Erotic Refugees (27 page)

Eoin stared at her in shock.
Had she really just said that she’d once been interested in
him?

“
Of course,” she added
hastily, “now I wouldn't dream of letting anything, you know,
happen. People to fuck are easy to come by, but friends are
gold.”

“
Right,” Eoin said, not
sure where to look. “So why didn't you … you know? Back
then?”

She took more wine. “Well you
never made a move, did you? Plus you were still with Jenny, and I
was with Johan.”

Eoin's heart hammered. “But if
I had made a move?”

She swung her head back and took a deep
breath. “This is stupid to talk about now. I would have done you,
if you weren't quite you and I wasn't quite me and things were
difference. No, sorry, dif-fer-ent. Well you know. Course now we
wouldn't be friends. And friends are well, everything. Just
remember”—she reached out with an unsteady hand and squeezed his
arm—“lots of women will want a piece of you.”

“
Nice to know I suppose,”
Eoin said. He was glad for the cover of darkness as he knew he was
blushing like a beetroot. And he realised that now was as good a
time as any to put her on the spot. She sure wasn't going to get
any drunker. He cleared his throat and Alice, sensing something was
up, turned her unfocused gaze in his direction.

“
What?”

“
Alice,” he said. “I
talked to Andy. And he told me what happened.”

“
He told you what?” she
said with a dark look.

“
About when you were
seeing each other. And how you broke up. I just want your angle on
it. The truth.”

“
Oh,” Alice said as if
relieved, although Eoin couldn't really see why. He kept what he
hoped was a stern gaze fixed on her and after a while she
relented.

“
Okay then, fine, if
it'll get you off my back. Yes I saw him. Andry. I mean … An-dy.
Stupid thing to do. I was married, but it was … dissolving, and he
was there. That's all there was to it. He was just
there.”

“
And there was something
about a DVD…”

“
Pah!” She stuck out her
arm, unsteady as it was, and bared her wrist. “Here, just suck my
blood why don't you? What do you want to know all this for? It's
ancient, old stuff. Rubbish.”

Eoin waited her out. There
wasn't much else to do.

“Look, the stupid idiot was supposed to send
it to me. To my email, like a normal person! Not burn it on a
stupid DVD and post it to my jävla house!”

“And what
happened
?”

She gave a dry laugh. “What do you think
happened? Johan opened it, and bang went my marriage. Not that it
wasn't doomed already but, Jesus, what a mess. Johan
told his parents, the moron. I'm surprised he didn't put
the video on his Facebook page too. And all because of Andy not
doing what I asked him to do, a simple jävla request. It still
makes my blood boil.” She shrugged. “Still, it's over and done
with. But the years after were really hard, and all for
nothing.”

“
But Andy didn't know it
all,” Eoin said, watching her for a reaction and expecting things
to get fiery. “Did he? He knew you had kids, you told him that, but
you didn't tell him you were married.”

Alice looked down. “No, I
didn't tell him. I didn't expect it to last very long. So yeah, my
bad. And I've nothing against him, but I'm tired of thinking about
it. Just leave it go, there's no point going over this any more.”
She placed her hand on his. “Just leave it go Eoin, okay?”

Eoin nodded. Well that was good
enough, she'd told him her side, just like he'd wanted. Although …
maybe that wasn't enough. Maybe he, as a good friend, should do
more than just listen? Maybe he should go full out, and try and get
the two of them talking again? It was clear they had a lot to talk
about, a lot of misunderstandings to trash out. Wouldn't a true
friend do that for her? Or at least try?

He sipped more water and
noticed that Alice's eyes were closed and her head was drifting
forward towards the table. He shook his head, marvelling at the
irony—he was the last person standing. He, Eoin, the only one of
the three who could hold their drink. That was unprecedented, to
say the least.

A few dark shapes darted past
the house—bats, swooping after insects. The sky behind them was a
stubborn yellow-grey and that was as dark as it would get. They
were already on their way to morning.

“
Eoin,” Alice groaned,
her eyes still closed. “Help me to, the room. You know, my
bed.”

Eoin took the wine glass that
she was cradling like a baby and managed to stand her up. He slung
her arm over his shoulder and manoeuvred her through the house to
her room. When she caught sight of her bed she dived onto it and
crawled under the covers without even removing her sandals. She
waved and collapsed onto the pillow.

Eoin watched her for a while.
She didn't move another inch and soon was breathing deeply. He
closed the door, tiptoed past the couch where Rob was happily
snoring, and went into the other bedroom where he pulled off his
clothes and climbed the ladder to the top bunk.

He could have easily taken the
bottom one, since Rob was not leaving the sofa tonight, but he
actually preferred top bunks. They reminded him of family holidays
to Scotland back when he was ten, with him on top and Adrian
underneath reading a book by torchlight and laughing like a horse.
A ceiling right above his face made him feel safe.

He slipped between the cold
sheets and closed his eyes. The air smelled like every Swedish
summer cottage, a combination of pot-pourri, mould, and bedclothes
washed in too much fabric conditioner. His mind spun, with one
single thought lodged in it, unwilling to shift itself.

There was a smart and painfully
attractive woman in the next room who, at one time in the past, had
considered sleeping with him. And as he dwelled on that thought,
dwelled on it far too deliciously and far too long, he realised his
mind was not the only part of his body not willing to go to sleep
tonight.

He stared at the ceiling,
humming some tune he didn't know the name of, and started counting
down the great many minutes to dawn.

With his hands positioned
firmly above the covers.

Chapter
28

Rob wasn't quite sure how to
break the news to Eoin. He paced his flat, trying out different
opening lines in his head, making the proper hand-gestures to go
along with each of them, but nothing felt right. He pulled out his
mobile and considered sending him a text but that was no good
either because then Eoin might not show up at all. And he so needed
Eoin to show up, because otherwise he'd have to do it all by
himself.

He couldn’t call Milly and beg
her to see reason either. She’d just laugh in that evil way of hers
and remind Rob that they owed her a favour. If he wanted Dating
Dirt off the ground he’d have to toe the line and that was all
there was to it.

Rob scratched his head in
annoyance. He brought his pacing to a halt and surveyed the mess in
his room. It was, by his standards, an average everyday mess, but
to most other people it could be seen as a sign that he'd lost his
mind. So he rolled up his shirtsleeves and put away or hid as much
of it as possible. He also made sure to put any and all blunt
objects out of arm's reach, because when Eoin showed up and heard
the news he'd probably attempt to batter Rob to death.

“
Hi there,” Eoin said
with far too much chirpiness when he arrived twenty minutes later,
exactly on time as usual. He dug around in his shoulder bag and
produced with a flourish a black metal-and-plastic thing that he
slipped around his neck. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“Well?”

“
Deadly Eoin,” Rob said.
“It’s a camera.”

“
A camera? It’s not just
‘a camera’, it’s a Nikon D90, with twelve megapixels! Do you know
how long—”

“
Eoin, it’s great, I’m
sure ye'll both be very happy, with all those little megapixels.
I'm just not very interested in that today.”

Eoin picked up on Rob’s mood
and his enthusiasm evaporated.

“
What’s happened? Did
Milly bail on the project?”

“
No no, Milly's sorted,
she'll be done with the prototype any day now.”

“
So it's Karen
then—”

“
No man, relax, the
project's fine, everyone's beaverin' away like … little beavers.
Beavers on speed, the lot of them. Nah, it's something
else.”

“
Alright,” Eoin said. He
sat down on the corner of Rob's bed. “So what's the panic? What's
this something else?”

Rob crossed the room and leaned
against the wall in a pose so forced-relaxed that even he knew it
was ridiculous. “Well, Milly will be here in a bit and she'll show
us the latest stuff she's done. I tell ye, the database is already
in place so everything will be running like clockwork when we get
our parts done—”

“
Rob, I know all that.
What's the actual problem part?”

Rob took a deep breath before
charging into an explanation about his promise to help Milly with
some unspecified thing in exchange for working with them on the
project. He continued to the part where she'd told him that morning
what the task would be. And he finished up by adding that she'd be
there in an hour to get them both “fitted”.

“
Right,” Eoin said with a
frosty edge to his voice. “And what is she having us do
then?”

Rob found himself calculating
how quickly he could climb through the half-open window, leap the
French balcony and make a run for it.

“
The Pride Parade. It's
in a few days and Milly's involved. Obviously, being gay and all.
Well not obviously, obviously…”

“
Rob, you're rambling.
Get to the point.”

“
She'll be dressin' us up
and we'll be pullin' a chariot.”

Eoin blinked and his gaze
wandered off to the side as he processed this information. “What,
you mean dressing up like horses?”

“
Well no. We'll be a bit
more … shiny than that.”

“
What, latex and mouth
zippers, is that the idea?”

“
Basically yeah,” he
admitted. “Latex and all. The outfits are already made and she'll
just have to adjust them a bit for us.”

“
But we'll be covered up,
right? With masks?”

“
Yeah, that's what she
said.”

Eoin stood up. “Jesus Rob, you
had me worried there for a minute. But sure, I'm in, I was planning
to go and watch the parade anyway and try out the Nikon. It’ll be
an amazing test now, being right in there! Do you know this thing
can manage four and a half frames per second and—”

Rob let Eoin rattle on about
the camera as he bubbled with annoyance. This was all wrong! Eoin
should be the one not wanting to do the parade. He had a kid damn
it, and surely he cared that he might be seen by people. Where did
this cheerful it-can't-hurt attitude suddenly come from?

Instead Rob had to admit the
sour-tasting truth—that he was the one who cared about what people
thought. He'd been fretting and worrying and even cleaning for
Christ's sake—cleaning!—about something that was considered by Eoin
to be a fine day out with some jolly new friends, wearing rings in
their nipples or whatever. Just a happy stroll through Stockholm
with the whole city and its mother watching. Rob was terrified of
it, and Eoin thought it was just fine.

And that really was terribly
annoying.

It wasn't a whole hood, just a
face mask that tied around the back of the head with a zip sewn on
the front for effect. The actual latex body suits, although hell to
get on, were not that uncomfortable to wear, despite the funky
smell. But that didn't stop the four days until Saturday from being
the longest of Rob's life.

The two outfits hung on a hook
in his hall, and every time he walked past them he felt another
little jolt of irritation. He distracted himself by working
flat-out on Dating Dirt, sometimes with Eoin, occasionally with
Milly when she could spare ten minutes from her apparently
twenty-four hour schedule, but mostly by himself.

The graphics and colour schemes
and page layouts were arriving from Karen (and from Preben too, Rob
suspected) and the whole thing was starting to come together
nicely. They now had a few pages to browse and some icons to look
at and even a couple of test profiles to comment on. It was looking
mighty fine indeed.

But he was also aware they
needed to move faster. He had only four months remaining on his
unemployment insurance and after that he'd need to fix himself
another job, or else put that gimp suit to alternative money-making
uses.

Saturday morning came at the
usual breakneck speed of a day one is not looking forward to.
Before Rob was even fully awake he was standing, bag in hand and
sunglasses on head, outside the underground station of Stockholm's
decidedly more upmarket neighbourhood of Östermalm. A glance at his
watch confirmed it was exactly noon. He was reaching for a
cigarette when Eoin showed up, looking like some kind of colonial
landlord in a white polo, khaki shorts and white runners.

“
Jesus Eoin, aren't ye
ever late for anything? It's making the rest of us look bad. And
isn't it a bit early to be bringin' out the camera?”

“
Why?” Eoin said, with
one hand on his newest child. “I'll want to remember this, it's not
something that happens a lot in life, is it?”