The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  At the clubhouse door, he turns back. She’s sitting up now, and just for a moment, she raises her hand, in greeting or farewell. He doesn’t wave back.

  As he yanks open the door, he’s laughing to himself. To think he’d thought she was a notch above the others. Elegant. Ha. Not so elegant staggering home covered in mud with her tits hanging out of her top.

  Then she starts screaming.

  _____________________

  The sound of the TV is a lullaby, making her drowsy, despite the cold. One of the springs is poking through the musty-smelling mattress, and she has to curl up at the very edge so that it doesn’t scratch her. They’ve hung a blanket up at the window to stop the morning sun from waking her too early, and an orange bar of light from the streetlamp outside falls through the gaps, cutting her in half.

  Her stomach gives a squealing twist, and she draws her knees to her chest to ease it. She wishes she had eaten more at school. The after-school club gives you cookies, and she managed to get two before the others grabbed the rest, but she’s still hungry.

  If she can go to sleep, she’ll forget about being hungry. She will forget about what Stuart Talley will say about her in front of everyone at break time tomorrow. She’ll forget about the way the teachers whisper about her during assembly and how everyone knows she steals school uniforms from the lost property box. Sometimes, she wishes she could stay asleep forever.

  There are slow footsteps on the stairs, and she squeezes her eyes shut and goes very still.

  The footsteps come into the room, and a weight lands on the bed, making the wire mesh under the mattress twang.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  She opens her eyes.

  “Want a bedtime story?”

  For a moment, she just stares at him. Then she whispers, “Yes, please.”

  She had a bedtime story once before, when one of Nanny’s boyfriends came up to her room and started telling her about a brother and sister whose parents left them in the forest. They were trying to find their way home when they came upon a house made of gingerbread and candies owned by a kindly old lady. She wanted to hear all about what each part of the house tasted like—especially the windows—but Nanny’s boyfriend fell asleep, so she had to make the rest of the story up. The people that left them in the forest, she decided, weren’t the children’s real parents at all. The old lady was actually their grandma and had built the candy house all ready to welcome them, while their real mummy and daddy searched the world for them, their hearts breaking with sadness. When they got back, they were so happy to see their children, they thought their hearts would burst.

  “Once upon a time, there was a little bunny rabbit,” says the man sitting on her bed. “She lived with her family in a burrow on a hill.”

  The little girl sits up. She likes the sound of this story. There is a bunny on the pajama top that her nan gave her.

  “The mummy and daddy bunny worked very hard all the time, but the little bunny never thought about anyone but herself. She wasn’t very clever, and she was always disobeying her parents.”

  Her eyes widen. Is something bad going to happen to the bunny?

  “Whenever they were busy working, she would run out of the burrow, laughing, and wander about the countryside, talking to whomever she met, telling horrible stories about her parents that weren’t true to get attention.”

  The little girl frowns. This is a bad bunny.

  “One day, she met a farmer having a picnic in a field, and because she was greedy and wanted some of his food, she told a lie that she was starving because her parents didn’t give her enough to eat.”

  The girl pulls the blanket up to her chin and bites her bottom lip.

  “The farmer gave her a little bit of bread, and while she was chewing, he asked her where she lived so that he could bring her a nice big chocolate cake for her tea. She told him and thought she was very clever for tricking him.”

  The man’s face is in shadow, but the bar of orange light falls across his hand. His skin is rough and purple, and a tattoo of a dragon’s claw pokes out from his sleeve.

  “But really,” he carries on, more softly, “she had been very stupid, because that night, the farmer came with his gun and his dogs, and he shot the little bunny rabbit’s mummy and daddy and all her brothers and sisters to make into a pie for his supper.”

  The little girl starts to cry.

  “As the mummy bunny died, she said she wished the nasty lying bunny had never been born.”

  A car goes past outside the window, its headlights sweeping across the room, casting long curled shadows from the peeling strips of wallpaper. On the other side of the room is another bed, with a motionless shape curled up under its own thin blanket. The headlights pass, and the room returns to darkness.

  “Do you know what happened to the little bunny who had told the tale?”

  The little girl shakes her head. She doesn’t want to hear, but if she puts her hands over her ears, she will be punished.

  “The farmer cut all her skin off while she was still alive and then dropped her in a pan of boiling water and chopped her into bits to feed to his dogs.”

  Her gasp sounds like the page of a book tearing.

  The man leans in so close to her that she can smell the sweetness of cider on his breath and the cigarette smoke in his hair.

  “If I hear that you’ve been blabbing your fucking mouth off to anyone at school again about what we do in the privacy of our own home, then that’s what’ll happen to you, you little bitch. Do you understand me?”

  She nods.

  He gets up and walks out of the room and down the stairs. The TV gets louder for a moment as the door downstairs opens and then goes quiet as it shuts behind him.

  The little girl lies perfectly still as a blood-warm wetness spreads out underneath her.

  Tuesday, November 8

  1.

  Jody

  Do you remember the first night we slept together? No, not that bit. That’s easy. The part afterward, when the sky had darkened to that grayish orange that is as dark as it ever gets in the city, and we’d gone inside, into the warmth of your flat. Everything was quiet except for the odd distant siren, hurried footsteps down Gordon Terrace as people tried to get home without being mugged, the wind rustling the rubbish blowing around the playground.

  I didn’t sleep much. How could I? I watched you sleep, watched your eyes moving beneath the lids. Were you dreaming about me? I never asked. Didn’t want to seem too keen.

  I watched your nostrils flare gently on every inward breath, your chest rise and fall, disturbing the hair that ran in a fine line to your belly button.

  Your body was so boyish, the muscles as soft as mine. I liked the way our bodies mirrored each other. You, dark and slim, with wide, brown eyes and long, black lashes; me, fair and skinny, with the lightest of eyes and lashes that are almost invisible. You were a masculine me, and I was a feminine you. Sometimes, we would press our palms together and marvel at how similar they were in size and shape.

  At least your hands are still the same, resting on the starched white sheet.

  You’re not in pain. The doctors promised me. In an induced coma, you don’t even dream. Beneath the lids, your eyes are perfectly still. Your lashes rest on your cheek, almost the same color as the dark flesh. They said the bruises would fade, that the swelling would go down, that your face would become yours again. I can’t help thinking, hoping: What if it isn’t really you under there? That they made a mistake; that you’re sleeping peacefully in another ward somewhere, wondering why I’m not there.

  No. It is you. I saw you fall.

  I twist your ring around my own finger. Press my fingertip onto the engraving so that its mirror image is etched into my flesh.

  True love.

  I know that they’re just clichéd words, like the hokey stuf
f they write in greeting cards, but whoever thought of them could never have known how right they were.

  There has never been a truer love. And whatever happens, Abe, whatever you’re like when you wake up, my love for you will stay true forever.

  I take your hand and whisper the promise into your fingertips.

  2.

  Mags

  Everyone else is asleep. Wound in their white sheets like mummies, wedged into the tiny open caskets advertised as fully flat beds.

  God knows what time it is.

  I should have changed my watch before the first glass of champagne. It was personally selected by some wine guru who must be famous in Britain. They handed it to me when I boarded, presumably by way of apology for the ten hours of cramped, muzzy-headed tedium I was about to endure.

  My phone will tell me what time it is when we arrive. Until then, I’m in a timeless limbo.

  The remains of the Cromer crab cake and lime foam sit, dissected but uneaten, on the pullout table in front of me. Considering how many flight attendants per pampered fat cat there are in first class, you’d think they’d have figured out that I’m not going to eat it. Even the wine tastes like shit, coating my tongue with sourness. I can feel my breath going bad, and though I showered at the club, I feel sticky and smelly.

  I tip the vanity bag onto the table, looking for breath freshener. Toothpaste, toothbrush, moisturizer, eye mask, something called “soothing pillow mist,” earplugs, and a crappy pair of velour slippers. No breath spray.

  I think about putting the eye mask on and misting the pillow, but I’m not sure there’s any point. My brain is far too wired to sleep, and every time I close my eyes, the same film runs through my head. I’m falling through darkness, the wind blowing my hair, the circle of light above me getting smaller by the moment.

  May as well keep drinking.

  The next time a flight attendant comes past, I ask her for a large whisky.

  I make another attempt to get into the novel I bought at the airport, a pulp thriller about some woman who thinks her husband has killed their son, but it turns out it was her and she’s just forgotten all about it, because he’s been spiking her food to protect her. I’m three-quarters of the way through, and I still don’t give a shit about any of them. But it’s probably just my state of mind.

  The flight attendant returns and puts the drink down on a little doily.

  “This is wine,” I say.

  She smiles so hard, the foundation at the corners of her mouth crackles. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I asked for whisky.”

  “Whisky?”

  “Same first letter, but a sneaky extra syllable.”

  Her eyelashes tremble, unsure whether I’m joking. I smile so she knows I’m not. Her gaze becomes glassy. Another bitch.

  “I’ll get your whisky right away.”

  “You know what?” I hate it but still can’t stop that American uplift at the end of my sentences. “I’ll just go to the bar.”

  “As you wish.”

  She stands back to let me struggle out of my seat-bed, and the smell of perfume is overpowering. Beneath it is something medicinal. Hand soap, perhaps, or those lemon wipes in the economy cutlery pack. It makes her seem entirely synthetic, but what do I expect on a Vegas flight?

  I can feel her eyes on my back as I make my way up the aisle to the bar. As I’m stepping through first class into business, the plane gives a little hiccup, and I stumble, turning my ankle.

  “Careful, now,” she calls after me, and I resist the urge to give her the finger. They can divert a plane these days for that sort of thing.

  Jackson paid for the ticket. I said it was kind of him. He said, No such thing. Just another bribe to keep you at the firm. I resisted the urge to reassure him that I wasn’t going anywhere. If you don’t keep your boss on his toes, you don’t get first-class flights and six-figure bonuses. Not that they do me much good. Now that the apartment’s paid for, I find myself throwing money away on expensive crap like the Louboutins I now slip off to massage my ankle.

  There’s only one other drinker at the self-service bar, a man around my age whose face has that flaky redness that always gets you on long haul if you don’t keep hydrated. Normally, I’d have been downing Evian since the wheels left the tarmac, but tonight, I don’t give a shit. It’s not as if Abe’s going to notice. I pour myself a large whisky and toss in some ice from the bucket. I think about taking it back to my seat—if I stay, there’s a definite risk the guy will try to talk to me—but it feels good to stretch my legs, so I lean on the barstool and flick through the in-flight magazine. There’s an article about an actress. The retouched pictures make her appear two-dimensional, and her upper lip is so stretched by collagen, it looks simian.

  “Going home?”

  I sigh inwardly.

  “Actually, I live in Vegas. Just going back to…see my brother.” I kick myself at the hesitation. It wouldn’t have happened in court. I need to get myself together, work out the smooth lie that will stop people trying to talk to me or, worse, sympathize. There hasn’t been time yet. I only heard this morning. It’s taken me all day to sort out the flights and hotels and hand my cases over to Jackson. Though I’ve spoken to them all in person and promised I’ll be back within a fortnight, my clients aren’t happy. No one else in the firm has my track record for helping guilty people get away with it. Jackson is taking over IRS v. Graziano. If the case goes badly, Antonio will spend the rest of his days in a federal correctional institution, trading his ass for cigarettes. Ass. I sound like a true yank. British people say arse. Nice arse. It sounds oddly polite with an English accent.

  “London?” the man across the bar asks.

  Beneath the ravages of the flight, he’s good-looking. Square jaw, broad shoulders, blond hair cropped tight to minimize a receding hairline. A man’s man. Banker, I think. Or another lawyer. Probably the former if he’s traveling in first.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too. Looking forward to seeing him?”

  That hesitation again. The whisky is fogging my reactions. I nod, then spin on the stool until I’m at a forty-five-degree angle from him.

  “That’s not an English accent, is it?”

  I spin back with a polite smile that, if he’s smart enough, he’ll translate as Get lost.

  “Scottish.”

  He isn’t smart enough. “Not strong, though, so I’m guessing you were gone by…hmm…eighteen?”

  I raise an eyebrow and, despite myself, say, “Not bad. Sixteen.”

  “Straight to Vegas from Bonnie Scotland? That takes balls.”

  “They took a while to drop. I went to London first.”

  “College?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, you should carry one of those twenty questions gadgets around with you. It could do the talking. Save you the hassle.”

  “Yes,” I say. Then a moment later, “So what am I?”

  I kick myself again. I’ve let myself be drawn in. I must be drunk.

  “Hmm…” He pretends to think. “Are you…a hedgehog?”

  I laugh loud enough to draw a disapproving grunt from the fat guy wedged into the casket nearest the bar. “Yeah. Spiky. Flea-infested.”

  “Not a hedgehog. You’re traveling in first. Are you an oligarch’s wife?” He waits for me to bite.

  I shake my head calmly. “That’s nine questions. Twelve left.”

  “Jesus, you’re counting?”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” I drain my glass and pour myself another.

  It takes him a while, but eventually he gets there.

  “So how do you get to be a first-class-traveling American lawyer when you left home at sixteen?”

  “Exams at night school. Law degree at King’s, my juris doctor at Columbia, then straight to Nevada because
it looked like fun. Cheers.”

  He clinks my glass, and we drink. “You make it sound so easy.”

  It wasn’t. One term I had five different jobs.

  “So what kind of law?”

  “Corporate.”

  “Seriously? I had you down for something more exciting.” He gives me an appreciative up and down look, but I don’t think he means to be sleazy. I think he’s just drunk. Actually, I’m beginning to like him. Maybe I won’t rush off just yet.

  “I work for gangsters.”

  “Defense or prosecution?”

  “Defense. I would have gotten Al Capone off.”

  He has a nice smile. My drowsiness is wearing off. I add a Coke to my whisky. A bit of flirtation will be a good distraction from the horror film in my head.

  We talk some more. The Coke kicks in, and I revive. He asks me how I would have gotten Capone off, and I tell him some of the tricks of the trade: undermining the accused, exploiting technical loopholes, coaching your witnesses. The film is still playing, but I’m not watching.

  Until he says, “So tell me about your family.”

  I almost close up on the spot, but perhaps the topic can be deflected.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “The truth, I guess.”

  “I’m a lawyer. I don’t do truth.”

  “Well, I’m a banker, so I should know there’s no such thing as truth. Only what you can make people believe. If I can make you believe shares in that whisky are about to go up five hundred percent, you go and buy them—and the shares go up. Belief becomes truth.” He waggles his eyebrows devilishly. “OK, I’ll start. My kids live in Islington.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “I want to. I want you to know. They live there, and I live in Vegas.”

  “So you’re a bad father. I don’t give a shit.”