Beach Bodies, Part 2

by Ross Armstrong

  ‘Sandra told you,’ mumbles Simon.

  ‘Sandra told me,’ affirms the fisherman. ‘To watch over you.’ He leans back down to the package and pulls out a stack of firewood, kindling and firelighters, then takes them to the open fireplace, where he gets to work on them.

  ‘Good, yes. I’m sorry,’ says Simon. ‘Look, I would like to apologise…’

  ‘Fine,’ says the fisherman.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s very good of you. Sorry, to everyone, for my…’

  Simon rises and goes over to the kitchen island where he leans and takes a few deep breaths and is comforted by Dawn in the partial silence. The fisherman strikes three lights within the fire and stands back to fan the flames.

  Roberto crouches too, warming his hands. ‘God, it got cold fast.’

  ‘You should put on an extra layer,’ the fisherman says, drawing all heads his way as he turns towards the stairs.

  A volley of shaken heads behind his back, in reference to the body up there. But none of the Beachers know quite what to say and Simon remains strangely inert.

  ‘We like it down here, you see,’ Lance says. It escapes from him under duress. But at least it makes the fisherman turn.

  ‘Weather turns fast here,’ he says, but all he sees is a roomful of bodies, static and unwilling to make any false move. ‘Why don’t you just go and get—’

  ‘Nah…’ Zack says, a long sound that means little. ‘It’s just… nice to have some cold… after all this… sun. Reminds us of home.’

  The fisherman gives a slow frown. ‘As you wish.’

  He notices not one of them is sitting down, nor have they been the whole time he is here. A couple of them give stiff nods to thank him for his time.

  ‘Well, I should get going—’

  ‘Of course,’ Sly says. ‘Don’t want to hang around with a bunch of melts like us.’

  ‘Black fella, eh?’ says the fisherman, looking Sly up and down.

  ‘Er, yep,’ says Sly.

  The fisherman steps in, almost reaching out to touch him. ‘Don’t get any round here. It’s nice. How do you find it?’

  ‘Er… it has its ups and downs,’ says Sly.

  ‘You’ll be good with your hands, I’d say,’ he says.

  Sly’s eyes flick over to the others. ‘Okay. What makes you say that?’

  ‘I just mean, I should show one of you the fuse box upstairs,’ he says, putting a foot on the first stair. ‘Just in case—’

  ‘No!’ Tabitha says, before the others can get there.

  ‘We don’t want to trouble you,’ says Simon, swivelling around, his head covered in sweat.

  ‘No trouble,’ the fisherman growls. ‘I came and took a look when they were building this place, I know where everything is.’ He wanders over towards Liv, her breath high in her throat. She needs him gone, for the sake of her nerves.

  ‘Blood.’

  ‘What?’ Liv says. ‘What did you say?’

  Simon moves in from one side, Justine from the other, sensing something is about to give.

  ‘Blood. On that knife.’

  Liv lifts it slowly, almost in apology, so everyone can see, examining it like she’s never seen a knife before. ‘I cut myself.’

  ‘That right?’ he says, against a couple of limp nods in the background.

  She lifts her hand to the light, a fresh slash between her index finger and thumb, that prompts the rest of the room to wonder how and exactly when she got that.

  ‘You want to be careful,’ he says.

  Liv offers nothing back but a weak smile before she lowers her hand, knife and all, to her side, where she thought it had lain out of sight.

  ‘I know where everything is. But thank you, thank you so much for your help,’ says Simon, and before the fisherman can finish his thought, Simon reaches out to take the fisherman’s arm, who allows himself to be led away.

  ‘You know where I am, just next door…’ the fisherman says, as his voice disappears into the hallway. And while most of the bodies follow like it’s a parade, to make sure the stranger disappears, Summer hangs back to see Liv drop the knife back in the drawer with a shivering hand.

  ‘What?’ says Liv.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Summer, with a tight shake of her head. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Summer: Before

  Summer has always believed you have to know what people see when they see you; this, she learnt from a young age, was the key to everything.

  Summer can remember the very moment she looked in the mirror and tried to judge if she was fanciable. Somewhat shyly, she judged herself a ten.

  Not all ‘tens’ can accept the extent of their beauty, this physical superiority that’s on show like a kind of nudity, and so they shirk from it. She’s watched others with the same predicament destroy themselves. Boyish affectations adopted to tamp down their natural elegance, poor styling choices to camouflage themselves like hunted beasts, attempts to build their character on the uneven ground of their quirks, leaving them stranded on the island of wearing rainbow scrunchies and speaking like an observational comedian. Or they can go the other way, surgery, in search of stamping out the smallest imperfections that paradoxically are more obvious when you’re so close to one hundred per cent.

  On the first day in the villa, not long after Summer and Dawn meet, the rest of the girls arrive. And then it’s time for the boys. They are to step out, one by one, like gladiators in that film about gladiators, so the girls can decide who they want to couple up with. Less than an hour gone in the villa. And it’s about to get brutal.

  Summer watches the face of the first guy fall when she doesn’t step forward for him. Roberto keeps his eyes on Summer’s golden heels, waiting for them to step his way, and when they don’t, his eyes film up, a glaze of instant tear like a millpond. So much feeling, and they’d only known each other a matter of seconds.

  It doesn’t bother Summer too much because she has built methods to cope with the disappointment of others. As she will mention a lot over the next few weeks, she is ‘a real empathetic person’. Empathetic enough to dumb down her sentences with bad grammar when using a ten-dollar word like empathetic, so the viewing public can still relate to her.

  She used to watch others’ reactions to films in the cinema, rather than watching the movies herself; Deriving more pleasure from their pleasure in the flickering half-light, than her own. Every Saturday and sometimes Wednesdays, head encased in her blue hoodie, she’d watch the people in her row with skilful side-eye. And she’d still be the one explaining the plot at the end. Because Summer has always prided herself on knowing exactly what is going on.

  So, when the chic TV presenter Maggie Claggen (Maggs Claggs), who would soon fade into the distance on a speedboat wearing her Cruise Collection Rixo dress, had asked them to step forward if they fancied the first hunk who had arrived for the ladies’ perusal, Summer simply bowed her head. Because, let’s face it, seeing people be sad gets you down.

  A stacked, chest-heavy Welshman; she decided Roberto was the full visual manifestation of the monster that a man builds to protect the boy inside. The stitches were just so easy to see. As if Dr Frankenstein spent so much time on the muscles he didn’t have time to join this one together fully, and you could see too much of the soul beneath.

  She doesn’t mean to be cruel, it’s just so clear there’s a puppy dog shining through, one desperate to be taken home, and that innocence is such a beautiful thing, hopeful, inspiring, wonderful. But it’s just not attractive. At least, not to Summer. Desperation stinks to her. ‘I can literally smell it,’ she once said.

  They had had a moment of course, barely a second, but that’s all it takes for a moment to occur. A glance. It was an accidental moment, she would later tell him after he tells her she is ‘the fittest bird I’ve seen in my whole life’, when they’re alone by the firepit. Then he will tell her it’s ‘no bother’, but he will be just protecting himself because, as she points out, he ‘looked pretty bothered by
it at the time’.

  But Roberto needn’t have got so cut up. Dawn steps forward a few seconds later, and, after a pause surely designed to create waves back home, Justine lunged halfway forward for a few seconds that felt like an eternity, before stepping up too. And it was Justine he picked, leaving Dawn a bit marooned, wearing a seasick look, before stepping back into line with the other girls.

  Lance is next, and he’s ‘a different kettle’, as Summer would say later.

  One wolfish smile and the girl’s minds are all fixed on the same problem: He’s trouble, and despite popular opinion running rife throughout the male world, trouble isn’t that attractive. However, Lance himself is attractive, like an aftershave model, which he is. And Liv will later admit the ‘bad boy’ thing maybe does it for her a bit, but not if he was actually ‘being bad’ to her. ‘Who would want that?’

  So Liv does step forward after Maggs Claggs screams his name. And Tabs does too. And so does Dawn, trying her luck again, leaving Lance to consider the field, quite happy with what’s grazing there. However, he isn’t into ‘intellectual birds’ he’ll say later, during a ‘truth game’, and unfortunately for Liv, he has her pegged as one, ‘something about the way you stood,’ he’ll say. So he opts for Tabs, who immediately starts wondering what she’s got herself into when she’s greeted with a full kiss on the mouth, which is both firm and consensually dubious.

  The women wait with bated breath for the third man out.

  There’s a ripple of excitement as Zack appears, which soon turns to confusion and disappointment. In the delirium of the minutes when the girls had the villa to themselves, they had huddled together and all decided they don’t like men too muscly, yet they will all later agree Zack’s bulges were insufficient, his abs seeming to get smaller the closer he got. Like ‘a sparrow’s eggs,’ Summer will say. ‘It wasn’t something that mattered around 2015,’ Tabs will later say, to sounds of universal agreement ‘but now, it’s like getting a car without seatbelts,’ which was greeted with the same amount of nodding but a touch more confusion.

  So when Maggs Claggs calls Zack’s name with great fanfare, all he gets is a row of guilty bottom-teeth smiles and a line of beautiful women standing as still as musical statues.

  ‘Oh Zack,’ Maggs says, ‘you wait till the end,’ pushing him away so he can wait for the semi-humiliating clearing process, when Zack will be forced to throw ‘his type on paper’ into the fire and take whatever he can get.

  But then in a moment, everything changes. Maggs turns and, with a severe look on her brow, she says something the girls don’t expect.

  ‘Now… this is where things get interesting. I’m sorry to do this to you girls.’ She steps away as if there’s some sort of problem with the cameras or lighting. Perhaps they would have to do it all again but act like it was the first time; Summer knows that’s happened in previous years. But no, no, it’s all theatre. Maggs smiles her consolation smile as she fills her tiny lungs and shouts into the microphone to announce there is ‘only one lump of fresh meat to come’.

  Terror shoots through the females, which the automatic cameras zoom in to catch. The equation is clear, at least to Summer, who understands the ebb and flow of TV drama implicitly. She can virtually call out every moment on the Kardashians before it happens: Enter stage right, Khloe, who is having doubts about her fashion label. She will have a heart to heart with Kim and Kris, who will suggest over a protein powder shake that the sisters get together for an underwear shoot, and an accompanying event hosted by Kanye, the proceeds of which will go to a children’s charity.

  Dawn’s eyes widen as she takes in the consequences of what Maggs is saying. The normal form on the show is that if the girls come out first there should be more boys than girls, leaving one lad to fend for himself. But they’ve flipped the script, the absolute bastards. The blood pumps hard as a waterfall in Summer’s ears now too. Not because of the competition, but because she has been outsmarted by the producers and the game is barely ten minutes old.

  Liv, Dawn and Summer must now fight it out for this last lucky boy, or face starting the game alone; an historically vulnerable position for those wanting to go the distance and win the competition, which is the main reason they are all here: A cash prize and a new career beckons, either as a TV presenter, a model, or merely doing the rounds being paid huge sums to turn up at club events looking like yourself. One of them will be left with Zack of course, but it will be difficult to convince the viewing public of genuine affection given she barely looked his way when he first stepped out. Summer considers her options.

  Maggs pauses as the sound of a heartbeat pounds from the speakers concealed in the villa walls. Summer smirks, resisting the tension that’s etched on the faces of Liv and Dawn. But her heart has its own ideas, banging hard in her chest too. A Pavlovian response to a television technique, that she had thought herself above.

  Then silence. Then the sound of flip-fops. A shin, a firm chest, a beautiful profile topped with blonde hair.

  As Tommy strides out, Summer sees Tabs hide a rueful smile, and a story starts to form. It’s like she’s back in Odeon 1; Tabs has clearly met him before, and this wouldn’t be unusual, as the young and attractive tend to move in decreasing circles. What’s more, Dawn seems to perk up with prior knowledge too. They may be able to hide it from the cameras, but not from Summer. Liv perks up too – there are lights in her eyes, Summer can see them. The man’s presence swells before Summer, his popularity making him more attractive by the second.

  ‘How are, ladies?’ he says. Scottish and guileless but somehow wonderful. Summer feels like one of those war commanders she read about in history class, staking out a good hill they can place their army on, from which they can rule. He is perfect for the battle. She had even once loudly declared in a club in Santorini that she liked ‘cocky idiots’ and here’s one to order, good enough to eat. An Antony to her Cleopatra. A Kanye to her Kim.

  Summer takes a graceful step forward and watches Tommy’s eyes roll along her form, allowing him to drink her in until his thirst is parched. Then, next to her, she feels Dawn step up too. Summer has never felt any awkwardness about such competition, but then she’s never ended up on the wrong end of the result. She has often consoled people gently in the aftermath, wondering why they hadn’t chosen a mate of more appropriate levels of attractiveness in the first place. It’s a surprise Dawn isn’t holding back and going for Zack instead. Perhaps this is because on Summer’s other side, Liv has stayed still, evidently deciding on the Zack tactic herself. Clever girl. Summer will have to watch her closely.

  First, she watches Tommy’s eyes wander between the two, with a level of showmanship she hadn’t imagined he possessed. Then, just as he was about to utter her name, looking deep into her eyes, he turns back to Dawn and does a completely extraordinary thing. He chooses her.

  ‘Dawn,’ he says. And Dawn canters towards him.

  Summer fails to hold back a laugh that will be broadcast to forty-five international territories. ‘Ha.’ A seemingly innocuous sound shooting around the world. A sound that will even be subjected to a Twitter survey: 71 per cent of people deciding it was ‘to hide her blushes’, the other 29 that it was cos she’s ‘a bit too cocksure of herself’.

  In that tiny moment after the laugh, Summer’s mind is thrown back to her first ever rejection, at 14 years old, just as she’d decided that her romantic life should begin. Hers was a mixed school and she’d chosen a boy to practise kissing on and handed him a note to that effect after watching him negotiate a lathe with some care in woodwork. She had carefully selected Pete, who was not the most beguiling boy in school looks-wise but was stoic and sullen and had good coordination, qualities that were both useful in a lover and in an ex. She didn’t think he would be the type to make a show of crying or telling sordid details when her practice period with him was over.

  But Pete had leant over the note, reading eagerly, then scratched out his reply in a pencil, which he then swiftly
placed back behind his ear. And when the note was passed back with that frown she had willed herself to find alluring, it read, ‘Not my type’. She had literally been told she was not someone’s type, on paper.

  She was disgusted, not with herself, but with Pete’s idiocy, his arrogance. It was a parable to her about how men were too cowardly to enter paradise because it felt too good to be true. He was clearly too afraid to live the dream. And when she cried in the toilets, it was not for herself, she told herself, it was because of Pete’s tragic lack of ambition.

  After a term-long sabbatical from love, Summer took turns with different boys, having taken to wearing a leather jacket, hoicking up her skirt and putting white highlights in her hair, in a transformation that aped Sandy’s voyage towards Rizzo’s look in Grease; a movie she had been shown twice weekly by her mother from the age of 8. A song from the movie had possibly even been the cause of her name, Summer had suspected.

  Armed with this new persona, she carried out a rigorous examination of the diversity of the sixth-form student body. She kissed impossibly tall boys, she snogged the long-haired emo types to their punk rock playlists, then dashed to the sports block to tongue a muscular, freckled boy who was tipped to play squash for England, which was impressive as she didn’t even know that was something you could do for England.

  But when the time came for her leavers’ prom, Summer, having recently broken the heart of a boy that claimed to be Nigerian royalty, turned her attentions back to Pete, to the bafflement of her entire year group. Pete, by this point, was a little heavier set, owing to a computer game addiction and a love of coding that had seen him gain an online internship with Tesla, which had unsurprisingly done nothing for his sex appeal.

  On the night of the prom, she danced close with Pete to R’n’B tracks he’d never heard, then agreed to go back to his house, where his often-absent parents were away. She pushed him onto the bed and took off her clothes. She had never had sex before, despite being an expert in its shadow moves. She crawled along the bed and kissed Pete, and after looking him in the eye, her mouth moved slowly upwards, so she could kiss him on the head. Then suddenly, she was dressing. She had wanted it to seem like the best trick she ever saw a magician pull. Not the one where he removes the tablecloth while keeping all the glass and silverware on it, but the one where he manages to put it back on again, without anyone noticing. And like a magician, as Pete lay open-mouthed, Summer disappeared, muttering one simple line as she left: ‘Not my type.’