A Certain Chemistry (27 page)

You’ll have picked up, of course, that the idea that I might win here never entered my mind. Conk was shorter than me and also no heavyweight. The trouble was, I’m useless. When I make a fist, I keep having to remind myself to put my thumbs on the outside—
that’
s how useless I am. If I try to kick someone, it’s an absolute certainty that I’ll miss, and that my shoe will come off. It’s impossible for a person to move a hand or an elbow or a head or a knee vaguely towards me in anger without it hitting me on the nose.

But all this, the granite inevitability of my defeat, meant very little, because I couldn’t let George see I was afraid of having a fight. That’s the reason I was standing outside a pub in Bathgate facing off with a man who’d celebrated every single thought he’d ever had by having it tattooed onto his forearm.

There was about six feet between us. A crowd of people looked on, and Conk’s two mates growled, “Gwerrrn—have him,” from behind. We stared at each other menacingly. He moved to the side slightly, as though he might try to outflank me, but I mirrored his movement. That was pretty good; I’d done well there. I must try to recall that move later, after I came to at the hospital. He shuffled a bit more and then started to make a lunge at me. He didn’t
actually
lunge at me—he just made the first bit of the movement, feinted an attack, to test me. My reaction was to jump back evasively, flinging up my arms to counter any blows and at the same time bringing every muscle in my body into a state of flexed readiness. Put like that, it sounds okay. In fact, to visualize the effect, try to imagine a set of movements on my part that appeared to be missing only my letting out a high-pitched cry of “Eek!”

A small snigger made its way around the onlookers, and Conk’s mouth pulled itself into a mocking little smile. I needed to regain the psychological advantage if I were to hold off my inevitable thrashing a little longer.

I decided to spit on the ground.

That’s pretty hard, isn’t it? Spitting signals you’re tough, physical, and indefatigable. Athletes spit as they’re preparing to throw something. Footballers spit after they’ve narrowly missed the goal. Seeing that his opponent is the kind of person who enjoys a good spit would surely sow alarm and uncertainty in Conk’s mind. So, keeping my eyes fixed on him, I spat off to my side in a sharp, explosive manner. Except that fear had made my lips all rubbery and my spit all viscous. Instead of tearing away to ground like a manly bullet—possibly shattering a section of the pavement on impact—a gooey glob stumbled from my mouth with a
frrrp
noise, made a clumsy, stringy attempt to break free, and then—defeated by both gravity and its own innate elasticity—fell back onto my shirt. In company with every other person there, I looked down at it. There was only one thing I could do. I reached across with my hand and, very deliberately, wiped it with the heel of my palm—not so much removing it, more smearing it right across my top.

“Yeah,” this silently announced, “that’s right—I spat on
myself
. I
am
Keyser Soze.”

Conk didn’t look as if my display had made him newly anxious; he did, however, look as if it had made him utterly bemused. At least it made him pause, though, so that confirmed it as a success as far as I was concerned. Maybe I could buy a little more time by ostentatiously pissing myself—it was certainly an idea to cling onto, given the fact that I might well piss myself anyway.

Just then—as they say in children’s books—
just then,
there was a wonderful sound. Cutting through the night came the, blissfully not-too-distant,
rr
RRR
rrrrrr
of a police car flicking its siren on for just a moment as an announcement that it was on its way. I couldn’t see it, but the direction the noise was coming from meant it must have been approaching from behind Conk; this was soon confirmed by the people around us peering over there and muttering. The crowd began to break up, Conk blew air through his teeth, and I hissed, “Fuck,” under my breath (under my breath, very loudly) to convey my disappointment and annoyance. Quickly, Conk changed his whole body language: he went from the tense posture of someone preparing for a fight to the loose, casual manner of “just a bystander,” and he began to saunter towards me—that’s to say, away from the approaching police. I remained where I was, putting my hands in my pockets and pretending not to notice him the way spies do when they meet in a park in movies. He strolled past me without saying a word. Though, as he moved by, he did take the opportunity to hit me very hard in the face.

You know how, sometimes, you receive an injury, but it’s so abrupt and unexpected that you don’t feel anything? Well, this wasn’t like that at all. This really,
really
fucking hurt. “Ergh!” I said, sinking to my knees (and hurting my knees). I pressed my hands to the side of my face, positive that my entire head was broken. After a moment, the initial pain of the impact began to subside and, under it, there was a different, and worse, pain. This one throbbed and squirmed and ran around under my face stinging hot then icy cold then stinging hot again. I clutched harder, trying to somehow press it away. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck . . .
Jesus
. Fuck. Fucking
Jesus
. Fuck. Bastard.
Fuck
. Bastard. Bastard . . . Bastard.
Bastard
. Fuck. Fucking . . .
fuck
. Jesus. Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck—” I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you all right, sir?” Opening one eye, I looked up at the policeman bending over me.

“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” I replied.

I should have said, “No—
he
hit me. Really hard. For no reason,” and pointed at Conk (who hadn’t paused and was now nonchalantly strolling off down the street with his mates), but, well, you just don’t, do you?

“I see . . . someone called reporting a disturbance here.”

“Really?”

“Aye. Really.”

“Right. Well, I haven’t seen anything.”

“Would that be because you were kneeling down on the pavement with your hands over your face, sir?”

There are few things that can quash your swagger more conclusively than a wry Scottish policeman.

“Come on, Jim,” he called wearily to his colleague. “Let’s go inside the pub and check it out.”

At first I thought I was completely alone now, but then I spotted George. She was standing down the road a little, just far enough away so that it looked like she didn’t have anything to do with the incident. She hurried over to me.

“God, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“I’ve called a taxi. We could take you to the hospital.”

“No, really, it’s fine. I’ve had much worse than this.”

“Have you?”

“Sure . . . I came off a slide once when I was seven.”

“Right.”

“Needed stitches.”

“I see. Has that idiot gone?”

I looked over my shoulder: I couldn’t see Conk or his friends anywhere. “I think so. It was lucky the police turned up. I mean, lucky for him.”

“
I
called the police. I was on my mobile before you’d even got out of the door.”

“Oh, right. Well, you saved that twat from the thrashing of his life, then.”

“Getting it or giving it?” She smiled and put her hand on the limited section of my face that I wasn’t already holding myself.

“I could have taken him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He could beat you up a thousand times and you’d still be twice the man he could even
dream
of being. . . . He fights because that’s
all
he can do.”

“I love you.”

I couldn’t have
not
said that at this moment if the fate of the whole human race had depended on my silence. It surged up inside me; even if its irresistible velocity hadn’t allowed it to break free, it would have blocked my throat, choking me, until I let it out.

George leaned forward and kissed my sole available eyebrow. “Saying
that,
” she whispered, “is always going to attract a girl more than brawling in the street ever will.”

“Good . . .” I smiled and partially released myself for a moment to trace down along the side of her face with my hand. “But even so, I could have taken him—you do know that, right?”

“Hey, I think this is our taxi.”

She walked over to it as it pulled up, spoke briefly to the driver, then nodded to me and started to get in. I followed. Inside, she laid her head against my shoulder, and the taxi began to take us back to the hotel.

“I could have.”

“I know.”

“No, really—I could have.”

There’s something very special about sleeping with a woman. On one level, this is so obvious that it’s redundant even to mention it. I mean, if a man’s life is dominated by the quest for sex, then waking up to find a bottom pressed to your groin and a pair of tits already in your hands has to be the
beau idéal,
right? It’s like nought to sixty in zero seconds. But that’s not what I’m talking about—for a start, my life is far from dominated by hunting for sex: I am, thank you very much, rather more sophisticated and multilayered than that. I’m referring to how it touches you emotionally. Maybe it’s because you’re vulnerable when you’re asleep. So, by sleeping with you, the woman is showing how completely she trusts you, and you, likewise, are showing her the same thing. Maybe that’s it. Whatever the reason, it’s certainly a surprising truth that sleeping with a woman, without even having sex, somehow feels far more romantic and intimate than hastily fucking her in the alley behind a pub car park. You can get a closeness, in bed together, that’s exhilarating without the sexual component being present at all. Which is not to say that George and I didn’t have sex when we got back to the hotel—
Christ
no. We went at it like we were both just out of prison—if her tongue had been any more lively I’d have probably suffered friction burns. I’m just pointing out how great it was; we had this whole nonsexual thing there, while at the same time having some really excellent sex. It was perfect. I couldn’t have been happier when I woke up the next morning lying next to George. I felt like a million dollars. A feeling rather disrupted when I glanced in the bathroom mirror and saw that I looked like £1.75.

My right eye was bloodshot and surrounded by a bruised, many-colored swelling so fascinatingly alarming that even I, knowing it would hurt me, couldn’t help prodding it with an investigative finger. Not attractive. Not attractive at all. I pulled on yesterday’s underpants, lit a cigarette that I’d found in the ashtray only two-thirds smoked, and peered in the mirror to give some thought to how I could improve my appearance. George entered, yawning, wrapped in a duvet. Her hair, wild under any circumstances, was here the coiffure equivalent of a terrifying storm sweeping in from the east. It had erratic, swirling currents in its midst, brawling tangles and violent projections like clouds of burning, boiling gas arcing out from a black sun. It was the kind of hair that comes into the bathroom of a morning and
immediately
makes you want to frantically shag its owner while she bends over, supporting herself with arms outstretched against the sink, her groans affected by breathy bursts due to each urgent thrust. I was thinking about the best way to phrase this idea as something we might consider doing, but George spoke first and the word she used was “Ewww . . .” She was looking at my eye and flinching with sympathetic pain. She moved closer and prodded it with her finger. “Does it hurt?”

I sucked in air between my teeth as her poke hit and backed away across the bathroom. “No. It’s fine. It looks worse than it is.” She tried to have another prod. I backed away farther.

“I could probably cover the bruise up a little—I’ve got some foundation in my handbag,” she offered.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I have a photo shoot to go to or anything.”

“What will you tell people?”

By people, we both knew she meant Sara. “Oh, I don’t know . . . I’ll probably just say someone hit me. There’s no point lying about stuff you don’t have to, is there? It’s perfectly possible for me to get punched in the face without
you
having to be there. Ask anyone.”

“Right.” She nodded. “Well, I’m going to have a shower.” She pulled off the duvet and hurled it out of the bathroom. Christ, she was gorgeous. And not just gorgeous, either, but also naked. As she leaned over to turn on the shower, I moved behind her and started to kiss her neck.

“Oh, Tom . . .
don’t,
” she said, giggling. “I’ve just crawled out of bed. I stink.”

“I don’t care
how
much you stink,” I whispered, and began running my tongue slowly down along her spine. I stopped halfway and straightened up again. “What I
meant
to say there was ‘No, you don’t stink at all,’ okay?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Still—thanks for saying it eventually.”

I moved my lips over her shoulders. “You don’t . . . stink . . . at all.”

“Mmmm . . . a girl just likes to be told that sometimes, you know?”

She reached her hands behind her back to touch me.

VI

You know
what I was thinking about back there? Back when Tom was having that problem with the punk outside the bar? Well, I’ve got to come clean again here, and tell you that back then I remembered that I cut a few corners, you know, “physiology wise.” You see, I didn’t really think to put enough space between the cues for “love” and the cues for “fear.” I just kind of figured it’d be clear from the context. I mean, why wouldn’t I, right? Then I hear that some of your scientists have done this experiment and discovered that, because of the chemicals released, people who experience fear on a first date often “misinterpret” it as love. Was my face red when I heard that, eh? I simply can’t tell you.

Yeah, well, it was just a thought I was having. Never mind.

There is another thing, though. I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier, when I was dropping all the science on you and telling you the names of stuff. But, well, I lost my nerve, you know? One reason I lost it is that this word’s no sweetheart to say, I can tell you. Here goes . . . “phenylethylamine.” What did I tell you, eh? Even your own scientists shorten it to PEA, so they don’t keep screwing up when they try to say it and making an ass of themselves during, I don’t know, seminars or whatever. But I got to admit, the length of it wasn’t the only thing that stopped me. Fact is, I’m a bit guilty about it. PEA, you see, is a dirty trick. Sure—like I’ve told you—I was worried you wouldn’t get yourselves together, and that things would fizzle out ’cause of it, but PEA . . . well. Okay, I’m just going to say it straight out. PEA kicks in when you’re attracted to someone, and here’s what it does: it stops you from seeing their faults. PEA is, like, your actual rose-tinted glasses. That’s bad enough, right? But then . . . Sorry. Okay. The length of time varies—it can be years—but after a while . . . it stops working.

Yeah, I know.

I’m not sure I’d have had the guts to tell you this if your scientists hadn’t uncovered that bit of evidence already. A dirty trick, like I say. Worse still, a dirty trick badly done.

Let’s just say I owe you one.

ten

I paid for a second night, just so we didn’t have to check out at eleven and could stay in the hotel room together all day. Later I popped out briefly and returned with some clean underwear, a couple of toothbrushes, a big bag of scampi and chips, and some more cigarettes. Fried food, cigarettes, and George—if I wanted for anything at all, it was only a few more hands and an additional mouth. In the afternoon, when we eventually began getting ready to leave, there was that sadness you feel when packing up on the last day of a wonderful holiday. I found myself looking around at things—the view from the window, the shower curtain, the hotel kettle—just to try and seal them under glass forever in my memory. George and I talked less, and missed no opportunity to share a sorrowful smile. When we got on the train back to Edinburgh, we held hands under the seat. It was as though our souls were intertwined and yet ached that they couldn’t melt together entirely.

I sighed with a kind of melancholy joy and slid the catch closed. “So, have you ever shagged in a train lavatory before?” I asked.

George had suggested it, hissed the idea coquettishly into my ear, and it’d seemed ungentlemanly to appear less than wholeheartedly in favor of giving it a go. But I was concerned that it might lack magic—you generally stay in a train toilet only for as long as you can hold your breath, don’t you? All the art and music and literature that humanity has produced through the ages has a devil of a job trying to hold its side of the scales against one glance into a train toilet: if you ever find someone waiting outside as you exit, you’re always distraught and have to fight determinedly against the powerful urge to grip them by the shoulders and cry, “You see all that? That
wasn’t me,
okay?” In fact, when we sneaked in together and it turned out that
this
train toilet—alone in the United Kingdom—neither smelled like an open sewer in high summer nor had horrific vileness smeared across every surface, I took it as another sure sign that George and I were being carried along by the miraculous, cradling arms of Destiny.

“No, I haven’t,” replied George. “Have you?”

“Never.”

“Ooohh,” she cooed. “A first for both of us.”

I did have another concern beyond simply the setting, though. The thing was, I’d had sex quite a few times in the past twenty-four hours. There was some soreness, quite honestly, but even more important than that was . . . Look, let’s be honest: it’s not a bottomless well, is it? I mean, things get topped up, but it takes time. I wasn’t entirely sure I had anything left. What happens if you don’t have anything left? I had no idea. Is it like when you have a dry cough? Do you come but, I don’t know, it’s just air?
Ffff.
Would George notice? I could fake an orgasm, of course (despite women thinking that this is exclusively
their
party piece, most men have done it at one time or another), but I didn’t think I’d be very convincing. I’d be too self-conscious with George. It’d sound like I was reading an orgasm off an Autocue. On the other hand, if I
was
up to delivering the goods—production rising to meet demand—would that alter my physiological setup generally? The way that washing your hair more frequently increases the amount of grease your scalp puts out, say. Would my body expect every day to be like this one now? I imagined the vast overproduction mounting up. I pictured a television screen showing a news flash warning that, while out shopping, my testicles had exploded and destroyed two city blocks.

Okay. So I was possibly being a little pessimistic—or optimistic—but, still, it was a bit of a worry.

George pulled down her knickers and hitched her skirt up over her hips. I made a snap decision to have sex with her and just hope for the best. You have to follow your instincts sometimes, don’t you?

We banged into
everything
. Whoever it was who designed train toilets, they clearly didn’t put much thought into the amount of shagging that’d take place in them. With every movement a part of my body knocked into some fixture—directly behind me, pretty much at arse level, was the long, thin, projecting metal tube of the hot-water dispenser; I feared it more than death itself.

“So . . . you’ve never . . . done . . . this . . . with . . . Sara?” George asked, pausing briefly between words as the back of her head banged against the wall. I lost my footing for a second and fell sideways against the button that flushes the toilet—it opened a path directly down to the tracks whipping past only inches below us and the room was filled with a rushing
whshhhhhhhhh!
until I lifted my weight off it again.

“Sara!” I half laughed, half shouted, on my first returning thrust. “No! But forget Sara. When I’m with you, George, you’re all I can think about. I’m not thinking about
not
fucking Sara now, I’m thinking about fucking
you
.”

“Then fuck me harder.”

“Fuck you?” I grinned.

“Yes,
fuck me
.”

Have you ever noticed that women most often say the words “fuck me” when you’re already fucking them? They don’t ask you to fuck them when—at a party, say, apropos of nothing—you
dearly
wish they would; but then when you
are
fucking them for all you’re worth, they imply that they can’t really tell you’ve started. It’s one vast landscape of pain being a man, it really is.

We stuck to our task tenaciously and, after a little while—with a simply delightful groan—George came. More impressively, so did I. I, quite literally, didn’t think I had it in me. Breathless, we began to slowly pull up and button things—happy, satisfied, and, quite honestly, not a little damn proud of ourselves.

“That was good.” George beamed.

“Yeah. It needed to be, though. It has to last for . . . for how long? When will I be able to see you again?”

“Hmm . . . I’m not sure. When’s good for you? When can you get away from Sara again?”

“Oh, Christ, I can get away from Sara
anytime
. You just say when you’re free next—as soon as possible, of course—and I’ll be there.”

“Well, I’ve got to go down to . . . What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Shhh . . .” She listened. “A beep. You beeped.”

“
I
beeped. What do you mean?” I laughed. “
I
don’t . . .” I stopped laughing. I scrambled wildly at the holder on the side of my trousers and tore out my mobile phone. It was in the middle of making a call. (I’d set it to beep periodically when in use—to indicate the amount of time I’d been talking.) It was connected, it had beeped, and the display said, “Sara.” I tentatively raised it to my ear as one might lean to listen to the ticking of a bomb. There was no sound from the other end, but it was definitely making a call.

I stabbed at the button to hang up and looked at my watch.

“What is it?” asked George anxiously.

“Sara.”

“Sara was on the phone?” she gasped. “What? Did she ring or—”

“No, no,
I
called
her
.”

“How? Speed-dial or something?”

“Maybe. That or voice. I’ve programmed it to dial certain people if you say their name—you only have to press a single button. If it got banged while we were . . . you know, and then one of us said her name loud enough for it to be picked up, it’d just dial automatically.”

“Jesus.”

“Fucking phones,” I spat. “Fucking
stupid
fucking mobile fucking phones.”

“So Sara will have heard . . .”

“No, it rang her mobile. She always has it switched off when she’s at work.”

“Phew.” She flopped back against the wall, relieved.

“Not bastard ‘phew,’ I’m afraid. The call would just go straight to her voice mail. As soon as she finishes work she’ll turn on her phone. It’ll say, ‘New message,’ and then she’ll be treated to a recording of us fucking.”

“Will she know it’s us? Did we say anything?”

“I can’t remember. She’ll know it’s from my phone, though, and I bet she’ll know it’s fucking. Fucking is kind of distinctive, isn’t it?”

“Yes . . . and I think we
did
say some things anyway.”

“Yes . . . I think we did . . .” I went cold. My limbs were numb and thousands of thoughts swirled in my head. I couldn’t hold on to any of them, though, because before I could examine one fully, another, even more terrible one would knock it from my hand and take its place.

George chewed her lip. “When does she finish work?” she asked.

“Five-thirty. We have”—I looked at my watch again—“forty-nine minutes until she switches on her phone.”