Hard Light (3 page)

He grimaced. “It's wasted on the kids who come here. You don't keep a jukebox in a pub. Or gastropub,” he added bitterly. I couldn't get a handle on his accent—something northern, maybe. “Cost me the Earth. Couldn't afford it now.”

“No shit.” I hesitated. “I'm a friend of Quinn O'Boyle's.”

“No shit,” he said, his voice expressionless, and walked to the end of the bar.

I'd lost him. I tried to think of a comeback that might buy me a second chance. Before I could say anything, he returned with a bottle of mineral water, opened it, and took a swig. “So how's Quinn?”

“Pretty good.” True enough, considering he'd been pistol-whipped in the Icelandic highlands and now had a permanent grin carved into his face, along with the tribal tattoos he'd gotten in prison.

“You're American.” I nodded. “At first I thought you were the other one. The Swedish chick.”

“That junkie? Fuck no.”

“Quinn here with you?”

“Not yet.” I took a deep breath. “He's in Reykjavík. I'm supposed to meet him here in the next few days. Well, not here—your old pub in Brixton. The Gambrel.”

“That was never my pub.” Derek drank what remained of the mineral water in one long swallow. His hand tightened around the plastic bottle, crumpling it. “I think you need to find another place to meet up.”

He dropped the crushed bottle onto the counter and held my gaze, his eyes the color of the kind of single malt I could never afford. Chuck Berry's guitar faded into near silence. There was an almost imperceptible click and whir as the Seeburg's Select-O-Matic once again slid back and forth, the tonearm replacing one 45 and withdrawing another.

Crackle of scratched vinyl as the needle hopped across a damaged groove and found its sweet spot. The hairs on my neck rose as an electric guitar soared into the sonic tsunami of Steve Hunter's intro to the live version of “Sweet Jane.”

Derek's mouth parted. His eyes focused on something just above my head, something I knew wasn't there. We listened without speaking, until the guitar resolved into four familiar cords and the crowd's applause surrendered to Lou Reed's voice.

“Still gets me every time.” Derek looked at me as though trying to remember where I'd come from. “What's your name again?”

“Cass.”

“Cass.” He got himself another mineral water, returned, and lifted the plastic bottle to me. “To Lou.”

“To Lou.”

Neither of us spoke until the song ended.

“That's how me and Quinn met,” I said at last. “I went to the record store to buy
Rock 'n' Roll Animal
when it first came out. There was only one copy, and this skinny red-haired kid already has it in his hands. I couldn't talk him out of buying it, but he invited me back to his place and we listened to it for about three hours, nonstop, until his father threw me out.” I downed my Jack Daniels. “I never knew there was a single of the live ‘Sweet Jane.'”

“Only in the UK. 1974. Quinn found it—that's his copy.” Derek inclined his head toward the Seeburg. “Everything on there came from him; he tricked it up for me when I bought it. Kept it at my flat till I found a proper place for it.”

“You give him a playlist?”

“No. Quinn knows my taste. Always has.”

Cold air blasted as the door opened and a group stumbled in, underdressed girls and a trio of boys with red-chapped faces.

“Excuse me.” Derek turned to greet his customers. “What can I get for you gentlemen?”

Men
was pushing it: Back home, none of them would've been legal. Not that I cared. As “Sweet Jane” segued into “Telstar,” I looked down and saw a full pint in front of me. I nodded thanks to Derek, paid up, and found a table in the back.

The place was starting to fill up. Someone nabbed the empty chair across from me and dragged it to another table. I sipped my beer, eking it out as it grew warm as blood. Derek seemed to be the only one holding down the place. No one came to ask me if I wanted another drink. No one cleared my table. I stayed put.

After a while, a buzz-cut woman in her forties slid alongside Derek to work the bar. The jukebox had long since fallen silent, replaced by a rising din of conversation and the incessant, witless birdsong of mobile phones. The air smelled like sex and weed and drugstore perfume. Alcohol boosted the Focalin in my bloodstream: For a few minutes I zoned out.

When I looked up again, the buzz-cut woman was alone behind the bar. Derek stood feeding coins into the Seeburg. An old Dusty Springfield song came on. He crossed the room, extended one arm into a knot of drinkers, and, as if by magic, snagged an empty chair and pulled it toward me.

“Okay if I join you?”

I nodded. He sat and withdrew two bottles of mineral water from the pockets of his donkey jacket, slid one across the table to me, popped the other, and drank from it with his eyes closed. A raised scar traced his jaw like the outline of a hinge. I glanced down at the table, and noticed the ring finger of his right hand had been severed at the second joint.

After a minute, he opened his eyes. Dusty Springfield gave way to Amy Winehouse. Derek shook his head.

“These kids can't figure out how to work a fucking jukebox. I used to show them, but they'd just play the same goddamned song over and over. ‘Rehab.' I had to take it off.” He took a sip of water, gestured at my unopened bottle. “You should have some of that. Stay hydrated. You don't want them to find traces of blood in your alcohol stream.”

“No danger of that,” I said. But I opened the bottle and swallowed a mouthful.

Derek cocked his head. “How do you know Quinn again?”

“High school. I used to photograph him.”

“You still a photographer? That's a dying breed.” He laughed. “Make that ‘dead.' You and that jukebox.”

“How do you know Quinn?”

“We used to work together.”

“At the Gambrel?”

“No.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Quinn didn't do business there. He had more sense than I did. Back then, anyway.” He stared at the Seeburg, its blue glare throwing the planes of his face into stark relief. “What were you doing in Reykjavík?”

“Just killing time.”

“Nothing else?” An eyetooth flashed as he smiled, but his amber gaze remained cold. He pointed at the barely healed starburst beside my right eye. “That where you got that scar?”

“No.”

“What about that?” He touched the fresh gash in my cheek, and I flinched.

“A bird attacked me in Iceland,” I said. “A raven.”

I thought he'd laugh. Instead he continued to stare at me. After a minute, he said, “You run with a rough crowd, Cass. But I guess you're aware of that. You know it's risky for Quinn to try to enter the UK?”

I nodded. I knew Quinn was afraid of being deported back to the U.S., but I'd avoided asking why. He had a laundry list that began with knocking off a pharmacy when we were kids. Somehow, I'd let desire for him and my own fear of remaining in Reykjavík override the obvious fact that if Quinn left Iceland, he was fucked. Quinn was a lot of things; stupid wasn't one of them.

I didn't want to think about the conclusion to this line of thought—that if Quinn didn't show up in London in the next few days, I was fucked, too.

I finished the dregs of my beer and stared into the empty glass. “Yeah. But I think he worked something out.”

“That would be quite a feat. Where you staying?”

I shrugged. “Can you recommend someplace?”

“Around here? Holiday Inn, but it's expensive.”

“How much?”

“Dunno. Three hundred quid?”

“For a fucking Holiday Inn?”

“This is London.”

“Yeah, I get that part.”

I looked away. At the bar, a pretty blond girl wearing polka-dot stockings and a fuzzy teddy bear hat leaned into a guy whose hair bore an unfortunate allegiance to LeBon-era Duran Duran. “Who's playing at the Electric Ballroom?”

Derek yawned. “Don't know. Hey, Kerry!”

“Hey, what?” the buzz-cut bartender shot back.

“Who's at the Electric Ballroom?”

Kerry inclined her head to the blond girl, mouthed a question then yelled, “Rapture of Lulu.”

Derek turned to me. “There you are: Rapture of Lulu.”

“Who the hell is Lulu?”

“No idea. I'm still trying to figure out which one is Baby Spice.” He gulped down the rest of his water and stood. “Let me know if you hear from Quinn. He owes me money.”

You and fifty other people,
I thought, but said nothing.

 

5

I sat and brooded while the Seeburg pumped out a steady stream of rock and roll, Northern soul, and girl groups. Derek had pushed all the right buttons. The fact that Quinn had put those buttons there in the first place didn't make me feel any better. Eventually the jukebox fell silent. I saw Derek walk over to pull the plug, then return to the bar counter. I decided to get another drink. Someone grabbed my seat before I took a single step.

I ordered another shot. Derek pushed the whiskey across the counter to me, his face impassive. I paid for it and wandered to an empty patch of wall by the front door. The blond girl and her unfortunately coiffed boyfriend stood a few feet away from me, texting furiously. I never heard either one of them say a word to the other.

I sipped my whiskey and tried to come up with a game plan. I was unwilling to stay in a Holiday Inn on principle, especially if it cost five hundred bucks a night. I surveyed the room for someone I might hook up with. Derek was out, though the buzz-cut woman was a possibility. The three fuzzy folkies had left long ago. Everyone else looked half my age and nowhere near drunk enough to bring me home.

I focused on a nearby table, where a girl sat, texting, while the guys she was with stared at the game on the flatscreen TV. I edged close enough to read over the girl's shoulder.

worlds end?

k

cya

She set down her mobile and started to tug a voluminous scarf around her face. Beside her, a bearded guy gazed transfixed at the game, his phone beside a martini glass.

My fingers grazed the edge of the table: Neither the bearded guy nor the girl blinked as I slid his phone over several inches, then moved the girl's to where his had been. I quickly feigned interest in my bag as the girl tucked the end of her scarf into her jacket, grabbed the wrong mobile, and hurried outside. A minute later the man stood, pocketing the other phone, and pushed his way through the crowd to the bar.

I finished my Jack Daniels and dropped the empty shotglass into my pocket. At the bar, the man with the wrong mobile suddenly turned and raced back to the table.

“You see my phone?” His friends shook their heads. “Fuck!”

Cursing, he raced outside. As he did, a white girl in a vast buffalo plaid coat walked in, balancing precariously on red patent-leather platform boots. Slate-green eyes, bleached-out hair twisted into an elaborately teased bouffant that added six inches to her height. Subtract the blond wig and Arthur Kane footwear, and she'd barely scrape five feet.

The guy beside her wore a caramel-colored overcoat, a brown fedora, and thick-soled brothel creepers: a look undercut by petulant, pretty-boy features starting to slacken with age and alcohol, as well as the fact that the collar of his expensive coat was spattered with vomit. He appeared about thirty, the girl a decade younger.

“Look.” One of the guys at the table nudged his mate, who smiled and angled his mobile to take a picture. Several other people did the same; the rest regarded the girl with mild interest, trying to determine if she was someone they should recognize. The girl in the buffalo plaid coat grinned and tottered toward the bar, her scowling boyfriend hurrying to catch up.

I glanced down at the guy who'd taken the first picture. His mobile's screen displayed a blurred image that looked like a thumb with blond hair.

“So is that Lulu?” I asked him.

The guy shook his head. “That's Krishna Morgenthal—she sings at some of the clubs around here, does a bit of backup when she can.”

“Is she famous?”

“Not really. In Camden, maybe. Brilliant voice.”

He headed for the bar, where a small crowd had gathered to take photos or buy Krishna Morgenthal a drink. I ambled over to a newly vacated table covered with pint glasses, several bags of chips, and a glass of tawny liquid. I nabbed a bag of chips and the whiskey, and sloped off to the back of the room.

The whiskey turned out to be Jameson—on ice, which suggested it'd been ordered by someone who also didn't know how to operate a jukebox. I drank it anyway, and wolfed down the prawn and bacon–flavored crisps. They were as disgusting as they sound.

Behind the bar, Derek yelled at a kid to back the fuck off. I settled in to watch the show, trying to psych myself up for a night at the Holiday Inn. I hadn't factored in that closing time came much earlier here than in New York. On a weeknight, anyway.

“Time!” bellowed Derek, to an answering chorus of curses and pleading.

“Give us a song, Krish!”

“Don't be a cunt, Derek!”

“Fuck off,” Derek retorted.

I nursed my Jameson and stayed put. I've been thrown out of enough places to know last call doesn't really arrive until the cops do.

Despite their complaints, within ten minutes the Banshee's customers had all left without a fight. I drained what was left of the Jameson and started for the door, where the buzz-cut Kerry waited for me to leave so she could lock up. I shot a backward glance at the room.

I wasn't quite last: Krishna Morgenthal and her dour boyfriend stood talking to Derek behind the bar. When Derek saw me, he lifted his chin and called out, “Kerry. She can stay.”

Kerry nodded, closed the front door and bolted it, then switched off the outside lights and most of the indoor ones. I watched her disappear through a door in back, and approached the bar.