Come Again

by Emlyn Rees

  Jimmy turns on him. ‘Why didn’t you say something before?’

  ‘Because you didn’t ask.’

  ‘What else you got?’ Jimmy asks.

  ‘That’s it,’ Ug replies.

  Jimmy mutters something and turns back to me. ‘Just dope, then.’ His top lip curls. ‘And I suppose you’re not interested in that either . . .’

  I don’t even bother to reply.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he says. ‘Because you’re not kidding me. Not for a second. Hey, Ug,’ he calls, keeping his eyes on me. ‘What d’you reckon? You think Stringer here’s going to make it through the weekend without getting back into the good old ways?’

  ‘Leave it out,’ Matt interrupts.

  Jimmy looks at me, disgusted, for a second, before turning his attention back to Matt and staring him full in the face. This is a stupid move. It’s almost as stupid as badgering me about drugs. Matt, apart from myself, is the only sober person here, so when it comes to staring, he’s at a distinct advantage. Compared to the rest of them, he is Clint Eastwood. Jimmy gives it his best shot, but he only lasts seconds before his eyes are flickering over the others, searching unsuccessfully for support. I blank him big time. The dipshit. Where does he get off hassling me like that? I can’t believe Jack’s got him tagging along. A case of too much history, I suppose. We’ve all got people from our pasts we don’t let go when we probably should. The trouble is, Jimmy’s one of mine and I just can’t seem to shake him.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ Matt says. ‘We’ll have fun. Trust me on this one, OK? I’ve never let you down before, have I?’

  ‘Yeah, sod it,’ Jack says, chucking Jimmy a beer and cracking one open himself. He pulls his ‘I Went Potty In Lanzarote’ hat down low over his brow. ‘He’s right. Let’s just get on with it.’

  ‘Good,’ Matt says, getting out. ‘I’ll go and check us in.’

  I turn back to face the front and notice that my fist is clenched. I picture the letters of Jimmy’s name tattooed across my knuckles. But then my fingers relax and I don’t feel angry any more. Why get angry over something so far back in my past? Why waste my time on someone like him? I glance back at Jimmy and this time all I feel is amazement that I was ever friends with him to begin with.

  Matt

  Friday, 22.32

  Cometh the hour, cometh the man . . .

  H

  Friday, 23.00

  Amy burps loudly and sways in her chair as she points at me. ‘You’re twelve. I know you are.’

  I say nothing. I knew she was coming round to me and I’ve been dreading it. I’m too sober and I don’t want to play her girlie bonding games. Especially with this lot.

  ‘H has slept with twelve blokes!’ she announces. ‘Same as me and thingy,’ she waves in a random direction down the table.

  I hate this. And I hate feeling estranged from Amy. I smile vaguely at her at the other end of the table, but inside I feel like she’s a million miles away. I know it’s her hen weekend, but I thought the whole point about sharing all the secrets of my sexual and emotional history with her was that she’s my best friend and that’s what best friends do. Because they keep each other’s secrets. They don’t make them public knowledge. These are her friends, not mine. It’s horrible listening to her blurting out all the stories that I thought were ours – and just ours – across the checked plastic tablecloths of Mexican Mecca. But I suppose my rules of information privacy and Amy’s don’t apply on a hen weekend.

  Which is why I don’t want to correct her and admit that I’ve slept with more than twelve people. To be honest, I’m not sure I even want to tell her about it any more: ever.

  Susie squeals with hysterical laughter and the others join in as Amy swaps her worst shag story: losing her virginity; and her most filthy: Nathan. I don’t join in. I’ve heard those stories a thousand times. They were better when they were fresh.

  ‘Jack’s the best, though,’ she slurs. ‘He’s gor-or-geous.’

  I rub my eyes. Jesus I’m tired.

  ‘Oh, oh!’ gasps Amy, suddenly, opening her mouth and pointing at me. ‘H! H! What about that bloke . . . what’s his name . . . your one, who had a willy like a banana?’ She screams and puts her hands to her mouth. ‘He was dreadful!’ She hiccups loudly. ‘H couldn’t walk for a week!’

  She gets up and does an impression of me walking like Raw Hide and the girls seem to find this hilarious.

  I beckon the waitress over. She’s dressed in what looks like stained chamois leathers and has corks dangling from her hat. They keep hitting her on the chin.

  ‘Can we have the bill please?’ I ask.

  Ten seconds later, she dumps it on the table, rudely. It has ‘Thanx’ scrawled on it.

  Oh dear. It looks like the literate and, I must say, highly educated staff have run out of patience. I wonder why? Could it be that Mexican Mecca’s third Michelin star is in danger of being knocked off? Or maybe they just feel we didn’t appreciate their house speciality – tortilla à la salmonella. Or maybe Amy and her gang have embarrassed them once too often.

  Susie jeers at me. ‘No, H. No. More drinks, more drinks,’ she yells. ‘Take the bill away.’ I ignore her and attempt to smile at the waitress in sympathy.

  ‘We’ve got to get back for Sam,’ I explain to a pouting Amy, putting down my Visa card. We’ll be here all night if this lot start trying to co-ordinate money. Besides, I’d pay anything to get out of here. All I want to do is go to bed.

  Except that, thanks to Susie, I don’t have a bed.

  Stringer

  Friday, 23.15

  ‘So what’s the story behind these splendidly lurid red cacks?’ Damien asks, walking over to me and taking the knickers which Karen kindly donated from my pocket.

  Anything – even this rather dubious exercise – is a welcome distraction from Jimmy’s bitching about Leisure Heaven.

  ‘Well?’ Damien prompts me.

  For the past fifteen minutes, Damien has been engaged in an in-depth analysis of the choice of women’s underwear brought along by the members of the stag party. He’s sozzled and there seems no end to the amusement he’s been able to derive from uncovering the provenance of each garment. For a man who lists the word moist amongst his favourite words, this somewhat unreconstructed approach to the dressing habits of the opposite sex comes as no surprise.

  I look at Damien’s fingers fondling Karen’s knickers and for a moment am transported back to the yard at my boarding-house at school, listening in awe as Richard Lewis tells me all about his teenage conquest of Emma Roberts. Panic seizes me for a second as I consider the possibility that Karen’s knickers might have a nametag sewn into them also. But Damien’s voice dismisses this thought, because all Damien’s voice asks me is, ‘Whose are they?’

  ‘Marilyn,’ I respond, coming out with the first name that springs to mind.

  ‘Description.’

  ‘Blonde, buxom and babe-ish. An actress,’ I hurriedly improvise. ‘Glam roles.’

  ‘Like Monroe,’ Jack comments absent-mindedly.

  Hmmm. Strange, that . . .

  ‘So what happened?’ Damien asks.

  I spin them a yarn with all the necessary ingredients to make them believe I’m telling them the truth. Key words include: foxy, filthy, famous and, of course, multiple orgasm.

  ‘Smart,’ Damien comments when I’ve finished. He looks at the knickers wistfully for a second, before handing them back to me, saying, ‘I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sleep with an actress.’

  With Karen’s knickers back in the palm of my hand, I can’t help feeling a pang of regret. I think back to Karen snorting over my request to borrow them for the weekend. After failing to persuade me that I didn’t have to add my name to the ranks of stag-night saddos, she relented and we went through to her bedroom. She opened her knickers drawer and told me that, if I was going to be a sexist jerk, I might as well be a sexist jerk with taste.

  It’s the next few minutes – as
she laid out the pick of the pack on her bed – that stick in my mind the most. I should have been able to approach the situation with an air of normality, an air of amusement – like she did. But it wasn’t normal for me. It was extraordinary. It was only afterwards, on my way to meet Jack and the others, that I came to terms with the true significance of the event. A sense of unease gripped me, not over my – admittedly suspect – reaction to witnessing Karen cataloguing her smalls, but deeper than that. I made a wish to make myself feel better. I wished on the never-never that a day would come when being in that situation with Karen would be as normal to me as seeing the sun in the sky. I wished that those knickers in that drawer would be nothing more remarkable than some of my girlfriend’s clothes.

  Here, now, I wonder how she is, and I hope she’s not feeling too blue. I think about Chris perhaps being out at some club in Newcastle with another woman. I wonder what tomorrow will bring and whether Karen will make the decision to change her life for the better.

  ‘Hey, Stringer,’ Ug calls out from the window at the front of the apartment. ‘Come here and check out the talent.’

  I roll my eyes at Matt and then walk over to join our local Neighbourhood Watch officer, Ug.

  ‘Go to it, Horse,’ Jack calls over from where he’s squatting on the floor drinking beer.

  Two minutes later, I’m walking out of Apartment 327 in the French Riviera and along the twenty yards of concrete pathway that leads to Apartment 328.

  It’s a relief to get some fresh air. Jimmy’s bitching aside, matters have been getting fairly out of hand. Jack and Damien have gone all rival on the booze front and Jimmy and Ug instigated a spliffathon the moment they entered the apartment. I admit it: there’s a bit of me that wants in. It’s all down to Jimmy, getting my brain ticking on the minibus. What if he’s right? What if I am only kidding myself? What if there’s a part of me that will always want to revert to who I was? And after all, it’s only a bit of spliff. It’s not like it’s anything hard.

  I breathe deep and try to shake the itch. I’m exhausted, that’s all. My defences are low, the couple of beers I had just now are making me woozy. All this jealousy and anger, looking at Jimmy and Ug and half-wishing I was with them, half-wishing they weren’t here at all, it’s nonsense. That’s what I’ve got to remember. I’ll regret it if I get involved. It would be a waste of the effort of all these months. I know the rules. No to all drugs. Spliff included. I know myself. If I broke that one cardinal rule, the whole house of cards would collapse. I’d be back in that dark zone, dependent, incapable of concentrating, or relaxing, or enjoying myself without the expensive on board. I’d be locked back into that never-ending chain of night-time trips across London in search of a score off some fuck-up I either don’t know or don’t care about. I shake my head. I don’t need it. It’s nothing to do with Jimmy and Ug. I can cope with them being here, can’t I? I’m strong enough for that?

  I reach the woman as she’s opening the boot of her red Peugeot 205, bathed in the glow of the night lamp above her apartment door. ‘Hi,’ I say, cheering myself up with a smile. ‘Welcome to Leisure Heaven.’

  She looks me up and down and I do the same to her. She’s about thirty-five, attractive. Her expression when she speaks is half-suspicious, half-amused. ‘You don’t work here, do you?’ she guesses.

  ‘No,’ I admit. ‘I am, however, along with a number of my associates’ – I turn sideways and indicate our apartment – ‘staying over there. I’m here to extend an invitation to yourself and anyone you’re with to join us for a drink either now or tomorrow . . .’ I give her my best smile. ‘Or whenever . . .’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ she says, pulling her bag out of the boot.

  ‘Do you want a hand with that?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. But thanks anyway.’ She hesitates. ‘What’s your name?’

  I consider this for a moment. ‘You can call me Welcoming Committee.’

  ‘Well, Welcoming Committee, you can call me Sam. I’m planning on going to the Aqua Spa tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll see you and your friends there.’

  ‘You can count on it.’

  She grins and glances over at the twitching curtain in our apartment. ‘I will,’ she says, heading off towards her apartment.

  Susie

  Friday, 23.45

  ‘Sam!’ says Amy, as we crash in to our apartment. Sam’s wrapped in blankets and is lying on the sofa, reading a magazine. She breaks out of her cocoon and gives us all a hug, as Amy introduces her to Lorna and Kate.

  H is not here. She got nicked driving us back from the food plaza and the nasty Leisure Heaven official made us get out of the car. H was banished to the car park near reception, so she’ll be gone for ages. I’m glad. She’s being such a spoilsport.

  ‘Sorry, we weren’t here. We’ve been in the . . .’ Amy waves her hand at the door and looks through one eye.

  ‘Restaurant,’ I finish for her.

  ‘When did you get here, mate?’ Jenny asks, grabbing a bottle of wine and opening it.

  Sam collapses back down on the sofa. ‘About half an hour ago. I was too tired to move, so I helped myself,’ she smiles. She’s eaten most of H’s food and is on her third can of lager. ‘I guessed I was probably on the sofa.’

  ‘Whoops,’ says Amy, losing her balance and collapsing on the floor.

  ‘You will never guess what?’ says Sam as Jenny hands out glasses of wine.

  ‘What’s that, then?’ I ask, propping Amy upright.

  ‘There’s a group of boys next door and one of them came over to say hello. I’m telling you, girls, he’s an Adonis.’

  ‘Oh goodie!’ says Jenny.

  ‘No word of a lie. We have landed on our feet, ladies. He’s just . . . uh . . .’ Sam rolls her eyes. ‘Amazing. He was totally charming. I told him we’d meet him at the Aqua Spa tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Why wait? The night is young,’ Amy slurs. ‘Go on, Sooze. Go get that man.’

  ‘You want me to check him out for you, do you?’

  She nods vigorously. ‘Yeah. Go get him. I want to see. He might do a strip for me. I deserve a strip, don’t I, girls? I’m getting married, aren’t I, and everything?’ She hiccups loudly.

  ‘You want him? I’ll get him,’ I say, brazenly flinging open the door.

  I can hear loud music from the next chalet, but the curtains are all drawn. I go to the door and look back. Amy’s giggling and peeking round the doorframe. Jenny is above her and Lorna’s on the other side with Sam and Kate. They look like a Scooby Doo cartoon and I can’t help giggling.

  ‘Go on,’ hisses Amy, waving me on.

  I hitch up my boobs and turn back. An Adonis, eh? I might be a changed woman, but for Amy I’m back to my old ways tonight.

  I knock loudly at the door.

  Matt

  Friday, 23.48

  ‘Leave it,’ I shout.

  There’s another bang on the door. Jimmy glares at me, still angry from before. ‘Why?’ he demands, his hand on the doorhandle.

  ‘It’s probably the park security. Open the door and we’ll have to deal with them. Ignore them and they’ll have to go away. We’ve turned the music down, so they’ve got no reason to be here now, have they?’

  ‘’S’right,’ Ug slurs, placing a restraining hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. ‘Just simmer. They’ll get bored.’

  Jimmy glowers at me, but releases the handle. Damien gets up from the sofa and walks unsteadily over to the ghetto blaster he brought down with him. He turns the music down a notch further and the knocking at the door stops. In its place, the sound of Billy vomiting reaches us from the bathroom.

  ‘Jesus,’ Stringer says with a grimace. ‘He’s like a drain. When’s he going to stop?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Jack says, taking a slug of Smirnoff Black. ‘I’m only his brother.’

  ‘Runs in the family,’ Damien teases, sitting down on the floor and breaking out a pack of cards. ‘Genetic lightweights, the lot of you . . .’ He s
huffles the cards. ‘Five-card stud,’ he announces. ‘Who’s in?’

  Stringer shakes his head. He looks like a kid, all weary and determined, not wanting to embarrass himself by going to bed before the adults. I catch my reflection in the mirror and realize he’s not the only one. My face is drained. I’m going to be looking like the Grim Reaper by the time I track H down tomorrow. I glance at Jack, who’s joined Damien. I wish he hadn’t told the others about what happened between me and H and I hope to God no one goes gobbing off about it in front of her. That’ll be me finished.

  Stringer

  Saturday, 04.15

  ‘Right, boys,’ Damien, now practically cross-eyed with drink but showing no signs of relenting, slurs, ‘time to up the stakes.’

  How high? I wonder. Liver failure? The way he and Jack have been going for it, that seems the likeliest result from here on in.

  ‘Twot?’ Jack enquires.

  Meaning, I think, to what.

  ‘Naked,’ Damien declares. ‘Loser strips. Outside streak. Past the apartment next door. And the one after that. And that. Then back. Assuming we don’t lock the door, eh?’

  ‘You’re on,’ Ug grunts.

  I say, ‘Forget it.’ Apart from having absolutely no intention of dropping my trousers in front of anyone, I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Come on, Stringer,’ Damien implores. ‘The night’s still young . . .’

  I look round at the empty cans and bottles and snack packets and pasty faces. Then I look back at Damien. ‘No, it’s not. It’s old and wrinkled and in need of some beauty sleep.’

  And with that, I walk next door and collapse on to the bed next to Matt’s in the bedroom we bagged earlier. A few minutes later, I hear Matt come in and crash as well. We’re both too shattered even to say goodnight.