Strawberry Tattoo

by Lauren Henderson

  That was an easy and discreet introduction, I thought. No mention of stranglings or Lex’s status as Suspect Number One in a murder inquiry. So why were they staring at each other like that?

  “You’re that friend of Leo’s!” Kim said to Lex. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere!”

  Lex looked as if he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.

  “Hey, small world,” he managed eventually.

  Kim was shaking her head slightly from side to side. It was a gesture so familiar to me that the recognition filled the pit of my stomach with a warm flow of nostalgia. It meant that she was puzzling something out, putting the pieces together in her head.

  “You’re the one who’s in some kind of trouble, right?” she said finally. “Leo told me you were on the run or something. Shit, it’s about Kate getting killed! I remember now! You’re hiding from the cops!”

  Her voice hadn’t risen, but the way she had stiffened meant that people were looking over at us curiously. I stifled the urge to bury my head in my hands.

  “Sam!” Kim turned to me. “What’s going on? What are you doing hanging out with this guy? He could be the one who killed Kate!”

  “Sam’s letting me stay with her,” Lex blurted out. “She doesn’t think I had anything to do with it!”

  So much for keeping that a secret. I felt like braining him with the bar stool.

  “You’re letting him stay with you? You must be nuts! The guy could do you in your sleep!” Kim had turned back to me. “You should turn him in night now!”

  I looked from one to the other, sighed deeply and put my head down on the bar. It wasn’t really enough. I could still feel them both staring at me. I started banging it lightly against the wood surface. To my surprise, this was strangely comforting.

  I stopped banging my head before it was permanently marked. We did finally get the Singapore Slings, though, and damn fine they were too.

  “She thinks I killed Kate!” Lex said dismally, as Kim removed herself. She shot him a watchful glance over her shoulder as she moved away, warning him that she would be on the lookout in case he extracted a garotte from his pocket and started toying with it while staring speculatively at my neck.

  “Well, so do the police, probably,” I pointed out. “I mean, you can’t blame her. She’s being protective of me.”

  “Why don’t you?” Lex said suddenly. “I mean, why don’t you think it was me that killed Kate?”

  I sighed. “I’m just not getting those killer vibes from you, Lex. I don’t know. I’ve met quite a few murderers in my time—I’ve lived a rich, full life—and you don’t strike me as the type. Though, of course”—I drank some more of my cocktail —“I could be completely wrong. You could be a crazed strangler with an urge to atone for John Lennon’s murder by contributing a beautiful corpse to Strawberry Fields every October. Like sending him a handmaiden in the afterlife. Very Egyptian.”

  Lex was staring at me anxiously. If it had been possible to back away while sitting on a bar stool, he would definitely have tried it.

  “See what I mean?” I gave him a friendly smile. “You’re much more spooked by me than I am by you.”

  “I don’t know how you can talk about it so—casually,” he muttered. “I mean, Kate’s dead. Someone killed her. It wasn’t me, OK? But there’s someone out there who strangled her. We might even know them. You just sound so fucking unconcerned.”

  “I’m not unconcerned.”

  “OK, then you sound like you don’t care that we could be in danger.”

  I shrugged. “We’re always in danger, Lex. We’re probably in more danger of getting run over between here and my flat, or being involved in a four-car pile-up because of a crazed psychotic taxi driver, than we are of being garotted by the Strawberry Fields Strangler.”

  “Well, I’m scared. I don’t mind telling you.” He finished his drink in a long pull at the glass. “Do you think your mate’d get me another of these, or will she bite my head off if I ask her?”

  His hand trembled slightly as he put the glass down.

  “Look,” I said, reaching over and patting his hand, “it’ll be OK. Don’t worry.”

  But Lex wasn’t a fool.

  “How can you say that?” he snapped back. “How do you know what’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t. I was just trying to cheer you up.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t. It makes me nervous. Hi, Kim?” he said tentatively, as she strode towards us, a martial glint in her eye.

  “Everything all right, Sam?” she said to me, pointedly ignoring Lex.

  “It’s fine. Really. Could we get another two Singapore Slings?”

  “Are you sure you should be drinking around him?” she said warningly. “You don’t want him to catch you off guard.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Lex interrupted. “Sam could probably drink me under the table and give me a good kicking when she’d got me down there, OK? She’s as hard as—I dunno, industrial cement. It’s me you should be worried about.”

  Kim looked at me, momentarily taken aback.

  “He’s right, you know,” I said.

  “Nothing’s changed, has it?” Kim grinned at me. “OK. Two Singapore Slings coming up.”

  “Am I off the hook, then?” Lex said to her. “For the time being. But watch your step.”

  “Yes ma’am!” He saluted. “She’s really pretty, your mate,” he said to me as Kim moved away. “Is she seeing anyone, d’you know?”

  He was a trier. I had to give him that.

  “Hi, this is Joan Rivers. Listen, can we talk? Buckle up your seat belt—by the way, you look great! That colour is you!”

  “Whoah,” Lex said, as the taxi hurtled up Third Avenue as if fired from a rocket launcher.

  “You know what?” I said, leaning forward when it was safer and addressing the diver through the partition. “We’re not in this much of a hurry.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m in a hurry,” said the driver, catching my eye in the rear-view mirror. “I really need to go. You know what I’m saying? I gotta go.”

  I turned to Lex, confused.

  “He needs the loo, idiot,” he hissed.

  “Oh, right.”

  We were screaming cross-town like a jumbo jet about to take off. It was a race against time. Would we make it to West End and 72nd before the driver lost control of himself? And why did this kind of bizarre taxi experience keep happening to me?

  “I can’t do it!” the driver suddenly exclaimed. Lex and I exchanged frantic glances. Then he stamped on the brakes and everything went dark, because I was being half-throttled by the seat belt. When my sight returned, I realised that we were stationary outside a Chinese restaurant and the driver was halfway out of the cab.

  “Back soon, OK?” he called back at us. “Just hang on. Don’t worry about the meter.” And with that he was gone, running down the street as fast as he could considering that he was doubled over.

  “Surreal,” Lex commented.

  “Ccchhh.” I finally got my neck free. This was a hazard of being on the short side and having bosoms: seat belts tended to ride up over them and strangle you. I looked over at Lex.

  “Shall we wait?”

  He shrugged. “If it’s a free ride … he said not to worry about the meter.”

  “At least it’ll be cheap.”

  “Did you see where he was going?”

  “Nope. I just hope he makes it there in time, for everyone’s sake.”

  Lex was staring thoughtfully at the frontage of the Chinese restaurant.

  “Look,” he said, “they even have an e-mail address.” He pointed to the sign.

  “What is it, www.typhoid.com?” I said.

  Lex acknowledged my wit with scarcely a flicker of his eyelids. He was thinking about something more serious.

  “I wonder if they do takeaway?” he said tentatively.

  Our eyes met. There was a brief pause.

  “Spring rolls, fried rice and spicy prawn s
omething,” I said. “I’ll wait here in case our free ride leaves without us.”

  The restaurant was faster than the taxi driver. When he finally returned, with the air of someone who has discharged a heavy burden, we were settled happily in the back of the cab, busily engaged on a comparison between English and American takeaway Chinese.

  “I love these containers,” I was saying enthusiastically through a spring roll as the driver settled back into his seat. We stowed the food quickly to avoid a series of Jackson Pollock splashes on our clothes as the cab pulled away.

  “Everything OK, mate?” Lex said to him.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. You know how it is. When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

  “Right,” Lex said empathetically, and launched into an anecdote about being caught short in a pub with a long queue for the toilets. The driver gave little grunts of recognition every now and then. They were getting on so well that when the driver announced: “That’ll be fifteen bucks,” as we pulled up outside my building, I was momentarily taken aback by his sheer cheek. What jolted me out of it was the knowledge that Lex would pay him if I didn’t say something, and then whinge about it afterwards. Men are pathetic about that kind of thing.

  “No way,” I said firmly, recovering fast. “You made us wait for at least ten minutes and that’s much too much even if we hadn’t stopped. Three bucks.”

  “Three bucks! No way! Twelve.”

  “Four.”

  “Ten.”

  “Five, and that’s my final offer. Otherwise my friend here will empty our takeaway all over the back of your cab.”

  The driver muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Fucking bitch,” and hit a switch. The meter printed a receipt and over its clicking came:

  “Hi, this is Joan again, reminding you to take your belongings and to get a receipt from the driver. Could you let me know when we get to Grant’s tomb? I have a date with him!”

  “That is so not funny,” I said, handing the driver the money. He pulled away while Lex was still getting out of the cab. The Chinese food nearly went flying. I caught it just in time. We had the last laugh, though. The cab was speeding away with its back door still open.

  “Prat,” Lex said crossly, embarrassed at having done a two-step stumble over the pavement before he could catch his balance.

  “I wonder if he’s going to stop to close that,” I said, looking after the cab as it U-turned and headed back downtown. Maybe the driver had been calculating that the speed of the manoeuvre would whip the door closed. If so he had turned the wrong way; it had had the opposite effect.

  “Jesus,” Lex said.

  “I know. One more cab-driving psycho to add to my list.”

  But Lex wasn’t staring after the cab. He had just seen the doorman through the glass entrance doors, waiting, his hand on the brass handle, cap straight and jacket buttons shining, to let us into the building.

  I smirked. “Welcome to my world,” I said, gesturing above us. “Look, I have an awning.” I headed for the entrance door. “You’re not in the East Village now, my boy.”

  “Aaaaah! Aaaaah! Shit!” Lex slammed into the railings like a cartoon character about to flatten itself.

  “God, Lex,” I said disapprovingly, “pull yourself together. It was just a little turn—ooops—whoah. …”

  I grabbed at the railings to steady myself as a small dog yapped and snarled around my ankles. Fortunately they were protected by so much moulded plastic it would have snapped its teeth off if it tried to bite me. I truly hoped it would. But the pet rat yipped one last time, and trotted off, tinkling a miniature bell as it went. I glared after it. The Upper West Side was full of dogs like this, spoilt, petted fluffs of fur with raspberry sorbet tongues, clicketing along on tiny, sharp bird claws, being walked by women wearing coats which looked as if they were made out of all their previous Chihuahuas.

  “Urn, hi?” Kim was saying. She floated up and swung in a generous circle in front of us, arms wide. “You guys just going to cling to that thing all day?”

  “I was doing fine,” I said with hauteur, detaching myself from the railing and pushing off again. I stalled almost at once. “Ah, bugger. It’s the getting started that’s so tricky.”

  “My boots’re pinching,” Lex whined.

  “Come on, Lex,” Kim said with the pity a woman displays to a man who is making a feeble excuse, “you said they were too big in the shop. Here, catch onto me.”

  Kim pivoted round and extended a hand to him, making everything look so easy that she encouraged me immeasurably by example; as if she had created a whole new way to move, effortless and fluid as the flow of water.

  “You look wonderful,” I said to her enviously.

  She skimmed forward, bringing Lex with her; he was hardly moving his feet, just letting her pull him along, beaming with enjoyment.

  “You have to think of it differently,” she said seriously, swinging to a halt. “You OK?” she said to Lex. He nodded. “Look,” she went on, letting him go. “Most people, when they’re blading, make the mistake of closing themselves up too much. Because they’re nervous. But that’s the way you end up falling. Instead you should keep your hips open, and your shoulders back. Look.”

  She swept away from us in a few long easy strokes, then turned, legs wide, like a bird riding on a current of wind.

  “See where my arms are?” she called. They swung out from her body like wings, dipping and rising again. “Now look what happens when I hold them in.” She mimicked me and Lex, our elbows hunched to our sides. “You’re tying yourself up in knots. You gotta let go.” Again she pivoted around, her arms flying out with the speed of the turn, graceful as a figure skater. “They give you balance.”

  I pushed myself off, getting more of a start this time, and bladed off towards her, letting my arms go out.

  “That’s it! Keep ’em working!” Kim called.

  I went right down to the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, halting neatly just before I hit the cobbled surround. I’d picked up braking pretty quickly; it was just a question of cocking one foot at the right angle to engage the lever on the back of the boot. Then I pushed off again, haltingly at first—I was going to have to practise that—and headed towards them again. Kim had both Lex’s hands in hers, and was blading around him, pulling him in looping ellipses. Their arms were outstretched, and they looked as if they were dancing, swinging each other in figures of eight. Country dancing on Rollerblades. There was probably somewhere in New York you could do that. It would be a snap for a town that had an S&M restaurant and one where all the waiters and waitresses were twins.

  I flopped down onto a bench to catch my breath and watched them, Lex stumbling a little but gradually picking up confidence. Kim wore black leggings and a short black padded jacket which finished just above her waist: stripped for action. She had the body of a professional athlete, lean and strong with a beautiful economy of movement. Lex, with his droopy jeans and layered T-shirts, looked like a bag person next to her. I marvelled once again at how she had changed. Gradually this new Kim was layering her image over the remembered one, like a palimpsest; traces of her as she had been ten years ago still slipped through, but they were fleeting now, and confined to tricks of expression, a particular way she had of turning her head, or her laugh.

  We were on Riverside Drive at the end of 72nd Street, a tree-lined promenade which stretched away into the distance uptown. In front of me rolling banks of grass dipped gently down to the Hudson River. It was a lovely day, crisp and clear, sunlight glinting on the rich green grass and striking sparks from the grey stone paths. Further away, just visible over the brow of the little slope that dipped down to the shore, the river dazzled my eyes, every little wave and ripple reflecting the sun in an endless series of glass shards. Down by the statue a workman was setting up a couple of amplifiers and a microphone.

  “Why don’t we try going down to the river?” Kim suggested. “You can handle that slope, can’t you, Sam?”
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  “I think so,” I said, looking at the long sweep of grey stone that curved down and away from us into a short underpass.

  “Lex, I’ll take you down,” Kim said. “Just remember, if you bring your foot up enough there’s no way you’re not going to stop.”

  Lex’s faith in Kim was strong. She had managed to relax him enough to make him nod now, swallowing hard, and follow her as she pulled him gently towards the start of the slope. Once I had worked out how much pressure to apply to the brakes, I skimmed down it.

  “Wow!” I said, as I came through the underpass. On the other side was a further slope, stretching down to the river path, and I pushed on down, revelling in my ability to glide downhill. Kim said this was the most difficult thing to do. I turned at the last bend in the path and the river was in front of me, so wide that I could only dimly see New Jersey across the water. Tiny boats danced on the waves, glittering in the sun. It was idyllic. The contrast could not have been stronger between this and the roaring filthy traffic behind us shooting up onto the myriad lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Ahead some sailboats, moored in the boat basin, were bobbing lightly in the clear balmy October breeze. The sky was the faded blue-white of bleached denim, as suffused with light as a giant pearl.

  An almighty crash roused me from my moment of serene contemplation. I swung round ungracefully to see Lex in a crumpled heap halfway down the last stretch of pathway, Kim sprawled over him.

  “Jesus. Are you all right?” I skated over to them.

  She was giggling. Lex looked slightly dazed, but was already sitting up, rubbing his head.

  “Did you see it?” Kim said to me from her prone position. “Lex did this spin, he braked too hard—”

  “I did a handbrake turn,” Lex informed me.

  “—and he just went shooting around, I couldn’t stop him—”

  “I’m sorry I took you with me,” Lex apologised, “I just couldn’t let go of your hand, it was like a lifebelt—”

  “I probably slowed you down some,” Kim said fairly. “Stopped you shooting off into the river.”