The Girl Below(64)

“Kind of ruins the effect, don’t you think?” he said, pouring out the bubbles, which smelled of freshly baked bread.

“What are we celebrating?” I asked, my voice flat because the speed had worn off.

Scott leaned in closer and put his hand on my knee. “You look tired,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

“Why?” I said, defensively. “I’m fine.”

“Suki,” he said, gently cupping my chin in his hand and forcing me to look at him. “I know you better than that.”

I took a huge gulp of champagne and said nothing. Scott put his hand around mine on the plastic flute stem, gripping me with warm fingers. With his other hand, he brushed the hair from my face and swept it behind one ear. It was so easy to respond to his touch, to forget the hurt and turmoil of the preceding months, to surrender to my longing for intimacy. Involuntarily my body leaned into his, reacting to the familiar pull of his closeness.

“We should just get married,” he said, settling back into the seat and scooping his free arm behind my back.

“What?”

“We should get married.” His words hung surreally in the air.

“You’re joking—right?”

“Why would I joke about that?” he said.

Scott’s proximity and the mellow warmth of the champagne had me intoxicated, but from five fathoms down came the voice of unwavering reason. “We can’t get married,” I said. “We’re not even going out.”

“Being married would fix that.”

His sureness threw me into turmoil. Some of the happiest times of my life had been with Scott, early in our relationship, when I’d tasted the first sweet sip of reciprocated love, but so had some of the worst, all the mornings I’d woken up to find him missing, only to have him come in a few hours later reeking of booze and lousy excuses. “Being married wouldn’t change anything,” I said.

Scott shrugged. “It might make me good.”

“I’m not marrying you to find out,” I said.

Scott laughed. “Then there’s nothing more to talk about.” He drained his champagne glass and stood up, looking at his watch. “I’m supposed to be meeting Anton in a minute.”

Following him out to the pavement, I wondered how he could offer to spend the rest of his life with me and snatch it away moments later. While he had been proposing, I’d felt sure of myself, in control, but now that he was walking away, I was overcome with wild emotions. “Wait,” I said. “You just said we should get married. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“You said you didn’t want to.”

“So that’s it—either marriage or nothing?”

“That’s it,” he said, adjusting the lapels of his jacket.

I had begun to sob, quietly at first, but then with real despair. He tried to quiet me down, to prevent a scene, and when that didn’t work he started to back away, to disown me. I clutched at his clothing, half blind from the flooding in my eyes. “That isn’t what I want,” I said, pathetically.

“What do you want from me?” he said.

The question was so insulting, so belittling—as though I didn’t even have the right to want anything from him—that I finally let go of the jacket and watched him walk away.

Seven minutes later, I pushed past the doorman at Kuzo and stumbled down the long staircase into the basement. They were having a drum ’n’ bass night and the place was decked out in camouflage netting strewn with orange emergency tape. Sweat dripped from the ceiling and huge speakers shook from the effort of spitting out bass. I fought my way past heaving shoulders and found Becky, sitting on her friend Justin’s lap in the corner by the bar. We didn’t speak to each other—we couldn’t, it was too loud—but she saw I’d been crying and put her arms around me, enveloping me in a damp hug. She pulled me into the bathroom, where we shoved our way into an empty stall and hunched over a small plastic bag of wet brown crystals. “Lick your finger,” she ordered. “This shit is too sticky to snort.”

At the bar, we demanded flaming Quaaludes, and washed them down with vodka and tequila shots, toasting, “Fuck you, Scott,” with each one. There was only eighty dollars in my account to last until next week’s payday, and I had spent it within twenty minutes. The brown speed was good and strong, but it made me thirstier than I had ever been in my life and I was relieved when we ran into Guy, a regular at the restaurant, and his mate Rupert, who had a face like a potato but was rich and liked to buy everyone drinks. I didn’t care who they were or what they looked like, I just wanted them to pay for it all and they did, round after round of shots, vodka, tequila, and schnapps. When I took speed, I could drink as much as I wanted without falling over or suffering the calamity of a hangover, and before long I felt dazzling and witty. Guy and Rupert were my new best friends, and the night opened up in front of us, a Christmas cracker of possibilities. Getting into the festive spirit, we raised our glasses to Jesus Christ and sang him happy birthday. Then I overhead Guy saying something to Rupert about Charlie and I said ugly things and flattered and lied until I got some.