by Noir, Stella
I’m not where I want to be, that’s for sure, but how do I change that? Pass, next fucking question.
I’ve got University qualifications but little to no work experience, beyond the volunteering work I did on my local town’s paper. And that it turns out is completely worthless. I came to New York because the opportunities for employment were supposed to be much higher than anywhere else. That was before the crisis hit, of course. Now, nobody can get a job, anywhere. It was hard enough to get the childminding gig with Stephanie, and if I give that up I’ll have nothing.
Since I got here, and realized no-one was hiring, I’ve been stuck in a fucking rut like a rat in a hole with flat sides, and I can’t climb out. Nobody else seems to care. No one I talk to even likes New York anymore, they just say it’s a city that gets on with itself and doesn’t give two shits about the people that make it move along. If we give up, a new generation of people will just take our place. It’s depressing.
We’re like parasites on a host organism that can live with us or without us. If we stop sucking blood and nutrients out of our host we wither and die, and all the while all we’re doing is surviving just to get along. I can’t get out of it.
“It’s this exclusive members only bar, you know real fucking hush hush.”
Fuck, it’s Chris again. He’s stuck to me like a fucking magnet, and I can’t get him away from me. Is that my fucking drink in front of me? Fuck it. Someone hands me another tequila, I don’t know who it is, but I slam it anyway just to get through the conversation blackhole with Chris. I’m drunk and the room is wobbling. Chris’s face is so close to mine, I don’t know whether to kiss it. It might shut him the fuck up at least.
“Fuck, Violet”, I hear Vicki saying, and a moment later I realize why. I look around and see a group of her friends clapping me for a moment. Clapping me and Chris. Fuck. What have I done? I feel wonky and hot, and not quite anywhere.
“That was pretty unexpected”, Chris says, and leans in to kiss me again.
“I need some air”, I say, horrified by what I’ve done, desperate to take control again. I push him away, and head quickly outside. My head feels like it’s detached from my body.
Outside, it’s got even colder. The snow has stopped falling, but it’s collected up on the sidewalk and turned into a kind of brown slush where people have walked through it. It looks like coca-cola flavored slushie. Vicki’s suddenly next to me and a moment later I realize I have a cigarette in my hand. Vicki’s got her lighter out but I don’t want to smoke it. The thought nearly makes me puke. I try to put it behind my ear, but I do it clumsily and it drops to the ground. Vicki picks it up, hands it over to me and I eventually get it into my pocket.
“What was all that?” Vicki asks.
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t shut up.”
Maybe I’m not as fucked as I thought I was. Either that, or Vicki is just as fucked and neither of us notice it.
“Is that what you do to all men?” she asks, laughing. “You want another bit?”
She looks like she’s chewing, but there’s nothing in her mouth.
“I’ve got to eat”, I say, suddenly feeling hungry. “I think I’ll feel better if I eat. I haven’t had anything since lunchtime.”
“Chips?” Vicki asks. “Plenty of those at the table.”
I shake my head.
“I don’t know what I’m doing”, I say. It feels like a confession.
“What do you want to do?” Vicki asks.
“Boyfriend, job, new apartment.”
“You should ask for a pay rise, isn’t that Stephanie a rich bitch.”
“That’s exactly why I wouldn’t get one. She’s so tight with her money. Every time I do the shopping she insists on looking over the receipt. She didn’t even give me a bonus this year.”
“Then you’ll just have to meet a millionaire”, Vicki says. “Preferably a millionaire that owns a newspaper so he can fuck you, pay you and give you a job.”
I take the cigarette from Vicki, take a drag and pass it back to her. The smoke clears my head a little and I begin to feel a little better.
“How the fuck am I going to do that?” I ask. “Millionaires don’t grow on trees unless you hadn’t noticed.”
“Get down to the city and hang around the offices. Or head to Dukes or Kings. Apparently that’s where they all hang out.”
“Yeah, right, I mean, what the fuck is that anyway?” I say. “Chris said something about that earlier. Like some kind of wanky exclusive club that’s only open at Christmas time.”
“Fuck knows, I read something about it on facebook but to be honest it looked like bullshit. It’s supposed to be some kind of rich kids hang out, if you believe it exists at all”, Vicki says. “Everything goes onto a card. No cash, nothing. You need ten million dollars in your account just to get on the list to get in, something fucked up like that.”
“Tell me where it is, and I’ll go.”
“Well that’s just it”, Vicki says, “and that’s why I think it’s got to be bullshit, nobody knows.”
“Then it doesn’t exist”, I say.
“Or they just move it around. Fuck knows. Here, you want this?”
I take the last drag out of her cigarette, then throw the butt into the gutter.
“Vicki, quick.” One of her work friends has run out to get her. “You’re gonna miss it, come on!”
She pulls her by the arm back into the bar, and I go with her. At the table, two firemen are waiting, a crowd of expectant women on tenterhooks.
“Vicki Spencer?” one of them says in a put-on sexy, gravelly voice.
“Yes”, Vicki confesses, already giggling at the surprise.
“I believe you’ve got a fire we need to put out.”
“For fuck sake”, I say, not meaning to do so out loud.
The music changes and the guys begin to dance. First around the table then up on it. After a while, the entire bar is clapping and encouraging them along. It’s lame, and Vicki loves it. I stay long enough to see Vicki grab both of them by their huge bulges and slap them in turn on the ass.
I don’t know where I’m planning on going, but I need a walk. This is too much for me at the moment and I’m just not feeling it. Plus, I really need to get some food and sober up. Chris wants to come with me, but I won’t let him.
When I get outside, the cold air hits me and stuns me for a moment. It feels liberating to be free, and even though I have no idea where I’m going, I’m satisfied that a walk, anywhere, will be better than the tacky performance I’ve just left behind. It’s almost certainly what I need, perhaps to give me a little bit of time to think what I really want.
I’ve got almost two weeks off and I plan to use it to turn my life around. I can’t spend all of it wallowing in self pity, or drunk like I find myself tonight. I’ve already done enough of that so far in my life.
I cross the road without looking properly, and an expensive looking car almost crashes into me. It scares the shit out of me, and when I finally get to the other side, and the safety of the sidewalk, my heart is beating wildly. It’s my fault, and I’m ready to apologize profusely when the window comes down. Thinking and walking when drunk across a busy intersection is a recipe for disaster.
“Are you alright?” the young man inside says, half of his face framed by darkness, the other half lost inside it.
“Sorry”, I say. “I wasn’t looking. I’m really sorry.”
“Where are you going?” he asks, looking me up and down. “You look cold, can I give you a lift?”
“No, thank you”, I say, automatic alarm bells kicking in for a moment. “I’m-. I’m not going anywhere. I mean, I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just walking.”
He looks up to the sky. “Lovely night for a walk”, he says.
I look up to the sky as well, and snowflakes fall coldly onto my cheeks. My hands are freezing, and even though I dig them as deep as possible into my jacket pockets, the cold is still sinking in like a
lifetime’s worth of bad news.
“Where are you going?” I say, turning the question back onto him.
I don’t know why, but it seems like the right question to ask. I’ve left my best friend’s birthday party without telling her, and now I’m asking a complete stranger where it is he’s going, as though I want to join him regardless of whatever he says. A moment passes, while he looks at me.
“Get in the car”, he says, eventually.
“What?” I stutter.
“Get in the car”, he says again, more firmly this time.
“Why would I want to do that?” I say.
“Because you already told me you did, and now what’s happening is that you’re getting scared.”
“I’m not scared”, I lie.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Violet”, I say, before I think better of it.
“Violet, do you know what I know about you?”
I look away and then back again.
“What do you know about me?”
“I know you are looking for something, but you don’t know what it is.”
Cocky. I smile because I’m nervous, and because he’s right and he shouldn’t be, and because he’s there and I am and he’s asking. I look up to the sky again, over the contours of the car, over the darkness at the edge of his face.
“Am I going to find it with you?”
“Maybe”, he says.
A moment passes. A beat in the fabric of time.
“I don’t know you”, I say. “What if I get into that car and you rape and kill me?”
“Is that the kind of thing you are looking for?”
“No, of course it’s not.”
My heart is beating so strongly I half expect to see it burst right out of my chest and continue off up the sidewalk.
“Get in the car”, he says again. “You can get out again when you’ve found what you’re looking for.”
More seconds pass, moments frozen in time.
“What’s your name?” I say.
“Bain”, he says, “Bain Power.”
Chapter 2
Bain
Tidy. Very fucking tidy. I could have run her over, and now I’m going to do a lot worse. I break women you see, that’s what I do. Like priceless Ming vases, bull in a china shop. I break them.
I’m good at two things, making money and breaking women’s hearts. Of course, I don’t set out to do that, it’s just a consequence of my behaviour. It’s who I am. Really, though, I’m full of love, I just don’t know what it looks like. Violet. She is one letter away from violent, though she doesn’t look it at all. She looks delicate, like she’d snap in my hands like a dry twig. I wonder what she likes. I bet she likes it hard and vicious and deep and plentiful. Like me.
“Drive”, I tell the driver, once Violet has accepted her destiny and is sat alongside me.
“Do you usually get into stranger’s cars?” I ask her.
“I don’t make a habit of it, no”, Violet says.
“What were you doing tonight?”
She smiles at me, and for a brief, heartbeat of a moment, when a car passes to our right and the lights filter in through the window, I see the next twelve hours run across her eyes like the flicker of a premonition in a deep blue flame nobody has the power to stop. It makes me hungry for her.
“It was a friend’s birthday party, fuck, I should go back. I shouldn’t be here. She’ll worry.”
“Why are you here?” I ask her. “We can go back if you want, but I don’t think you want that.”
There is a crispness where the flat edges of danger level off with anticipation. Violet watches her decision melt away like the snow at the edges of the sidewalks.
“Fuck, I don’t know. Where are we going?”
Soft lips and dangerous words.
“Where do you want to go?”
Violet plays with a ring she wears on her thumb, turning it over and over. The gesture speaks of an anxiety she’s unable to control, a hunger that is never satiated. A curiosity.
“Somewhere fun”, she says with purpose, as though finally allowing herself to agree to it. Her conscious mind finally catching up with the decision she has already made. “Fuck it. Somewhere fun.”
“What about your friend?” I casually ask, trying not to appear inconsiderate. “Won’t she be worried?”
Violet. Does she know she’s about to step behind the red curtain? What innocence lie behind those eyes, what darkness?
“Probably. I’ll call her later. Or text her. Or not. Do you have anything to drink in here?”
Her eyes scan the cab, falling eventually upon mine. I soften a smile towards her. The big bad wolf. But you like that, Violet, don’t you? The big bad wolf coming to take you away.
“No, I’m afraid on this occasion I don’t, this isn’t my car. We can stop if you like”, I suggest.
“It’s ok, I can wait until we get wherever we are going. Where is that by the way? Do we have a plan or are we just going to go cruising around New York getting to know each other?”
Feisty. That will come in handy later when she’s powerless to resist me.
“Kings”, I say, the word still fresh enough on my lips to feel unusual to say. “Have you ever heard of it?”
“Kings? Are you shitting me?”
I laugh. “You’ve heard of it?” I say.
“No, not really. Only tonight, fucking coincidence. It’s an exclusive bar right? Wait a sec, are you loaded? How much fucking money have you got exactly? This isn’t your car, but it is your driver, I kind of got that. And that suit, that isn’t exactly something that you buy in Macy’s.”
“Very observant, Violet. Would you like me more if I was?”
“I don’t know how much I like you now.”
“Oh come on, don’t hurt my feelings.”
“You look like you can take it.”
I smile. Violet digs her hands into the hip pockets of her jacket. She’s twisted to the side to face me, her seatbelt slack across her shoulder, like the loosened strap of a bra. I notice she has a chipped tooth, a tongue piercing.
“It’ll be a new experience for us both. I’ve never been there before either.”
She shifts position, a delicate movement to bring herself fractionally closer to me, one leg dropped lower, tucked underneath the other. Opening herself up now, showing confidence.
“Right, so why are you taking me?”
“You’re in my car, Violet, it only seems fair.”
A little tilt of the head that reminds me of the movement Jack made at Aces earlier, when faced with the whore in the glass box. Hands out of pockets too, palms up to face me.
“You didn’t have to invite me in.”
I look away, out of the window briefly and then back to her. Christmas is still here, dropping off storefronts and stuck to sidewalks.
“You looked cold”, I say. Vulnerable. Delicate. Breakable. Mine. “Besides which, I couldn’t just go on my own.”
“What happened to Mrs. Power? Don’t tell me, she’s at home looking after the children. Wrapping the Christmas presents and hanging the stockings.”
“Relationships aren’t really my thing”, I confess. “I was never very good at them.”
“Nor me”, Violet says.
She shrugs, digs her hands into her jacket again and looks away out of the window. I don’t even need to look to know she’ll be playing with that thumb ring again, turning it over and over. Someone cheated on her and broke her heart, someone just like me. I let the silence that descends bite into us like cold wind.
“So, we are both single, unattached and without plans”, I say eventually.
Violet looks towards me again. “We’ve got plans”, she reminds me like one old friend might another. “Kings, remember.”
“Of course. What better way to spend Christmas?”
The car pulls across two lanes of traffic and up to the sidewalk after a few more minutes, crawling slowly while the driver r
eads the numbers on the storefronts to our right. He stops when he finds what he’s looking for, clicks on the interior light and turns around to face us. He looks much older now than he first appeared in the yellow, artificial light of the car that spills across his jacket to reveal dandruff, fallen strands of hair and wrinkles where it hasn’t been creased properly across the shoulders.
“This is the address I’ve been given for tonight”, he says. “Go through the restaurant, and Kings is out the back through the kitchens. James fucking Bond.”
“James fucking Bond”, I repeat.
I give the driver a tip, which he palms without acknowledgement, before giving Violet a look up and down, which produces within him a kind of intestinal grunt he finds impossible to control. He has the wonky, shifty look of a wife beater and the nose of an alcoholic. Just looking at him makes me angry.
“Shall we?” I’m ready to leave him behind and focus my mind on something else entirely. I’m ready to take Violet down the rabbit hole.
“You don’t have someone to open the doors for you?” Violet asks.
“I’m rich, darling”, I say, “I’m not an invalid.”
Violet
What the fuck am I doing? The moment I get into the car, I realize I probably shouldn’t have. Bain seems like a nice guy, but he could just as equally be a fucking murderer. The two things aren’t always mutually exclusive.
Something inside me wants to find out more about him, so at every opportunity he gives me to leave, I don’t. I feel bad for Vicki, but I also feel like I need this. It’s a weird fucking thing to say, but I need a night of adventure and risk and spontaneity and this seems like the best opportunity I’ll get to do that, perhaps in a whole lifetime.
So who is he? Well, he’s fucking rich for one, I could tell that immediately. He’s dressed like a king, and I can almost smell the money on him. No fucking heating problems in his apartment, that’s for sure. Fuck it, I bet it’s not even an apartment, I bet the guy owns a mansion that looks out over central park, a holiday home in Florida and a castle in Scotland just to get away from it all.
Maybe I’ll see it. Maybe he’ll fuck me hard on Egyptian cotton sheets and then cut my throat afterwards so he can drink my blood. Am I looking for that? The fucking, not the throat cutting.
