She bends her head and shakes it, and her beautiful hair moves like a silky curtain around her face. ‘No, I’m with … friends. I have to go back to our table.’
I take my phone out of my pocket. ‘What’s your phone number?’
She lifts her head and tells it to me and I key her number into my phone. Not taking my eyes off her, I press the call button. A bird starts chirping from inside her bag.
‘Now you have my number too,’ I tell her.
‘Yes, now I have your number,’ she says slowly.
The moment is strange, surreal even. Full of undercurrents and deeper meanings, it doesn’t belong in the middle of a club relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh. All the clever words and witty remarks have deserted me. I don’t want to let her go.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I ignore it. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.
She nods slowly. ‘Yeah, maybe you will.’
For some odd reason her voice is sad. As if this promise has been made before and never kept, even though I cannot even imagine a scenario where a man takes her number and does not call. She is impossibly intriguing. I resist the temptation to reassure her that I will call.
‘Well, then. Nice to have met you,’ she says and, turning, begins to walk away.
‘Snow,’ I call.
She turns around, one charcoal eyebrow raised.
‘I will call you,’ I promise. It has never happened to me before. I have never cared to reassure anybody that I will call. If I felt like calling the next day, I called. If I didn’t, well … c’est la fucking vie.
One side of her mouth lifts, and then she turns away and carries on in her path, again an incorruptible fairy tale creature. When she disappears from my sight I can’t stop smiling. I take a triumphant sip of my drink before tilting my body slightly so I have a view of her table.
And that moment is like that video of John Newman’s track, ‘Love Me Again’. Do you know it? Where a boy and a girl meet in a dreary club. They escape from her wannabe gangster boyfriend and run out of the back doors. Hand in hand, full of hope and excitement, thinking they have outrun the bad guys, they get out of a narrow alleyway and dash straight into an oncoming vehicle. The video ends abruptly on a black screen.
I guess you are supposed to infer that they die.
Snow’s table is Lenny the Gent’s table.
The fairy tale takes an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Lenny ‘the Gent’ is not the wannabe variety but a real gangster. What they used to call a mobster. They call him the Gent because he is always so fucking polite. He would say ‘please’ or ‘do you mind’ before he hacked off your face. The Gent is surrounded by beautiful, giggling women vying for his attention, but he gazes at Snow’s approach with the kind of hunger that makes me sick to my stomach.
Fucking hell. Straight into an oncoming vehicle!
Snow is Lenny’s woman.
When she reaches his table, he stretches out his hand. For a second she hesitates then she opens her bag and gives him her phone. He pockets it, and taking another phone out of his pocket gives that to her. She puts it into her bag and sits down beside him, and he places his hand on her thigh.
I try to make out her expression, but her face is as smooth as a statue. Like a man in a daze I start walking toward her. My mind is blank. Fortunately, I collide with a waitress.
‘Sorry. It was my fault,’ she apologizes.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell her, my hypnotic trance broken.
I stop where I am standing and look at Snow. She is staring vacantly into her drink, her numb face the perfect frame for her empty eyes. The emptiness is total. I recognize its significance instantly. Her frozen body and expression are an instinct to survive. She has locked herself away in a place where she cannot be corrupted by the baseness and degradation around her.
A nearly naked woman is writhing her flesh close to Lenny the Gent’s face, but, like mine, his eyes are glued on Snow.
There is only one way this thing is going to end. Badly. But I don’t care. I have always gone where angels fear to tread. The blood expands in the veins of my forearms.
Snow will be mine.
The second mouse will get the cheese.
Three
SNOW
Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which you must see the world.
—Lucien Bernard Shaw
‘Are you ready to go?’ Lenny asks. As if it is ever my decision to stay or go.
I turn my head in his direction and feel like a deer that has stepped out of cover. It stops and stands, motionless, nose to the air, watching, smelling, ready to flee at the least sound. A million years of evolution has taught it how to sniff out danger.
He looks back at me, his eyes totally blank. It is the thing that I find most unnerving about him: how dead his eyes can be at certain moments. Then he smiles and his face fills with human emotions and I forget that momentary disquiet.
‘Yes, I’m ready to go,’ I reply.
‘I’ll be coming up with you tonight,’ he says, watching me for my reaction.
I become cold inside. The deer would have bolted, but I don’t. My face cracks into a smile. ‘Of course,’ I say quietly.
He stands and holds out his hand. I take it. At the next two tables men are standing up—his minders. We walk out of the club followed by them.
What a mistake it was to talk to that impossibly gorgeous man, to flirt with him and pretend that I could ever go out with one such as him. Shane. Beautiful name. But it was stupid and careless to walk back with some of his warmth still wrapped around my wrist and his cocky smile lighting my eyes.
Lenny knew straight away. He sees everything. Eyes like a hawk. I am his possession. He doesn’t use me too often, usually twice a week, sometimes thrice, but I am his, just as much as the hammock he uses only in the summer is. He will sleep with me tonight because he wants to exercise that ownership over my body.
He is actually furious.
We get into the rear of his Rolls-Royce and he leans back and runs his hand along my inner thigh. I inhale sharply. It is an involuntary gesture and his hand freezes. My gaze swings nervously to his eyes. With a cold, hard smile on his face, he moves his hand relentlessly upwards.
I suppose it is my fault, really. If I had not allowed the other man into my head. If I had not come back thinking of fireflies. If I had just been a little better hidden, he would not be doing this now.
‘Open your legs,’ he instructs.
I part them slightly. His fingers pull away the material of my panties and brush at the seam of my core. I flinch inwardly. Outwardly, my face is calm. I stare straight ahead as if nothing is happening.
‘Dry,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re always so damn dry.’
I swallow hard. ‘I have lubricant at home.’ My voice sounds suddenly panicked. I don’t know where the instinctive horror of him comes from. He has never hurt me—at least, not yet. Perhaps, the revulsion comes from the frightening emptiness in his eyes, or the smooth hairless skin on his back. Like a reptile.
‘Hmmm.’ He takes his hand away and I close my legs with relief.
The car stops outside my building and we get out. In the lift, I know he is watching me steadily, but I cannot look at him. Here the lights are too bright, God knows what he will see. The lift doors open and we step out onto plush maroon carpet. We walk down the corridor and he opens the door with his own key. It is a small one-bedroom apartment. I live here. He pays the rent and all the bills.
I put my purse on the sideboard and head for the little table that serves as my bar. If I’m going to have sex I will need a very stiff drink.
‘Would you like a nightcap?’ I ask politely.
‘Yeah, pour me whatever you’re having.’
I require a drink where I can put lots of alcohol into the mix and no one will be the wiser. ‘I’m having vodka and orange juice,’ I throw over my shoulder.
‘That’ll do me,’ he says, and slumps onto the sofa.
I’ve noticed recently that he’s changing right before my eyes. His moods are becoming darker and more frequent. With my back to him I prepare our drinks. Mine is three-quarters vodka and a quarter orange juice. I carry our drinks over to the sofa and hand him his. I sit next to him and take a gulp. Heavens, it is strong.
‘I have some of your favorite caviar. I’ll go and get it,’ I say, attempting to stand.
His hand shoots out and clamps around my wrist. My shocked eyes fly to his face.
His thin, cruel mouth twitches. ‘I’m not hungry … for that.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I mumble anxiously, and take another gulp of my drink. I steal a glance at him and he is watching me with the kind of coldness that chills me to the bone.
‘Will you need to finish all of that before you can do anything?’ he asks, lighting a cigarette.
I nod and push the ashtray toward him.
He looks at me through swirls of smoke. ‘Go on then. Fucking finish half a bottle of vodka before I fuck you,’ he says. His words are vicious, but his tone excruciatingly courteous.
So I do. I drink the whole thing and it seeps into my limbs and deadens them. My head gets fucked and I no longer care about anything. I put the glass down carefully and look at him expressionlessly. ‘I’m ready,’ I tell him.
He stands and, pulling me up, carries my limp body to the bedroom. As bedrooms go it is unremarkable. All the furniture came with the apartment and I have not added anything to it. But it is clean. Very clean. I couldn’t bear it if it was not.