Apparently Chummie can. While Gibby recovers, Chummie googles. ‘How about this?’ he says finally, holding out the screen, triumph in his eyes.
Gibby gapes. ‘Can you afford it?’ He doesn’t mean to embarrass Chummie, but he can’t help seeing the incongruity. ‘If you have that sort of money, why are you working here?’ he blurts.
‘I have to do something with my time,’ shrugs Chummie. ‘And I’m good at my job. Besides, working in the geriatric ward means I get to sharpen up my Scrabble skills.’ His mouth twitches.
Give it ten years or so, and conducive circumstances, and perhaps Chummie might become possible friendship material. ‘I guess, after what I’ve just told you, I’d better foot the bill,’ he says with another flash of humour.
Gibby watches him at the till, fumbling with change, apologising to the cashier with the beehive hair. Something has changed about him; he has the air of a man who, thinking the ground was solid under his feet, has just stumbled and fallen. In other words, he looks scared.
THE WINDOW AND THE LIGHT
WHY DOES LACE AGREE to accompany Gibby to The Golden Monkey on a Friday night? She’s never been there (not her sort of place) but she knows already what it’s like: plastic bamboo, lukewarm wine, a ragged saucer of mints at the till.
‘It’s not exactly an office party.’ Gibby sounds immensely casual, which reveals how gut-wrenchingly, headache-inducingly keen he is for Lace to come with him. ‘My father’s decided to celebrate the company’s fifteenth year in business.’
It’s obvious what the combination of ‘celebrate’, ‘company’ and ‘business’ add up to. Gibby is asking Lace to spend her Friday night drinking sweet white wine in a cramped Chinese restaurant alongside reluctant husbands, edgy wives, and waitresses who are exquisitely polite and woefully underpaid.
Lace chews her lip and pushes the supermarket trolley along with her elbows. ‘Okay. I’ll come.’
Gibby has already opened his mouth to launch into the long list of reasons why Lace might enjoy a ‘Let There Be Lux’ office party. His mouth snaps shut and he looks stunned; he’s not used to instant success.
‘Okay,’ repeats Lace, manoeuvring up beside the cereal shelves. ‘Now, are you sure your mother wants Lucky Charms? It looks like something no one over the age of ten would touch.’
‘She got addicted to it on her honeymoon in the States. Now she eats it dry. Picks out the marshmallows in a special order.’ Gibby throws three boxes into the trolley. ‘It’s highly coloured enough to be visible in half-light. It’s her version of bar snacks.’ He stares at Lace. ‘Why did you say okay to the party?’
‘Because I meant it. I don’t mind coming to your father’s boring office party and eating wontons and watching people get drunk and hit on each other’s spouses.’ She hasn’t really answered the question but Gibby leaves it at that. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. He blunders ahead, his great gusts of relief setting the neon-orange ‘Special Deals’ signs swinging.
Now he’s around the corner, choosing washing powder, let’s repeat the question, quickly, quietly. Why, when Lace has already arranged a date with a handsome philosophy lecturer who will start the evening talking of Hume and morality, and end the evening by acting in pleasurably immoral ways — why would she opt instead for the dull prospect of a lighting company’s work-do?
‘Something about Gibby’s fringe.’ Lace is mulling over her decision out loud. ‘Something about the way it’s been cut too short, so his eyebrows have nowhere to hide. It makes me feel sorry for him.’
‘Are you going to stand there mumbling all day?’ It’s a square woman in a salmon-pink tracksuit. ‘I’m trying to get to the tinned meat.’
‘Of course you are,’ says Lace smoothly. Is it courtesy, or insult? With the open box of cereal tucked under her arm, she and the trolley glide away.
She runs Gibby to ground by a shelf of polishing products. ‘What on earth do you need from here? No one in your house cleans, do they?’
‘Never.’ Gibby sprays a pine-scented plume into the air and sniffs it in a considering way. ‘Hmm. That’s okay, not too synthetic.’ He does the same with a can of sandalwood. ‘Which do you like better?’
‘What about cherry-blossom? That sounds nice.’
‘No, too flowery.’ Gibby takes out his notebook and jots something down.
‘I see! You have your inventor’s hat on.’ Suddenly Lace has to shield her eyes because he’s become so radiant, shining like the brightest spotlight in his father’s top-of-the-range system. Strange, the way ideas suddenly take hold of him even in the most mundane of settings, like this suburban supermarket with dirty floors and fish-faced women.
THE PHILOSOPHER PRINCE TAKES rejection well. ‘I see,’ he says over the phone. ‘You’re blowing me off for your best friend.’ He pauses. ‘Couldn’t you just blow me?’
For a second the familiar spark ignites in Lace’s head. There’s always next Friday. This is what she’s about to say, but a shutter falls behind her eyes like a guillotine, cutting off her future.
‘I’m sorry?’ It sounds as if the philosopher is speaking from a hallway; there are squeaking feet, the hum of voices, and the constant banging of doors.
‘I have to go,’ says Lace, sounding like an actor on a soap opera.
‘I didn’t mean to cause offence. Neanderthal of me.’ The philosopher is gaining points by the minute: not only nice, not only nicely mocking, but also able to apologise. ‘Can we rewind?’
The problem is, she can’t remember how they started. Which comment might she have found indelicate? Already the conversation has fallen into pieces, dropping through the cracks of her memory.
‘Lace, are you okay?’ There’s a slamming sound, and then background silence. The philosopher has shut himself in somewhere, perhaps in his office, the better to express his concern about the beautiful, odd girl whom he dreams about nearly every night.
Is she okay? She’s been pondering this for some days now but she hasn’t come up with an answer.
‘I could come round,’ offers the philosopher. ‘I don’t have lectures this afternoon.’
‘No!’ The suggestion temporarily energises Lace. Coming to her place is against the rules, never known in the whole of her amorous history. ‘Not here. My father’s in bed with a migraine.’
‘Your father? But I thought he was —?’ For one whose profession includes debating the finer points of life and death, he seems strangely reluctant to say the word.
A chunk of Lace’s past resurfaces; she swears under her breath. A retrospective of her father’s work in an art-house cinema, a speech she’d given as the sole survivor of the family, an admiring audience — one of whom was the philosophy lecturer himself. Of course! This is how they met.
‘I meant my uncle.’ She sinks onto a chair: a stupid mistake. ‘He’s a total tyrant. That is, he’s totally tyrannised. By migraines.’
‘I see.’ Ominously, it sounds as if the philosopher really is starting to see; he sounds extremely worried. ‘What if we meet somewhere neutral, then? You sound as if you need —’
What’s he going to say? Lace waits for the expected:
— a shoulder to cry on
— an ear to bend
— a good cry?
But he resorts to none of these. ‘A break,’ he says finally.
A break! How odd, and how sad, that he should choose this particular word. Lace knows what she has to do. She can never again share popcorn with him in a mid-afternoon cinema; never again hear about Hume’s influence on Adam Smith (at least, not from him). Never achieve a greater familiarity with his warm mouth, his smooth chest, his lean thighs.
‘Never again.’ She leans forward on her chair as if gripped by pain. But she’d like to be remembered in the old way — as a sparky luminous girl, rather than a thin tired one whose memory is riddled with holes. Summoning all her strength she announces, deadpan, that she’s nervous about going to her friend’s father’s office party. ‘All
those hard-boiled salesmen!’ she quips. ‘Fried pork, and frazzled wives.’ Sweat pours off her forehead with the effort; the phone slips in her hand. ‘Wontons and wantonness,’ she concludes.
Though the philosopher laughs, he’s not stupid enough to believe in such a lightning-fast recovery. ‘This is a postponement,’ he reminds her, ‘not a cancellation.’
So they part on a high note, which is how Lace prefers to leave things. She strides around the flat, marshalling magazines into rubbish bags, scraping food into the bin, reminding herself that the philosopher’s kindness would have been her undoing. To avoid any future lapses she deletes his phone number, although this makes her cry.
When she looks in the mirror she’s as pale as paper: no story inside her, no words in her head. As she walks through the city she pulls her coat tightly around her to hold herself together.
MR LUX IS HOVERING just inside the beaded curtain, a Red Bull in one hand and a Coke in the other. As he greets each new guest he takes a sip from one can and then the other, mixing his own energy cocktail in his mouth. When Lace arrives he swallows too fast.
‘Lacey!’ he splutters. ‘Glad you could make it.’
Lace reaches out to shake his hand but is thwarted by the Red Bull can. ‘Happy fifteenth birthday, Mr Lux.’
‘Ha ha! If only!’ Mr Lux gulps speedily from one hand and then the other, the fastest caffeine-gun in the west. ‘But none of this formal stuff tonight, Lacey. Call me Adam.’
‘I will if you call me Lace.’ Cautiously she unbuttons her coat, fearing that fragments of herself will fall onto the swirling red carpet.
Gibby floats up behind his father like a jellyfish dwarfed by a big-bellied shark. ‘You came alone, Lace?’ He peers through the branches of the plastic cherry tree. ‘No date?’
Mr Lux laughs loudly. ‘You kids! Things weren’t so complicated in my day. If you asked a pretty girl to a party, you certainly didn’t expect her to turn up with another man.’ His sidelong look at Lace is decidedly speculative. ‘You should come round more often, Lacey.’
‘Her name is LACE.’ Gibby flushes. ‘And you know we’re just friends, Dad. Don’t turn this into something it’s not.’
‘So serious!’ Mr Lux laughs to the waitress bearing a tray of welcome drinks. ‘They always say that humour skips a generation.’
Gibby drags Lace into the fake cherry-blossom grove. ‘You didn’t have to completely cancel your Friday night.’ He sounds almost aggrieved. ‘You were welcome to bring whoever it was you’d lined up.’ He makes it sound as if Lace is a hunter, with a row of stags willing to be hauled out and shot.
‘I wouldn’t bring a date here. I wouldn’t bring anybody here!’ She hopes Gibby will laugh. But he’s picking at a patch of artificial moss, balling up small pieces, hurling them at a nearby group of ruddy-faced men.
The night is too young but Lace feels as old as the moon, as worn as the carpet. ‘Maybe we can sit down. Are there allotted table-settings?’
Gibby looks at her with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘We can’t sit down. Sitting down at tables required paying for a dinner menu, and my father’s decided to keep costs down.’
‘No chairs? And no food?’
‘Finger food, bought by my father — cheaper that way. Frozen spring rolls and frozen wontons from Cut-Price Caterers, deep-fried on the premises.’
‘I see why he’s won Regional Businessman of the Year three times in a row.’ Lace is appalled and impressed.
Gibby tugs at his shirt collar, beads of sweat glistening in the roots of his hair. ‘I’ll get us some drinks. There’s a windowsill you can perch on, if no one else has thought of it first.’
Lace sets off across the room. Although she doesn’t know anyone, some of the men act as if they’ve met her before. ‘Aren’t you —?’ they say, by way of starting a conversation. ‘No,’ she says quickly, ploughing on through the green lighting, the waving arms and gaping mouths. She’s nearly at the windowsill when someone grabs her sleeve. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ There’s an ominous ripping sound.
Lace turns to see a small woman with narrowed eyes, peering at the shred of material in her hand. ‘You wore white?’ says the woman accusingly. ‘On a chilly evening like this?’
‘And it just got chillier, thanks to you,’ says Lace, looking down at her gaping sleeve. She isn’t usually rude but she’s worried about Gibby, and she’s too tired to be tactful.
‘Don’t make a fuss. I’ve got a safety pin in my bag.’ The woman is clearly tipsy, and also vaguely familiar; is she a regular at the Ha-Ha Club?
Gibby arrives in a rush of embarrassment and anguish. ‘For god’s sake, Mum! What the hell have you done to Lace’s dress?’
Of course! It’s Mrs Lux — almost unrecognisable without her beige velour sofa and a remote control in each hand. Has Lace ever even seen her standing up?
‘I was just trying to say hello. But she kept on walking.’ Mrs Lux stares crossly at Gibby but instantly her face clears. ‘Ah, gin! At last!’
Gibby pulls the glasses out of reach. ‘It’s lemonade. And they’re not for you.’
Mr Lux approaches swiftly. ‘Come on, you two,’ he hisses. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’
Quietly, Lace reclaims the remnant of her sleeve and stands supportively behind Gibby.
‘You need to get some food into Mum,’ Gibby tells his father in a whisper.
Instead Mr Lux gives his wife a sharp pinch on the arm and changes the subject. The focus swings to the prospect of Gibby joining the Lux lighting company, and soon a small crowd has gathered. It’s all ‘When?’, ‘At what level?’ and ‘Does he need training or has he picked up business acumen from his father?’
Lace downs half a glass in one go. The next second, her head is reeling. ‘What’s in this?’ she asks Gibby.
‘Vodka, champagne, some unidentified liqueur. There’s a booze cabinet behind the nodding Mandarin. Drink up and I’ll get you another. It’s the only way to get through this fiasco.’
‘What about answering Mrs Martinez, son?’ Mr Lux slaps him so hard on the back that the dragon-shaped swizzle stick leaps out of Gibby’s drink and into Mrs Lux’s half-open handbag.
Mrs Martinez is a pale, avid-eyed human praying mantis. She repeats her question, mouth gaping. ‘When are you intending to join Let There Be Lux?’
‘Never.’ Gibby raps it out.
Mr Lux gives a loud laugh, which is his automatic response to anything awkward. ‘He’s joking. Kids have it good these days. They can play around for years before joining the real world, whereas we were grown-up at fifteen.’ His chest puffs out at the memory, and so do those of his friends. They stand like well-fed pigeons, swelling over their drinks.
‘Grown-up?’ echoes Gibby, staring at the pink-faced men and their teetering wives, at the lipstick-coated glasses and greasy fingers and unsubtle rubbing of arms against breasts.
Rocking on his heels, Mr Lux raises his glass to Gibby and Lace. ‘They’re the first generation to have it all! Just look at them!’
Everyone does so. The women scrutinise Lace with dislike and with envy, while the men — having been given a legitimate excuse — inspect her head to toe. Only Mrs Lux, now staggering, trains her eyes on Gibby. ‘Why aren’t you wearing the short-sleeved shirt I bought for you? You promised me you would.’
‘Do you ever feel like you’re vanishing?’ Gibby speaks to Lace and Lace only. Standing there in his buttoned-up long-sleeved beige shirt with the cuffs pulled right down over his hands, he does looks as if he’s shrinking, melting away under the unwanted attention.
‘What do you call yourselves, kids?’ Mr Lux is on a jolly roll. ‘Generation X, Y and Z are done. Should we start again at A?’
‘A for Arbitrary!’ suggests Mr Martinez.
A for Arsehole. Lace nearly says it out loud, clenching her hand so hard around her glass that it squeaks like a microphone. ‘We have other problems,’ she says loudly. ‘I apologise for the fact that we ha
ven’t lived through a world war or a Great Depression. Nor are most of us supporting families by the age of twenty. We do, however, have to contend with no career stability, exorbitant student loans, high unemployment, unaffordable housing, impossible societal expectations, enormous pessimism, the ever-present threat of terrorism, melting icecaps and crumbling welfare states. Furthermore —’ She pauses for breath. We’re constantly accused of being spoilt for choice. But before she can say this an army of waitresses and waiters emerge, parading in a red-silk circle, presenting food. Huge spring rolls leaking pork fat and carrot juice, plump flabby wontons lying in mounds like carcasses. Perhaps it’s the irresistible smell of piping-hot grease, or the sight of Lace holding her white shredded sleeve-of-peace — suddenly, the wind of opinion changes.
‘Very difficult to be young these days,’ mumble Mr Lux’s employees, through free pastry. ‘Impossible pressures. Vast insecurity.’
Even Mrs Lux becomes kindlier, possibly because she’s snatched yet another brimming wine off a nearby table. She approaches Lace with a reconciliatory safety pin. ‘You look thin,’ she says, almost fondly. ‘Is your cousin feeding you properly?’
‘He’s my uncle,’ says Lace, watching her sleeve being fastened crookedly to her dress.
‘And you look so tired!’ Mrs Lux’s maternal manner had probably come more naturally twenty years and a thousand martinis earlier. She squeezes Lace’s arm experimentally, as if it’s a mango or a pear. ‘You’re skin and bones.’ She sounds quite happy that at last, after many years, she can find fault with Lace’s appearance.
‘You need a rest-cure, Lacey.’ Mr Lux nods emphatically. ‘Want a recommendation for a good getaway?’
‘I already have a place to go.’ Lace peels his hand off her forearm. ‘My uncle’s booked me into a sanatorium.’
‘A planetarium? You’re going to look at stars? I suppose that’s as restful as anything.’ Mrs Lux looks away vaguely, as if craving the static non-engaging presence of a TV screen.
Gibby glances at Lace and raises one eyebrow. Lace raises two back. It’s their usual silent communication, easy, quick, wry — but now, instead of making her safe, it makes her feel bleak. How many days has she agreed to be locked up under the gaze of unfamiliar mountains, away from her best friend?
Suicide Club, The Page 12
