Something You Are

by Hanna Jameson

  She slapped me on the ass as she left.

  I ducked into the dressing room behind the stage for a moment to check my outfit. Even if Mark Chester was gay, my primary function here was to be ornamental. My outfit was a black and white bandage-style playsuit and heels; there wasn’t enough of it to risk falling into disarray. My eyeliner was a little smudged around my heavily lidded eyes. All make-up looked awkward on me. My features were too large and exaggerated for such a tiny face and my plain black hair had never been long enough to sweep back like Irish.

  Plain, as Mum had always said. But men had always liked it. Go figure.

  I wondered exactly how my employer and manager, Noel Braben, had come to recommend me. It was common knowledge that he had hired me for his own personal preferences and not for any of my attributes as an employee. It was a running joke of his that for someone working in customer service I was one of the most caustic people he had ever met.

  I left the dressing room and its suffocating cloud of perfumes and made my way over to Mark Chester’s table, where he was sitting with two other men. Even seated you could tell how tall he was, and he already had a drink.

  ‘Hi, I’m Seven,’ I said, smiling, but not too much. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘You’re Seven?’ Mark stood up and shook my hand, an unusual gesture in a place like this. ‘How charming; sit down. I’ve had more than enough to drink tonight already. Do you want anything for yourself?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ I did as I was told and sat down beside him. ‘How did you ask for me by name? Did Noel suggest me or something?’

  ‘Yeah, Noel told me – I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind, it’s just... Sorry, what did he say about me?’

  ‘Well, I was going to be here tonight shadowing a couple of business pals and, as you probably well know, I’d get bored if I didn’t find a decent conversationalist.’

  ‘Yeah, I was told I wouldn’t be your type.’ I shrugged, fixing the half-smile on my face.

  ‘I like my women how I like my coffee.’

  ‘With a massive cock, right?’

  He started laughing. ‘Well, I was going to say... Ha! Yeah, right!’

  ‘How long have you known Noel then?’ I asked, looking up at the exposed copper piping snaking its way across the ceiling.

  ‘Oh, years. We chat a lot... If you didn’t mind, there was actually something particular I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘It’s a nickname,’ I said, pre-empting the inevitable question about my name. ‘I got it when I was young. I had an OCD thing.’

  I met his eyes. They were an intense green and he had tattoos on the backs of his hands and fingers, from what I could see of them.

  He folded his hands across each other, masking some of the tattoos I was trying to examine out of the corner of my eye. ‘That wasn’t what I was going to ask.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’ll do my best,’ I said, worried that he wanted to discuss something I’d be woefully undereducated to handle. ‘But I’m not exactly a University Challenge contestant with questions. I can do art, martial arts, bit of geography, languages, but I was never that into hard-core subjects, you know. If you’re after politics or history or something like that go for, uh... Abigail, over there. She’s at UCL.’

  He seemed amused by me. At least I had made some kind of impression.

  ‘It wasn’t so much about stuff like that,’ he said, lowering his voice a little. ‘Forgive me if I’m crossing a line or if this makes you feel uncomfortable, but I wanted to talk to you about your parents.’

  For a moment there was only background noise, electro-guitar music, the clink of glasses and masculine chatter.

  Mark had sat forwards with his hands linked on his knees, ignoring his other companions, who seemed happy to chat between themselves.

  It was the last thing I’d expected him to say.

  I thought about it every day but not at work. The images had never come to me here, when my mind was taken over by mundane repetitive tasks. I’d never thought about the skull cleaved in two and the fifth floor and the front door hanging askew on its hinges...

  ‘Um, sorry, what?’ I said, hoping I’d misheard. Maybe he’d said patients? Or patents?

  ‘Your parents,’ he repeated. ‘Noel mentioned them to me. Don’t blame him, he probably never expected me to talk to you. I promise this isn’t a joke or morbid curiosity or anything trivial like that. I’m genuinely very interested in your life. Do you know what I do for a living? Did anyone tell you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I solve problems,’ he said, with a glance over my shoulder. ‘I solve problems, when problems are people. You understand?’

  I understood what he was saying, in a literal sense, but not why. I couldn’t recall ever being so wrong-footed by a statement. Noel called me a born smart-arse; it was rarity for me to be unable to muster a response. Maybe I should have been angry at Noel, but in my shock the thought didn’t occur to me.

  ‘So you’re a private detective or something?’ I said.

  ‘I’m... more than that. I can track people down, make people disappear, make people suffer. I can make people do most things.’

  ‘So you’re a killer?’

  ‘Well, at least make it sound professional. I’m a very professional killer.’ He smiled. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I’d completely understand and won’t be offended at all. But at the moment, you’re the person I find easily the most fascinating in this room. And I’d like to make you an offer.’

  I watched Irish or Elise or whatever her name was standing across the club, with her hand draped over a man’s shoulders.

  The girl onstage was still singing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, blood rushing to my face. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I want to talk to you.’

  ‘That’s fine, my love.’ He nodded. His smile seemed genuine. He reached into the pocket of his skinny jeans and handed me a card with a number and no name printed on it. ‘If you change your mind.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, already standing up.

  I crossed the club floor heading for the dressing room, but then changed direction and slipped out into the concrete stairwell instead. There wouldn’t be anyone there. My legs were unsteady and I was lightheaded, on the verge of throwing up.

  I leant my forehead against the wall next to the fire escape and swallowed, thinking, You will not cry. Almost three years and I hadn’t yet cried. Everyone thought it was weird. Noel thought it was weird. I didn’t think it was weird; I’d just resigned myself to an inevitable nervous breakdown in my early thirties, when it would all come out, having been given time to rot.

  I shut my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. The sharp edges of the business card were hurting my palm.

  You will not cry.

  You will not cry.

  You will not cry.

  After a while, when I’d forced myself to meditate for a moment and clear my head, I left the stairwell and asked around to see if Noel was at the club tonight. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t going to be there until early the next morning.

  Without anyone to vent my fury on, I told them all I was feeling ill and went home early. I avoided looking back in the direction of Mark Chester’s table, but I took the professional killer’s business card with the number and no name.

  *

  I didn’t sleep that night, which allowed plenty of time for the rage to build by the time I left for the Underground again at ten in the morning. The air had a bite to it: cold and bitter for this time of year. Some skinhead was already shouting at his young girlfriend outside a Starbucks. I fantasized about putting him in an armlock and breaking his wrist.

  I let myself into the club through the staff entrance and found Daisy, the bleached-blonde barmaid, already counting the float into the till.

  ‘All right, Bitch-face,’ I called. ‘You’re early. Is Noel upstairs?’

  Daisy looked up at me and smiled. ‘Hey,
Fuck-rabbit.’ Even in the colder days of summer she didn’t wear much. In fact, even during winter I couldn’t recall seeing her wearing anything that covered her legs, nipples and midriff simultaneously. ‘So are you. Yeah, he’s upstairs. Do I need to put on the old headphones and whack-up some Tool?’

  ‘Maybe, but not for the reason you’re thinking.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ She gave me an animated thumbs-up.

  Daisy was the only one here whom I distinguished from the other girls. In a way, she was distinguished from the other girls. She didn’t entertain and perform and fuck and get fucked like the rest of us. Rumour was, her boyfriend had got her the bar job to stop her from getting bored. Her boyfriend was a hitman called Nic Caruana.

  A professional killer, I thought, like Mark.

  I left her and headed upstairs to Noel’s office.

  It was silent on the second floor. He never worked to music. He was remarkably sensitive to sound and couldn’t sleep with the slightest background noise. Even when he had the TV on it was at a volume almost no one else could hear.

  I let myself into his office without knocking.

  Noel looked up from his laptop, affronted, but then he smiled. Unlike most men, he became more handsome when he smiled. It showed his age; the late-thirties lines around his blue eyes stood out and his face became more weathered. But he wore middle age well, like an expensive luxury accessory, like the suit jackets he wore over his jeans.

  ‘Hey you,’ he said, beginning to stand. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I shut the door, pulled out the second wheeled chair with some commotion and sat down. The office was psychotically tidy, with papers and folders stacked in size order and everything arranged at right angles.

  He stared at me, and slowly lowered himself back into his chair.

  I raised my eyebrows, damned if I was going to speak first.

  ‘Am I about to be told off?’ he ventured.

  ‘Well, I’ll give you some credit for realizing you’ve done something wrong.’

  A couple more seconds.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, chewing his lip a little. ‘Ah. I... didn’t think he’d speak to you.’

  ‘What kind of excuse is that?’ I snapped, reciting a mantra in my head to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm... ‘So it’s OK for you to share my private business about my family with a stranger as long as it doesn’t get back to me? Is that your logic here? If Noel Braben shoots his mouth off to a random guy in the forest and Seven doesn’t hear, does it make a sound?’

  ‘Well, you once shared your private business with a stranger the first time you met them. You had no issue with telling me.’

  He never raised his voice to anyone, not that I’d heard. It was unnerving.

  I hesitated. Maybe it should have done, but that fact hadn’t crossed my mind once while thinking about this the night before. I still wasn’t sure why I’d told Noel anything about my personal life in the first place. If I’d been able to share the story of what happened to my family with him so freely, before anything had happened between us, it didn’t seem outlandish that he’d thought it might be OK to regale someone else with it.

  I am sitting on a mountaintop.

  I can hear the wind in the trees.

  I am calm.

  I am calm.

  Noel pushed a silver thermos across the desk at me. ‘Do you want some coffee?’

  I picked it up without a word and took a gulp of the coffee inside. I never drank coffee. He knew I didn’t drink coffee. It was black and disgusting and made me want to gag but I drank it anyway, to avoid speaking for a few seconds longer.

  ‘What did he say to you? It’s kinda unlike Mark to do something like that. He’s a stand-up guy. I didn’t think he’d just start talking to you about it.’

  ‘It wasn’t just talking to me about it, to be fair to him. He wasn’t simply looking for a fun conversation. He... He made me an offer actually.’ I fished the business card out of the pocket of my leather jacket and held it out for Noel to see. ‘He said he’s a guy who solves problems.’

  ‘He... Wo. Wow. He said that to you?’

  I nodded.

  Noel let out a snort of disbelief. ‘No, really. I mean, Mark, he’s... expensive and he’s... he’s Mark. Wow, he must be really interested in you. He doesn’t talk business with just anybody; he works for the Russians and spends half his time out there doing... God knows what.’

  There had been a festering sensation of dread and excitement in my stomach that had crept into my consciousness the night before and worsened now.

  I am sitting on a mountaintop...

  He started laughing and clapped his hands together, making me start. ‘Fucking hell, this is... OK, I know you’re pissed off with me and everything but this is pretty fucking amazing, you know. If Mark Chester wants to take an interest in you then maybe you should think about it? Maybe just talk to him? I don’t know. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but he’s serious, he’d probably find out stuff you never would...’

  I stared hard at the plain business card, with the number and no name. ‘So he’s kinda a big deal then?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s a big deal.’

  ‘You really think he’d find something?’ I asked, sceptical. ‘After three years? I mean... it’s almost three years now and there was no evidence then. You really think he’d find something?’

  ‘Well, I’m not one to exaggerate... much.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But I don’t think Mark’s ever left a job unfinished. I don’t think he’s ever lost a person he’s tried to track down and I don’t think he’s ever left a person alive who he was paid to take care of. He basically never fails, I think.’

  I didn’t know if this was what I wanted to hear.

  ‘Are you still pissed at me?’ Noel asked, leaning forwards across the desk and pushing his laptop to one side. ‘Look, I wasn’t just gossiping like some old bloody woman, I was just... Lighten up, OK? This could be a really good thing for you.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was right or not so I nodded. It wasn’t as if I was going to draw an apology out of him.

  He tried to prompt a smile from me. ‘Yeah? We OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I forced my lips to twitch, to appease him.

  ‘Yeah? Good, I hate it when you look at me like that, baby.’ He reached across the desk and gestured for me to take his hand. ‘And you know, I could have done something super smart here.’

  As I put my hand in his, I noticed that his wedding ring was back on.

  2

  The first time I entered the Underground I wasn’t impressed. I spent the majority of my first impression waiting downstairs in the club for my interview, picking at my fingernails and hunched over.

  I’d been sitting there for twenty minutes too long and the barmaid kept reassuring me, ‘He’ll be down in a minute,’ but I was starting to feel insolent.

  It’s not as if I needed a job right now anyway.

  I almost left before my interview, never to come back.

  Sometimes I tried to imagine how everything might have turned out if I had.

  Even if I was underwhelmed, the club was nicer than I’d expected: not as gaudy and overblown. It was about as tasteful as an erotic club could be. Now, at three in the afternoon, you could almost mistake it for a jazz place in the right light, without all the naked women.

  A few men in suits were drinking and talking amongst themselves at tables, while the barmaid appeared to run the place. Some low indie rock was playing from her iTunes behind the bar and the lighting was bright but tinted purple.

  There was exposed copper piping hanging from the ceiling.

  The man I was waiting for, Noel Braben, was upstairs in his office.

  I was to find out that the Underground did in fact have an owner, a woman called Ms Edie Franco, but I was only to see her twice in the time I worked there. Noel and Ronnie O’Connell, his long-time business partner, spoke of her working ‘up north’ with her other clubs. The two of the
m had more invested in the day-to-day management of the Underground than she seemed to.

  When the door to the stairwell on my left opened it wasn’t Noel Braben who walked out of it. It was a woman with dark red hair, metallic and glossy. She had high cheekbones and wide eyes that looked me up and down and full lips that tightened at the sight of me as she looked over her shoulder on her way out.

  I watched her go, thinking that she was gorgeous but an obvious bitch and that she probably worked here...

  A man wearing jeans and a suit jacket appeared in the doorway after the woman had left, looking pissed off and eager to abdicate from this day. Tired blue eyes searched for me from under a mop of hair that made him look like a member of the Beatles, and he frowned.

  ‘You’re... Seven?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Seven,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes.’ I raised my eyebrows this time and he smiled.

  ‘OK then, come on.’

  It wasn’t exactly lust at first sight. But it became apparent very quickly that something about me amused him, and something about him fascinated me.

  I wasn’t used to finding men interesting. Women had more intricacies; they were harder to please in every sense, harder to read, and the women I had loved I could live my entire life learning how to please and how to read.

  But I liked Noel Braben.

  I swivelled left and right on the spinning chair as he observed me and asked things like, ‘You always lived in London? You don’t look English, exactly.’

  ‘I’m half Japanese but my parents moved back and forth a lot so my accent is pretty much English.’

  ‘It’s a bit American.’

  ‘Well, that’s how we speak English. We watch a lot of American TV.’

  ‘Do you still live with your parents?’

  ‘No, they’re dead.’

  ‘Ooh.’ A grimace. ‘I’m sorry. Was it recent?’

  ‘They were murdered a few years ago, with my sister.’

  I think I’d wanted to shock him, or myself. It was the only explanation for why I’d stated it with such bravado.

  But he wasn’t shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with the blank tone of a guy who considered murder no different from any other form of death. ‘Did they ever find the... guy?’