The Planner(50)

‘Hello,’ she mouthed, waving her hand.

‘Hello,’ he said, waving his hand back.

She moved closer to hm. She was a talented dancer and if there were any significant defects in her appearance, then they weren’t picked up by the club lighting. He was almost a foot taller than her. She asked him something, but the music was too loud to be sure what, and she was unlikely to be interested in town planning. It was clear that English wasn’t her first language. They both smiled, but not at the same time. It was no good. He might as well have been trying to have a conversation with a zebra. He would have to give up.

‘Where’s Carl? Where’s Erica?’ said James, but Felix couldn’t hear him.

James went into another room, and then went through a door he hadn’t noticed before. He walked down a long, narrow corridor and found himself in a smaller room in which no one was dancing. Instead, people were sitting on the floor and staring at a wall on to which was being projected a series of images. It wasn’t particularly orderly, but it felt very calm. Either everyone here had taken different drugs from him, or else they had taken the same drug at different times. The images were abstract and senseless: shapes, colours and lines, the kinds of things that opticians test you with, but they didn’t hurt his eyes or his thoughts, and after a while he started to think they might even be good for him. Maybe they could heal his mind. There was music here, but it was of a different sort – gentle, melodic and, best of all, it wasn’t that loud.

James wondered if he could just stay here for the rest of the night, or even the whole weekend. It would be nice if Erica found him here, and they could see it through together. But then, to his surprise and dismay, it suddenly became apparent that he couldn’t, that he would have to go somewhere else as quickly as he could.

‘James! Fucking hell! It’s James Crawley.’

James had been assured that cocaine had no hallucinogenic properties, otherwise he may have wondered if his mind had manufactured some ghastly phantom. Ian Benson, rising star of Southwark Council’s IT Services department, was grinning at him.

‘Oh, hi Ian,’ said James. ‘Good to see you.’

‘I didn’t expect to see you here. Didn’t think this was your sort of thing.’

Was Ian on drugs as well? Probably, although he was such a haphazard creature, such a strange and obtuse personality, that it was impossible to tell. He had an unusually large head, too big for his body but not for his brain, which was known to be powerful, if often misapplied. He had a degree in physics, was in charge of the office intranet, and the only person who could be relied upon to mend James’s computer, though it was almost always him who broke it in the first place.

‘I’m with Alex,’ said Ian. ‘Alex Coleman from work. We’re on a proper night out. I don’t know where he’s gone. He’ll be chuffed to see you.’

Now that was even worse. Wasn’t the club’s pricing policy designed to exclude these kinds of berks? Alex from Comms and Ian from IT – junior local authority employees, exactly who shouldn’t be able to afford the entrance fee, and who you didn’t want to meet at two in the morning when you were feeling at your most defenceless.

‘It’s magic here, isn’t it,’ said Ian. ‘Great atmosphere. Properly buzzing.’

‘Yes,’ agreed James. ‘It’s really great. Do you come here a lot?’

‘No, mate, not often. Too expensive. But when I do, I like to really go for it.’

‘Totally,’ said James. ‘I’m with some other people, so I better go and find them. I’ll come back and see you in a minute.’

‘Cool,’ said Ian. ‘See you in a bit. I’ll be here.’

James went to the toilets, but they were a refuge from the music only. The lighting here was merciless, with the kind of luminosity normally associated with medical interventions, but the real problem was that they were so busy. The main reason for this was that it was full of women. It wasn’t that he had blundered into the wrong ones, and it wasn’t even as if they were designated as unisex. Rather, and as a planner he should have understood this, it was simply an out-of-date regulation that was being widely ignored. Women wanted to go into men’s toilets and so they did, and the men didn’t seem to mind. But James minded, for he wanted to be alone for a while, and that was impossible. All of the toilet cubicles were in medium- to long-term use, while a variety of sex and drugs crimes were being committed. Standing over a sink, the only calm he could construct came from looking deeply into himself in a mirror, but after no more than thirty seconds of this he became saturated with horror.