‘Come in, f-follow me.’
He led her into a hallway. The air smelled like wet laundry drying slowly. An antique crystal chandelier with two functioning bulbs was the only light source. It illuminated a huge green patch of damp on the wall and a series of intricate cracks that rose to the decaying cornice-work. She looked up, saw dragonflies and flakes of fallen plaster trapped in intricate strands of a great webdrift. Whole place was falling down. One mighty storm would flatten it. Who’d want an old mansion next to Boombox Bay?
She noticed a couple of oil-paintings on the wall, one of a sombre man in judicial robes, the other a pale woman with a fragile consumptive look. Neither face smiled.
‘Who are they, Dorcus?’ she asked.
‘Parents.’
‘They live here?’
‘Oh no, they’re … they’re dead. I’m on m-my own.’
He led her to the foot of a staircase, then stopped. He didn’t move for a while. What’s he listening for? His smell was stronger when he stood still. She took a step away.
‘What time’s the bus, Dorcus?’
‘The bus?’
‘I assume we’re standing here waiting for something.’
No wee smile, no nod of recognition at her little joke. Humour just wasn’t his thing, she could see that. He stared over her shoulder and she turned to see what had absorbed his attention. She followed the line of his eye into a room where dust-sheets covered furniture. She made out the shape of a piano in the gloom, and a wingback chair that, with a sheet covering it, suggested the figure of somebody sitting there in a shroud.
She asked, ‘Do you play?’
‘Play … what?’
‘The johanna.’
‘Me? N-no never. It was, uh, my mother’s and she played a long time ago … y-years.’ He sprayed saliva with some words, and choked back others.
He led her from the bottom of the staircase and down a corridor, away from the room with the piano. Corridors went this way, that way: the house had an abundance of passages, a maze.
‘Rube says you work with him.’ She couldn’t imagine what this hesitant stooky of a man had in common with Reuben Chuck.
‘Mr Chuck, I don’t c-call him …’
He was never going to finish the sentence. ‘What is it you do exactly?’
Dorcus opened a door and showed her inside a room with a long black leather couch and a shelf of leatherbound books. An old black Bakelite phone sat on a table. The curtains at the window were covered with cartoon characters from old DC Thomson comics. Desperate Dan. Lord Snooty. Christ, she hadn’t seen these in years.
‘I provide him w-with office supplies,’ he said. He shut the door.
‘Really?’
‘Paper and printer c-cartridges and that sort of …’
Glorianna took off her coat, slung it across a chair. She sat on the couch. It squeaked under her. The only office supplier she knew in connection with Chuck’s businesses was Grimmond & Company of Finnieston, who provided invoice books, business cards, and stationery to the Fitness Centre. But then she didn’t know everything about Chuck’s affairs, and didn’t want to.
Too much knowledge – you know what they say.
Now she heard what seemed like the sound of footsteps very far away, muffled, the slop-flop an old man might make as he shuffled along a track of threadbare carpet in brokenbacked slippers. Dorcus, who’d drawn the curtains and turned on a lamp, began flexing and unflexing his hands nervously. Outside, the dogs roared as if they’d found a couple of newborn babies, perfect aperitifs.
She was cold. A draught blew at her. She couldn’t locate its source, it was erratic and swirled around her, carrying a hint of perfume reminiscent of – what? She wasn’t sure. Flowers, but what kind? OK, maybe one of those little scented Airwick things in a bottle tucked in a corner. But where was the draught coming from? The door was closed, the curtains drawn.
Dorcus appeared to be listening for something, head tipped to one side.
‘Are you sure you don’t have a lodger, a roommate?’
‘Yes, nobody, n-none.’
Fine. I’m the one hearing stuff. Maybe it wasn’t anyone walking, just the rising and settling of ancient floorboards. Old houses had arthritic tics of their own. And that odd draught was just … air rushing through the gaps in warped window frames, blowing down old chimneys, and joining in a shimmy of wind.
She heard the erratic clink of piano keys.
‘Mice,’ Dorcus said. ‘It’s an old …’
An old house, yes sweetie, I clocked that instantly, it’s rotting away, honeycombed with rodent runs. Gross: she wasn’t enthralled with the rodents running up and down the keys of the piano. She didn’t like mice. They creeped her. Their whiskers, their cunning eyes and furtive movements. She was about to suggest traps or an exterminator, but what business was it of hers? And she wasn’t warming to the prospect of laying hands on Dorcus. But she’d do what Chuck asked, she’d do it as quickly as she could, and then get the hell out.
The piano keys rattled again. ‘That good old rodent rock,’ she said. ‘You think it’s a special night for them? Somebody’s twenty-first?’
No response, no wee smile.
‘Come here,’ and she reached out for his sweating hand. She felt resistance. His body was unyielding, his expression stricken. ‘Sit beside me, Dorcus. Come on.’
She tugged his hand, but still he didn’t move. Reuben, you have some serious fuds for associates. This guy’s been double-dipped in a cryonic substance. ‘Let me massage your shoulders. You’ll feel better.’
Dorcus lowered himself tentatively to the edge of the couch, keeping a safe distance from her. She opened her bag, took out a vanilla-scented candle, lit it: it helped defuse offensive odours. She uncorked a bottle, and tipped massage oil into her hands. She rubbed the backs of his hands, stroking them, noticing the ragged fingernails.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Lavender and almond-honey. Feeling better, Dorcus?’
‘Uh …’
‘Tell the truth. You’re unwinding. I know you are.’
‘A wee … little, yes.’
He was lying. ‘You got anything to drink? Scotch? Vodka?’
‘I might have some wine …’
‘Why don’t you pour a couple of glasses?’
He got up quickly and left the room. She wandered idly. She glanced at the bookshelves. The big leatherbound volumes were medical textbooks. Surgical Physiology. Complications in Surgery. The Anaesthesiologist’s Manual of Surgical Procedures … There had to be a hundred such books, more. Tucked at the end of a shelf she found a batch of medical supply catalogues. She flicked some pages.
Operating scissors. Haemostatic forceps. Surgical blades. Drainable fecal collectors.
Drainable fecal …? Vomitarium reading material.
She stuck the catalogues back in place.
Dorcus returned with two thick glass tumblers half-filled with wine.
She took one. ‘Cheers,’ and she sipped. It was plonk, truly vile. Chateau Oxter-Rot. It left a taste of vinegar at the back of her throat. She felt like spitting it out. Dorcus took one niggardly sip, then set his glass down beside the phone.
‘Mmm,’ she said and put her glass alongside his.
‘The wine’s b-been here, oh, a long time.’
‘Old wines are always the best … I was checking your books. You’re a medical student?’
‘Student?’ He uttered a derisory laugh. ‘I’m fully qualified …’
‘You’re Dr Dorcus then?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘But you also sell office supplies?’
‘Well … this house is … I need extra income.’
The qualified physician flogging reams of Xerox paper. ‘You work two jobs.’
‘I’m kept b-busy,’ and he gestured vaguely.
OK. Whatever. She patted the couch. ‘Take your shirt off and sit beside me.’
He stared at her as if this request
was an attack on his personal morality.
‘Look, I need your skin, Dorcus. I’m very good at this. Trust me. Do you find it hard to trust people?’
‘No, no, n-not really, I don’t know …’
He unbuttoned slowly. He didn’t take the shirt all the way off. He exposed his white bony chest. She thought of a turkey at Christmas, gorged, denuded, a yawning white carcass.
He sat down. She tipped more cream into her palms and reached out, feathering the back of his hand with her fingertips. ‘You don’t have to be nervous. I guarantee pleasant relaxation.’
‘I’m not n-nervous.’
‘You just bite your nails for nutritional reasons?’
‘There’s no nutrit— oh, you’re having a j-joke.’
‘A small joke,’ she said and drew closer to him. That wine came back up into her mouth. Gut rejection. She slid the shirt off him. She touched his nipples, felt the ridges of his ribcage. Did he ever eat? Maybe he was a vegan, a bean-muncher, the way Chuck had become. Chuck, bloody Chuck, why couldn’t he have stayed the way he was instead of turning into a Temple devotee? Fun had gone out of his life, plus I miss all the great fucking we had. I thought it was love, I truly did, romantic me.
Teasing, she slipped off Dorcus’s glasses and peered through them, oh God, the room became an instant fog, she could see nothing but blur.
‘P-please give me my glasses back,’ he said.
‘Blind without them?’ She popped them on his nose.
‘My eyesight’s not too good,’ he said.
She moved closer to him, kneaded his right arm slowly, then the left. He was rigid. She couldn’t unlock the knotted muscles. His hands were clenched against his knees so tightly that no circulation was reaching his knuckles, which were sharp white stones.
‘Lie back,’ she said. ‘Shut your eyes.’
He slumped backwards but didn’t close his eyes. His lips were tight shut in resistance. She worked up to his shoulders with her fingertips.
‘Feel the warmth coming out of my fingers, Dorcus? Think of your body as a slow moving river, it’s flowing gently, very gently, the water is clear. You’re weightless. You’re floating in a womb, it’s very silent, nothing can harm you …’
He was motionless, a plank. A pained look creased his face. OK, he’s over-anxious, he’s never been massaged before, and for all she knew he’d never been touched by a woman. She ran the flats of her hands down his chest toward his navel, then rippled them back up again. Again, again. Energy was streaming out of her – but failed to penetrate him.
‘Feeling it, Dorcus? Are you letting go?’
‘I don’t … no, I don’t …’
‘You won’t sink. The water will keep you afloat.’ Hard damn labour this. She took a towel from her bag, dried her hands, and poured a little Green Tea soothing cream onto her palms. She worked him all angles, kneading and stroking and then, having asked him to turn over, she pummelled him close to the spine. She counted the pimples on his back, noticing a small mole under his shoulder-blade.
She stopped, sighed. ‘You’re not getting anything out of this, are you?’
Dorcus said nothing. She couldn’t see his expression because he had his face hidden in a cushion, but she guessed he had the look of a man eager for an ordeal to end.
‘OK. Let’s try something else. I need you to take your trousers off and lie face down again.’
‘My t-trousers?’
‘I’ll look away if it makes you feel more comfy. Remember, I’m a professional. I do a lot of massages. You’re a client, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t see you as a man. No offence.’
‘I … I find th-this difficult.’
She turned her face aside. ‘See? Not peeking, am I?’
She heard him unbutton his trousers, then the sound of them sliding down his legs to the floor. The couch creaked as she turned to look at him. He was naked except for his thick slack white socks, and his tartan boxers. He had pale skinny legs covered with very fine hair.
‘Face down,’ she said.
He slid onto the couch, buried his face. She bent, pressed the base of his spine. She made rippling circles with her fingertips, digging them into the skin above his buttocks. She was forceful at times, at other times gentle.
Dorcus was a locked dungeon. Fucking useless.
Chuck used to get hard as soon as she touched him in this area. Wowee, like that.
Take a taxi, Glori.
Up yours, Reuben.
She heard no change in Dorcus’s breathing. She wondered if he had a lover, and what tricks this woman might use to warm up Dorcus and bring him to life. How did she get his little sentryman to rise?
‘Dorcus, I need to lower your shorts, but only a little. Are you OK with that?’
‘I d-don’t, ah, well … if you …’
She drew the tartan boxers down an inch and rolled her fingertips through the scrawny muscles of the upper buttocks. He had no arse to speak of. She pushed, and strained, then she let herself relax a moment. Her finger joints ached. She began again, working her hands under the boxers. It was exhausting and after twenty minutes of pushing, kneading, pulling and stroking, she understood that she had a dead man on her hands, the ultimate hypertensive.
She dropped her hands away from him and sighed. ‘Dorcus, I hate to say this, but our stars are in different quadrants. Maybe this just isn’t a good time for us. You won’t be offended if I call it a day, will you? It’ll be like I never came to see you in the first place. That suit you? I’ll tell Mr Chuck it didn’t work out—’
‘No, no, d-don’t tell him that. I like Mr Chuck. D-don’t tell him that …’
‘OK. What if I say … it was the best massage I ever gave and you loved it?’
‘Yes, tell him that, s-say that to him.’
She heard the piano again. A whole army of mice had to be running across those keys. They scampered over the bass notes, boomp boomp boomp. She repressed a shudder. Fur on the ivories. She got up from the couch. Dorcus was sweating. He reminded her of a geeky kid who’d never quite become adult, and so goddam tense his guts had to be twisted up inside like bad macramé.
She shrugged, picked up her coat and took her mobile phone from her coat pocket.
‘Who are you c-calling? Mr Chuck?’
‘Well, Dorcus, I can hardly walk all the way back across Glasgow. And no, I’m not calling Mr Chuck.’ She began to tap in the numbers of her regular taxi company when Dorcus made a swift unexpected move toward her and chopped the mobile out of her fingers. She was astounded by his action, the suddenness, the shock of it. What the fuck?
‘I’m sorry, so s-sorry,’ he said. He went down on his knees, picked the phone up, stuttering apologetically. ‘I d-don’t k-know w-what came over me—’
‘Forget it, Dorcus.’ Brush it off, make out it’s only some weird spontaneous discharge of energy, who could say? But it disturbed her on a level where she didn’t want disturbances. He handed her the phone. The little plastic screen was cracked. When she tried to make a call the line was dead. The force of the phone striking the floor had either dislodged the battery or busted the circuits.
‘This is a bloody nuisance,’ she said.
‘I d-didn’t mean, h-honest, I just had this fla …’
‘I know you didn’t mean it,’ she said. ‘Fact is, you did it anyway. And look – I’m left with one very dead phone.’ She shook it as if this might accomplish a rearrangement of the circuitry, which was like kicking a flat tyre in the hope it would reinflate.
She nodded at the old Bakelite phone on the table. ‘Can I use that?’
‘Doesn’t work,’ he said. He turned away from her and pulled up his trousers and buttoned them.
‘You must have a phone in the house that does, right?’
She wanted to go, had to. Dorcus wasn’t the kind of person she longed to spend any more time with. Forty minutes in his company already, and what? – one bolted-down gulp of execrably bad vino, none of her techniques h
ad worked on him, plus the broken phone. It wasn’t a cheerful list.
She wasn’t at all happy about the way he’d lost control and just whacked her mobie out of her hand – what was he? An epileptic? a guy with uncontrollable fits and seizures? And if he was a doctor why didn’t he prescribe himself some medication for the condition?
It’s none of my business. She put on her coat. She saw a bunch of his tartan boxers spill from the badly buttoned fly. It was funny, but she knew that if she laughed he’d take it the wrong way.
‘D-don’t tell Mr Chuck what hap-hap …’
‘I already promised you. Now, show me a phone I can—’
Dorcus swallowed hard, as if choking, then turned pale and stuck a hand across his mouth. He rushed out of the room so suddenly he was gone before she could finish her sentence. She heard him climb the staircase rapidly.
Dorcus in stricken flight – why?
She went into the corridor. She could hear him run along a passageway overhead. Then, from above, the sound of a door slamming.
She walked to the foot of the stairs.
She needed a phone to call a taxi, and a key from Dorcus to open the front gates. If she hadn’t needed either, she’d have split already. In fact, she’d settle for the key alone, and take her chances finding a taxi cruising along.
She climbed halfway up the staircase. The air became bitter cold all around her; she’d entered a space where for no apparent reason the temperature plunged. Shivering, she hurriedly climbed the second flight. The cold that had clung to her dispersed as quickly as it had occurred.
Inexplicable draughts, distant footsteps, a chill zone – wooooeeee. She didn’t believe in occult happenings. It was easier for her to believe that crystology was a genuine science than in any spooky supernatural stuff.
She reached the upper hall, which stretched away in a series of closed doors. She walked slowly. ‘Dorcus? Dorcus?’
She heard the sound of somebody vomit – an outrageously powerful upchuck, the thick splatter of undigested foodstuffs barfed at velocity. Expressboke.
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