Willing Flesh (2 page)

She holds her arms open as Staffe comes toward her.

‘What handsome friends you have,’ says Staffe.

‘Who, Ollie? Did you get the piece?’

He shakes his head. ‘Too rich for me. I’m not made of money.’

She gives him a look, tuts. ‘Liar.’

Two

Elena Danya looks up at the Thamesbank Hotel. It could have been commissioned by Stalin, with its square bulk of grey render and its uniform steel windows. They spent
£
60 million refurbishing it a couple of years back and crowned it with two burnished domes. Now, to stay one night, without the pleasure of Elena, commands a month of her mother’s labour, back home. For an extra five hundred you could fuck lovely Elena, anywhere but the arse.

Today, in accordance with Markary’s specification, she is white, and she will be supremely gentle for her shy, mystery client. Her blonde hair is freshly washed and plumped and she pulls up her oyster fur collar against the riverside chill. She truly looks like somebody’s lovely sister cum sixties model. A young Saudi swaggers out of the revolving doors and stops dead, mid-step. He looks back at her, mouth open, as she goes into the lobby.

At the desk, she places her almost empty attaché case on the impeccable mahogany glaze of the counter and says, ‘Papers for 601.’

‘Madam,’ says the concierge, looking down at the register, where the booking has been made in pencil, paid in cash. These are charted waters.

Elena makes her way across the lobby which is the size of a tennis court. Her stilettos clip across the marble and she holds her head high, eyes upon her. A young man in a pillbox hat and high-waisted trousers leans against his luggage buggy. He looks her up and down, quite deliberately, with piercing, light eyes, almost white. Their eyes meet and she gets the impression they might know each other. His badge says ‘Gary’.

The top of her leg vibrates and Elena thrusts her hand into the special inside pocket she commissioned to the lining of her fur. She lifts the phone to her ear before it rings.

‘Where are you?’ says the voice from the phone.

‘Arra? Arra, is that you? Are you OK?’

‘Don’t sweat, Lena, honey. Are you there?’

Elena looks at Gary. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. She moves towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that give on to the river. She can see the South Bank, way across to her right, up river. Above, the sky is heavy with snow. In a hushed voice, she says, ‘I’m at the Thamesbank.’

‘You don’t like hotels. Who are you meeting?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it one of his friends? You should watch yourself.’

‘Why did you call, Arra?’

The line falls silent.

‘Arra? Are you out of it?’

‘I’ve got a bad feeling is all. I’m worried about Becx.’

‘Rebeccah? It will be Christmas soon. Everything will be different,’ says Elena, but the phone is dead. She slips it back into the special pocket of her fur, the coat’s perfect form unspoiled.

She makes her way back across the lobby and Gary has beads of sweat on his temples, as if his desire has oozed. The lift doors close and something inside her dilates. She feels ready, quickly opens the attaché case and goes into her silver pillbox for a pre-taste of the finale powder. One pinch for the left nostril and one for the right, a quick dust down; doors open. She steps out, one foot in front of the other, all the time changing herself into something that she surely is not.

The door to Room 601 is ajar and Elena presses it open, ready to smile, but the room is empty. Water gushes from beyond a closed door. She steps inside and places her attaché case on the desk by the window. Across the river, she can see the Oxo Tower. Markary took her there once. He spent a fortune on the meal and they had a wonderful evening. He made her laugh and she had lobster, then a crêpe Suzette. She felt like a film star and that night she kissed him by Westminster Bridge and he took her to the place in Cloth Fair and they made love. She thinks, how much easier it would be if she could love
him
properly, if he was
enough
.

She senses someone behind her and she dilates again, unbuttoning her fur, letting it slide to the floor, leaning forward, placing her hands on the window ledge. She hears him. Close, now.

Elena tenses her buttocks and waits for the viper zzzip behind her, waits for his hands to be on her, kneading and tugging at the angel-white silk of her whore’s finery. Markary said he was shy, so she doesn’t turn on him, plots ahead that she will make him quick but stop him, dead! in his tracks, and then she will do what she is famous for – taking both balls in her mouth as they six and nine and he snorts a line all the way down from her navel and up again. Then she will finish him and take the money.

Right now, she thinks she must be mad for wanting to go up to Suffolk, to read a book. Sometimes, she just doesn’t understand herself.

But there is so much more at stake than what she allows her willing flesh to imply.

However, this one is taking his time. She tenses her buttocks again: one; then the other; and in the window, in amongst the view of the Thames, she sees the moving watermark of her client coming towards her: lithe; or scrawny. She wonders if she should turn on him, slowly, but she waits, to feel his hands on her. She wonders if she might enjoy him. A one in twenty.

Then he takes her breath away. She feels a dull pain in her kidneys and her head whiplashes away from her, the South Bank warping, twisting out of sight as she catches her head on the corner of the radiator. She falls into the soft fur of her coat, thinks she may pass out, thinks, ‘This will hurt, in the morning.’ She wants to stand and fight him, but as he tugs at her, she feels all her strength seep onto the lush, white carpet. A seam of red. And with a last glance up, she sees a pale shadow over her and as the room goes dark, she sees a vision of her mother. She cannot move and the darkness deepens. She can’t breathe. Her face is hard up against the soft carpet and something inside her seems to die.

*

Staffe lies back on the vast, plumped bed and stares out of the low window, down at gloaming St Giles. It has rained lightly, threatening to snow, and the cobbles warp the college lights’ reflections.

The shower stops running and Sylvie emerges, dripping, holding a Mai Tai. He doesn’t know where it came from. She bends down, kisses him, and he pulls her on top of him. She rolls away, holding her Mai Tai high. She takes a long swallow, drinking it greedily, not like a lady, but because she loves the taste and looks up at the ceiling, kind of sad. He follows suit.

‘It would be nice to do nothing,’ she says.

‘If you like.’

‘But you’ve booked a table.’

‘I can cancel.’

‘You said it was your favourite place.’

‘Second favourite.’ He places a hand on the pod of fat at the top of her thigh.

Sylvie leans up on her elbow, facing Staffe and hooks a leg over his. ‘Sometimes, Will,’ she kisses him on the temple, her wet hair dripping on him, ‘you say exactly the right thing.’ She takes another sip.

‘Sometimes?’

‘We can go to the restaurant.’

‘I can compromise, you know.’

‘When it suits,’ she says, stroking his chest.

‘Let’s stay here.’ He wants to know if she and Ollie ever went out, and where and when did he watch her emerge from the shower. Was he ever bad to her? Did she acquire her taste for Mai Tai from him? Why did they stop seeing each other? He sighs.

‘What’s wrong?’ she says.

He would give her beautiful children. ‘You never say you want children.’

‘Will! What’s brought this on?’

He looks across the room to his jacket on the back of the chair by the window. The Ural ring is in the inside pocket and he wonders if this might be the right time.

‘Is this because you saw me with Ollie?’

‘You were
with
him?’

Sylvie stands up, strides across the room, puts her drink down, heavy.

‘People can see,’ he says. ‘It’s dark outside and the light’s on.’

‘Bugger them,’ she says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a fresh pair of pants. She steps into them and turns to Staffe, hands on hips. ‘Maybe we should go out for dinner.’

Staffe remembers from somewhere that Mai Tai reminds Sylvie of the sun and she drinks them when she is happy, not to get happy.

‘Why are you happy?’ says Staffe.

‘Who says I am?’

His mobile phone rings.

Sylvie looks at it and back to Staffe. ‘You’d better get that.’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t want to. Come here.’

She smiles and pads across the floor, wonky and creaking. She bounces on the bed and straddles him, her hands splayed on his chest. ‘Babies, hey Staffe? What’s come over you?’

‘Most people at least discuss it.’

‘You’re not most people.’

‘We’re not most people.’

‘I like things the way they are.’ She leans down and kisses him.

A shrill telephone rings from the bedside table.

‘Nobody knows where we are,’ she says. ‘That’s what you said.’

Three

Arabella shivers awake. Her head aches with a low, flatlining boom as she pushes herself off the mattress and draws the sheet around her. The orange teardrop shape of the streetlight through the threadbare fabric at the window signals the day is over.

She checks her phone to see if Rebeccah has called, more from hope than expectation and, right enough, the last call registering is the one she made to Elena. ‘Shit,’ she says.

‘What d’you say?’ calls a man from the next room.

Arabella clambers off the bed and goes to the window, drawing back the fabric which is nailed up to the old pelmet. She sees her own broken and pale reflection in the cracked pane and is disappointed, but she swallows deeply and tries to convince herself that this is the better life.

‘You call me?’ says Darius from the doorway.

‘I’m cold. Hold me.’

‘I’m worried, Arra.’ He is stick thin and wearing low jeans and a tracksuit top that don’t match the plums to his voice. He has a mop of bible-black, curling hair and fine, delicate bones, cherub lips.

‘What’s to worry about?’

‘I’m worried about you. Those friends of yours.’

‘What about you and one of those friends of mine?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ He takes her into the crook of his neck and holds her tight, rubbing her back, running his hands up and down along her washboard ribs. ‘You’re fading away.’

Arabella pushes him away and turns back to the window. All along the street, the windows are boarded up and the builders have packed away for the day – old toilets and doors packed high in the skip. The other night, they used hammers and chains to get the squatters from next door.

‘We can’t stay here, Arra.’

‘I know that,’ she says, making herself strong. She coughs, dry as dust.

‘You should call your father.’

‘Don’t talk to me about my father. You’re as bad as each other.’ She loses her balance, sits clumsily in the chair. ‘I sometimes think you are on his side.’

‘You’re sick, Arra. You should lay off the gear for a while.’ He sits on the floor, cross-legged, and jabs his fingers into his thick hair. ‘There’s a party up St John’s Wood.’ He looks up, forcing a smile.

She clouds over, fixes herself a line and a jug of sweet tea, says, ‘I need forty or so.’

Darius hands her three twenties.

‘You take care of me, Darry. I love that.’

‘Like I said, there’s a party. There’s more where that came from.’