He laughed and told her she could make twice that, easy, in just a few hours a night and all she had to do was sip orange juice and make small talk in that baby-doll voice of hers, and it was all completely legal. Then he asked her if she was interested.
EVENING:
His name is Brian and he treats Angel differently than anyone has treated her in a long time. He buys her a cup of coffee in a cafe, he talks to her. He asks her questions, he wants to know everything about her. He offers to buy her dinner, but all Angel wants is a bag of crisps and she can’t even finish those. He eats and she watches.
When the time comes, he gets her what she needs. He follows her into her squalid room without comment, and at the sight of the needle, he averts his eyes. He raises a hand to his face for just a moment, and for that moment, Angel allows herself to imagine that he is brushing away a tear.
She stabs herself in the thigh. Squeezes. Angel leans back on the mattress, veins flowing with golden honey. Warm – the room is so warm. Alive with Brian‘s presence.
She feels Brian breathing, feels the beating of his heart. The air around him crackles with electricity; she can see the sparks, feel them explode against her skin. Even a blink of the man’s eyelids sends shock waves across the room, making Angel shudder.
‘We should be going,’ Brian said, looking at his watch.
NIGHT:
Two men walked down a Soho street, past nightclubs and restaurants, past neon signs promising food and liquor. But they’d had their fill of both and now they were looking for something more. Something that smelled of sweat and cheap perfume.
They turned down a narrow, badly-lit passage. A woman called to them from a doorway – the only doorway in that particular passage – and after a moment’s discussion, the men headed down a steep flight of steps. The ceiling and walls above the stairway were painted a garish shade of yellow with the words ‘Exotic Women’ and ‘Live Strip’ printed at intervals, in large black letters. A redhead in black hotpants sat behind a counter at the bottom, smoking a cigarette. ‘You here for the show? Three pounds each.’
The men paid her and went inside, through a beaded archway.
A dark-haired woman in a short red dress greeted them with, ‘Have a seat, the show will start in just a few minutes, aw’right?’ Beside her stood the bouncer: a shaven-headed giant in a tight black suit. He crossed his arms and grunted.
The men sat at a candle-lit table, noting the tiny stage in one corner, dark and empty, and the pale-faced man with thinning hair who stood behind the bar, slicing a lemon. There didn’t seem to be any other customers.
A girl approached them for their drink orders. She was small and painfully thin, dressed in pink. She didn’t look a day over fifteen. Her long hair hung from a centre-parting, nearly obscuring her face. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she breathed in a little-girl, Marilyn-Monroe sexy voice. ‘What can I get you?’
She came back with two beers and something that looked like a glass of orange juice. She placed the drinks on the table and sat down, uninvited. The men exchanged amused glances. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked them.
‘Germany,’ they replied in unison, heavily accented.
‘Are you here on holiday? Or on business?’
They told her they were in London on business. She asked a series of polite, general questions. The men answered distractedly, looking towards the empty stage.
A woman, tall and angular, with short-cropped hair bleached almost white and dark red fingernails like talons, appeared out of the shadows, brandishing a square of white cardboard. ‘Pardon me, gentlemen, but I have to collect for the drinks.’
They nodded and reached for their wallets.
‘That’s two hundred and thirty-seven pounds, please.’
‘What?’ the Germans shouted in unison.
‘Two hundred and thirty-seven pounds,’ the woman repeated, adding firmly, ‘You’ll have to pay that now. We collect by the round.’
‘But this is crazy!’ one of the Germans shouted. ‘We have only two beers.’
The giant in black moved closer; he was at least six foot six and must have weighed nearly twenty stone. ‘You raising your voice to the lady?’
‘There is some mistake,’ said the other German.
‘No mistake.’ The woman held the cardboard square up to the flickering light of the candle. It was a printed list of prices, and it was the first time that either man had seen it. ‘You had two low-alcohol lagers, at fifteen pounds each.’ She tapped the appropriate line on the menu. ‘That’s thirty pounds. Plus one Satin Duvet,’ she tapped again, further down, ‘at fifty-two pounds fifty…’
‘Wait!’ one of the Germans interrupted. ‘What is this Satin Duvet?’
She raised one eyebrow. ‘That’s the lady’s drink.’ She made a point of emphasizing the word ‘lady’.
‘But we didn’t order…’
‘You pay for the lady’s drink,’ the giant informed them, cracking his knuckles.
‘Plus one hundred and twenty pounds hostess fee,’ the woman continued briskly, tapping a line of small print across the bottom.
‘But we never asked…’
‘This is a hostess bar,’ she explained in a voice of patient indulgence, as if she was talking to a pair of not-too-bright children. ‘It says so quite clearly,’ she tapped the cardboard menu again, ‘here. And then there’s VAT. Altogether it comes to two hundred thirty-seven ninety-four, but I’m dropping the ninety-four p.’ She spread her hands in a gesture of magnanimity, smiling sweetly. ‘Now you do have enough money, gentlemen, don’t you?’
‘We’re not paying.’
The bouncer shook his head. ‘You’re paying,’ he told them. ‘Turn out your fucking pockets.’
Angel stood up and moved away. Brian appeared from a room behind the stage.
The Germans remained defiant. ‘We’ll call the police.’
‘You won’t call nobody if you don’t get out of here alive,’ the bouncer reminded them.
The Germans looked up at the giant standing over them, looked at Brian looming behind him, the bartender moving in their direction. ‘OK, OK,’ one finally said, ‘I have a Visa card.’
Brian shook his head. ‘No cards. Cash.’
The Germans paid and left, shouting threats, as a party of seven Japanese descended the stairs, chattering excitedly. ‘Three pounds each,’ the redhead told them.
It was late and the dark-haired woman in the red dress was taking her turn at the counter while the redhead sat with two men at a table, sipping orange juice and assuring them that the show would start in just a few minutes.
Angel was in the office with Brian. He opened his wallet and she saw that it was crammed with notes, more money than she had ever seen in her life. He counted out two hundred pounds, and handed it to her. He muttered that they’d be closing soon, and she didn’t have to stick around if she didn’t want to. She told him she wanted to stay a while longer, it wasn’t like she had any other plans. He shrugged and handed her an empty glass coffee pot. ‘If you want to hang around, then make yourself useful.’ Angel hesitated, staring at the pot in her hand. ‘Just fill it with water,’ he told her.
Angel giggled. ‘Oh yeah. Sure.’
‘Ta,’ Brian said a minute later. Then he smiled at her, and Angel felt her mind begin to spin. She started thinking, ‘What if?’
What if someone – someone with a smile like Brian’s – wrapped her in his arms and never let go. Would it be enough to drive the demons out of her head? Would it be enough to make her forget all the things she needed so desperately to forget, the things that drove her to seek oblivion from the jab of a needle. She looked into Brian’s eyes and imagined herself sinking into a different kind of oblivion.