‘I’ll drive you back to your hotel,’ he suggests as closing time approaches. ‘My car’s in a car park just round the corner.’
‘Yeah,’ she answers. ‘That’s no problem.’
The West End theatre crowds were in the midst of their daily exodus and it took another fifteen minutes to climb the serpentine path up the concrete bunker. At one stage, she gently put her hand on his, but the vehicle in front moved a yard or two, and he had to move his hand to disengage the handbrake.
Strange how odd moments live forever in your memory.
A touch of affection.
The blinding sound of yearning, of longing.
Outside the hotel, she kissed him lightly, between lips and cheek.
‘We’ll have to talk again,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
And here my imagination fails me. How do we end the story, Maxim? Does Kate pull a knife from her handbag and stab him to death, blood spurting in all directions over the wet, shiny London street? Or, in a fit of despair, knowing they have nowhere else to go from here, does Maxim gently put his fingers around Kate’s neck and strangle her? It’s what characters in his stories would do, isn’t it?
We both know too well there can be no happy ending, no desperate thrashing of bodies in hotel beds, sheets strewn to all poles, shrieks of orgasm equalling cries of death, no postcoital tenderness as fingers now explore opposite orfices with gentle care rather than brutal passion.
Tell me. Write me another ending.
Send me a mystery book where you don’t come to Seattle to camp on my doorstep, quarrel with my jealous husband and end up badly beaten up by the younger man. Where I arrive in London to see you and learn you were killed when two black armed robbers attacked the store on a Monday morning, looking for the Saturday takings.
No, you will not come to Seattle and I will not go to London.
And delete my name and address from the shop’s mail order records (and thank Thalia and the staff for the excellent service this past year).
So be it.
Kate
Wondrous Kate,
So farewell then. By the way, I never did find out what colour were your eyes.
Sadly.
Maxim
A cool morning in the American Northwest. Kate moves lazily from bedroom to bathroom, her long white nightdress trailing behind her on the wooden floor. Somehow, she senses that her state of mind is at last serene, appeased. She looks up at the small, square mirror of the medicine cabinet. She appears tired, she thinks. Her mind wanders, aimlessly. Her husband is away on a business trip; he is a financial journalist. She has the whole apartment to herself. She can’t remember the last time this happened. Today is a day off from the library. There are pale, darker shadows under her eyes, she peers closer into the cabinet mirror. Her eyes are dark brown. Soon, she and her husband (who often sleeps on the sofa at night after they have pointless rows) will move into their new house.
In London, eight hours time difference, Maxim wearily moves from bathroom to study, sighing, more flecks of grey in his daily growth of beard. The hell with it, today he doesn’t want to shave. Downstairs, the sounds of the kids readying for school. He pulls the old red Atlas out from one of the bulging shelves. America. Washington State. Oh yes, north of Oregon. Seattle, there it is. He gazes absently at the colours on the map, the blue of the Pacific, immense all the way to Russia, the brown and white of the mountains, the green of the Montana open country. Christ, it’s so far, he thinks. Far, much too far from London.
A DEEP HOLE by IAN RANKIN
I used to be a road digger, which is to say I dug up roads for a living. These days I’m a Repair Effecter for the council’s Highways Department. I still dig up roads – sorry, highways - only now it sounds better, doesn’t it? They tell me there’s some guy in an office somewhere whose job is thinking up posh names for people like me, for the rubbish collectors and street sweepers and toilet attendants. (Usually they manage to stick in the word ‘environmental’ somewhere.) This way, we’re made to feel important. Must be some job that, thinking up posh names. I wonder what job title he’s given himself. Environmental Title Coordination Executive, eh?
They call me Sam the Spade. There’s supposed to be a joke there, but I don’t get it. I got the name because after Robbie’s got to work with the pneumatic drill, I get in about things with the spade and clear out everything he’s broken up. Robbie’s called ‘The Driller Killer’. That was the name of an old horror video. I never saw it myself. I tried working with the pneumatic drill a few times. There’s more pay if you operate the drill. You become skilled rather than unskilled labour. But after fifteen seconds I could feel the fillings popping out of my teeth. Even now my spine aches in bed at night. Too much sex, the boys say. Ha ha.
Now Daintry, his title would be something like Last Hope Cash Dispensation Executive. Or, in the old parlance, a plain money lender. Nobody remembers Daintry’s first name. He shrugged it off some time back when he was a teenager, and he hasn’t been a teenager for a few years and some. He’s the guy you go to on a Friday or Saturday for a few quid to see you through the weekend. And come the following week’s dole cheque (or, if you’re one of the fortunate few, pay packet) Daintry’ll be waiting while you cash it, his hand out for the money he loaned plus a whack of interest.
While you’re only too happy to see Daintry before the weekend, you’re not so happy about him still being around after the weekend. You don’t want to pay him back, certainly not the interest. But you do, inevitably. You do pay him back. Because he’s a persistent sort of fellow with a good line in colourful threats and a ready abundance of Physical Persuasion Techniques.
I think the chief reason people didn’t like Daintry was that he never made anything of himself. I mean, he still lived on the same estate as his clients, albeit in one of the two-storey houses rather than the blocks of flats. His front garden was a jungle, his window panes filthy, and the inside of his house a thing of horror. He dressed in cheap clothes, which hung off him. He wouldn’t shave for days, his hair always needed washing… You’re getting the picture, eh? Me, when I’m not working I’m a neat and tidy sort of guy. My mum’s friends, the women she gossips with, they’re always shaking their heads and asking how come I never found myself a girl. They speak about me in the past tense like that, like I’m not going to find one now. On the contrary. I’m thirty-eight, and all my friends have split up with their wives by now. So there are more and more single women my age appearing around the estate. It’s only a question of time. Soon it’ll be Brenda’s turn. She’ll leave Harry, or he’ll kick her out. No kids, so that’s not a problem. I hear gossip that their arguments are getting louder and louder and more frequent. There are threats too, late at night after a good drink down at the club. I’m leaving you, no you’re not, yes I am, well get the hell out then, I’ll be back for my stuff, on you go, I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction, well stay if you like.
Just like a ballet, eh? Well, I think so anyway. I’ve been waiting for Brenda for a long time. I can wait a little longer. I’m certainly a more attractive prospect than Daintry. Who’d move in with him? Nobody, I can tell you. He’s a loner. No friends, just people he might drink with. He’ll sometimes buy a few drinks for a few of the harder cases, then get them to put the frighteners on some late-payer who’s either getting cocky or else talking about going to the police. Not that the police would do anything. What? Around here? If they’re not in Daintry’s pocket, they either don’t care about the place anyway or else are scared to come near. Daintry did a guy in once inside the club. A Sunday afternoon too, stabbed him in the toilets. Police came, talked to everyone in the club – nobody’d seen anything. Daintry may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard. Besides, there’s always a reason. If you haven’t crossed him, you’re none of his business… and he’d better not be any of yours.