Noughties (25 page)

Then she drove off.

I remained on the corner, barefoot, hands in pockets, folding under the knowledge that she would be driving all the way home through reality-bending tears.

Ella hasn’t reappeared yet. Everyone else is over at the bar, eyeing up additional drinks with looks of beautiful boredom. Jack and I are left alone. He gives me a sidelong glance, the trace of a smile recognizable beneath the hood of his pointed noise. I want to laugh. I feel extraordinarily
tense, but all I want to do is laugh. Jack’s smile grows and we both find ourselves chuckling.

“Ah mate,” he says, shoulders humming.

“Hah, I know,” I say, the laughs unwinding as I rub my eyes and stretch my arms. “Shiiiit.” I pat Jack on the shoulder. He’s the best mate I’ve got and it finally feels like we might be back as a duo. Am I going to ruin it all before the night’s over?

“Ha.” His smile gradually irons out as reality reimposes itself. “Mate.”

I’m glad to be sitting. There’s so much crap in my system now that a sudden lethargy comes over me, filling my limbs with liquid fish and chips. Standing up will create all sorts of problems.

“It’s such a relief,” he says, filling his small chest to maximum capacity and letting it out. “You know, opening up to you earlier. I’ve gotta say, I really appreciate having you here for me … They say you make one or two friends for life at uni, and I guess it’s true.”

“Mate, don’t mention it, you’ve always done the same for me.”

He thinks about this. “Thing is, I feel like I haven’t been there for Ella, despite everything. Now that I’ve spoken to you I feel like I really should be open with her. You know, tell her that I know what happened and that she shouldn’t have had to shoulder the burden this whole time—”

“If it even happened,” I interrupt. I really do not want this conversation. I wish he’d just drop it and lighten up … leave the angst to me; I’ve got it covered.

“Whatever … but, realistically, I am the only person who can share the burden of it—”

“If it even …”

Jack frowns at me.

“And if I don’t set things right now we could end up
drifting apart as a result … and then she
will
be left to deal with it all … forever! Just imagine how she must be feeling … Fuck! I feel like shit about this.”

He’s right, but it’s
me
who should be saying it. “Just listen to yourself,” I begin, to stem his drunken outpour. “I’m sorry, mate, but that’s a bit melodramatic. Nothing happened! You’re being so paranoid. And even if it did, it’s a bit late now, so just let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Do you really think?” he replies, looking puzzled.

Is it any wonder that things have been complicated between me and Ella this past year? Just look at how it’s weighing on Jack. How do you come to terms with something like that? There are no terms for the unborn … But all this unexpected stuff with Jack is making everything so much worse.

“Yes,” I say decisively. “You need to man up. Seriously, mate, just let it go.”

Ella reappears from the toilets, a gliding saint of distortions. Every context is hers, readjusting to her presence and poise: this bar, our conversation, my night. She sees the others at the bar and with a heavy heart I watch her make her way over. But contingency plays its incalculable part when she scans to her left, nothing but a whim, where Jack and I remain. Her face reads quiet alarm before softening into an unconvincing smile. She wishes I hadn’t seen her, or that she hadn’t seen us, and continues on to the bar.

This is it—the last stand in the bar before the finale; the warm-up for the crunch; the final push toward the main event:
club
. The adrenaline starts to pump; the skin begins
to prickle. I long for the baying of the gladiatorial arena … awaiting … electric. I anticipate it with all my body. This is it, pal. Now we’re
really
going somewhere.

After nailing consecutive Jägerbombs, we’re colonizing the dance floor in our farewell bid to the
via media
establishment. It’s so cramped in here, what with the bar area and the dance space merging into one, that we can’t help but grind each other, gyrating and bouncing in a frenetic sweat swap-shop. Our personal clump has its internal dynamics, like a multicelled organism in constant flux. There’s Megan and Sanjay, congealing and splitting, congealing and splitting, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes spooning. Then there’s Jack, secreting energy and pumping it around to the rest of us. He gives Ella a spin and hooks an arm over her shoulder. He seems to have taken my advice to heart and Ella looks like she’s finally starting to relax. Scott participates with pointing fingers and a pained expression of sudden self-consciousness. Need I say that we are now officially off our tits? Abi’s fucked and she’s granting me a boundless amount of attention. It’s logistically impossible not to lavish each other with intimate respect. And now that I have accepted my bona-fide hammeredom, I amiably greet her rebounding loins.

Packed this tight, all gropes are permissible … mainly because no one can see. And so I think
fuck it
when Abi reverses into me and, reaching behind, pulls me up close by the rim of my jeans. It feels nice—the undulating curvature of her sides and soft torso as I steal my hands round to the front. Things can’t get any worse right now, so why not? She dry-humps me to the beat, raising and lowering her ass over my crotch in perfect rhythm. There’s no point pretending that she can’t feel me harden, so I allow my cock free rein, stabbing it into her bum and spreading it
around as far as the dance will allow. And she isn’t pretending either when she reaches round (continuing the dance as she goes) and grabs it with devilish lust. As we bump and grind amongst the rest of the ensemble, Abi delves her exploratory mitt right inside and down my trousers. I look around, a moment of hesitation, but nevertheless breathe in and arch my back to give her easier access into my pants. She continues to face forward, away from me, while the exalted movements of the mass carry on—

A sudden memory of a college formal dinner, the last night of second year … Up on high table the Fellows and the Dons, the Principal, the Dean, the honorary guests and the oily Chaplain lay it on and spare not. Before these bluff talking heads stands a veritable fare of cheeses and truffles, figs and jellies, grapes and mints, rammed in the grand dining hall, all wood and portraiture. Their cheeks bulge like whoopee cushions, glowing fiercely jocular in the candlelight, blustering flatulent tsunamis from their mouths and other more hidden orifices. Watch these great bears as they pass the port to the left and masterfully refrain from taking the nose off the Stilton. See them in their sweat-glued tuxedos and gowns, dropping crumbs and tweaking the grapes. Oh, how smug and snug are these crazed hyenas in their after-dinner loathing, wretchedly bumbling and bellyaching their way through the evening, indulging in accepted hatreds. Oh, how they scoff those crackers and then, filled to the brim, scoff at the outside world. What a jolly occasion, all rumbles and booms; knowing jokes and greasy back slaps; gluttonous retching and snobbish assent …

Tightfisted, Abi administers staccato pumps. Her confident pole-dance has me squirming with pleasure, going all gooey in the middle, like the ground is falling away from me—

Me and Jack sat rammed against the wall, behind a long table on a long bench, farther down the hall. Another year of Oxford about to end … something worth celebrating. It was there, keeping his voice on the down-low, that he told me he loved Ella; how he was crazed for her; how he’d do anything for her, and any other cliché that needed fulfilling. His crisp tuxedo accentuated his earnestness while my more ruffled version added to my sense of being a fraud. He was so proud of the conviction of his feelings and I was frustrated by the muddiness of my own. I had loved Lucy, I thought, and I loved Ella, I think, and I was twisted into a stubborn knot of confusion by the idea of Jack making a move. He seemed glad to have confided in me … I had been chosen and trusted …

Abi pounds at it for half a song. I feel clammy in her palm and I run my fingers all over her body, squeezing her hips, sliding my hand up her top to her yielding belly—

Most of the college’s tutors were at the formal and Dylan came down the bar afterward. Everyone was already pissed from the wine and port provided with the meal, but Dylan insisted on buying the English crew a round of drinks. Ella declined the vodka and Coke he got for her and left to sit with Jack, Sanj, Scott, and Abi—I took the spare drink off his hands. I thought it was quite rude of her, but Dylan didn’t seem to mind. Like everything else, I put it down to alcohol. I remained standing to one side with Dylan, lapping up his conversation and beverages. I was always terribly impressed by whatever he had to say, as well as flattered that he would bother to say it to me. I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable though when he started ranting about Dr. Snow: “Polly’s the fittest in the faculty, isn’t she?”

“Stop winding me up! You’re such a ball breaker.” I
knew he was just trying to set me on edge, and the sadistic grin was confirmation enough.

“Hah, don’t think I don’t hear what all you hormone-addled undergrads say about her.”

“As if!” I pleaded my innocence.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. There’s not much to choose from, is there, so a young buxom tutor like Polly is bound to attract attention.” I noticed that Ella was watching us from the table. She seemed on edge, standing out from all the bustle and bodies of the constricted college bar like an aching hologram. I turned my back so that I wasn’t facing her, but I could feel her stare clawing at the back of my head.

“She’s not all that anyway. Trust me … I know!” With that Dylan excused himself and sauntered off to the bathroom. After a brace of astonished sips I rejoined the gang.

Ella was missing.

“Where’s Ella?”

“I dunno,” answered Abi. “She just disappeared.”

“Oh.” I looked to Jack for some information—I figured he’d be keeping an eye, considering what he’d told me earlier.

“She’s left her purse,” he said. “I’ll go check if she’s in her room …”

Abi is disengaging and turning to face me. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t want any of this. I think Jack has noticed something, because he’s looking at me strangely, but that’s probably just the lighting. And we seem to have caught Ella’s attention too, though clearly she doesn’t know: she almost looks happy, relieved even, and it would’ve killed her if she had seen … what was occurring in my pants just now. Sanjay jutters over and shouts in my ear—

I lagged behind Jack by thirty seconds or so, having pulled into the toilets at the foot of Ella’s staircase for a quick pit-stop. Her bedroom was three floors up and I was still fiddling with the button on my trousers when I pushed open the expectant door.

Great flashes of unreality projected onto the screen at the back of my eyes. I don’t know what I had been anticipating, but it emphatically was not this: the dancing figure, there, in the center of the room, bouncing inadequately on hot-coal tiptoes that vaguely kissed the floor with each downward plunge, straining to slacken the dressing-gown cord hanging from the light fixture, about to give. She was pulled taut, in desperate need of unspooling.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” shouted Jack, sourcing the pitch and air from some uncharted depth. I was petrified, frozen in the sickening moment. Ella groped and fumbled at the cord with sloppy hands, complicating the knot against her best efforts; her lips a gorgeous pastel blue, her eyes popping stunning violence. Jack had wrapped his arms around her hips and was lifting her from the ground so that her hair scuffed the crack-stained ceiling. She could never have killed herself, the light hanging so low that she was only ever an inch or two from the ground. Her tugs brought the fixture free from its hold, collapsing her and Jack into a knot on the floor.

Jack sat her up and held her tightly in the suddenly darkened room, fearing that she might try something else. She began to cry over his shoulder as she surrendered into his solid body, her eyes settling on me, there in the doorway. But I felt like I wasn’t there at all; as though she could see straight through me. Jack whispered desperate comforts and carefully stroked her hair …

“Ready for Filth?” says Sanj.

“Sure.”

We all watch each other as this inevitable directive does the rounds, our commotions unwinding to a full stop. I can feel my body deflate as guilt and a subtle sense of sickness set in. Abi is smiling at me.

And then we’re exit-bound, threading a wonky line through the ballistic mob.

I awake … I think. It gets harder and harder each morning. More problematic. More tiresome. I begin to stir approximately ten minutes before the alarm is due, in sickly anticipation of its blurting GBH. I cringe when it hits. A full-bodied recoil. Fuck my life.

Then (I say “then.” Really I mean forty-five minutes and a severe battle of self-will later) I’m in front of the sink and mirror. I leave more of myself in the basin each time: hairs (mainly hairs), lashes, nails, and a miscellany of scum. I curse experimental curses at the thick bush on top of my head: “Get down obnoxious cunt rug,” “I’ll cut you motherfucker,” “You’re dead mate, real dead.”

Next, I go nuclear on the toilet seat. It’s pre-coffee though, so just a few dry explosions, opening up a wind shaft between my legs and letting it sing. I play a handful of complex notes, run through some Grade 8 scales, by which time my involuntary hard-on has gone down and I can shed the contents of my bladder. I blow my nose, provoking a final roar from my gut. That taken care of, I select some choice items from a heap of clothes on the floor, scrub my teeth, and I’m ready to roll.

I open my door and there on the landing is a black pram,
like a chariot of mourning. I wait for a familiar greeting but none is forthcoming. I look left and right for signs of delivery, half expecting a man with a clipboard asking me to
please sign here
. But, of course, no one is around.

The babe is bundled up inside, his little body rising and falling under the slow measure of heavy breath. His oversized face is now shriveling into a grotesquely aged version of my own. His cheeks and eyes are puffed and his mouth obscenely crooked.