S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  Well, reflected David, as he tried to focus on finding Sammy, on this night of days, or whatever in hell it was now, precious little.

  ‘What I was going to say,’ he went on, ‘ – in America, New York – you ever, Dwight, go to these, what are they? Lap-dancing type places? Nude sort of bars?’

  Dwight’s eyes and lips tightened and flattened down into slits, black with amusement, as he jerked back his head shortly and once as if he had just delivered at speed into his mouth a neat cold shot of something harsh (which he hadn’t, not yet, because David was still failing to make any sort of contact with – where was he? – Sammy. Ah. Was this Sammy now? Yes it was: same again, then, please – better make them double doubles this time round because after these, we’re off).

  ‘Shooooor!’ Dwight was now assuring David conspiratorially, and very much man to man. ‘Like when we do conventions, yeah? Outta town. Chicago, Atlanta, Denver – Detroit, oh man. The way those babies shake their booties. What – you ain’t never been one of those places? You don’t maybe got ’em in England?’

  ‘Once, I went …’ put in David.

  ‘Tell you, boy – joints I been, ten bucks buys you a teasing taster. You flash your roll and man – it’s feasting time. They got these booths in back. Maybe, we get to New York I can show you a real good time. Sure there’s Charlene we gotta get around. Your lady wife sweet on you hitting the town?’

  ‘Used to it,’ grunted David.

  Dwight turned to David, now – the light of animation stirring amid the dull and milky liquids of those just-open eyes. ‘Jeez, Dave – some of those babes are so young, you hear what I’m saying? Fresh and flawless, boy – like they were since before when. Since before I can’t hardly recall. Me …’ – and now Dwight brought his lips to within twitching distance of David’s ear – ‘ … I like ’em, you know – real young?’

  David nodded. He pulled at whisky, and Dwight did too.

  ‘Yes …’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Young is good. Very good. Tell you – Jesus, Dwight, you maybe won’t believe this. Yeh we do have them in England, few – some are just sort of topless, you know? Which is OK. Others go the full, you know …’

  ‘Manty?’

  ‘Well … yeah. But they’re women, of course.’

  Why did I say that? And look at Dwight: he’s thinking exactly the same damn thing. Never mind: charge on.

  ‘Yeh – I was actually taking a client from the north of England. Kept on and on about it. Furniture manufacturer – rich as hell, but really dull, you know? Also had this export and import business – used to buy all this furniture from all over the world. Anyway – so he goes ‘Aw-cur, David’, he goes – they talk like that, don’t know if you know. Oop north.’

  ‘Beadles? Liverpool, right?’

  ‘Well this was Sheffield, actually.’

  ‘Sheffield I don’t know.’

  ‘Well no, you wouldn’t. Knives. Anyway – when are we going, David, he goes. So I got this listings magazine, right?’

  ‘You want I should refresh our drinks, Dave?’

  ‘Ooh – I don’t think so, Dwight. Yeh, OK. So anyway, I find this place in Hammersmith, right? Well no, you wouldn’t. Well – forget Soho, this is miles away. Anyway – we get there, OK, and the place is covered in all the neon lights and all the rest of it: ‘Totally Nude American Table Dancing’ it says – and he’s really keen. So we go in – usual thing, I expect – velvety, chromy – and I order champagne – bloody rip-off, but he was paying – and Jesus, bingo – over comes this most … Christ, the most beautiful girl you ever saw in your life – ’

  ‘Young? Young babe, yeah?’

  ‘Oh Christ yes – young. Barely learned to walk. So she climbs up on to the table in front of us and Jesus, what a view! And she takes off just everything except the stockings and these amazing shoes and she’s pouting down at us and her hips have gone mad and God, Dwight, I don’t mind telling you – I was going a bit mad myself.’

  ‘And your guy – he into it?’

  ‘Well this is just it!’ nearly shouted David – so back there and among the heat of it all did he suddenly feel. ‘I glance across at him – thought he might have exploded, or something – and instead of gawping up at this jaw-dropping vision, he was staring down at her feet, click-clacking away, and he was frowning badly. Uh – Everything OK, I go – and he starts tut-tut-tutting away. I’m helping the girl down, now, because the record’s ended – and there he is just passing a hand over the surface she’d just stepped away from. He looks at me and he goes: ‘They should be shot’.’

  Dwight was all his. ‘He said that?’

  David’s wide eyes reassured Dwight that he had indeed heard him right. ‘So I’m going, er – sorry? I don’t understand – I thought you wanted …? And he goes No no no – not the girls, the girls are nice enough. The management – misleading the public. ‘Totally Nude American Table Dancing’, it said. (And now I’m really thinking he’s crazy, right?)’

  ‘Sure sounds like he’s nuts.’

  ‘But look, I said … she – she was totally nude: you just weren’t, well – looking. And he says to me – you ready for this, Dwight? He says Aw Eye, Fur Enoof – but there’s no way in hell that that was an American table!’

  Dwight held David’s huge-eyed incredulity, and their lips opened in unison to form an O of wonder, just before all the creamy laughter – soon turned to roaring – and then not much later, the wiping of eyes.

  ‘Dave,’ wheezed out Dwight, ‘you know what? I maybe said it before: you just break me up.’ And then – in one surprisingly agile movement – Dwight was off his stool and grinning and swaying. ‘Fella – I gotta go.’

  David turned (whoa – bit too quickly) and gazed with benevolence at the weaving bulk of Dwight, that red and sausagey inner tube stuck fatly between his collar and hairline seeming way over-inflated as well as flamingly seared. Dwight now raised an arm in the manner of a great dictator curtly acknowledging the awestruck devotion of at least a division of knife-sharp and jet-clad storm troopers – and without turning nor losing his balance, he called back over his shoulder:

  ‘Catch ya later, Dave!’

  David dumbly waved at the ever smaller and retreating form of his new and big friend Dwight and felt only affection and a freaky kind of bonding as he just about heard him calling out again (could have been Yes sir, yes sir – you really break me up …) and then Dwight turned into an archway and bashed his nose and briefly apologized and staggered off again and was lost to sight.

  And Dwight’s big hand was still raised in salute (was thinking he should maybe, uh – how’s about I put it away now, huh?) when who should be coming right at him from way down the other end of this vast and quiet upholstered corridor but his own little girl, his own sweet Suki.

  ‘Hi there, Suki my angel. You still up? How’s your Mom doing?’

  Suki stopped: her upper lip was sort of raised, and the stiff fingers of both her hands seemed indignant, splayed out at her hip bones. Her whole body looked flared.

  ‘Gee, Dad – you’re kinda, like – loaded, right?’

  Dwight was barely undulating as he continued to look down on her with all the beaming kindness of Saint Nick hisself.

  ‘My own sweet girl … Where’s Earl?’

  ‘Yeh – like ask me. Hit the sack, Dad – OK? What’s cooking down the bar? Sump’n? Nothin’? Jeez – this whole tub is, like, in a coma?’

  Suki ambled on – leaving her father fluttering gently amid the thick and total stillness, still head-waggingly benevolent and marvelling at having – guess what, at this one moment in time? Run plumb bang into his one sweet and darling little daughter … who was (and he focused upon this truth with a frisson of confusion) now gone someplace else.

  So, thought Suki: let’s just check this out, here – what’s, like, falling down? Yeah – like I figured: zero with a capital zee. Three grinning Chinese guys hanging round a mike which don’t seem to be working – and yeh sure, they g
imme that look, that look I get from guys all over; only with Orientals it don’t come out too good, you know? Just seems they’re having trouble big time taking a dump. Kinda the same with Hispanics, yeah? They do the eye thing on me and all they look is like they’re just gonna cry, or something. Black guys I ain’t into; dig all the cool, sure, and the muscles they most of them got, but when they’re into, like, checking me out, all I feel is kinda like – scared? All the laughter goes right outta their eyes.

  So what else? Barkeep. Looks beat, poor guy. How long he been standing there, fixing hits for jerks? And some girl fooling with her glass – she maybe trying to hit on Dopey the Barkeep? Nah: looking every which way but right at him. And the other end we got a drunk. English guy, I betcha. Jeez – just get the way he’s eyeing me, now: same age as my Dad, Chrissake. Cute, though, kinda – in a beat-up sorta drunk and English kinda way. I mean – what? I’m back home in New York and I’m checking out some totally empty pub? And it’s one a.m. – two, maybe – and so the whole fuckin’ rest of the city is, like, shut down?

  Suki perched up on a stool and said Hi to the barman, just as he was well into his Hi to her and only a second before – couldn’t have been more – David leaned across and waved at her his glass (and Christ, I’ve really got to watch that – nearly arse over tip, that time) and said Well Hello There – and Suki might well have responded (dumb, oh yeh sure he is – but like I say, kinda cute) but she blanked him off entirely when she glanced across again at the girl at the bar and suddenly recognized her as one of the two in the lousy disco and so yeh OK, I’ll go with Hi – real bright and right at her – and Stacy was already doing a Hi of realization and raising a finger as well as that eyebrow.

  ‘OK,’ said Suki, now. ‘I guess I’ll have a vodka rocks? Stacy, right? Getcha sump’n, Stace?’

  ‘Have a drink,’ came David’s thick and (was that really me?) distant, dull and booming voice.

  ‘Thanks, Suki,’ smiled Stacy (she’s nice, she was thinking – much better now she’s on her own: often true). ‘I’ll maybe just have an orange.’

  David waved his arm, now – all-encompassing and large, the gesture was intended to be (had him swaying quite badly again, though).

  ‘Have a drink!’ came the cry – buffeted by a crosswind as it was, and badly distorted by that dented megaphone he lately seemed to bawl through.

  ‘So,’ said Suki to Stacy – edging two stools closer, is the way she saw it, as David was plunged into the cold and could only wonder with misery: Why is she moving away from me, hm? All I did was offer her a drink. ‘My goofy brother still with your friend, someplace? Sister, maybe?’

  Stacy smiled, and sipped her orange.

  ‘Not my sister no, Suki. She’s actually my – ’

  ‘Have drink!’ roared out David (God I did, didn’t I? Really roared it out, that time round: didn’t mean to – it’s just how it worked).

  ‘This your first night, right Stace?’

  Stacy nodded. ‘It’s rather odd, isn’t it?’

  Suki laughed, quite briefly. ‘Rather odd – yeah. Odd is good, odd I like. What it is, Stace, is like – weird? Like – crazy weird? I been here since, Jesus – seems like the whole of my life. I mean, don’t get me wrong – we’ve had some real good times, you know? Like – Singapore? Totally arsem. But now all I feel is great – I’m going, like – home, you know? Need to chill out with my friends? New York – you know it? Tell ya – it’s real kicking.’

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ said Stacy.

  Why do I suddenly feel this? A hundred years old. We must be about the same sort of age, Suki and me – a year or two between us, maybe – and yet I’m just sitting here feeling like bloody Mary Poppins, or something, while she’s just romping around and being young. Christ: it’s even the same with my bloody own mother. How can it be that all I feel is like my mother’s auntie? (And in answer to your earlier question, Suki – I really couldn’t tell you. Is my mother still sodding about with your I think pretty horrible brother? Haven’t got a clue. Look – with Jennifer, you just don’t know.)

  ‘Have a drink! Ooh Christ – !’

  ‘You OK?’ laughed Suki – looking down at the English guy, sprawled among the upturned stools, seeming amazed and gurgling away I’m Fine I’m Fine I’m Fine I’m Fine.

  ‘Here – let me help you, sir,’ said Sammy – darting from behind the bar, and already well on the way to getting David up and more or less on his feet. ‘There, sir – all right?’ I wish, he was thinking, that all of you’d go now. I’m really bloody tired: Jilly just must be asleep by this time, yes?

  David was grasping the bar quite firmly, his eyes like alarmed and fleeing goldfish (his mouth poised quite like that as well). Suki looked at him with, who knows? Amusement? Anyway waiting for the next delivery of dumb and stupid; Sammy looked at him with pretty much dread – please, oh God please don’t let him be sick. After this whole damn evening, I just couldn’t face – not sick, not this late. Stacy was looking at Suki and thinking how pretty, how very pretty the way just that one long finger is idling gently on the rim of her glass (reminds me quite a lot of a girl I was at school with – Janet, who I don’t think of now).

  And then it came from David’s mouth:

  ‘Have a drink …!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sammy softly (thank you, God – all he came out with was crap), ‘time for bed, sir?’

  ‘You, er … could be right. Do you want to buy my jacket? No. No. Forget I said that. Stupid. Bed. Bed. I think you could be right.’

  Yes, I think you could. I just have now to take my leave of all these good people and with some sort of dignity negotiate this runway, here, and the fields beyond it and get myself back to, um … get myself off to cabin number, er … got it written down, somewhere … and ease myself quietly into that big soft bed and say goodnight fondly to my dear wife, er … to my dear wife, um …

  ‘You OK, sir?’ checked Sammy, as David barrelled away.

  ‘Perfectly,’ David assured him. Nicole. Yes of course.

  And Suki said to him You know what? You’re real neat.

  David remembered it, of course he did. It took him barely two hours to find his cabin (the corridors were good, though – one wall cannoned you right into the other, and the gently shuddering carpet kept your big and spongey feet both afloat and alive) and then there was all the car park stuff to be gone through when he fetched up at the door and then when he’d finally got the bloody thing to open (what’s actually wrong with it, at all? It’s all they’re meant to do, doors, isn’t it? Fucking open) David was thinking this and this only: mustn’t wake, er … oh Christ: Nicole. Needn’t have bothered. I don’t even think it was my falling over the bloody raised-up doorstep thing and then careering into the wardrobe that did it: she was shouting and spitting at me before I’d even got the door ajar. She did the usual: shot her venom for ten or so years, demanded an explanation – and when I opened my mouth to say nothing (well look: what sort of explanation, one might reasonably ask, could she ever be seriously expecting? I drank too much, God’s sake – how difficult is that?) then she screams at me to shut the hell up and let her get some sleep and we’ll talk again in the bloody morning.

  God, though. It’s maybe that Suki I could properly do with. That would give Nicole something to shout about. And Trish. Good God – Trish: forgotten about her. Yes – as I say: pretty little American girl … my age, could be the last bloody time. And talking of age: young – oh God yeh: really fresh and young. My friend Dwight could really go for Suki, big time. Green with envy, he’d be. You know – I signed the tab for all those drinks (well, scrawled some sort of mess right across the bill). It’s not that I think Dwight’s mean, oh no – I know mean men, and Dwight’s not one. But he’s rich, you see – and they don’t think of it, do they? Spending money. Not the rich. They forget things cost. But I don’t, no. Because I haven’t really got any money at all, not to speak of. And after tonight, one helluva lot less, I suppose. Ah well. So
d it.

  Hey but listen (God I’m so tired – thank God, thank God) – wasn’t it odd that she thought me neat? yes it’s odd, that, very – because to be perfectly frank, all I feel is a bloody shambles.

  *

  Jennifer’s face was wet and cold, and the surrounding blackness thrilled and scared her. She went on fiddling with a thick and clanking padlocked gate (I do not need this: it is stopping me going to where I need to be) and Earl, Jesus – he could actually be maybe helping me out, here, instead of just tugging at my arms and whining his whine.

  ‘Look, Jen, like – let’s just split to my cabin, huh? What say? Christ it’s so goddam freezing out here … and the sign says – ’

  ‘Oh Christ – the sign says, the sign says!’ snapped back Jennifer – feeling the rush of wind in her frizzed-up hair as the muted crash of waves seemed at once to pitch down the nose of the ship while sending up into their faces not so much gentle spray as stinging hard gobbets of heavy slapping water.

  Earl looked about and licked away at some of the salt; he wrapped around him this dumb and damp stupid lightweight jacket and yeh, he looked about. And all he saw was dark and fucking scary. This is crazy. This is, Jesus, just so goddam crazy, you know? Been getting along real fine, this foxy English babe and me – put away how many, back in the lit-up warmth (yeh – tell me bout it) of the Regatta Club, down there. Then she’s going – Earl, come on, let’s go, Earl, yeh? And I’m like Yeh sure, baby – going is good: let’s do it. OK – one level I’m thinking Jesus, I drank so much I ain’t too sure we got lift-off – know what I’m sane? But I’m figuring too, Hey – what the hell? This honey’s so hot, she could set fire to the ocean. Yeh – and talking ocean, I’m getting beat up bad here by that very goddam thing. All the munce I been on this tub, I ain’t never – not one time – come out on deck at night. I mean to tell you – what, like, for, you know? Inside we got heat, we got light, we got booze – and tonight, Earl baby, we got one long-legged chick who I tell ya is hot to trot. So how come suddenly I’m freezing my ass off in the middle of a night that is black like you ain’t never in your goddam life even seen black, baby – and my feet like doing a skating act over this fucking slimy deck and here in front of me I got the English crazy who’s trying to, what – pick a lock? And go up what looks to me like no more’n a ladder that leads to where, in Jesus Christ’s name? And the sign – what’s with her, you know? Ain’t the sign plain enough to her, or what? ‘Strictly no passengers beyond this point at any time’ – red on white and swinging from the chain. Simple, huh? She don’t speak English, the English crazy? I mean, I’m thinking – they gotta put up a sign? Who in their right mind wants to go trapezing and slithering around and climbing up ladders at any time at all, let alone in the middle of the fucking night? You wanna know who? Tell you who. Little Miss Fruitcake, newly escaped from the Ewe-Knighted Kingdom.