Sweet baby Jesus, he doesn’t know? How can you not know if your legs are working?
Knox screws up his mellow face a little, in what I assume is concentration, but if what he’s doing is attempting lower-limb engagement, then it’s a complete and utter failure.
“Okay,” he admits, slurring even those two syllables. “They might not be wholly under my control right now.”
No kidding?
“Knox, I’m not sure any of you is under central control right now. What the fuck were you thinking? We have to impress Graham Callahan tomorrow morning. Weren’t you listening? Didn’t that little nugget sink in?” I shouldn’t say this stuff, because I know he has a genuine issue that he can’t do a damned thing about, but smoking himself into oblivion sure as hell ain’t helping any.
“Graham who?” he asks.
I slap my forehead, because if I slap his, I might do some actual damage.
“Oh right, the suit. He got me rattled, Nate. I needed to take the edge off. I was going to hang with the boys, but Joel stormed off and Dane…” He shrugs, because neither of us need him to finish that sentence. I can imagine all too vividly where my brother is right now, and what he’s up to. I’m going to bang his and Joel’s heads together later.
“I get it.” There’s zero point in tearing a strip off Knox. He’s not going to recall a damn word of it come tomorrow a.m. Right now, I’m better off lending my energy to getting him moved to somewhere he’s not going to cause us trouble.
Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.
“Let’s get you to our room.”
“OK,” he agrees.
Yeah, as to how the fuck I’m achieving this miracle of locomotion is another matter. I start by grabbing his feet and sliding them towards his butt, so that his knees are bent. Then I grab hold of his hands.
“Up,” I command, but no joy. I go in closer, lifting under his stinky pits this time, but there’s still no obvious upward motion. The man’s like a ton weight jellyfish, no rigidity to him anywhere. “Give me a bit of a hand here, Knox, please.” It takes me everything I’ve got to get him something approximating vertical. And he only stays that way because I’m knee to shoulder with him, and his back is flat against the wall.
“I love this wallpaper,” he says.
Really? I can’t believe he’s admiring the damn flock fleur-de-lys nonsense, but then I don’t really believe the heaving noises he springs on me either as he splatters the contents of his stomach right over my shoulder and down my back.
“Christ, Teddy!”
“Sorry,” he gargles, before spewing up another gallon of carroty goodness.
For a moment, my concentration lapses as I screw up my face as the stench of alcohol, curdled cream and stomach acid burns the inside of my nostrils. Knox drops immediately with nothing to support him. His legs fold beneath his body, and his head hits the skirting board with an almighty thud. If nothing else proves exactly how far gone he is, that bump does it. He doesn’t even moan. Doesn’t whimper. I have to double check to make sure he’s still alive, but he’s definitely breathing. The tears that well in the corners of his eyes, crack open my heart for the umpteenth time this evening, but at least they’re an indicator that on some level he registered the pain, and not all his neural pathways are fucked. What it doesn’t do, is help with getting him upstairs and out of sight before he’s seen or smelled. That vomit is seriously putrid. I mean, vomit’s never good, but this…This is enough to make even a mother’s eyes water.
With that in mind, I strip off my shirt, and use the clean bits of it to wipe Knox’s face. Never mind that it’s my original Stone Roses Waterfall shirt. It obviously doesn’t work as a lucky charm, given how tonight’s going down. And Loveday already used the front of it to dry her hands.
“Something up, Nate?” Knox asks, giving me a lethargic side-eye.
You have got to be kidding me.
“You, Teddy are what’s up. You. You’re a headache I really don’t need. I don’t. The band doesn’t. You’ve got to stop this, or you’re going to prove Joel right. Believe me, you don’t want to do that.”
“We’ll go upstairs. I’ll go to bed,” he says like he’s some sort of Confucius clone. Getting him to either of those places would certainly be wise right now, but I’ve given that a shot already and I know he’s not going anywhere if I’m doing this alone.
I try Joel first, but the bugger doesn’t answer his phone. I guess he’s still pissed at me for not listening to him earlier. I shoot off a text to him instead, begging him for assistance. After that, I try Dane, but his number goes straight to voicemail.
So sorry, I’m screwing right now. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you if I haven’t already screwed you before.
Useless goddamned brother.
And I don’t get a reply from Joel either, which might mean he’s turned his phone off, or that he’s officially washing his hands of Knox, which rather leaves me stuck.
I have no choice. I do the unthinkable, and call the only other person on hand whose number I have.
NINE
Loveday Trevaskis
“It’s the zombie apocalypse. Do you have my back?”
I’m stripped down to my undies, getting ready to dive into my side of the bed I’m sharing with Jessie—Ivy claimed the single—when my phone rings and I answer to find Nathaniel Darke murmuring in my ear. My whole body goes rigid. I never expected him to call, especially not tonight…this morning…whichever it is. “Hold on.” I make an immediate detour towards the bathroom, my mouth going dry, and my skin tingling like I’ve just been zapped with an electric charge.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Can’t we have the lights out yet?” Jessie hollers. “And don’t turn the bathroom one on, it buzzes like crazy and is wired to the extractor fan.”
I snatch up a complimentary bathrobe, hammer my fist against the light switch, then slam headlong into the external corridor instead.
“Darke,” I breathe into the phone, my voice an excited whisper. “Where are you?”
“Doing reconnaissance. I’m in stairwell B, with a wounded comrade, so far we’ve managed to avoid being seen, but it’s desperate and there’s no shotgun in sight.”
I move along the corridor in the direction of the emergency exit plan I noticed earlier. That ought to tell me where stairwell B is.
“Can you help?”
“Need me to bring green herbs?” I ask, thinking of my favourite game. I tiptoe along the empty hallway, even though my bare feet don’t make a sound on the carpet. The map shows that stairwell B is just ahead on the turn before the bank of lifts.
“No. Blue ones. Just get here fast.”
Guess Darke’s a Resident Evil fan too.
“On my way.”
I hit the door to the stairs. The light here is blinding compared with the dimness of the corridor. I blink, clutch the bannister and lean over to look up and down the central well. Darke is a couple of flights down, crouched with his bare, ink emblazoned, back to me, and one hand clutched to the side of his head.
“Up here.”
He turns, sees where I am, and finishes the call. He doesn’t come to meet me. Instead, I pad down the steps, curling my toes because the surface is freezing.
“You play too many video games,” I say, once I’m within four paces of him. He’s bared down to the waist, giving me a splendid view of his inked torso. He’s no gym bunny, but pleasantly ripped, with nice strong arms and enough dark fuzz on him to make my lady parts get antsy. It’s hard not to stare at the few tufts that are peeping over the top of his low-rise jeans and not contemplate the package below that they’re signposting. I’ve already had him in my mouth tonight and lied outrageously to one of my best mates to avoid a having a serious ding-dong over it, meeting him here now is going to cause a Jessie supernova if she finds out.
“It got you here, didn’t it? And if I play too many games, you do too, because you never once asked me what the hell I was
talking about.”
“Yeah.” He has me there, because not only am I here, I’m here wearing a borrowed bathrobe and my undies. Then again, I reckon if he put his mind to it, Nathaniel Darke could relieve me of both those items in the time it takes me to blink. “I’m not seeing a zombie hoard.”
He bites his lips, in an attempt to hide the smile spreading across his face. “I’m not seeing any blue herbs.”
Touché.
“It’s not as if you need any.”
“They weren’t for me. They were for him.” He takes a pace to the left, so that I can see around him. One of his band mates is slumped in the corner, with his head bent at an alarming angle. At a guess I’d say he fell down the stairs, but the puddles of corrosive-looking goo splattered around him hint otherwise. The smell once I get on a level with Darke is eye-watering—an acidic mix of curdled milk, beer and…is that urine?
Darke casts a grim look in the direction of his friend’s groin. Me, I prefer not to think about whether it’s a stain or a shadow across the region of his fly.
“What happened?”
He chews over his reply, which leaves indents in his lower lip where he digs in with his teeth. “Just help me get him upstairs.”
“Upstairs? Seriously?” The only place this guy looks like he needs to be heading towards is a hospital. I tiptoe around the noxious puddles and check his pulse in his throat. For all that he appears to be utterly fucked, it’s going strong. Nevertheless, I swipe a thumb across the screen of my phone and jab in the number for the emergency services.
“No.” Darke leans over and taps the end call button before the connection has properly been made. “The last thing I need right now is a crew of paramedics carting him off. I need to get him straight to face Graham Callahan.”
“You what?” Did he really just say that?
“He’s our bass player.” He throws me a pained look from under his eyebrows.
“Your friend? Yet you’re putting your ambitions over his health? Seriously?” Who does that? Well too many people, I suppose. The world his full of selfish wankers. I just hadn’t pegged Darke as one of them. Obviously, I mistakenly assumed our musical compatibility equated to general like-mindedness.
He shakes his head, disturbing the dark hair that rests upon his collar. “That’s not it.”
“Then prove it. Let me make the call.”
“Who ya gonna call?” the patient blurts, nearly bowling me over I’m so shocked to hear him speak. I thought for definite he was comatose. Apparently, he’s still with it enough for his inner geek to function.
Both Darke and I stare at him, anticipating a follow up yell of “Ghostbusters,” but he just flashes us a toothy grin and then slides back inside himself, his eyes becoming vacant, before his lids droop over them. Perhaps the hospital wouldn’t thank us for depositing him there. They’re none too fond of having drunks clogging their waiting room, and I’m beginning to think that’s all this is—too much booze and zero self-restraint. On the other hand, it’d be irresponsible not to get him help when he so obviously needs it.
“Please. If you could just assist with getting him to bed,” Darke begs.
“You want me to help you get him to bed,” I parrot him, because the information does not compute. “Are you delusional? He’s a mess. He’s not playing anything for Graham Callahan. He’s not playing anything for anyone. Darke, we need to call an ambulance.” This boy needs to have his stomach pumped.
“My name’s Nate, and please—” He covers the screen of my phone with his hand so that his long fingers end up folded over mine. “—let’s at least make this a vaguely fair fight.”
“Seriously, you think I’m trying to ship him off to hospital because with him out of the picture Bitch Slap is guaranteed the top prize in this competition?” The damned competition hadn’t entered my thoughts until he mentioned it. “Look at him, Darke. I mean it, genuinely look at him.” I physically help him to turn his head in the appropriate direction. “Have you ever seen anyone look this shit before?”
“Maybe,” he sighs in a way that tells me he definitely has, and more often than he cares to admit. “I realise things look bad, but you don’t know him. Knox has issues.”
No kidding.
“Issues a trip to Doctorsville is only going to exacerbate.”
Knox—is that his name? “Knox…Knox,” I gently shake his shoulder. My prodding barely raises a groan. “Do you know what he’s drunk…taken?”
“You’re making too much out of this. Listen to me. We’re not sending him anywhere without his consent.” Darke snatches my phone out of my hands and stows it in his back pocket ensuring I can’t dial for assistance next time he’s distracted. “I know you mean well, but you don’t know shit about the situation. Being prodded and poked and shuttled around for hours, then sent home with a wad of leaflets about where to go for help isn’t what he needs.”
“And I suppose you know exactly what it is that’s gonna fix him.”
Darke shakes his head. “Wish it was as easy as sending him for a long stint in rehab, but he has memory issues that predate the damage he’s done to himself through overindulgence. I’m telling you straight though, sticking him in an unfamiliar environment will just confuse the hell out of him.” Darke slides his long fingers through the front of his hair, then turns those sharp eyes on me. “I realise your conscience might be telling you something different, but the best place for him is bed, so are you going to help me, or not?”
If Jessie was here she’d tell me to walk away, to leave Paradise Kiss to wallow in their own stench and not worry about them, but I’m a sucker for overgrown boys in need of saving. Some girls get sappy over cute fluffy animals, in my case it’s bad boys in distress. One pleading glance, and it’s like a screw comes loose inside my head and sense flies out of the window.
“I’ll help,” I say, pausing before adding a caveat. “But only in getting him as far as your room. You can put him to bed and play night nurse yourself since you’re not prepared to call in the experts.” I’ll do this because Knox clearly needs someone to look out for him, and while I’m far from convinced that Darke’s strategy is the correct one, I concede he at least believes he’s doing the right thing.
“Let’s get him up, before someone happens along.”
Getting him upright is like manipulating a ten ton scarecrow, by which I mean he’s all dangly limbed and at risk of his stuffing coming out. Darke literally heaves him into an upright position, then we take an arm each and hook them around our shoulders so that Knox is between us. The smell of him makes me want to hurl. I’d hold my nose, but I don’t have a hand free to do so. With one, I’m clinging onto Knox’s wrist, and the other is fastened around his leather belt helping to combat the effects of gravity. I have no idea how we get him up the stairs, because while one of Knox’s feet occasionally goes in front of the other, it’d be a gross distortion of the facts to describe it as ambulation.
“You’re either brave or stupid,” I tell Darke when we finally reach the correct landing. We both have to pause for breath, though we maintain our grip on Knox. I swear, if he ends up on the floor now, as he has several times during the climb, I’m going to propose dragging him by either his ankles or collar. “What I’m saying is that there’s nothing to stop me blabbing all this to Graham Callahan in the morning. You know yourself he’s not going to be enthused at the idea of taking on a band with a—” I pause to look Knox over, because it’s hard to come up with an appropriate description for him. “—a slacker for a bassist.”
“Lickers are fast,” Darke protests, obviously having misheard me. “He’s more like an indolent slug. As for why, I guess I was banking on your innate goodness. I know Jessie’s a cow, but that doesn’t mean all of Bitch Slap are tarred with the same brush.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
He puckers his lips and blows me a kiss. “Any time.”
Darke reaches for the door handle and pulls it open. He s
tops it swinging back on itself by shoving his foot in the way, then letting me shuffle through sideways because the gap isn’t wide enough for the three of us to walk abreast. The corridor only just accommodates us.
“You weren’t my first choice,” he explains. “More like the last resort. I wasn’t getting up those stairs on my own, not without one or both of us sustaining a serious injury.”
I take that to mean he couldn’t locate the two other members of his band. One assumes he’d call them ahead of me, unless he’s hiding Knox’s drug problem from them, or they have problems of their own.
“What’s he taken, anyway?” I ask. I don’t know why it’s relevant, but…I guess I’m nosy.
“This is a few pints topped off with some weed.”
“Bullshit.” I nearly drop Knox in the process of calling Darke a liar.
“I’m serious.” His pale green eyes flash with indignation. “I’ve known Knox to drop the odd tab, but never to dabble in the really hard stuff. I’m guessing whatever he smoked was cut with something else.” The sincerity with which he says this, convinces me that Darke at least, believes his own words. Maybe it’s the truth and maybe it’s wishful thinking on his behalf, because if I had to guess, I’d say Knox has been chasing dragons.
“Like what?” I raise my brows and wait for him to present a plausible explanation.
“Pesticides, strychnine, possibly opium.”
OK, they all sound pretty grim and hazardous.
“But let’s face it—” He brings us to a pause outside room 423. “—it could be anything. I’ve heard if you’re not used to it, opium can make you puke.” The new stains on my bathrobe and Darke’s lack of an upper body covering are testament to how much spewing has taken place.
I’m left supporting most of the vomit merchant’s weight, as Darke works magic with the key card, and gets the door open. With a lot of sweat and pulling, we manage to navigate Knox over the threshold and into the bathroom.
“Better hose him down before we put him to bed.”
He certainly needs it, but, “I only said I was coming this far.”
BANGED: Rock Stars, Bad Boys & Dirty Deeds Page 44
