With three fat lines inside you, you can face the music. Literally. You can feel the grin on your face already, stretching your skin over your cheekbones. You fake a yawn, just to feel the ache in your jaw.
Inside you lose Laurie almost immediately. You need a piss and begin to wade your way towards the toilets at the back of the bar. There’s a scream in your ear, loud enough to shatter your eardrum. Nadia materialises in front of you, shimmering in a silver vest. She screams your name again and flings herself at you. You stagger a little, even under her slight weight. The pills are making you unsteady.
“I thought you’d never get here! Everyone’s waiting for you! Come with me.”
She seizes your hand and tugs you along. For a fleeting moment, you wonder what it would be like to know this many people who’d be like this even if you didn’t sell them drugs. Then someone stumbles into you and the thought is gone. You follow Nadia’s pert white-jean-clad behind out into the tiny beer garden.
There is an immediate change in the atmosphere. Those who are most desperate come forward and start talking to you; the absolutely frantic come straight out with their requests. The ones better able to hide their need continue with their conversations, with just a slight pause as they clock your entrance and the occasional glance around to check that you’re still there. Those are the ones who will wait until you want to leave and then corner you by the stairs, by your car, in the toilets. You clench your jaw – you feel the need for another line already. You spot Laurie making his way over to the table and the shift of a few people from you to him. As always, there’s that momentary sting of rejection, until you remind yourself that both of you are just providing a service, that’s all.
Nadia sits down by you. The smoke from her cigarette stings your eyes; her voice rattles on in your numbed ears. You look at her, marvelling that someone so beautiful can be so empty. She hasn’t got a bad personality – she has no personality. She’s a personality sink. You can feel a little of yours leach away every time you’re near her. You always come away greyer, thinner, more insubstantial.
3.17am
The club is close and hot and steamy, an urban jungle realised. You stand by the purple painted wall, condensation running down it. You press your palm into the thin stream of moisture, relishing the brief moment of coolness. That Nike is roaring through your bloodstream, the charlie chasing it in a faint white trail – you think this as a coherent thought and start laughing, thinking of all the tiny specks of coke, all the little Charlies, running through your blood, chasing that Nike – yeah, just do it…
Oh God. You start praying to something you don’t believe in as you find yourself bent over the scummy toilet, feeling yourself empty out. There seems to be more than your stomach contents spattering onto the dirty porcelain. How can there be anything lost, when there’s nothing there in the first place? You shove that thought away, flush it away with the tug of the chain. You sit on the dirty tiled floor, throbbing head resting on your folded arms, staring at the filthy floor.
There’s a warm, heavy hand on your shoulder and you look up. Laurie’s face bends down from what seems like an impossible height.
“You alright, man?”
You can’t do much more than nod. Conscious of a little dart of shame, you haul yourself to your feet, wade towards the door. Your bed has never seemed so appealing. But you know you would just lie there, big-eyed in the darkness, feeling your heart hammer against the thin walls of your chest. Lying there, counting the beats. Counting down towards death. No way.
“I’m OK.” You reach for the bag as you say it. Laurie finally smiles, a little uncertainly. You produce an answering grin, from somewhere you can’t go too often.
“Sure?”
You wave the bag in answer and he grins again and doesn’t ask any more questions.
5.26am
The dawn light is creeping in through the windows of the club, a shy gold finger of light testing the smoky darkness inside the walls. The beat is as thunderous as ever but is beginning to sound bleary, too insistent. You bend over a sink, rinse your mouth with water, spit it back into the cracked bowl.
Back in the corner, sat on the sticky carpet, you look out over the sea of bobbing heads. As always there’s that pocket of emptiness inside you, that constant unending ache that no amount of powder can wipe away. You look at the sunlight, battling against the thickness of the dark and feel that pocket gape open a little further. One day it will open completely and you’re scared of what will come out.
There’s a figure in front of you suddenly, a white figure. It’s Nadia, in her shimmering vest and white jeans. The light behind her suddenly intensifies until she is irradiated in light. The smoke coils behind her; sunlight beams out in a circlet of fire around her head. You feel your heart leap up suddenly. She is so fierce, so splendid – for a moment you are drowning in the sight of her, in awe of her and you lean forward, yearning. There’s nothing lost that can’t be found – is that how is goes? Salvation is standing there, angel wings invisible in the darkness.
Then she moves and the light dims and she’s just Nadia again, beautiful and empty and boring. Your heart stutters, falters, limps along. It’s the same old shit, as it always has been, as it always will be. You feel a sliding trail of wetness move down your cheek, a sheet of wetness overlaying your face and realise that ache in your throat is a huge wave of tears, built up behind your eyelids. There’s one lifelong sob caught in your throat. Pressing a hand to your chest, you sigh. The morning light is out there, golden, molten, beautiful. But you – you are lost in the darkness, clawing for clarity, drowning in this sad, grey excuse for a life. That angel has flapped its wings . There’s no real sunshine, no golden morning waiting for you out there. There’s an empty house, a cold bed, a faltering heart. It’s nothing but dark and smoke for you, from here on.
~~~
Wave Goodbye
New Year had come and gone before Simon noticed that people were disappearing. Christmas had been the usual blare of tinsel glitter and family noise and he’d not been down to the beach once. So it was on his first day back on the surf that he realised the pink-haired guy who usually surfed just along the beach wasn’t there anymore.
Of course, Simon didn’t actually think he’d disappeared, not then. Despite the headlines in the local paper and the tentative interest of that intestate TV crew, the recent spate of vanishings had more or less passed him by. There were other things to worry about after all; Stacey, his lack of a job and the resulting state of his finances, his father’s failing health, the lines etching themselves ever deeper into his mother’s face. Too many things to waste time worrying about why people, young people like himself, had dropped out of sight. Had disappeared.
So, on that warm morning on the freshly washed beach, Simon just noted the absence of the guy vaguely, before paddling out to where the waves were breaking in foamy white crests. He’d caught a few and was splashing his way out again when he noticed the surfboard, garish red and yellow under the sun, its nose wedged into the sand. Only then was he aware of a small chill, a tiny finger of cold nudging his stomach, remembering the shark attack on the beach last year.