Three Button Trick and Other Stories

by Nicola Barker

  ‘You’ve got a what?’

  ‘I’ve got an erection.’

  Tina recoiled. She grabbed hold of her clothes, her jacket, her shoes, and dashed into the bathroom. She shot the bolt and got dressed. When she’d finished dressing she called through. ‘If you’ve not gone by the time I count to ten, Ralph, I’m going to scream and scream until the police come.’

  ‘One.’ She put her ear to the door to listen out for his response. ‘Two.’ She could hear him speaking but not what he said. ‘Three.’ She pulled the door open a fraction.

  ‘Four.’

  Ralph’s loafer protruded, as before. He had not moved.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘What’s the guy’s name, anyway?’ Ralph asked, apparently unruffled by Tina’s little display.

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Funny name. Must be foreign.’

  Tina scowled. ‘Paolo.’

  ‘Paolo?’ Ralph snorted. ‘He’s so fucking paranoid. More to the point, he’s so hairy. Even his ankles. I was staring at his ankles for a full five minutes while you were still in the shower and, I’m not kidding you, the hair was half an inch thick. It was extraordinary. Staring at his ankles was the only thing that stopped me from screaming myself stupid.’

  Tina paused and then addressed herself emphatically to Ralph’s loafer. ‘Paolo has every reason to feel paranoid on my behalf. I have a strange man stalking me, pestering me, hiding under my bed while I’m in the shower …’ Modesty forbade her to mention the erection.

  ‘And the erection,’ Ralph said. ‘Don’t forget about that.’

  He twitched his foot. Tina stared at it malevolently. The thick sole, the scuffed heel. Slip-ons, she thought. So common. They were brothel creepers, really, with a large ornamental buckle glued on the side. Nasty, stupid shoes.

  ‘Anyhow, Paolo’s a doctor,’ Tina muttered, dragging her eyes from Ralph’s footwear. ‘Doctors are caring by nature. It’s an instinct.’

  ‘A doctor!’ Ralph parroted. ‘How gratifying for you.’

  He was quiet for a while and then he said, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of nail clippers handy, would you?’

  ‘Nail clippers?’

  ‘So I could try and cut myself free.’

  Tina looked churlish but picked up her bag anyway and was about to open it but then paused. ‘I don’t know if I want you cutting yourself free. You might be dangerous.’

  Ralph snickered. ‘Let’s get one thing straight between us, Tina. I had no interest at all in ever seeing you again after our little bit of fun in the crypt yesterday. And although I have an erection, that’s no reason to think I find you irresistible.’

  Tina tucked her bag under her arm and headed for the bathroom. She’d just remembered Paolo’s mushrooms and wanted to clear them out over the sink to minimize the mess.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Finding some clippers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Tina grabbed some tissues and pulled the bag wide. She paused. She stared.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  In her bag, instead of the mushrooms she’d expected, there were ten finger bones. Ten clittery-clattery finger bones. Yellow bones. Earthy bones.

  She dropped the bag.

  Ralph was still talking. Tina wasn’t listening. She backed away from the sink, out of the bathroom, into the bedroom and gently pushed the door shut. When she next spoke her voice was low. ‘I couldn’t find any clippers after all.’

  ‘Great.’ Ralph sighed. ‘So now what?’

  Tina grimaced. ‘If you leave yourself alone for a few minutes maybe it’ll have a chance to go down.’

  ‘It won’t go down. It has no intention of going down. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  Tina said nothing, only stared peevishly up at the lamp fitment. Ralph continued talking, undaunted. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘I don’t want to know. I’m not interested. I just want you out of here.’

  ‘So I got home to my hotel yesterday,’ Ralph said, his voice slightly muffled by the bed and the mattress, ‘sat down, dozed for a while and then ching! A hard-on. Well that’s hardly anything out of the ordinary. So I grappled with it for a while, but the more I touched it the harder it got. And it wasn’t a good hard. It was a bad hard. It was angry. I couldn’t relax. It hurt if I sat down, it was even worse if I stood up. It burned. And it wasn’t a sexy feeling, just kind of irritating. Eventually I started to get depressed. Frustrated too. But then out of the blue, after a few hours struggling, I found relief. Want to know what it was that relieved me?’

  Tina’s lip was tingling. She curled it. ‘Desperately’

  ‘You. It was you.’

  She recoiled.

  ‘Funny, huh? As soon as a thought of you flitted into my mind I felt a kind of loosening, I mean, it didn’t go down or anything but the discomfort eased a bit. But it kept me up all night just the same. And I felt weak. Like all the blood had been diverted from my body and brain into just that particular part of me.’

  Tina smirked but said nothing.

  ‘In the morning I walked over to your hotel. I left you the note. In the foyer it stopped hurting altogether. Strange, huh?’ He paused. ‘So you don’t even have some scissors handy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, can you try and lift the bed then? It feels like I’m being garrotted.’

  Tina appraised the bed. It was large and heavy and the headboard was a thick, dark wood. She squatted down. ‘There’s no way I can lift this thing. It’s huge. You’re just going to have to untangle yourself.’

  Ralph fiddled quietly for a while. The sound of his nails against the mattress wire set her teeth on edge. She stared over at the bathroom door.

  ‘Have you ever had a 24-hour erection before, Ralph?’

  Ralph stopped fiddling.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Maybe you should go to a doctor or something.’

  ‘Why? Fancy calling Paolo over?’

  Tina’s thoughts turned to Paolo. She touched her bottom lip with her index finger and dwelt on his pistachio-flavoured kisses. Her fingers, she noticed, after a short interval, smelt very strongly of soil. Soil? She stared at her hands. They were clean. They were spotless.

  ‘I’m only saying,’ Tina continued, slighüy anxious now, ‘that you snapped that bone yesterday and ever since …’

  Ralph chuckled. From under the bed his laughter sounded like a mouse scampering. ‘Have you got bones on the brain or something?’

  ‘You snapped that bone and now you have this strange stiffness’.

  ‘The penis doesn’t have a bone in it, Tina. It’s blood that makes it hard.’

  After a pause, Ralph added, ‘I guess it’s just one of those things. We don’t much like each other but in some weird way we’re destined to be together.’

  Tina struggled to stop herself from growling.

  ‘Fate,’ Ralph sighed, and then tapped his foot against the mattress.

  Tina felt claustrophobic. She walked to the window. ‘So why do I keep seeing bones everywhere?’ she asked, almost piteously. ‘And why does this whole room reek of soil? Damp soil. Can’t you smell it?’ She yanked the window open.

  Ralph sniffed obligingly. ‘Smells of old cum and mothballs under here.’

  ‘We’re cursed!’ Tina exclaimed dramatically, half meaning it, half not.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Ralph sounded utterly unperturbed. ‘I don’t believe in that stuff.’

  ‘But you believe it’s fate that we should be together? That’s so stupid. Maybe I should call down for a porter.’

  Ralph continued to fiddle. ‘Great idea. Try explaining this situation in pidgin Italian.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Ring Paolo, then,’ Ralph said brightly. ‘Explain things to him.’

  Tina blinked. ‘Paolo? No way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ll look stupid.’

  ‘Hardly. I’m the on
e looking ridiculous here, not you.’

  Tina said nothing. Ralph, in turn, ruminated for a while. Then he said, quite softly, almost inaudibly. ‘Maybe you’re right, though, maybe I shouldn’t have taken that bone after all.’

  Tina froze. ‘What?’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken it. I should have just dumped it.’

  Tina’s hands formed into fists. ‘You took the bone? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Ralph tried to stifle a yawn but failed. ‘You did.’

  Tina’s hands flew to her throat. It tightened.

  ‘You nearly slipped, remember. I thought that monk fella was coming so I tossed the bone into your jacket pocket.’

  Tina stared down at her jacket. She took two deep breaths, and then slowly, fearfully, she slipped her hand into her right pocket. Inside she found some tissues and a couple of English coins. Nothing else. She exhaled her relief and then steeled herself for the left pocket. She dipped in her hand … More tissues, an old bus ticket, and then? Something stiff and slim and potentially fibrous. Gently, gently she withdrew it. The bone. Only it wasn’t a bone, it was a Bic pen. Yellow, innocuous.

  ‘You bastard!’

  Ralph howled. ‘Sorry,’ he coughed, between gasps. ‘I guess that was rather close to the bone!’ He laughed some more. Tina said nothing. Instead she went and picked up the phone.

  Most of it she explained there and then. The remainder she whispered to him outside on the fire escape, away from Ralph’s prying ears. Of course he was angry. But there was a slant to Paolo’s anger that Tina hadn’t anticipated. It wasn’t the sacrilege or the invasion of her privacy or even the lie over her former intimacy with Ralph that he minded. It was the erection.

  ‘A 24-hour erection? No way. It is not possible.’

  Paolo clambered into the room, got down on to his hands and knees and stared at Ralph and his entrapped member. Ralph shielded himself with an outstretched hand. ‘What is this?’

  Paolo was undaunted. ‘No way. I am a doctor. I have never heard of such a thing.’

  Ralph grinned, sensing Paolo’s pique. ‘Actually, it’s been more than twenty-four hours now. It’s closer to thirty.’

  Paolo swore in Italian and then stood up. ‘OK, turn away, Tina, I don’t want you seeing anything that might prove unsettling. And you …’ He kicked Ralph’s foot.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘You, get ready for me to lift the bed. I’ll go slowly but prepare yourself for some discomfort.’

  Tina turned away. Paolo braced himself, grunted, and then lifted. Ralph cursed and rapidly made some necessary adjustments.

  ‘Right,’ he said finally, ‘I’m decent. Hold it three seconds longer, Paolo, and I’ll roll out from under.’

  After exactly three seconds Paolo dropped the bed, unceremoniously. Ralph tried to stand up. But before he could straighten himself Paolo had darted over and shoved him, quite forcefully, in the centre of his chest. Ralph jerked and then wilted. Paolo was at least a foot taller than he was.

  ‘Sit! Over there. In that chair.’

  Paolo pointed. Ralph winced, staggered over and sat down.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘So,’ Paolo glared at the significant protuberance between Ralph’s thighs. ‘I can clearly see that there is indeed some activity in your trousers.’

  Ralph looked down at himself, as if to confirm in his own mind that this was true.

  ‘Yes.’

  Ralph’s penis was stretched and erect under the fabric of his jeans.

  ‘Tina,’ Paolo said softly. ‘Make yourself comfortable on the bed. I myself will take the other chair.’

  Tina did as Paolo had asked. Paolo pulled a chair over to a position directly opposite Ralph’s, and then settled himself into it. Nobody spoke. Finally, Tina said gently, ‘It’s late. Hadn’t Ralph better get going?’

  Ralph nodded keenly, all previous thoughts of his improbable connection with Tina patently abandoned.

  ‘No, Tina,’ Paolo replied calmly. ‘Now we wait.’

  Tina frowned. ‘But what for?’

  ‘We wait until his magical erection goes down. Then I will kill him.’

  Ralph’s eyes widened. So did Tina’s. Paolo just smiled and kept his eyes fixed on Ralph’s thighs. Ralph squirmed.

  ‘Ah yes!’ Paolo sneered, looking and sounding quite demonic. ‘Try and maintain that erection under real pressure, little man. We’ll all see how long it lasts, eh, Tina?’

  Tina cleared her throat. ‘But maybe, Paolo …’

  Paolo silenced her with an impressive jerk of his eyebrow. ‘You called me, Tina, and I came. This is my business now. Keep out of it.’ Tina retreated back on to her pillows.

  Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes passed. Nothing moved except for Tina’s eyes which turned every so often towards the clock on her bedside table. After forty minutes Paolo was still as watchful and focused as a kestrel in a summer wheatfield. Ralph was pale and bug-eyed and sweating: But his erection remained prodigious.

  Eventually Paolo stirred. ‘Tina, I need to use your bathroom.’ Tina nodded. Paolo stood, went to the window and fastened it, turning the security lock at its base and pocketing the key.

  ‘The room keys?’

  Tina pointed to the bedside table. Paolo picked these up on his way into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him.

  In a flash Ralph turned to her and whispered frantically. ‘He’s a fucking maniac! He’s going to kill me. He means it. Why the fuck did you have to go and phone him?’

  Tina gaped. ‘Me? Why did I phone him? It was your idea in the first place. How was I to know he’d react this way? Anyhow,’ Tina pointed, ‘the erection’s still there, isn’t it?’

  Ralph unzipped his fly and brought out a cheese straw. Tina stared, dumbstruck. Finally she murmured, ‘What is that?’

  ‘What does it look like? I never had an erection. It was a wind-up. I wanted to pay you back for being such a stuck-up bitch the other day. And for passing me over.’

  ‘Passing you over? Are you mad?’

  ‘I was going to run off once you’d phoned him, so that he’d come round and you’d look stupid. But,’ he indicated the zip on his fly, ‘this fucking thing did get caught and I was stuck there for a while so then I thought, why the hell not sit this out and be in on all the fun?’

  The toilet flushed. Tina gestured frantically. ‘Put that back in! He’s coming.’

  A droplet of perspiration had formed on the tip of Ralph’s nose. ‘I can’t. It’s crumbling. It’s hot down there.’ He waved the straw and it drooped. Tina’s hand darted into her pocket and she pulled out the Bic pen.

  ‘Take this. Quickly.’

  Ralph snatched the pen and stuck it down his trousers with dispatch. Just in time. Paolo came strolling out of the bathroom. Tina was still staring anxiously in Ralph’s direction and so failed to detect that Paolo was holding something in his hands. Her bag. After a cursory glance at Ralph’s genitals, he sat down in his chair again and placed the bag on his lap.

  ‘Tina, could you possibly explain something to me?’

  Tina glanced over. ‘Paolo?’

  ‘Could you perhaps explain why it was that when I went to wash my hands in your sink I found your handbag in there, and it was open, and inside it was the mushroom dinner I cooked you?’

  Ralph turned and appraised Tina. His mouth had fallen slightly ajar. Tina looked down at the counterpane. She opened her lips to say something but then Ralph spoke first.

  ‘Actually, Paolo,’ he said calmly, ‘she throws up everything. It’s a medical condition. She’s an anorexic.’

  ‘Bulimic,’ Tina corrected him, quickly.

  ‘That too.’

  Tina chewed on her lower lip. She felt so tired. She could barely call up the strength—physical, moral—to meet Paolo’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Paolo,’ she said finally, peering up beseechingly. ‘It was no reflection on the meal. Really it wasn’t.’

  Paolo conti
nued frowning for a few seconds longer and then suddenly he smiled. Tina smiled back. Even Ralph smiled.

  ‘Dear Tina,’ he said gently, ‘you must think me a beast. I had no right to look into your bag. I’m sorry.’

  His face softened and, true to form, Tina’s heart—like a lump of semi-congealed butter on a warm hotplate—softened with it. Everything would be all right. She felt it, suddenly. Everything would be just fine. She turned to Ralph. ‘This is ridiculous, Ralph,’ she said boldly, ‘and it’s all gone on for long enough. We should tell Paolo about the pen. I’m positive he’ll understand.’

  ‘The pen?’ Paolo’s eyebrows rose.

  Ralph’s face was rigid. ‘I don’t think so, Tina,’ he said slowly, his eyes fixed on her most expressively.

  But Tina didn’t baulk. ‘It’s just got way out of control,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell him, Ralph. Get it over with.’

  ‘Get what over?’ Paolo leaned forward in his chair, his neck extending so that the muscles stretched and pumped with all the elasticity of chewing gum.

  Tina took a deep breath. ‘It isn’t an erection, Paolo. Ralph’s got a pen down his trousers. It was all just a stupid joke. He told me while you were in the bathroom.’

  Paolo got to his feet, very slowly. ‘Ralph,’ he said softly. ‘Over the past hour I have had the opportunity to scrutinize your clothes and your footwear at some length. Your shoes are very unusual. In Italy we don’t have anything quite like them. Perhaps I could take a closer look. Would you mind?’

  Ralph, paradoxically, had pushed his body as far back into his chair as it would go. He took a deep breath. He shook his head. ‘Of course I wouldn’t mind.’

  Slowly, stiffly, he lifted up his foot so that Paolo might see one of the shoes without bending down. Paolo took hold of the foot, pulled the shoe off and quietly inspected it.

  As he did this, Ralph watched him fixedly, and then, for a split second, his eyes darted sideways, towards Tina. In that instant Paolo grabbed hold of Ralph’s jaw, prised his mouth open and rammed the tip of the loafer into it.

  Ralph flailed helplessly, his jaw stretched wide, his eyes squeezed tight. Tina sprang up and grabbed hold of Paolo’s arm. ‘Stop it! Leave him alone! You’ll hurt him!’

  As soon as she touched him, Paolo let go. He raised his palms to the ceiling. ‘See? I’ve let go. See?’