Death & the City Book Two

by Lisa Scullard

  Connor nods and follows my gaze out of the window.

  “I think you just need to not worry about it,” he says at last. “You’re not going to pick up a lifetime’s worth of experience based on one date. Although there are guys who would boast about having that ability, in order to get women into bed quicker.”

  I realise that everything I’ve just said, could be interpreted by any normal self-respecting guy as a massive hint that some form of commitment was due. If women really do try that sort of transparent emotional blackmail, which I’ve overheard the V.I.P. girls and barmaids hatching plots about in the glass-wash room.

  “I was just trying to illustrate how I can’t relate to people living in the real world,” I sigh, sticking my fork into a black cherry, and licking the cream off it absently.

  “I was just trying to hint that I’m still getting another date with you on Sunday, before you jump on that plane,” he says. “And please stop doing that to your cherry. You can eat any way you like when we’re in private, okay?”

  I catch his eye, startled, and he grins. One up to him, I guess. Just trying to conceive of all the other ways I might unknowingly be showing myself up in public keeps me quiet, for the remainder of the time it takes us to finish up.

  “What time have you got to be back?” he asks eventually.

  “Er - I have to pick up Junior, go home and make dinner, get ready for work and drive to Phantasia, so I have to fit all that in before my shift starts at nine.”

  “Need to get any shopping first?” he asks casually, tapping his teaspoon on a napkin idly. “Seeing as you’re here, you could come round with me now and get it out of the way. Last time I saw you and her out shopping, you were only buying doughnuts.”

  “Yeah, she’s a fussy eater,” I joke. “I guess so. I think I’m out of pasta. And cat-food as well.”

  “I remember what’s in your kitchen cupboards. I think you should probably write a list, because from that I know you don’t keep one,” he suggests, finds a pen in his inside pocket and pushes it towards me on top of a clean napkin, after first scrawling SHOPPING LIST at the top and underlining it. I give in, and write the first two items down, surprising myself how the action triggers proper recall of groceries currently lacking at home, including the shower gel and toothpaste I noticed this morning. After a couple of minutes I’ve reached the bottom of the napkin. Connor picks it up as I hand him the pen back, and gives it a summary glance.

  “Okay,” he nods, giving me the list back. “I reckon we can get both of our stuff in one big trolley. Let’s go.”

  It’s a strange feeling as I put the shopping away at home after picking up Junior, organising my storage better so that I have one upper and one lower storage cupboard just for food, and not hardware. Junior says if I give her the Jaffa Cakes, I won’t have to find a space for them, so we negotiate a deal where she finds alternative accommodation for four of them on a plate, which is taken up to her room. Strange as in, I don’t know what to make of the situation with Connor now. Every time I get back on track mentally, regarding keeping my distance, staying objective about it, and whatever his motives are, he just gets easier to get on with. More understanding, and more like he’s making sense of everything, in a way I can’t on my own.

  I do find myself trying to discover empathy for the Hartes, by considering what Junior would feel like if I got the wrong end of a contract one day. But the thought of that, just makes me think it would be a good idea if I reminded head office that there was talk recently of drawing a line under it all, from my perspective. Quitting, in other words. I wonder if Sandra ever thought about the impact of her own lifestyle on her children, or the possible outcome. I have a brief echo image in my head of seeing her and Lenny, in V.I.P. getting drunk, after she left A&E having just been given heart tablets. No. Quite possibly she didn’t.

  And Terry evidently never took it into his head that his lifestyle choice, ignoring his former partners and their kids, could lead to the kind of outcome that would place his own next of kin on the operating end of a contract out on him, on his own doorstep.

  It’s a strangely selfish world at times, I think. Even in supposedly normal families. Finding my own identity crisis and personality disorders lacking an ability or mind to empathise with the functional, I think what mostly bothers me is that it reinforces my own dysfunctional make-up. I can’t just wizard up a new personality out of my imagination to deal with it, all ready-equipped and fully-informed on relationships, and home support networking symbiosis. I can picture it in circuit boards, or computer highway terms - but not in people, not in communication - not in community.

  I do, though, get a very tentative glimmer of explanation, hovering around my peripheral consciousness regarding my uncertainty towards Connor. If he’s genuinely trying to reach me - psychologically and emotionally speaking, in terms of developing a relationship - the personality that a normal woman would already have responded to his efforts with, doesn’t actually exist in me. I’m aware more than ever now, of the apparently increasingly yawning abyss between my personality disorders, and the grey areas I thought previously of as just fog. The bit of me that doesn’t have the answers to anything out of my usual context. In the real world of attraction and courtship - without all the unproven rule books (unproven, in my case) - in normal relationship terms, technically that makes me an air-head.

  Maybe that’s just what he likes, I tell myself, and inadvertently smile. Knowing him, probably the last thing he’d be interested in, is a woman with a built-in pre-set program of how relationships progress. Or even worse, one with a plan.

  As I tip the receipts out of the last of the shopping bags, before resigning them to the recycling, the paper napkin shopping list joins them on the worktop, with Connor’s block capital heading standing out like a traffic STOP sign. It reminds me what he said, about women who keep a ‘shopping list’ up their sleeve, producing it whenever a man appears to be making the right conducive noises and moves that indicate he might be a good prospect to fulfil it. It’s just a grocery list though, so in this case, I put it in the shredder along with the receipts. I don’t need a souvenir of going shopping with him. It wasn’t like it was planned, like a date. But it wasn’t a bad experience either. I suppose I often forget to be grateful for the things I expect the worst of, which then turn out to be fine.

  Recalling our first date, it does remind me that my shoes are still on the mantelpiece, and I have new Zombie heels in the car, along with my Vegas travel choice cheap Mary Janes. I decide to put them all away, like a normal person should. Not anthropomorphise them with any special powers or significance. Like a Hollywood hit-man’s lucky one-shot underpants.

  I drive to work after dropping Junior off, listening to Daft Club and Alive 2007 on my MP-3 memory stick, plugged into the stereo. I don’t mind the motorway commute so much at night. It’s not a busy stretch, although out of a nearly 20-year habit I do keep an eye out for unmarked police speed traps, which comes of learning that any road in Florida with a school located on it had a 15mph limit - even if that road was ten miles long. I liked the American concept of conscience I picked up when staying over there as a kid. It was very religious, philosophically based in the insecurity of not having proof of an afterlife or what it might contain, so religious karma was more a part of society than anywhere else I’ve lived. Miss Haversham has some weird theory that reincarnation means you can come back as anyone you want, and claims she’s lived so long because she hasn’t decided yet whether to come back as Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, or Princess Diana, and how she would do things differently to them in each case.

  Who would Sandra come back as, given the choice of anyone in history? Listing her favourite hobbies, eating, drinking and sperm-jacking, maybe she’d come back as Lucretia Borgia. Lucretia Borgia is on my list of top fantasy dinner-party guests, along with Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Atkins, Vlad the Impaler, Oliver Cromwell, and Hitler. My bets would be on Borgia as last diner standing. Although if I a
dded Terry Dyer to the guest list, it might be a draw. Unless Sparky was the chef, in which case all bets would be off, after the ice-cream bombe with fizzing sparkler-type things sticking out of it, or even earlier if pizza delivery was on the menu. I quite like the thought of Sandra as Lucretia Borgia. Puts a matching face to the famous name.

  I wonder who I’d come back as. Someone with a nice quiet unremarkable life, hopefully. I used to think it would be nice to be Mrs. Columbo, when I was younger. He was always talking about her when solving a crime. She must have been quite a smart cookie.

  It takes me just over an hour and a half commute from door to door tonight. Phantasia isn’t a club, it’s a mobile theme night - more like a convention, which tours internationally and recruits locally as required. Basically a key core of D.J.s and live acts, Medieval fantasy Euro-Porn Stars, and a couple of adult Manga film-makers thrown together, in a surreal mix of music, book-signings, film promotion, photo opportunities and fantasy fancy dress competitions. Tonight’s venue is The Old Apple Warehouse (the fruit, not the laptop), a farming industrial estate site, usually used for weekend antique fairs, and weekday indoor markets.

  And tonight, Apple is dressed up for the occasion in bridal white swathes of taffeta, forming a space-age series of interlinking indoor marquees, tunnels and tents around the central performance stage, with the rainbow lighting, smoke machines and lasers giving the event a Barbarella meets STAR WARS meets Lawrence of Arabia atmosphere. It’s been open all day since eleven this morning for the book and DVD sales, and author interviews, vanilla bondage etiquette demos, and interactive Q&A with film-makers and stars. Just gearing up now for the Phantasia After Dark party, which is when all the weirdos come out and supposedly sell their recreational herbal remedies. And the kinky-spank pimps, enlisting girls to hang out in fetish clubs who will falsify assault charges unless payment is extorted. Which the authorities are frowning upon, quite heavily.

  As we’re given the staff tour, shown around the Fire Exits, blind spots, disabled access and toilets, we’re told that there will be some searching, but most of the checks will be done by walk-through body scanner, which every visitor has to pass through.

  “Our company actually did the beta tests of these scanners before airports secured them in this country,” the security manager tells us. Which could be true, for all I know. “So there’s no surprises can be sprung on us here. We know this machine inside out.”

  “What about people bringing in sex toys or fancy-dress weapons?” a younger doorman asks, who reminds me in attitude and appearance of Jag Nut.

  “Anything like that gets tagged and goes in the cloakroom. Unless it’s illegal and has to be passed on to the police, they’re welcome to collect it again afterwards,” the manager lets us know. “This isn’t a swinger’s party or sex encounter night, it’s performance art licensed only. Meaning all the usual licensing laws apply. This ain’t Las Vegas, kids.”

  I start to worry what I might find in Las Vegas at this point. And that I’m glad Crank took the most privacy route, with his publicity consent.

  The Phantasia production value is pretty high, and it’s very theatrical - think Kylie X Live or Madonna’s Music tour meets Cirque du Soleil, and the customer’s costumes are just ridiculously professional. The best that the internet can provide. From full anatomically-correct Ridley Scott’s Aliens, to bondage armour-plated cyber men and women based on illustrations by Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Les Edwards, Jim Burns - and all the Marvel, DC Comics, 2000 AD hero fetish variants you could eat. Practically a cheerleader squad of Elektras, and more than just a few girls painted Mystique blue with yellow contact lenses in. But only one Durham Red, who looks miserably ticked off until I ask her if she is Red out of Strontium Dogs, and suddenly her grin is wider than a Cheshire Cat.

  “Everyone’s been asking me if I’m Ultraviolet or Bayonetta,” she groans. “Do I look like Mrs. bloody Luc chuffing Besson? I had to stick these fangs in with nail glue.”

  They stand out from the Medieval fantasy crowd as being ‘newbies’ and ‘fashion fodder.’ The customers who turn up in leather armour, chain mail, chastity belts, or sewn into hessian sacking as ‘ragamuffin gimps’ claim to be the original Phantasians, the hard core who have followed ‘the Phantasia community’ since its inception. It’s like cage-fighting fans, since cage-fighting found its way into nightclubs as light entertainment. There’s always a group who claim to have been ‘Involved from the start’. The only cage-fighter I ever had to deal with, was showing off his machismo skills while drunk on a non-cage-fighting night. I gave him a verbal warning to tone it down, before carrying out the threat of a wedgie and removing him from the dance floor by it. For some reason he never forgot that particular admonishment, and mentions it whenever I see him at The Plaza now.

  My favourite customer outfits are the Morph-suits, the completely faceless, anonymous Lycra zip-up Smarty-Party gimps. They’re harmless and disturbing both at the same time, in a sort of ultimate safesex kind of way. I wonder what Connor would look like in one. In fact for all I know, he could be among them. It’d be an awesome hit-man disguise, at one of these get-togethers. Except of course there’s nowhere to conceal a weapon. They’d have to be unarmed ninjas, although the only place they’d be able to camouflage themselves in their bright range of colours would be at a gay Mardi Gras.

  “That’s my fella and his mates,” Red confides in me, when we bump into each other again. The Morphs are on the illuminated dance-floor like something out of a Twin Peaks dream sequence, doing cartwheels and having spontaneous wheelbarrow races around the perimeter. “Guess which he is.”

  “Wow, that is a challenge,” I remark. Red’s about my height, and made even taller by her cyber platform buckle-and-steel-shin-pad boots, customised from iBay. Maybe she likes them tall, so I just pick the tallest of them. “Is it Mr. Dark Green?”

  “No - that’s actually my brother,” she laughs. “It’s Mr. Dark Blue. With the sunglasses over his hood.”

  I look and see an only slightly shorter customer than the tallest Morph, better physique, doing a bit of The Robot break-dancing. As good as the paid performers in their cages on the main stage, if a bit more tongue-in-cheek and relaxed. From what I can tell, through the unreadable Morph mask.

  “It’s his stag do,” she tells me, hitching up her knuckle tape to show me a tiny black diamond, set between rubies in white gold on her finger. “We were here earlier, went out for a meal and came back. It’s been a really good day, actually. He brought a white shirt and got loads of autographs on it. We like the Manga stuff best. He got Lady Lily White’s autograph. Dr. Wang. You know, the psychologist that got struck off and her books withdrawn? She just does films now. She had a fashion show here earlier, for her own clothing design line. I’m going to copy my wedding dress from it.”

  “Congratulations. Is it your hen night as well?” I ask her.

  “No, I’m here for his, he invited me because we like the same stuff,” she says. “I’m not having one. Can’t stand big groups of women, all squawky and loud and stupid and unladylike in public. I’m just going to go for a spa day with my mum and his mum, which they’ve organised. My best friend can’t come because she’s still on anti-psychotics since her last nervous breakdown, and I heard somewhere that complementary therapies should be avoided. Her and me will do something else.”

  “I’ve had experience of that - I was on medication for the same years ago,” I tell her. “One of my friends took me to an open-air operatic and classical music concert at a castle as a treat for my birthday, because all the beauty stuff and drinking alcohol was out of bounds. It was the best time I could have had. Just loads of people having a picnic on the grass, listening to Die Fleidermaus outdoors.”

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Red taps her drinking straw on her lower lip, inspired. “There’s an old Medieval abbey near where I live, that does al fresco summer concerts, Shakespeare and stuff. My mum would enjoy that too. And his mum - in fact, I m
ight even call it my proper hen party. Thanks. I’m really glad I stopped to talk to you.”

  The next group I bump into are the ragamuffin gimps, sewn roughly into their sacking like scarecrows, being led around on bits of string by men in armour and ladies in wimples, or escaping such obligations and huddled around the end of the bar.

  “What are they for, exactly?” I ask a scary wimple lady, with two extra wimples in the form of her conical brassière.

  “In Medieval times, it was easier to keep a human pet than an animal,” she tells me, and I realise I’m about to get a history lesson rather than a bit of social banter. In fact I get almost a religious history of the philosophy of Phantasia, which I feel is more like something constructed by ‘the community’ around essentially a social and marketing event. I tune back in as she concludes with “…Of course, in those days, they would have been completely naked. Except in winter.”

  “Did they do the same as real pets?” I ask. “Catch mice, fetch sticks…?”

  “Keep their owner’s feet warm at night,” she nods, earnestly. “It’s the undisputed origin of modern role-play bondage. Think of the whole licking of the Master’s shoes scenario. Humans replaced animals as pets when animals were harder to keep alive and thriving in a human household, with no knowledge or education of animal welfare available.”

  Phew. And I thought she was just going to say something along the lines of: To keep my place at the bar, and look after my coat and purse when I go to the toilet.

  “Are they allowed to talk?” I ask.

  “Not in character,” she says. “They can bark, or growl, or miaow or purr, depending on which pet they’re meant to be at the time.”

  Her ragamuffin gimp is currently drinking lager through a straw inserted in the oral hole in his hessian gimp mask, and belches, indeterminately of species.

  “Do you go to many of these events?” I query of Scary Wimple Lady. Her hair is a very un-Medieval flamingo pink under the wimple, and her eyebrows are two rows of piercings, that look as though sprung book-bindings have been twisted through them.