Marla reached out and unscrewed the bottle cap, instantly feeling intoxicated at the heady smell of the anise-laden spirit. A flash of that dirty cellar with its stained mattress, broken toys and tattered porno magazines pierced her brain, banishing all hope of sweetness. What the hell, she needed a drink—more than ever now. She poured a measure of the clear liquid into Jessie’s glass.
“Any mixer for this?”
Jessie’s lips curled slyly as she held out her glass. She clearly wanted it filled to the top. “Marla, please. After all we’ve been through together don’t go all pussy on me now.”
Marla sighed heavily and topped up Jessie’s glass, then filled her own.
“So… what do we drink to?”
“To the Big House. And to getting off this damn rock in one piece I guess,” Jessie said after a brief moment’s thought.
Good enough for me, nodded Marla as they each expelled a breath and gulped back their drinks. Marla coughed and spluttered as her natural gag reflex attempted to deny the harsh liquor from entering her body.
Neither of them could hear the banging sound from high up inside the house anymore, and both had forgotten about Adam working on the door lock up there. Outside, on the other side of the metal shutters that sealed them inside the sanctum of the Big House, a fierce wind picked up and propelled the clouds across the sky as if to make way for the sharp gloom of nightfall. Evening had fallen over the house like a shadow.
“Ladies, the DJ is in,” Jessie said, reaching out for the toy tape player and switching it on.
Marla grimaced at both the sudden tinny blast of Old MacDonald’s Farm and the sharp sensation of ouzo coursing down her throat. Trapped inside a maximum-security retirement home with a mad woman, drinking stolen liquor and listening to nursery rhymes. It was going to be one of those long, long nights.
Jessie spun the bottle again, cackling that it was her turn—her turn—to spin, and not Marla’s, despite the latter’s protestations to the contrary. The booze was making her mean, spiteful even. Marla hated “spin the bottle” with a vengeance; she’d only agreed to play it in an attempt to placate Jessie for a while. Her alcohol-clouded brain accessed cringe-inducing memories of the last time she’d played this game. Never again, she’d sworn then—so typical to find herself succumbing to the game’s dubious charms again. The rules were simple, spin the bottle and wait for it to stop rotating. If the neck of the bottle points your way, the person who went last (in the is case Jessie, always Jessie) calls “truth” or “dare” then thinks up a humiliating question or even more humiliating dare. Refusal to answer the truth, or to act out the dare, might be the biggest humiliation and so often the case was.
Marla shuddered at the memory of her younger self, kissing a pimple-faced boy whose breath smelled strongly of onions. Maybe refusing to play wasn’t such a humiliating prospect after all. But there again was the scraping sound of the bottle as it spun round and round on the hard surface of the floor. They sat cross-legged opposite one another, Jessie’s face almost entirely occupied by her grin. The smirk on her face was accompanied by a high-pitched squeal of delight as the bottle slowed and came to a halt again, pointing right at Marla.
She groaned, her body lolling to one side until her shoulder was almost touching the floor. Marla wished to God that Adam had agreed to play this asinine game with them when he’d popped downstairs to eat earlier, at least that way some of the heat would be taken off of her. But she and Jessie had put away most of the ouzo by then and she’d seen the clear disapproval on Adam’s face. The last thing he probably wanted to do was sit playing childish games with two half-soaked girls. The conversation had gone something like this:
“Where did you get the, um, nursery music?”
“From Toys R Us, stoopid.” (Sniggers).
“Any food left?”
“Sure… and getch yershelf a glass… we’re nearly out of ouzo.”
“No thanks, just wanna grab a quick bite.”
“Did you find out wasss behind the door?”
“Yeah. Another door.”
And with that, he’d gone back upstairs taking a bowl of cold pasta with him. Strains of Humpty Dumpty echoed after him. His parting look had rattled Marla, and Jessie could see its after-effects on Marla’s face.
“Truth,” Jessie said mischievously.
Marla rolled her eyes, took an acid sip of ouzo and nodded in resignation to her fate.
“Did you do Pietro? You know, before he tried to jump the shark…”
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…
Jessie’s giggles echoed around the bare surfaces of the room. Marla looked around, studying her surroundings as if for the first time. What they hell was she doing locked in here, getting drunk with Jessie? She exhaled loudly—a tired, vaguely angry sound.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…
“You did! You did, you dirty girl, I just knew it!” Jessie’s voice trailed off into high- pitched squeaking giggles, sounding more like hiccoughs than laughter. “At least you gave him a good send off…”
Couldn’t put Humpty together again…
That was the limit. How could Jessie be so insensitive? Marla stood up sharply, swaying slightly as the alcohol nausea hit her. She rocked forward on one foot then kicked out at the bottle as hard as she could with the other. The bottle spun past Jessie’s shocked face and crashed against a cabinet, shattering on impact. There, spin the fucking bottle now.
“What the hell!?” Jessie spluttered.
“In answer to your question, I did sleep with Pietro. But only because I was drunk, and he couldn't get it up anyway. As I’ve been drinking again, with you again, I may as well see if Adam’s up for it. If he is, maybe I should do him on the stairs right now. Anything if it means I don’t have to play your stupid games.”
Her words chilled the stuffy air in the room. Before Jessie could reply, Marla moved through the space between them coolly and towards the door.
“What’s gotten into you? I only wanted to blow off some steam.”
Marla turned and looked back, hearing the hurt in Jessie’s voice. She did look genuinely upset, and vaguely pathetic, like a child who knows it is way past bedtime. Garbled thoughts and emotions trampled over each other inside Marla’s brain, fuelled by the alcohol and the aftertaste of her anger.
“I came to this island to turn my life around,” she sighed. “But all I’ve done since I got here is repeat the same old fucking mistakes.”
“This island can change you, Marla. Believe me, it can.”
“Maybe it doesn’t, maybe it just brings out the worst in you.”
Now Jessie heard the bitter disappointment in Marla’s voice. Something changed inside her tipsy brain and Marla could see she felt exactly the same, after months trapped on this island—this false paradise. Jessie blinked up at Marla and the surface of her eyes glistened wetly.
Marla thought of the jetty and the gunmen aiming right at her. She thought of Adam and how she’d secretly burned for him in her bed at the summerhouse. She thought of Pietro and his broken body, lying bleeding in the lighthouse, impotent and spent. All of it was so far away from the dream she’d been sold at those shiny offices in London—a fantasy to which she had so willingly subscribed. She tried to find the words that might articulate all her hopes and fears, struggling to show Jessie once and for all that she was no mere plaything sent to the island for her own personal amusement. But no words came, only a cold, empty feeling. She felt hollow and useless, adrift like the dust in the house and at the same time tethered to its cobwebs.