The Afterparty
Page 9
‘Stay local, Paul,’ said Mellody, climbing out last. ‘We shouldn’t be too long.’
And as she stepped into the municipal orange of the overhead lamp, Calvin realised, not quite believing it, that she had changed her clothes. Gone now were the dress and heels. Here was blouse and skinny jeans. Short ones, with little roll-top boots. She must have taken off her clothes while he was looking out the window!
She trapped his stare.
‘Are you not cold, Calvin?’ Smiling.
‘I’m all right,’ he lied.
‘Well, it’ll be warm inside.’
She clasped his arms in her hands and rubbed them up and down.
‘Come on then,’ Sean said, and set off at the head of the group.
After just a few yards, they turned into what appeared to be a car park. (Gravel, puddles, cars.) In front of them was a large office building, sagging with age, and so completely unremarkable that Calvin had not noticed it from the street. A British Telecom logo – the old British Telecom logo – still hung on the front, but clearly the place had been deserted for some time.
As they got nearer, however, music could be heard. The walls trembled with a patterned hum, a deep and awesome sound. Cracks of lights were visible around the windows too, and an overweight, middle-aged man was standing by the door. This was no industry event, Calvin realised. This was a squat.
‘Ten pounds, folks,’ said the man.
Sean whipped three twenties from a wad and handed them to a woman with a nose ring who was sitting at a trestle table. She put his money in an old ice-cream tub and stamped everybody’s hands. It was too dark to see what with.
Calvin had never been to a squat party before. Though he had heard about them often. A secret mobile number used to go round college on Friday afternoons. Just dirty binges, he assumed, filled with trance freaks sweating off their body paint for days. That Mellody herself might go to one astounded him.
And already she was walking calmly up the litter-covered stairs. Calvin followed, with the others. The music swelled. The handrail rattled in its fixings. Fell silent when he touched it. Rattled when he let it go. An unempty beer can skittered through his legs and struck the wall with a looping fairground clank. On the first floor, they passed through a cloud of weed that drifted from three women who were leaning through the window. If they recognised him, they gave no sign. Calvin lit another cigarette, and tried offering the packet around as his friends climbed further. But it was dark, and no one saw. Too loud as well, as they approached the second level, where a rise in volume introduced the dancefloor. And still the group did not change course, spiralling left and up and onwards as a set of scarred wood doors swung open, sending out a weary male silhouette and an assault of techno. Hi-hat, bass-thump, hi-hat, bass-thump, unsafe and merciless and urgent. So loud was the sound that it tickled the hairs on Calvin’s arms and sent a warming shiver through his trunk. On the third floor, Sean at last turned right and led them through into a large, low-ceilinged hall. There were fewer people here, and it was quieter than Calvin would have expected. Tables and chairs, some upright, were scattered in clusters. Graffiti of all abilities covered the walls.
‘There he is,’ said Mellody, out of breath and sexy, pointing. She set off across the centre of the room, past the serving rail of an ancient cafeteria. Behind its Perspex hood, where the hotplates used to be, were now just holes, round-cornered oblong openings, filled with cans of beer and bottled water. On the wall hung an old felt noticeboard, still studded with the kind of plastic letters that the chip shops used where Calvin had grown up. And there, beside an empty four-tiered cake display, stood a man of almost superhuman height, picked out against a bank of UV tubes. He seemed to be waving, and tapped his watch in a mime of impatience.
Sean reached him first and shook his hand. Then Mellody.
‘Giles,’ she said, proffering a cheek as well, which the man bent low to kiss.
‘Mellody, mwah,’ said Giles. ‘You do realise what you’ve done to my schedule?’
He was well spoken, and wore one of those upper-class waxed jackets, extra large to contain his stupendous limbs. The look of someone who has eaten well for generations.
‘You haven’t been waiting ages, have you?’ Mellody was concerned.
‘Oh no,’ sighed Giles gently. ‘Mrs Giles is on the warpath again, but she knows what Fridays can be like.’
‘Of course. How’s the little boy?’
‘Horribly healthy!’ he snorted. ‘A bloody tyrant. I’ll be on fatigues all night when I get home.’
Calvin had never met a posh drug dealer before. The lads in Leeds that he and Jason used were usually young rude boys. Party lovers blessed with business brains. Always in a rush. Paranoid too, they were – or not nearly paranoid enough. But then it must be difficult being a dealer, he always thought, trying to tell one’s customers from friends.
‘Hello Peter,’ Giles said.
‘All right mate,’ said Pete. ‘Sorry about the wait.’
Malcolm and Sasha just waved hi.
‘Giles, this is Calvin.’ Mellody stepped aside so he could be seen.
Giles extended a large soft hand.
‘How do you do?’ he said pleasantly.
Calvin shook it and said, ‘Yeah great, thanks.’
‘Business good?’ Sean asked.
The question felt embarrassing, but Giles did not seem to mind.
‘Oh, you know …’ he said, and left the rest to slide.
‘Mustn’t grumble, eh?’ Sean was jokey. ‘So, er, do you have what we talked about?’
‘Ah yes, you’ll need to talk to Rasta Phil about that.’
‘Rasta Phil?’
‘He’s in the kitchen behind the cafeteria.’
‘OK great,’ Sean said. He paused. ‘And he’s a Rasta, is he?’
‘Yes, he is.’
Sean waited, as if he was expecting more information. ‘Nice one, thanks,’ he said when he didn’t get it, and led everybody back towards the little bar.
But Mellody did not go with him.
Calvin panicked. To follow or to stay?
He looked at Mellody for guidance, and she asked him immediately: ‘Have you got a cigarette?’
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, Michael understood that he had become relaxed. It was just so good to talk about his writing when a person was sincerely interested like this. And somewhere, as the conversation detoured through the territories of Style and Story and (his own favourite) the Crisis in Fiction, he had forgotten that the person he was talking to was Hugo Marks. Indeed it felt now – almost – as if this movie star and he just naturally belonged in one another’s company. He tried to recall the time, just hours before, when he and Sally had discussed the guy as if he were a mythic being, something conjured by the folk imagination, like a cyclops or a sasquatch. And now: here he was. Now. Here. And basically a normal bloke – a nice bloke too, intelligent and tolerably read.
Looking up, he saw that Gordon Ramsay was towering over them with a big blond grin.
‘Those canapés were shit,’ he sniggered. ‘Did you make them?’
‘Gordon, hi!’ Hugo stood to embrace him. ‘No I didn’t, as a matter of fact. We don’t all have two kitchens in our house. How are you? This is Michael Knight from the Standard. Actually, is it Michael or Mike?’
It was always Michael. But standing up he said, ‘Either’s fine.’
‘The Standard? Shit.’ Ramsay gripped his hand. ‘Not the Evening Standard? I’m suing you lot at the moment.’
‘No, that’s the other one,’ said Michael, and with a rush of confidence: ‘You’ve got two kitchens in your house?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got the most amazing, beautiful lower-ground-floor kitchen for my wife. And I’ve got this lovely, stunning, 1,500 square-foot kitchen upstairs. With a code lock on the door.’
‘My God!’
Michael laughed. Surely this was gossip, too? But fearing that the thought was written on his face, he raised his
glass and chased the whisky down into the meltwater.
‘Well,’ Ramsay continued, ‘I don’t want to come in at 12.30 or one o’clock in the morning finding an overcooked, charcoaled cottage pie. I like my kitchen at home. It’s my play area …’
‘Do you think up new recipes there? I’ve always wondered’. Hugo had an eager fan face of his own.
‘Yeah, I do all sorts of things at bizarre times of the night. It’s amazing.’ The man’s rough energy was uncontainable. His whole body bounced on its heels as if anticipating second serve. ‘It’s like having a Bentley parked in your kitchen. This stove, it’s three and a half metres long; it’s all stainless steel; it’s got five ovens; it’s got an induction wok; it’s got a charcoal grill …’ He planned it out with methodical, even architectural gestures, building the thing all over again. His hands could not help smoothing down the counter, angling the pipes, setting up the knife rack high.
Michael focused hard, straining to impress each detail into his memory for later use.
‘Listen, I came over because I’ve got to go,’ Ramsay said suddenly, inflicting a double handshake, a post-match handshake, on them both.
‘You’re not coming back for the afterparty?’ Hugo asked, jerking his head towards the door.
‘Sorry, I can’t. I’ve got a plane at stupid o’clock. But look: happy birthday, fuckface. Don’t go to bed sober. And I want to see you and the missus in my new restaurant soon, OK?’
Michael watched the chef’s departing back light-headedly. He felt high and silly. Helium-filled. How was this night happening to him? Was it happening to him? It bore all the distinguishing marks of a night that never would.
‘So … you and Sally. Is it on the cards?’
Hugo sprung this with a twinkle, as he waved another waitress down.
‘No,’ Michael said, too late.
‘But she is single, right? Two more good Macallans, please.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh come on then! Get in there while it lasts! Not that it’s any of my business, of course. But me and Mellody, you know, it very nearly never happened. I cancelled quite a big screen test to see her the week after we met, and I always think about how easy it would have been just not to do that.’
He looked sympathetic, and Michael was touched. Though he did not see how his puny little love life could be compared to the celebrated union, the genetic jackpot, of Mellody and Hugo Marks.
‘I know. You’re right,’ he said in the end, and glanced up gratefully to see another group of guests steering themselves into their view.
‘F-fantastic party, Hugo,’ a girl said, bending down so rapidly for a kiss that Hugo had no choice but to stay in his seat. ‘I’ve had … such a wonderful time.’ She spoke unsteadily, and made no attempt to acknowledge anyone else as she straightened up.
‘You’re welcome, Natalie,’ Hugo replied, with what Michael had begun to recognise was his customary grace.
‘No, seriously. It was wonderful … We’ve all had … such a wonderful time at your birthday.’
The words were too fast, her eyes the unblinking bright of a fanatic. Even so, you could see she was an exceptional beauty, thin as rain, with long black hair, pale skin and rouge-ripened cheekbones. Her friends, quite young, said nothing. One of them wore a ragged T-shirt that said LA Whore. They seemed to be hanging back, as if to make it clear that Natalie – who continued to speak excitedly of ‘atmosphere’, ‘occasion’ and ‘amazing’ – did not represent them. At times Michael thought he detected a wafting sourness on her words, something cabbagey half-masked with mint. He had heard that bulimics got bad breath. Was that what he read in the air? He hoped, for some reason, that it was.
‘Excuse me, sorry,’ Hugo said suddenly, rising from his seat and producing a ringing phone from his pocket.
At last the girl stopped talking.
‘Renée, hi!’ Hugo hid the handset momentarily between his palms. ‘I’d better take this. It’s been great to see you.’ He began to walk away.
‘OK, bye then,’ said Natalie.
And Michael watched him leave, a little stunned. This then, so abruptly, was how his night with Hugo Marks would end.
Following a loose group wave, the young people bled away.
The waitress returned and placed another pair of glasses on the table.
‘Thanks,’ Michael said, looking at them.
The waitress smiled.
She was the same girl who had given him his crab so very long ago. The thought was pleasing. It had – lest he forget – been an extraordinary night.
Which reminded him. Hurriedly, he took his phone out and began, with the Notes function, to record as much as he could remember about Gordon’s Ramsay’s two kitchens. The ‘charcoaled’ cottage pie that his wife had left behind was particularly choice. Michael had drunk too much to write it down with style, but that could be revised at home. No details about Hugo, though. He was resolved on that. And he would explain as much to Sally in the morning – assuming he could convince her without proof that they had met. The uncomfortable suggestion that he should have asked for a photograph, like those girls did, started scratching at his thoughts. That would have been a thing to show around. Yet it had almost seemed – it really did almost seem – as if, in their talk, Hugo had left the matter of his famousness behind and become, in some transitory way, his friend. The memory would have to be his souvenir.
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boom
Thath was a heavy line.
Whoo.
Jusssht a dash of ketamine. A little sprrrritz. Ha ha ha. Mellody had overdone it a bit. Ha ha ha.
She was in a chair. A window sill beside. Specks of white glowed UV blue.
Dab.
Blah! Cigarette ash. Blah!
Ha ha ha.
Gripping weakly sides of chair, she levered herself to her feet. Tried to walk too quickly, found only air where her legs had been and crumpled gracelessly to floor.
Ha ha ha.
What a silly time. She made no effort to get up.
Heavy beats from downstairs hammered upwards through her body. Rapid and regular. Hidden industry. Somewhere near her face, a crushed beer can. Aimless gazing.
Calvin.
With a memory smack.
Calvin.
He curled comfortably around her bag as if it were a favored toy.
There were things in her bag.
Mellody sent test signals to her legs. They moved with more control. In earnest then, she crawled across, and Calvin offered no resistance as she plucked the bag away. Why did he have it, anyway? She remembered racking up two lines of K on the window ledge, handing him a note … Then she remembered nothing.
The contents of her bag, she was pleased to see, were untouched: Kleenex, mascara, a mirror, seven or eight bank notes, a lighter, Marlboro Lights (she lit one), her phone (two texts, four missed calls) and, in the little pocket at the side, a wrap of coke, a bag of ketamine and a little brown bottle of opium tincture (God bless Giles!). She checked her texts. One was from Hugo, predictably, which she did not read. The other was from Pete. ‘Where r u?’ it said. ‘time 2 scarper.’ Scarper? Mellody did not know what the word meant. Probably a British sex thing. With fumbling fingers, she deleted the message.
Calvin stirred at her feet. He looked so adorable, so new. It made Mellody feel powerful and protective, kind of horny in a wrong way. Balancing her cigarette on the window sill, she tipped a heap of Giles’s coke on to the space beside it. Some probable grains of ketamine remained, so she gathered them in too.
Calvin stirred again, and now his eyes opened. He looked confused.
A wave of tenderness urged Mellody to kneel and kiss him. And in her mind, some part of her did. What was she doing with this beautiful young man, she wondered? Whose talk in the car was all about ambition and his new cellphone? In whose eyes she saw herself reflected back the dreamed infatuation of a boy? What was she doing, her mind wondered, as her body split the coke in two and snorted up its half.