Car that sped

We meet under Marble Arch. He seems jumpy, surprises me: ‘Hold my hand?’ But it’s awkward, he has to remove his heavy leather gloves, in the process dropping the satchel he’s holding. Then we’re ducking and diving, on and off buses. ‘Where are we going?’ He shakes his head, draws me on. Through outdoor markets where the ethnic poor are always with us, and luxury shopping complexes peopled only by security guards, travelling to no purpose it seems.

‘Here.’ Down a nondescript street we turn into a hotel lobby. I notice he’s sweating; so am I, the day warm and white.

‘Soulless,’ I mutter, examining the marble interior, a luxurious front, inauthentic, like a film set. He starts, gives me a hostile look.

We’re waved toward the reception desk, where a heavily perfumed woman appraises us. ‘Do you have a room booked?’

Despite the shaggy hair, layered clothes, Ben comes from money, out of place but not intimidated by her cool tone. ‘No, meeting someone, Mr Scimmia, in Room 403. He should be expecting me.’

‘I’ll just phone up for you.’

I look at Ben, but he’s staring at the receptionist, his shoulders hunched, leaning over the desk, testing her for soft spots, chinks.

‘He’s waiting for you. Fourth floor. The lift’s just over there.’ She points, white-gloved hands, like an air hostess. It’s all gloves these days, a time of assassins.

The lift’s old-fashioned, clunky, too small, and Ben’s shoulder to shoulder with me, him and his satchel.

‘What’s in it?’ I ask, staring at the worn brown bag.

‘Cash.’ Through the pallor of sweat and tension, his momentary glow.

Weightless upward motion, terminated by the lift’s startling ping. For a second I think he wants me to get out first, then he shuffles ahead of me. Stopping before room 403, he clears his throat, gently taps on the door. On the other side, creaking, then silence. Slowly, the door swings open.

Within, two men, thickset, wearing ape-like masks. I step back, feel Ben’s hand on my arm, pulling me into the room. The door’s abruptly closed and locked.

‘Who’s this?’ They’re glaring at me, looming over me. The voices, muffled behind their masks, seem barely accustomed to speech, crunching on words like chunks of bone.

‘My partner.’

‘What happened to the other one?’

‘There was a problem.’

Both men stare at each other, their masks somehow darkening. ‘Don’t like it.’

Head dropping, ‘I needed the assistance,’ Ben says.

To either side of him, bulging, huge, the ape-faced men. I think they’re going to hit him, want to yell, can’t, my voice bagged, junked.

‘Got the money?’

Ben pats the satchel.

‘Come through to the office.’ The one who says this snickers. ‘Not you,’ he grunts. I take a step back, watch Ben pass through an open door into the bedroom with them, can make out the bed beyond, a metal case sitting open on it. Then the door is closed.

Viscerally barren, this hotel room, designed for everyone, for no one. I stare at the window, nerving myself up, then move towards it, halting once when the floor squeaks, push the limp curtain aside and look out. Beyond, grey stone, clucking pigeons, cars skimming below. Four floors up, no balcony. Hearing movement, I backtrack to my starting point, just as the door opens and the two men emerge, followed by Ben, who’s now hefting the metal suitcase.

‘Stay here ten minutes, then go,’ one of the ape-men instructs. And at me: ‘Get out the way!’

I glance at Ben. He puts a hand to his chin, rubs the stubble there, tight-faced though we’re now alone. Suddenly heavy, I support myself against a vacant wall.

‘All right?’ he mutters.

I nod.

Long minutes we wait in silence, then abruptly he grabs my arm. ‘Come on!’ Tugging the door open, he shoves me through it, one hand on my shoulder, the other gripping the suitcase. We stumble down the corridor into the lift.

The lift stops at each floor, though no one seems to be waiting. When the doors open on the foyer, Ben propels me across carpet, marble paving, and we’re out on the street. In the blurry light, I nearly step in front of a car but he pulls me back, leads me off left, staring around. After several minutes he yanks some keys from his pocket, stops by a white convertible, crunches the handle. ‘Get in,’ he says, slinging the suitcase on the rear seat.

Down gritty streets that have seen better decades we bounce, slight rain on the window. At one crossing, an old woman in purple woollen coat and hat stares at us. I can’t guess what she prophesies. We hit the motorway, zip across roundabouts, slipping from lane to lane.

‘What’s in the suitcase?’ He won’t answer, keeps looking back.

‘Are they following us? Is anyone following us?’ His tanned hand on the gearstick is trembling. ‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ In the cramped confines of the car, we’re both explosive. Craning back for the tenth time, my gaze returns to the case, while, above us, signs count down the miles to Northern towns.

‘Is anyone following us now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about that black Land Rover?’

--

My eyes open on darkness. The car has stopped, the driver door open, a draft of cool air on my face, Ben, back to me, feet on the road, smoking. He turns suddenly, stares at me as if he doesn’t know me, then half smiles. ‘Want something to eat?’ Leaning over, he pulls open the glove compartment and drops a crumpled bag into my lap. Haribo milk shakes. Kids’ food. Him at thirteen, racing through life. Sex, drugs and fruit gums. Travelling so fast. Never truly a kid, never more than one.

Tentatively chewing a sweet: ‘Who do you think’s after us? Those men?’ Ben shakes his head, reaches into his packet for another cigarette, runs his tongue nervously over chapped lips.

‘Where are we going?’

‘York.’

‘What’s in York?’

Again, nothing.

‘Close the door,’ I say, ‘I’m cold.’

Through Harlow, Stansted, Cambridge. At one point, sick of his speeding and erratic lane-shifting, ‘I’ll drive,’ I say. From then on, we take it in turns. Still fearful of being followed, he tells me to turn off the motorway for a bit, hang west. We ghost towards Rugby, travel in circles. Sometimes I drowse, sometimes my eyes are on the road. Whether emerging from sleep, or a trancelike corridor of white stripes, it is suddenly dawn, pale sun, birds soaring, green meadows to either side. Crackling to a halt on gravel, ‘Stay in the car,’ he says, reaching behind, takes the suitcase and gets out. But he only walks a short way off, dropping to his knees, opens the case. ‘Fuck!’ I watch him for a few seconds, then, sliding across the driver’s seat, unsteadily approach.

Within the open case, individually wrapped in transparent plastic bags, milky objects, pulsing. ‘God,’ I say. He turns on me fiercely, in his hand, one of the bags, its contents static, unhealthily grey. ‘Ben, what have you done?’

‘It’s fine, you’ll get paid. I told you to stay in the car.’

‘They’re ….’

‘I know.’ He stares at the grey object in his hand.

‘What’s happened to that one?’

‘It’s fine. It should be fine.’

‘It looks dead.’

‘Don’t say that!’

Back in the car, side by side, silent, the suitcase on the seat, sun on our faces, getting steadily stronger.

‘What’s in York?’

Mollusk-like, he withdraws.

‘Tell me.’

‘A man. He’ll pay anything.’

‘What does he need them for?’

‘What do you think?’ He sounds so bitter. ‘York first, then Glasgow. I can offload the rest there.’ He dips his head, can’t look at me.

‘Ben ….’

‘You can have more money. Twenty ... no, twenty-five thousand. Okay?’ I’m shaking my head. ‘But I need you.’

Past Huntingdon, Stamford, Grantham, stopping every so often to pick up petrol and pricey junk food. Now and then I catch a black Land Rover in the rear view mirror, wonder if it’s the same one, say nothing to Ben as I can’t face his paranoia.

‘What about you?’

He’s suddenly still and tight, a listening nerve.

‘What?’

‘What’s the count on you?’ He grunts, turns away. The increase and loss of light. Most of us, through compromise, showed progressive loss. We were all trying to get back to the bodies we had when we were seventeen, and the souls we were born with.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘When did you last get a scan?’

‘You don’t need to worry about that.’

I ask for the radio. He finds a station playing songs from our youth, songs about love and hope and pain, such nostalgia, packed back into the slough we thought we’d cast off years ago, till I switch it off. One time, when we were fifteen, I remember seeing him outside Camden tube station with a girl, kissing her, pressing her, and when she responded with confused misery, laying a hand on her cheek. ‘Little teenage shit,’ someone standing behind me observed to his mate.

 ‘What happens to them? The ones without …?’

He shrugs. ‘No one knows.’

‘Doesn’t anyone care?’

‘No one wants to know. It’s poor people’s babies, kids they don’t want. What difference does it make? Even with, they’re going to have bad lives.’

Sick of taking it in turns to doze, cramped and aching, in the back of the car, at the end of our second day of arbitrary navigation he suggests we rent a room for the night in Sheffield. Parking near the centre of town, the simple pleasure of stretching our legs, an ordinary couple amongst the Friday night bustle, warm smoke and alcohol fumes overflowing full clubs. Shabby, diminished, we creep amongst this loud, bright crowd, occasionally stopping someone to ask directions to the nearest hotel, but no one can help us, or even seems to understand what we want. Eventually, sick of walking, we return to the car. I huddle in the back, he lets down the front seat, puts the radio on low. Time passes to a drowsy jazz number.

--

‘I have to make a phone call.’

He shoots me a wary look. ‘You can’t.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Why? Who do you need to call?’

‘Come on, I could have sneaked out at the last service station.’

‘No. It’s not safe.’

‘Ben ….’

‘All right. Wait till we’ve made the first sale though.’

York, ghost-town, we drive straight through it, make for its residential outskirts, old, privileged mansions of yellow stone, turn into the drive of a white, recent building quite at odds with its surroundings, one huge, double-glazed window a swimming pool of reflections, an eye. He turns off the ignition and for a few minutes we sit in the car, him humming intermittently. He seems to be gathering himself to say something, golden fuzz on his angular face, the glint of an ear-ring. Beyond him, the convertible in which we sit – trust him to pick such an ostentatious car – reflected in the window. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

The front door is pulled open by a black-haired man, youthful, but aesthetically wrong, his face bogus, its texture too hard, a mask behind which his eyes hotly peer. ‘Finally. You’ve got the …?’ He flicks back his fringe as Ben, suitcase in hand, brushes past him.

Modern art on the walls, well-stocked bookcases, a young woman, apparently displaced by our arrival, disappears upstairs. In the spacious living room, Ben sets the suitcase on a French table and turns to face his client. ‘Got the money?’ The man nods, walks over and seats himself behind a desk, pulls open a drawer while Ben watches him. He hesitates, leaving the drawer open, picks up a bag of tobacco and some rizlas, starts rolling himself a thin cigarette.

‘Sssame price?’ He stutters a little and I’m absorbed by his face, rubbery in this light, as if secured by an elastic band. Ben regards him speculatively. ‘Yeah.’

‘How many can I have?’

Ben shrugs. ‘How many are you good for?’

The man’s hot eyes flick down to the open drawer. Beneath the synthetic flesh I sense a gathering of will. All of a sudden, he thrusts his hand into the drawer, and lifts out a gun. ‘All of them?’

My heart dives. The gun’s aimed at Ben. I feel deadly, displaced, like I’m having an out-of-body experience, and there’s not enough air in the room for all of us. Standing stock still, as if motionlessness will save me, I find myself staring at Ben. He seems oddly relaxed, folds his arms in front of him. ‘Harry, that’s a cigarette lighter.’

Now glaring at Ben, ‘Bam!’ the man says, pulling the trigger, and I flinch as a small tongue of flame creeps out of the nozzle. His eyes are huge, portholes on an ugly secret, and I suddenly know all about him, his little, privileged life.

‘I’ll take three,’ he says.

Back in the car, late afternoon sunshine waning, the world looks old, a discarded toy, its plastic parts gathering dust. On the streets, only the pale, strained faces of the elderly, a scatter of leaves, blue plastic bags. I notice the window screen’s dappled with grime.

‘What was wrong with him?’

‘First transplant never stabilised.’

‘What will happen to him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Does anybody?’

Ben considers this. ‘Maybe some of the scientists that did the original work. They were trying this stuff out on apes before they used it on humans.’ I remember the hotel, the creatures that sold us the case.

‘How did you know it was a cigarette lighter?’

Ben lets out a short laugh. ‘Harry’s got a reputation.’

‘What if it had been a real gun?’

‘You saw the state he was in. He couldn’t afford it.’

We pick up the A64, follow signs for Scarborough. ‘Let’s spend the night on the beach,’ he says.

Now the first sale’s in the bag, he seems more relaxed, stops the car to let me make my phone call, jokes about our youth, the clubs we used to sneak into with fake ID. I remember the gin and the longing.

‘Were you happy then?’

‘Yeah,’ he says brightly, ‘weren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

He turns to me, one hand on the wheel. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he says.

We park in sight of the sea, tramp down towards the coast line, a bare strand, boundless as we wish our souls to be. Ben has set my memory going and these words return from the past, loop in my mind as we cross the coarse sand and the water blackens. Though it’s late and chilly, Ben wants to bathe, presses me to join him, eventually strips to his boxers and, on his own, with lusty whoops, runs down to splash about in the sea. Returning to stand over me, teeth chattering, coat wrapped round his shoulders, his body’s toned, must be some discipline in him to keep it that way, or perhaps he naturally stays trim despite the passing of the years. Trust Ben to have that kind of luck. ‘Cold,’ he’s saying, shaking his head like a good-natured dog, invigorated yet faded, smiling down at me.

Still damp, he clambers back into his clothes while I look on. ‘That’s enough of the beach,’ he says, ‘let’s find a room.’ Flush with the cash from his recent sale, we check in to a seaside hotel, book a luxury suite, and at the sight of the vast double bed and Jacuzzi I’m tempted to suspend reality, daydream we’re lovers on the run. We dine in the hotel restaurant on oysters and champagne, light-headed stumble back to our room and I can see what he expects, wonder if I’ll go through with it this once, this thing I thought I wanted. He slips his shirt off, his skin golden under the bulb’s shine, comes to lay a hand on my shoulder, but I shrug him off and he retreats, mouth opening and closing, dumb, parrot-like. He gets into bed, I strip to underclothes, fold my jeans over the back of a chair, walking into the living area, check the door’s unlocked, walk back into the bedroom, get into bed and switch off the table lamp, then lie awake, back to him, staring out the window at the hard moonlight.

@ianjmclachlan