Butcher (20 page)

‘I might have some wine …'

‘Why don't you pour a couple of glasses?'

He got up quickly and left the room. She wandered idly. She glanced at the bookshelves. The big leatherbound volumes were medical textbooks.
Surgical Physiology. Complications in Surgery. The Anaesthesiologist's Manual of Surgical Procedures
… There had to be a hundred such books, more. Tucked at the end of a shelf she found a batch of medical supply catalogues. She flicked some pages.

Operating scissors. Haemostatic forceps. Surgical blades. Drainable fecal collectors.

Drainable fecal …
? Vomitarium reading material.

She stuck the catalogues back in place.

Dorcus returned with two thick glass tumblers half-filled with wine.

She took one. ‘Cheers,' and she sipped. It was plonk, truly vile. Chateau Oxter-Rot. It left a taste of vinegar at the back of her throat. She felt like spitting it out. Dorcus took one niggardly sip, then set his glass down beside the phone.

‘Mmm,' she said and put her glass alongside his.

‘The wine's b-been here, oh, a long time.'

‘Old wines are always the best … I was checking your books. You're a medical student?'

‘
Student
?' He uttered a derisory laugh. ‘I'm fully qualified …'

‘You're
Dr
Dorcus then?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘But you also sell office supplies?'

‘Well … this house is … I need extra income.'

The qualified physician flogging reams of Xerox paper. ‘You work two jobs.'

‘I'm kept b-busy,' and he gestured vaguely.

OK. Whatever. She patted the couch. ‘Take your shirt off and sit beside me.'

He stared at her as if this request was an attack on his personal morality.

‘Look, I need your skin, Dorcus. I'm
very
good at this. Trust me. Do you find it hard to trust people?'

‘No, no, n-not really, I don't know …'

He unbuttoned slowly. He didn't take the shirt all the way off. He exposed his white bony chest. She thought of a turkey at Christmas, gorged, denuded, a yawning white carcass.

He sat down. She tipped more cream into her palms and reached out, feathering the back of his hand with her fingertips. ‘You don't have to be nervous. I guarantee pleasant relaxation.'

‘I'm not n-nervous.'

‘You just bite your nails for nutritional reasons?'

‘There's no nutrit— oh, you're having a j-joke.'

‘A small joke,' she said and drew closer to him. That wine came back up into her mouth.
Gut rejection
. She slid the shirt off him. She touched his nipples, felt the ridges of his ribcage. Did he ever eat? Maybe he was a vegan, a bean-muncher, the way Chuck had become. Chuck, bloody Chuck, why couldn't he have stayed the way he was instead of turning into a Temple devotee? Fun had gone out of his life, plus I
miss
all the great fucking we had. I thought it was love, I truly did, romantic me.

Teasing, she slipped off Dorcus's glasses and peered through them, oh God, the room became an instant fog, she could see nothing but blur.

‘P-please give me my glasses back,' he said.

‘Blind without them?' She popped them on his nose.

‘My eyesight's not too good,' he said.

She moved closer to him, kneaded his right arm slowly, then the left. He was rigid. She couldn't unlock the knotted muscles. His hands were clenched against his knees so tightly that no circulation was reaching his knuckles, which were sharp white stones.

‘Lie back,' she said. ‘Shut your eyes.'

He slumped backwards but didn't close his eyes. His lips were tight shut in resistance. She worked up to his shoulders with her fingertips.

‘Feel the warmth coming out of my fingers, Dorcus? Think of your body as a slow moving river, it's flowing gently, very gently, the water is clear. You're weightless. You're floating in a womb, it's very silent, nothing can harm you …'

He was motionless, a plank. A pained look creased his face. OK, he's over-anxious, he's never been massaged before, and for all she knew he'd never been touched by a woman. She ran the flats of her hands down his chest toward his navel, then rippled them back up again. Again, again. Energy was streaming out of her – but failed to penetrate him.

‘Feeling it, Dorcus? Are you letting go?'

‘I don't … no, I don't …'

‘You won't sink. The water will keep you afloat.' Hard damn labour this. She took a towel from her bag, dried her hands, and poured a little Green Tea soothing cream onto her palms. She worked him all angles, kneading and stroking and then, having asked him to turn over, she pummelled him close to the spine. She counted the pimples on his back, noticing a small mole under his shoulder-blade.

She stopped, sighed. ‘You're not getting anything out of this, are you?'

Dorcus said nothing. She couldn't see his expression because he had his face hidden in a cushion, but she guessed he had the look of a man eager for an ordeal to end.

‘OK. Let's try something else. I need you to take your trousers off and lie face down again.'

‘My t-trousers?'

‘I'll look away if it makes you feel more comfy. Remember, I'm a professional. I do a lot of massages. You're a client, as far as I'm concerned. I don't see you as a
man
. No offence.'

‘I … I find th-this difficult.'

She turned her face aside. ‘See? Not peeking, am I?'

She heard him unbutton his trousers, then the sound of them sliding down his legs to the floor. The couch creaked as she turned to look at him. He was naked except for his thick slack white socks, and his tartan boxers. He had pale skinny legs covered with very fine hair.

‘Face down,' she said.

He slid onto the couch, buried his face. She bent, pressed the base of his spine. She made rippling circles with her fingertips, digging them into the skin above his buttocks. She was forceful at times, at other times gentle.

Dorcus was a locked dungeon.
Fucking useless
.

Chuck used to get hard as soon as she touched him in this area. Wowee, like
that
.

Take a taxi, Glori
.

Up yours, Reuben.

She heard no change in Dorcus's breathing. She wondered if he had a lover, and what tricks this woman might use to warm up Dorcus and bring him to life.
How did she get his little sentryman to rise
?

‘Dorcus, I need to lower your shorts, but only a little. Are you OK with that?'

‘I d-don't, ah, well … if you …'

She drew the tartan boxers down an inch and rolled her fingertips through the scrawny muscles of the upper buttocks. He had no arse to speak of. She pushed, and strained, then she let herself relax a moment. Her finger joints ached. She began again, working her hands under the boxers. It was exhausting and after twenty minutes of pushing, kneading, pulling and stroking, she understood that she had a dead man on her hands, the ultimate hypertensive.

She dropped her hands away from him and sighed. ‘Dorcus, I hate to say this, but our stars are in different quadrants. Maybe this just isn't a good time for us. You won't be offended if I call it a day, will you? It'll be like I never came to see you in the first place. That suit you? I'll tell Mr Chuck it didn't work out—'

‘No, no, d-don't tell him that. I like Mr Chuck. D-don't tell him that …'

‘OK. What if I say … it was the best massage I ever gave and you loved it?'

‘Yes, tell him that, s-say that to him.'

She heard the piano again. A whole army of mice had to be running across those keys. They scampered over the bass notes,
boomp boomp boomp
. She repressed a shudder. Fur on the ivories. She got up from the couch. Dorcus was sweating. He reminded her of a geeky kid who'd never quite become adult, and so goddam
tense
his guts had to be twisted up inside like bad macramé.

She shrugged, picked up her coat and took her mobile phone from her coat pocket.

‘Who are you c-calling? Mr Chuck?'

‘Well, Dorcus, I can hardly
walk
all the way back across Glasgow. And no, I'm not calling Mr Chuck.' She began to tap in the numbers of her regular taxi company when Dorcus made a swift unexpected move toward her and chopped the mobile out of her fingers. She was astounded by his action, the suddenness, the shock of it. What the fuck?

‘I'm sorry, so s-sorry,' he said. He went down on his knees, picked the phone up, stuttering apologetically. ‘I d-don't k-know w-what came over me—'

‘Forget it, Dorcus.' Brush it off, make out it's only some weird spontaneous discharge of energy, who could say? But it disturbed her on a level where she didn't want disturbances. He handed her the phone. The little plastic screen was cracked. When she tried to make a call the line was dead. The force of the phone striking the floor had either dislodged the battery or busted the circuits.

‘
This
is a bloody nuisance,' she said.

‘I d-didn't mean, h-honest, I just had this fla …'

‘I know you didn't mean it,' she said. ‘Fact is, you did it anyway. And look – I'm left with one very dead phone.' She shook it as if this might accomplish a rearrangement of the circuitry, which was like kicking a flat tyre in the hope it would reinflate.

She nodded at the old Bakelite phone on the table. ‘Can I use that?'

‘Doesn't work,' he said. He turned away from her and pulled up his trousers and buttoned them.

‘You must have a phone in the house that
does
, right?'

She wanted to go, had to. Dorcus wasn't the kind of person she longed to spend any more time with. Forty minutes in his company already, and what? – one bolted-down gulp of execrably bad vino, none of her techniques had worked on him,
plus
the broken phone. It wasn't a cheerful list.

She wasn't at all happy about the way he'd lost control and just whacked her mobie out of her hand – what was he? An epileptic? a guy with uncontrollable fits and seizures? And if he was a doctor why didn't he prescribe himself some medication for the condition?

It's none of my business. She put on her coat. She saw a bunch of his tartan boxers spill from the badly buttoned fly. It was funny, but she knew that if she laughed he'd take it the wrong way.

‘D-don't tell Mr Chuck what hap-hap …'

‘I already promised you. Now, show me a phone I can—'

Dorcus swallowed hard, as if choking, then turned pale and stuck a hand across his mouth. He rushed out of the room so suddenly he was gone before she could finish her sentence. She heard him climb the staircase rapidly.

Dorcus in stricken flight – why?

She went into the corridor. She could hear him run along a passageway overhead. Then, from above, the sound of a door slamming.

She walked to the foot of the stairs.

She needed a phone to call a taxi, and a key from Dorcus to open the front gates. If she hadn't needed either, she'd have split already. In fact, she'd settle for the key
alone
, and take her chances finding a taxi cruising along.

She climbed halfway up the staircase. The air became bitter cold all around her; she'd entered a space where for no apparent reason the temperature plunged. Shivering, she hurriedly climbed the second flight. The cold that had clung to her dispersed as quickly as it had occurred.

Inexplicable draughts, distant footsteps, a chill zone –
wooooeeee
. She didn't believe in occult happenings. It was easier for her to believe that crystology was a genuine science than in any spooky supernatural stuff.

She reached the upper hall, which stretched away in a series of closed doors. She walked slowly. ‘Dorcus?
Dorcus
?'

She heard the sound of somebody vomit – an outrageously powerful upchuck, the thick splatter of undigested foodstuffs barfed at velocity. Expressboke.

Behind which door was his
chambre du vom
?

She listened. Silence. She felt sorry for him. He was a complete
numpty
, like the wee boy with the beaky pigeon-like face who always sat cross-legged in the front row of a class photo. Usually called Archie or Angus. The kind that would never be able to cope with the world. They went through their allotted span with nervy eyes and sometimes a twitch and often some anti-social affliction they couldn't kick, like bedwetting, or snotterynose.

She wandered along the hallway. ‘Dorcus? Are you OK? Dorcus? Talk to me, Doc …'

She heard him throw up again, a vigorous release, followed by a groan. Now what room was that? She paused outside a door, pressed her ear to the wood. ‘Dorcus?' She tapped lightly. ‘I need your key to get out of this gaff. Come on, Dorcus. Open up. Let me out.'

She heard movement from inside, she wasn't sure what. She turned the handle slowly, pushed the door open a little way, an inch, two inches. She was struck at once by the force of that brutal disinfectant pong Dorcus dragged round with him as if it had been injected into his sweat-glands. She could even smell traces of it on herself.

She took a half-step inside the room, which was hard underfoot, uncarpeted. Tiles, white tiles. A soft light burned above a steel sink, where hot water ran slowly and quietly from a tap. Steam fogged the air. This vapour clouded a long-haired figure standing naked at the sink, spine turned toward Glorianna, face hidden by a towel. The figure turned very slightly, revealing a glimpse of breast.

Glorianna watched her turn and saw the towel fall from the woman's hands to the floor – slowly, like a wounded game-bird in a dying fall. She saw the figure's darkened pubic region exposed by an eye of light, and she gasped, pulling the door shut on the steam and the falling towel, and the way the shadow of the figure was thrown halfway across the room to a bed – and although all this was misted, and lacked clarity, Glorianna knew what she saw.