by Joseph Knox
She always smiled like she meant it. I always lied to her.
I stood up, but she was already walking away, heels on the hardwood floor. She stopped, turned. ‘You’re staying?’
‘I think so,’ I said, hoping she’d sit back down.
‘Would you tell my friend I’ve gone?’
‘The blonde kid?’
She nodded. ‘The blonde kid. Y’know, you should look for a job somewhere else. Maybe you can do better?’ She turned and left. It was one of the few times she tried to talk to me. I should have said something else, I thought. Something better.
Isabelle Rossiter came back an hour or so later. Her skirt was hiked another inch up her thighs and she drifted across the room to the Ladies’. The bar manager had come back five minutes before. He watched her like the other men in the room, through the corner of his eye. When she reappeared from the toilet, she looked awkwardly around, and slunk to the side of the bar that her new friend wasn’t serving.
I guessed, after whatever they had done out there, he’d told her to beat it.
The barmaid passed her over for other customers, avoiding the age question, and Isabelle seemed to shrink down to almost nothing. After a few minutes of this, she inched slowly round the bar, a pleasant, vacant look on her face. She wiped her nose, took out her phone and half-pretended to read something on it. It was quite cool in the room but she wore a light sheen of sweat, and I guessed that she was high.
The bar manager was laughing with a customer when he saw her coming through the rabble. He made a show of turning away, shouting something about the pipes and going out the back to avoid her. Isabelle looked like a lost child in a supermarket.
The customer who the bar manager had been laughing with turned to her. His face was heart-attack red and swollen with drink. He let his left arm fall from the bar and brush against her thigh. When she looked up at him, he cupped a hand to her ear and said something. She was seventeen years old. He must have been in his late fifties. She frowned, took a step back and shook her head. No, she said, with her own ration-book smile. Thanks.
She’d live, I thought. I was young as well. I thought sex and money were half of everything. She walked towards the door with slow, gliding steps. The red-faced man turned and lifted up her skirt as she went. She pulled it back down and kept walking, but a cheer went up around the bar.
I stared into my drink again, saw myself caricatured in the liquid. When I got up, I got up slowly, willing her to be gone by the time I got outside. She was standing on the pavement, though, watching her breath in the air.
‘Isabelle,’ I said. She turned with a bright, stage-managed smile. She held it even when her eyes gave away that she couldn’t place me for a second. Her hands drifted to her bag. ‘We met at Zain’s …’
‘The astrologist,’ she said, brightening, taking a step forward. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Just having a drink. I’m actually glad I caught you.’ Her face straightened. Oh? ‘I ran into Cath and she asked me to tell you she’d gone.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed hurt. ‘Say where?’
‘No. Was upset about something, though.’ She pulled a face to cover a blush. I felt bad for pushing it but I still needed to talk to her. ‘My friend just left too and I feel like having another. If you’re up to it, I’m buying …’ She thought about it for a second and walked past me, back into the bar. She looked like she was doing an impression of someone else.
2
We left the dance floor shaking but still trying to shake it. I’d been buying and Isabelle laughed like a whip-crack, throwing her body forward and then back again, covering her mouth with her hands. A flash of chipped orange nail polish and matching lipstick. Occasionally her eyes drifted over my shoulder, and I knew she wanted someone else to see us together.
There was no problem sitting back at Catherine’s deserted corner table. Last orders had rung out and almost everyone was on their feet, dancing or queuing at the bar. Even Cath’s abandoned drink was sitting there untouched. It was around that time when lovers start pairing off, and Isabelle leaned back, watching the boys and girls leaving together. Some arm in arm, some stony-faced.
She thought out loud, over the music. ‘I wonder which ones just met and which ones are real couples?’
‘The ones all over each other just met. The ones not speaking are the real couples.’
She swirled her drink, tried to sound offhand. ‘Like Zain and Sarah?’
I looked at her. She’d been shivering since we sat down and tried to cover it. I wondered again what she was on. If it was the same thing I’d tasted at Fairview.
‘Izzy, that bottle of wine you gave me the other week. Where did you get it?’
She tried to remember. ‘I don’t know, maybe Neil?’
The barman had put something in her drink. I think she had an idea what I might ask next, so she improvised. Stared right at me while pulling out a cigarette like the smoking ban never was. Her hands were shaking so much I had to help light it. She took a drag and blew smoke in my face.
‘You don’t like Zain very much, do you?’ she said, changing the subject.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s a user.’ She frowned. ‘People,’ I said. ‘Not drugs.’
‘He doesn’t use people like you do.’ I tried to smile but her youth made the opinion sound like mundane fact. Like X-ray results. ‘You use your disadvantages,’ she said. ‘Same as me.’
‘What are your disadvantages?’
She acted like she hadn’t heard me, started moving her head to the rhythm of the music. Screaming laser effects and something about going wild for the night.
‘I love this song,’ she said. I waited. ‘People don’t like me very much. They don’t like you very much, either.’ Her teeth were chattering and she took a deep drag of her cigarette. ‘It’s good in a way. Means we can creep right up on them.’
‘Who are we creeping up on? Zain Carver?’
She watched the smoke leaving her mouth. ‘He’s something different …’
‘From what?’
‘A loan, a debt, a job.’
‘So you’re just taking a gap year?’
‘Why not?’
‘You might leave it with nothing.’
‘No future,’ she said, a perfect Johnny Rotten drawl. We both laughed. ‘You’re right, I should probably go backpacking round a cultural wasteland with people my own age.’
I touched my glass to hers. ‘Suddenly the drug trade sounds more appealing.’
‘You’re OK, y’know? Everyone else is always telling me to go home.’
‘Like who?’
‘Zain, Cathy, Grip. The lot of them.’
‘Where is home, Izzy?’
‘I don’t wanna talk about it …’
‘What even brought you here in the first place?’ She looked at me. ‘You just don’t seem like a natural fit.’
‘Why not?’
‘You look like you grew up rich.’
‘Fuck you,’ she said. ‘You look like you grew up poor.’
‘That’s what brought me here.’
She smouldered for a second. ‘For me it was all the anorexic girls I grew up with. All the boys who only wanted to hold my hand and write poems about me …’
‘I suppose not much rhymes with Isabelle.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not much.’
‘They’ll get older, though. Better.’
‘Is that what people do when they get older?’ I didn’t say anything. She flicked ash across the table, singed my arm, and went on, ‘You and Zain spoke the other night. Call him a user then?’
‘It didn’t come up, no.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Advice.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s having the house painted. Wondered if pastel green would go with his dreamy eyes.’
‘You said he’s a user …’
‘Yeah, let’s talk about something
else.’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Tell me who he’s using.’
I sat there until she saw something in the way I looked at her.
‘Fuck you,’ she said again, meaning it this time. She stabbed her cigarette out on the table. Her orange lipstick had rubbed off on it. ‘I make my own decisions.’ She pulled her scarf tight and I thought of the scar on her neck. I looked away, across the room and saw the bar manager staring, dead-eyed, at me again. I thought of his acquittal. The evidence that had gone missing and the laced wine he’d given to Isabelle. Tonight, he’d have to go through me.
I waved at him.
Isabelle lifted Catherine’s abandoned glass of vodka and started to drink. Neither of us blinked until about a third of it was gone.
‘Stop,’ I said, reaching a hand across the table to lower the glass. We were two people in a crowd of a thousand, and we sat in deafening silence for a minute.
‘Look at us now,’ she said finally. ‘We’re like one of those real couples.’
It was the bitter end and the lights were turned up, exposing us all. The men and women who’d looked so alive in the cool darkness seemed trampled and beaten somehow. The music, which had seemed to hold up the ceiling, had been gutted from the room, leaving it lifeless and empty. The bar manager was collecting glasses, snaking around tables towards us. He still stared at me from sunken, ashtray eyes. As he drew closer I saw that his face was drawn and hard.
‘Closing time,’ he said, heavily dropping his basket of half-empties on to our table. Isabelle’s nose had started bleeding, and she checked it in her compact mirror. ‘You wait for me,’ he said to her. She blushed, looked up at him and gave a small nod.
‘Thought I’d walk her home myself,’ I said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Never know who’s around these days.’
‘He bothering you?’ the barman asked Isabelle. She gave me a long, exhausted look. I could see the comedown somewhere in her eyes, but she wasn’t acting naturally now. I thought she was scared of him.
‘Yeah,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s bothering me.’
The bar manager wiped his nose and let his head loll. Then he grinned. He lifted one side of his drinks basket and threw it violently upwards. Everything hit me at once. I was drenched in broken glass, backwash and beer, and saw blood running from somewhere, mixing with the liquid as it drained through my legs. Isabelle shrank back into her chair. There were gasps. Conversations stopping dead around us. A group of men started cheering. The defeated people who had been quietly leaving looked over at us.
‘Sorry about that,’ said the bar manager, still smiling. He took a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and bent to dab at a spot of liquid on my face. His shoulder hit mine, hard, as he did so, his name-badge connecting with my collarbone.
I got my breath and climbed to my feet, my chair fell back behind me. I could feel coarse, broken glass in my face.
‘Neil,’ said the barmaid. She was standing behind the manager, a hand on his arm to calm him down. I swayed forwards but he pushed me firmly back. More people had stopped on their way out to watch us argue, some laughing and cheering. There were enough of them staring to make things feel ugly. To make me feel like a drunk.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Isabelle, nearly falling over my chair as I walked to the toilets past ten or more burning pairs of eyes.
‘Wait outside,’ I heard the bar manager say to her.
When I went into the Gents’, bleeding, drenched below the waist and stinking of drink, the two men who’d been talking in there exchanged looks and left. I thought of Isabelle, her shrinking voice, and then of Smithson, smiling on the court steps. I caught a glimpse of myself as I passed the mirror, red-faced and shaking.
I went straight to the cubicle I’d started my night in, stood on top of the toilet and tore the light fixture off the ceiling. Two-thirds of the plaster tile surrounding it came down too, and several bags of drugs plopped on to the floor around me. I ripped them open, one by one, and up-ended them into the toilet. I flushed until there were just a few pills floating up through the water. I flushed it one last time and left the cubicle.
When the door opened I knew it would be him. I turned slowly. The lights left trails behind them like ghosts. The bar manager walked confidently across the room and shoved me into the wall. My collarbone screamed beneath my skin.
He wrapped a hand round my jaw and squeezed.
‘She’s mine,’ he hissed, staring into my eyes. My vision was blurred, and he was so close I could smell the vodka on his breath. He slapped my face once, twice, and drew his hand back for a third.
I nodded and he let go. He checked himself in the mirror, swinging his shoulder quickly as he did so. I winced and he laughed a little. Happy with his appearance, he took slow, menacing steps towards the exit. The implication was that he might turn around and kill me any second. I let him cross the room, pull down the handle and push open the door.
‘Glen,’ I said.
He turned at the sound of his real name. ‘The fuck did you just say?’
The door swung shut.
‘Glen.’
‘Who called me that?’ he said, staring at me. ‘Who fucking called me that?’
‘That’s your name, isn’t it? Glen Smithson?’ He took two efficient steps in my direction and ground me back into the wall.
The air left my lungs.
‘Name’s Neil,’ he said, holding up his name-badge. ‘Get it right.’
‘My mistake,’ I said. ‘Thought you were that bloke from the papers—’
Glen Smithson punched me so hard in the chest that I almost passed out. As I slid down the wall I saw that my impact had made the lights in the room start flickering. I was on the floor, crying for a breath. Smithson stood over me, breathing hard through his nose. Then he crouched and said he’d kill me if I didn’t get lost.
I believed him.
‘Fuck off,’ he said, kicking me in the direction of the exit. I got to the door and held on to it to help myself up. When I looked back, the flickering light made him look like something supernatural. I slunk out, soaked in sweat now as well as drink.
The huge, unnaturally lit beer hall was empty. Shaking, I picked up the nearest chair and dragged it back to the toilet with me. I opened the door and found Smithson combing his hair in front of the mirror.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I think your UV light’s on the blink.’
He glared at me until the meaning of my words sank in. Slowly, he turned towards the cubicle I’d found the drugs hidden in. He pushed open the door. When he looked comprehendingly up at the destroyed fixture, his mouth fell open.
I wish I’d seen his face when he saw the empty bags. The dust around the toilet. The pills floating up through piss and shit. He knew what Zain Carver did to the arms and legs of people who lost his product.
I let the door swing shut and secured the chair up against the outer handle. As I walked through the post-closing-time quietness of the huge, empty hall, I heard Smithson’s shoulder repeatedly slamming into the toilet door behind me. It echoed through the building, regular and deep, like the heartbeat of something we’d been swallowed by. I pushed through a fire exit. Fresh November air froze the beer and sweat against my skin.
Isabelle was standing under a street lamp. She looked blue. She did a double take when she saw me walking towards her. I smiled. She took it the wrong way, took a step backwards, and tripped on a pothole in the pavement.
3
‘Wha’ happened?’ She was slurring her words. I took her by the arm and pulled her towards a taxi rank. ‘What did you do?’
Her shoes scraped along the ground. As we drew near to a taxi she tried to pull away from me and I let go of her arm. She crumpled to the floor. I was just glad she wasn’t going home with the barman. When I lifted her up again she weighed nothing at all. She passed out beside me on the back seat and the driver winked into the rear-view mirror.
‘Go
od lad,’ he said.
After what I’d seen in the bar I’d decided to take her back to her family, Rossiter’s wishes be damned. I went through her bag for some ID, some home address for her father. We were driving towards his constituency. I found myself looking closely at Isabelle. Stirring occasionally, she seemed to do the impossible. She looked like the girl in the photograph again.
Her phone wasn’t password-protected and I went to her sent messages. There it was, the only one to my number:
Zain knows.
I remembered her telling me twice that I wouldn’t have been let in unless they knew me. I wondered how far that went. I wondered if the text was a joke, a warning or even some elaborate manipulation from Carver himself. Had he found my number? Given it to Isabelle? Used her phone? I scrolled through her photographs, saw nightlife stuff with Franchise members. It looked like there was voicemail, too, but when Isabelle shifted in her sleep I put the phone back in her bag.
My heart sank when I found the money.
I couldn’t confirm my suspicion because the driver was glaring at Isabelle in the rear-view, so I waited ten minutes until we hit traffic, until he adjusted the mirror to look up her skirt. Once he started up again I thumbed through the notes. Hundreds of pounds in tens and twenties, wrapped in red rubber bands. She’d made the collection when she disappeared with the bar manager.
I stared out the window. Saw neon lights streaming past, promising the world, then Isabelle, asleep, reflected in the glass.
‘Could you pull in here?’ I said. The driver indicated and turned. ‘I think we need to go back.’
4
We arrived at Fairview after midnight. The street was quiet. I leaned over to pay the driver and saw he had an erection, pressing through greasy jeans. He ran his hand over it as he fumbled through a money-bag.
‘No change,’ he said.
I nodded and dragged Isabelle out of the car. ‘Can you wait a minute?’
