by Alison Bond
The girl ran her hand casually across her body to land on her skinny hip and her gaze dipped blatantly to the bulge in Gabe’s trousers.
He looked at Joe again, but he hadn’t noticed, and was still arguing with the doorman.
Then he pointed at the girl and she took his arm. Together they walked out of a side door and disappeared.
She had lovely little tits. The most exciting thing about them was that they weren’t Christine’s full fleshy handfuls, but little pointy ones that jumped to his touch, tiny nipples the colour of bubblegum. He was excited. It had been years, years, since he’d enjoyed the feel of a different boob. He’d looked of course, and he’d fantasized plenty, but he hadn’t touched. She was quite happy for him to rub her with one hand and himself with the other. Her skin was pale, nothing like Christine’s faintly Mediterranean looks that no genealogy could explain. This girl had skin the colour of mashed potato.
He willed himself to stop thinking of mashed potato.
And to stop thinking about his wife.
She lay back on the bed and peeled off her tight jeans, looking like the kind of girl he’d had crushes on at school. The cool ones that would never look at him, let alone talk to him or peel off their jeans for him. He thought of a girl called Jenny Lewis, the last girl he’d had a crush on before he met Christine.
Damn it, Christine again.
The young Polish prostitute smiled up at him and touched herself through her skimpy white knickers. Schoolgirl knickers. Knickers like Jenny Lewis probably wore beneath her too-short school skirt.
He felt himself growing harder.
What was the Polish for blowjob?
He couldn’t quite believe that Gabe had deserted him. He was stuck in an argument with this doorman, who by now he had learnt was the owner, about money. He was insisting that they would have to pay for the privilege of being in his club regardless of whether or not they took advantage of what was on offer, and Joe was trying to explain that there had been a mistake. When he turned to Gabe for moral support all he saw was Gabe’s back exiting stage left, his arm linked with that of one of the girls.
‘Your friend has the right idea,’ said the owner. ‘If you don’t like ladies try another club.’ He sneered and Joe’s face burned with confusion.
Gabe was going to have sex with her? Just like that? Was he happy that they were here? Was this what he wanted all along? But he was married; Joe had met his wife. He’d thought, as much as his limited experience of such things allowed, that Gabe and Christine were a normal happy couple. Joe had never been to a lap-dancing club or a strip bar; perhaps this was a standard night out for Gabe? For English men?
No, he’d watched enough English soap operas to know that sleeping with hookers was not something married men did without getting into trouble.
He was waiting for Gabe to come back. To say that the girl had just been showing him to the bathroom or something. But this wasn’t going to happen. Gabe was out the back somewhere having sex. Just like that.
‘Is that right?’ The owner was goading him. ‘You don’t like women?’
‘I like women.’
‘Then pick one. We don’t have all night.’
Joe looked at the girls on stage. None of them seemed troubled that they were being so obviously appraised, but none of them seemed particularly bothered about attracting his attention either. Except one on the end, slightly older, who smiled at him gently.
‘We can talk,’ she said in English. ‘But I will tell your friend we did more.’ She took his arm, firmly but kindly. He looked back at the owner who immediately seemed less confrontational, and allowed himself to be led.
Did this mean Gabe and Christine were on the rocks? Was this the first time? As he, Joe, had brought Gabe here, was it his fault? Had he, even inadvertently, destroyed the very state that he idolized – that of happy marriage? Did this make Gabe a bad person? Could they still be friends?
He knew it was stupid, but he felt like crying.
The woman holding his arm led him through a dark corridor to an unmarked door. It opened into a tiny room with a mattress on the floor covered in a flowered sheet, a sink in one corner and an open window up far too high to offer any kind of view. The only light came from a small lamp on the floor with a tatty fringed lampshade.
He walked around the room wishing that there was more to look at, smiling at her occasionally and feeling very awkward and impossibly sober.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said after a while. ‘This will be easy.’ She sat on the edge of the mattress and patted the space next to her. ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘We wait for a few minutes then we leave. I tell them whatever you want. You were great, you were … um … large?’
She had bright blue eyes that gazed at him with warmth and humour. Her curly brown hair reminded him of a dog his next-door neighbours once had, but he thought better of mentioning that.
‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ he said in Polish.
‘The other girls are younger and prettier. You picked me, so you are being nice, not me.’
‘You’re not Polish?’
‘Lithuanian.’
‘I don’t speak Lithuanian.’
‘Nobody does,’ she said sadly.
She played with the sheet on the mattress, smoothing it out and tucking it into the corner near her. Joe slipped his mobile phone out of his pocket and checked the time. It was almost five. His mum wouldn’t be too worried; she knew he was with Gabe and she would have called him if she wanted him back. It wasn’t unusual to stay up all night. He suspected that she would be pleased he had found a friend at last. But he wondered what she would say if she knew what kind of man he was. There was so much he didn’t know about Gabe. He looked towards the door, wondering where Gabe was, trying not to think about what he was doing, but wondering how long he would be.
‘You are thinking of your friend?’
Joe nodded. There was something very sweet about this woman. He felt as if he could tell her anything. ‘He’s married,’ he said.
‘Lots are,’ she said. ‘I was once.’
He lifted his head in surprise. He never would have thought of a prostitute having a husband. ‘While you were … working?’ he said.
‘We needed the money. I have children. Four.’ She slipped a book out from under the mattress and a photograph from between its pages, as any proud mother would. He looked at four blue-eyed children, smiling for the camera, nothing to distinguish this family from a million others.
‘They’re nice,’ he said, because he didn’t know what to say.
‘Don’t worry about your friend,’ she said. ‘He is not a bad person. Not for this.’
She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his cheek, turning him to face her. ‘You are a sweet boy,’ she said. ‘You are sure there is nothing you want to do together?’
‘I’m a virgin,’ he said.
‘I would be your first?’
He nodded.
‘You want me?’
Joe looked at her and thought about what it would be like to lose his virginity here in this room, on these cheap sheets. To walk out in a little while and be a proper man, divesting himself of his virginity at last. Something he had imagined doing countless times, but never like this. He looked into her kind blue eyes and considered the possibility, but then he shook his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I think I’ll wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘For love,’ he said.
They stayed in the room for a few more minutes and then they left.
Back in the bar Gabe was sitting on his own at a small round table looking into an empty glass. He lifted his head and Joe noted that while he didn’t look the least bit guilty or ashamed, something of his trademark swagger was lacking. If anything he just looked tired. What had Joe expected? A contrite and cowed Gabe who couldn’t meet his eye? Once more Joe berated himself for being naive. Just because Joe hadn’t done anything didn’t mean Gabe hadn’t either. Then
he remembered that the only people who knew what had happened to Joe in the back room were Joe and the woman concerned, whose name he hadn’t even bothered to find out. Why on earth should Gabe be repentant when he thought that Joe had been off doing exactly the same thing? Joe knew he would never tell Gabe the truth.
‘All right?’ said Gabe.
‘Let’s go.’
The doorman dropped a folded bill on the table in front of them and Gabe opened it, fishing for his wallet at the same time. Then he stopped. ‘What the –?’
He passed the bill to Joe. Over ten thousand złoty. Something close to two thousand pounds.
The doorman hovered, his face impassive, his bulk clearly situated between them and the exit.
‘Listen, mate, is this right?’
The doorman remained blank. Gabe looked to Joe for help.
‘This bill is too much,’ said Joe. ‘There is a mistake.’
‘That is the price.’ His shrug was comprehensible in any language.
‘You’re having a laugh,’ said Gabe. He was tired, sobriety was fast approaching with a killer hangover on its heels, and he was feeling the emotional fallout of having cheated on his wife for the very first time. All those years of fidelity, of making the effort to stay in love, ruined for a pair of irresistible tits. He felt awful and he wasn’t in the mood to have some bruising bouncer yank him around by his dick. ‘We’re not paying this much. Sorry, mate, but that’s the way it is. Understand?’ He looked at Joe again. ‘Tell him,’ he said.
‘We will not pay this much,’ said Joe.
‘I think you will.’
Joe felt Gabe stiffen beside him and followed his eyes to the bar, where two men who could have been the bruising bouncer’s big brothers had suddenly appeared.
‘Shit,’ muttered Gabe. ‘Deep shit.’
Joe felt scared then for the first time. His fear was threefold. One, what would he tell his mum if he got a black eye? Two, what if they broke his arm or did something else that would keep him out of next Saturday’s match? And, three, what if they killed them both?
‘We know who you are,’ said the doorman. ‘You think we never watch sports on television? We have White Stars fans here. We know you have money.’
‘They’re fans,’ relayed Joe. ‘Football fans.’
‘Fucking funny way of showing it,’ said Gabe. He sized up the situation and realized that he was two grand down for the night. It was a lot of money, but perhaps they deserved to be ripped off. After all they’d been stupid enough to come here in the first place, to partake of beer and birds without asking the price. He tried not to think of two grand in terms of Old Gabe – supermarket man – but New Gabe, international footballer. It made their idiocy a little easier to bear. ‘Ask him if he’ll take a cheque,’ he said to Joe.
They wouldn’t, but they did offer to drive them to an ATM so that they could retrieve the cash, an offer which they made begrudgingly, like it was an inconvenience to them.
Gabe and Joe were quiet in the car. Gabe withdrew the money and though he felt like stuffing it into the throat of the nearest bad guy he handed it over with little rancour, and tried not to be too surprised when they drove off and left them in the middle of the dark and deserted street.
‘Do you know where we are?’ said Gabe.
‘More or less,’ said Joe. He started walking north, knowing that sooner or later they would hit the river and he could get his bearings.
‘What a night, eh?’ said Gabe.
‘What a night,’ said Joe.
‘One best kept between ourselves.’
‘What happens south of the river stays south of the river?’ suggested Joe.
‘Good call.’
Joe climbed into his bed as the birds were singing, having slyly dodged the spots in their apartment where the floor creaked so as not to wake his mum. Of course she had been awake from the moment she heard his key in the door, and hardly really asleep before then. She listened intently to her only son as he crept around trying not to wake her and wondered if she should be worried. He was her boy, and without a father to guide him he would be pulled in all sorts of directions. Once upon a time she was grateful for football, something to focus him and keep him out of trouble. She was only just starting to realize that football would bring trouble of its own.
Gabe climbed into his bed and couldn’t bring himself to touch his wife. He thought of the leggy teenager who called herself Aska and had given him one of the greatest blowjobs of his life.
He stared at the familiar elegant lines of his wife’s shoulder blades as she lay with her back to him, peaceful and trusting as a child.
Guilt gnawed down on his conscience.
He felt like a total bastard.
24
The city of Krakow had gone football crazy. Utterly, beautifully, tits-up crazy. For one weekend the Polish were as fanatical about their football as the English. Flags fluttered in the most unlikely windows, from grand old villas and concrete tower blocks alike. She was proud to be a part of it.
The UEFA Cup was regarded by many football fans as the poor relation of the Champions League. A snivelling cousin trailing after a richer, sexier, more dynamic elder and taking its cast-offs. Teams that were dumped out of the Champions League qualified automatically for the Cup, which did nothing to help its lesser stature. It was not worth as much in terms of prestige or cold, hard television rights. By the truly snobbish it was sneered at.
Until your team made it to the final stages. And then suddenly the UEFA Cup became a very big deal indeed.
But for Samantha it was the start of her new life.
‘You want me to come with you?’ Leanne had asked at the end of the day before.
‘I’ll be okay,’ she’d said, as if she was playing, not just watching.
She arrived at the stadium early, her nerves propelling her out of the soulless hotel room and into the streets. She wandered slowly through the tourists in the main square, no longer feeling quite like one of them, and to amuse herself on the way to the stadium she counted every White Stars flag or banner that she saw. Near the beautiful old university a rank of taxis stood idle, their drivers gathered by a statue of Copernicus, the most famous alumnus, and every taxi had a White Stars scarf across the back or tied to the door handle.
Her stomach somersaulted. There was too much at stake. She wanted them to win, but more than that she wanted them, her boys as she thought of them, to play well, for in the box watching with her would be her two invited guests: Dave Withington, second in command for the England Under-21 squad, and Alan Bull, an important backroom staffer for the senior team.
She’d invited the managers of both England squads, not expecting them to attend but knowing that the invitation would trickle down, in much the same way that Leanne picked up all the invites that fell beneath her remit. Dave and Alan were quite near the top of the pile considering that she was asking them over to see two players that weren’t even on their radar, in a country hardly renowned for producing footballing genius. Two relatively important voices made it this far solely because of her reputation as an agent and spotter of talent. Samantha Sharp didn’t waste people’s time. If she said there was something worth seeing in Krakow then the people came to Krakow. It was as simple as that.
The stadium was already starting to fill up, with hours yet to go. But she was the only person in the executive box. Later it would be filled with chatter and the chink of glassware but now she had it all to herself for a few moments.
She walked to the expansive window and looked out on the ailing pitch, its brown patches shamefully outnumbering the green. How very wrong of Lubin to spend more on the players’ lounge and this executive box than he had on the playing surface. She looked at the hardcore fans, dotted here and there, draping their homemade banners over the terraces, preparing for the long wait until kick-off and she felt, as she often did, that it must be nice to have something that you felt so passionate about. She only felt that way about mone
y and success, and she was wise enough to know that wasn’t the same as following a team, sharing a common purpose with a stadium full of like-minded fans, a collective ideal that victory would be theirs.
Today she wanted it so badly that she felt close to them, the fans, closer than ever.
If nothing came of today’s match, if Dave and Alan from the FA went home disappointed, then she would be off to a terrible start. They would go home and report that Samantha Sharp was building castles in the air out here in the middle of nowhere, chasing an unlikely dream, merely consolidating her failure. Whatever eye she had once had she had lost. Legends had been right to let her go.
No pressure.
She had underplayed the significance of the game to Joe in particular, not wanting him to be nervous.
‘Do it,’ she whispered, pushing lightly on the glass with her fingertips. ‘Do it for me. Please.’
‘And if they lose?’
She spun round. She wasn’t alone. Lubin was sitting quietly in a chair in the far corner of the room. Watching her.
She blushed. The last time he’d seen her she had been naked.
‘Please,’ he said, waving his hand in the air. ‘Please, go on.’
He really should have made his presence known. It was impolite. And now she had been caught talking to herself, praying almost.
His father is one of the richest men in the world. Do you honestly think he cares about being polite?
‘I didn’t see you,’ she said.
‘Evidently.’
She had left him sleeping in his hotel room in Zadar, creeping out at dawn to catch her flight back to Krakow after a night of ferocious sex that left her breathlessly satisfied but emotionally numb. He had sex like he was in a competition. And whatever he was competing for it was clear he thought he had won. Afterwards he had hardly looked at her before he fell asleep. She tried to sleep too, only because she wasn’t confident of finding her way back to her own hotel. She couldn’t even remember the name of it. She had to wake Leanne at 6 a.m. just so she could collect her bags on the way to the airport. Since then he had contacted her twice, but she hadn’t returned either call.
