A Line of Blood (25 page)

‘Wow. Irony,’ I mimicked, falsetto. ‘You Americans sure do learn fast.’

‘Yeah, I guess we made it as far as sarcasm.’

She picked up my drink and tasted it.

‘You see?’ I said. ‘Much better.’

‘No. Icky.’

‘Please yourself.’

‘I do.’

We lay on our backs, drinking whisky and looking up at the sky. Say what you will about light pollution, but I swear we saw stars.

‘This place is actually pretty cool,’ said Arla. ‘Why do you call it Crappy?’

‘Crappy Rub Sniff,’ said Millicent. ‘If you spell Krapy with a K and one P, and Sniff with one F.’

‘Backwards, you mean?’ said Arla. ‘K-R-A-P-Y-R-U-B-S-N-I-F?’

‘Max figured it out. Don’t know why we didn’t.’

‘Huh,’ said Arla. ‘Smart kid.’

A police helicopter appeared and hovered for ten minutes, the beam from its searchlight twitching nervily, cutting white steel swathes into the blue-brown sky. For a moment the beam strayed into our garden, and Millicent and Arla raised their glasses to it.

‘Feel like home?’ I asked.

‘Sorta kinda no,’ said Arla. ‘I live in a real nice neighbourhood.’

Millicent kissed me, got up and went upstairs. Arla watched her go.

‘Millicent never asked me for help before,’ said Arla. ‘Guess she decided I finally grew up, or something.’

Millicent closed Max’s window. The light in the bathroom came on, and I could see her outline on the frosted glass as she brushed her teeth.

Arla turned over and lay on her front, looked at me appraisingly. ‘You guys OK, Alex?’

The words were out before I could stop them. ‘Was she planning to leave me?’

‘Cute question, Alex.’ Arla laughed her spun-sugar laugh. ‘Do you even
know
my sister?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Does it seem to you like she likes to
share
?’

‘She talks …’

‘Really? With me she sure locks the hell down.’

Water trickled down the drainpipe. Millicent never turned off the tap when she was brushing her teeth.

‘You know how she left
us
, Alex?’ Arla turned to look at me. ‘Oh, she didn’t tell you? Like, on her fricking prom night she tells Mom she’s going to the store.’ She drained her glass. ‘I mean, I guess at the time I thought it was kind of funny when her doofus boyfriend Thaddeus came round in his tux, and he’s standing there sweating in the kitchen trying to make conversation with my dad, and Dad’s being
super
-mean to him, like he offers him a t-shirt to change into, which obviously he can’t say yes to, but does not ask him to sit down. But by ten thirty even my dad’s starting to get a little agitated. And Millicent rings three days later to say she’s in fricking Providence, Rhode Island.’

She paused, looked at me, made it clear she expected a reaction. ‘That’s like 3,000 miles.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no, she didn’t tell me that.’

‘And two days after that Thaddeus dies. At the funeral his parents present it like it’s an unfortunate accident, like he mixed alcohol and painkillers by mistake. And my parents want to act like nothing’s happened. And Millicent doesn’t come back for the funeral. And there are all these rumours about what really happened. And she
never
comes home.’

The lightness of her voice. I’ve got you wrong, I thought. There’s nothing flighty about you at all.

‘Guess why Millicent left, Alex?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Neither do I. Because she never once told me. She never talked about it to you?’ The disappointment was tangible. ‘Like some kind of boy-trouble thing, or maybe, I don’t know, an abortion, or something? There was this weird ridiculous rumour that she gave birth to a baby in a beet field. Ha.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That must all have been hard for you.’

‘Yeah, Mom and Dad got even more sucky after that. Kept pointing out there were no beet fields for hundreds of miles. They heard the rumours too.’ She smiled brightly.

‘You’re right,’ I said after a while. ‘Leaving is her default response. She goes into lockdown with me too.’

Millicent stopped brushing her teeth. The light in the bathroom went out. The water carried on running in the drainpipe.

‘I don’t know what I was expecting,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if Millicent was handing out group hugs and candy kisses. I never thought she was that kind of Cali-girl. She called me motherfucker on our first date.’

‘That’s that thing you do, isn’t it, Alex? You know, where you try to mask what you’re feeling with irony.’ She drained her glass again, picked up the whisky bottle, pulled out the cork with her teeth, and poured herself another whisky. ‘Kinda English.’

‘I’m …’

‘… Scottish. I heard ya.’

I stood up.

‘Where are you going, Alex?’

‘Get you some ice.’

‘No need.’

‘And Millicent’s left the tap on.’

We drank. I smoked. The helicopter reappeared. Its beam cut violently through the garden. Arla was silhouetted against the wall for a moment. Then she was fission-bright. I lost her form in an aftershock of blur and shadows. I put my hand to my eyes. When at last I could see again, I saw that Arla was rubbing her eyes.

‘Oucho,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Oucho.’

‘So,’ she said, ‘who’s the perp?’

‘Sixteen and white in this area. Statistically speaking. Twocker.’

‘And for those of us who don’t speak Brit?’

‘He takes cars without the owners’ consent.’

‘He’s been under-parented,’ she said, grinning. ‘Statistically speaking.’ Her mouth, I thought, it’s Millicent’s mouth. It has the same wry twist when she smiles. But her voice is light and air, where Millicent’s is darkness and smoke.

The helicopter had fixed in one position. It was low now – perhaps sixty metres – and its beam was pointed straight down into the nearby mews. We heard sirens, then car brakes, then boots on cobblestones. There was a lot of shouting.

‘Are they … beating on him?’ asked Arla.

She was right. Cries of pain, and cries of righteous anger. It sounded bad.

‘We should do something, right?’ said Arla.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We should.’

We put down our drinks and went running to the front door. I flung it open, and we set off towards the mews. At the end we turned left, then left again. The engine note of the helicopter grew louder, then more urgent. We turned into the mews but the cars, the men and the boy had gone. The helicopter was slowly rising. As we watched, it turned off the searchlight and headed east.

‘So what do we do?’ said Arla.

I looked around. There were a few tyre marks but no trace of the boy’s presence in the street, no trace of his arrest, nothing that bore witness to a beating. ‘Not much, I guess. I could write a concerned letter, but I probably won’t.’

‘I guess you gotta be cautious.’
Cau
-tious. Those long Californian vowels. Millicent was losing them now.

‘Actually, they’ve been incredibly polite with me. Lucky I’m not a sixteen-year-old boy.’ For the first time in days the fear was lifting. Alcohol helped, I decided. Alcohol and Arla.

‘Alex, I think I got a shard in the sole of my foot.’

I hadn’t noticed, but she had taken off her shoes, had run barefoot through the streets. I bent down. A glint of glass almost level with the skin, the blood dull brown in the orange sodium glare. The glass was ugly and uneven, and I didn’t think I could get it out here. I needed better light.

She held my arm and hopped gently back to the house. I fetched antiseptic, a saucepan of hot water, and two large towels. I sat Arla on the sofa, and turned all the lights on.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Even in this light you are tanned.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am tan in any light. It’s a California thing.’

‘I look a little more Scottish than you, obviously.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Pleasingly Scottish. Kind of Byronic pale.’

‘Byron wasn’t Scottish.’

‘Take the compliment, Alex,’ she said.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘You have beautiful arms, Arla. Beautiful tanned Californian arms.’

‘What kind of a dolt even cares about arms?’

‘Take the compliment, Arla.’

I bathed her foot, and patted it dry with a towel. Then I looked again at the glass. It seemed to be a wedge-shaped sliver, pushing a long way into the sole of her foot. Really a hospital was the place for this. I touched the edge of the glass very lightly with the tip of my finger. Arla winced.

I took a thumbnail on each side of the shard, and tried to draw it out of her foot. Nothing happened, but Arla inhaled sharply and bit her lip. I tried again, and this time the right side lifted a fraction. Blood was pooling again where the shard had shifted. I looked up at Arla. She had tears in her eyes and was clearly in pain, but she nodded at me. I tried again, and the other side of the sliver shifted. Arla put her hand on my head, stopping me. She took three deep breaths.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Go.’

This time the shard slipped out easily. I held her foot for a moment, and felt the stiffness in it start to ebb away.

‘The doctor gave me a bottle of morphine,’ I said. ‘Want some?’

‘Uh uh. Whisky.’

Arla washed her foot while I put coffee on the stove and fetched cigarettes and whisky. I went to the bathroom to find her a plaster, and took a large swig of morphine.

When I came down Arla had filled the glasses and was sitting with a lit cigarette in her mouth. I went to the kitchen and fetched the coffee, and found a candle on top of a cupboard.

I lit the candle, and turned off the lights in the living room. Then I gave Arla her coffee, sat beside her on the sofa.

‘You smell of perfume and half-metabolised whisky,’ I said.

‘You also,’ she said. ‘Minus the perfume.’

We locked eyes for a moment. Then she patted my arm and looked away.

‘Arla, I used to sleep with a
lot
of women. Before I met Millicent.’

‘Why did you stop?’

‘I met Millicent.’

‘So again, why did you stop?’

‘I couldn’t get it right.’

This amused her. ‘You sucked at promiscuity?’

I took her hand in mine. She turned towards me, looked down at her hand, then looked very directly at me. Those eyes. Untainted California green. A better version of Millicent, I thought. Like Millicent before me, before Max, and before Bryce.
A Millicent without the betrayal.

‘So, Arla,’ I said, ‘do you want to show me how it’s done?’

She laughed. ‘You want me to show you how to do promiscuity?’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking her steadily in the eye. Her face was very close to mine, and I could feel her breath on my cheek.

‘You’re making a pass at me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d like for us to have sex, and you’d like for us to do it without emotional involvement or hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you think that’s possible for you, Alex?’ She said this with great simplicity.

‘You manage it,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you would.’

‘You think I’m vulnerable.’

‘Your son and your wife are asleep upstairs. I’d say that makes you vulnerable. And it makes
them
vulnerable. And she’s my sister, which makes
me
vulnerable. Page one of the book is you do not screw your sister’s husband. Also every other page. In capital letters and a super-easy-to-read typeface. This would not be right, Alex, for you or for me.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘I do promiscuity. I do
not
do cheating. I do
not
do revenge. Especially not on my sister. She adulates you, you know.’

‘I know.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought of Millicent. ‘I mean, I don’t know.’

‘What are you trying to say, Alex?’ The perfection of those eyes, locked on to mine now, endlessly green.
Look away, Alex.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Thank you.’

‘You’re thanking me? Why are you thanking me?’

‘For looking after me. And for turning me down with such charm and such kindness. Are you sure you don’t want any morphine?’

‘Uh uh,’ she said, ‘no. No morphine. But thank you for liking my arms.’

‘You have beautiful arms,’ I said.

‘I’ll try to remember that.’

We fucked there on the floor of the living room. I don’t know what it was that changed in Arla, or in me, but I remember her drawing me gently down to the floor. I remember falling backwards. Arla cradled my head, made sure I wasn’t any more hurt than I already was. Then she ran her hands under my shirt and over my chest, then down to my belt buckle, kissing me all the while.

We fucked with wordless intensity. I tried not to think about Millicent, then tried not to think about Arla, then tried not to think about coming.

It didn’t last more than a few minutes and I don’t think Arla came. It has no meaning. I told no one about it, and shouldn’t be telling you.

Abruptly and from nowhere I was awake.

Millicent wasn’t in bed, and the light from the window told me that I had overslept. The curtains were open. I wondered whether Millicent had opened them to make a point.

I had slept the sleep of the dead drunk, fully clothed, on top of the bedclothes. My mouth should have been dry, and my head should have ached. I lay for several minutes, waiting for the dizzy fug of regret and hopelessness that would surely come; nothing came.

I sat experimentally for a minute or two, expecting to be crippled by a nauseous wave of remorse, to be sent rushing to the toilet bowl or the medicine cabinet. But I was clear of head, and untroubled by guilt. My hand did not shake, nor did my vision blur. I craved neither water, nor orange juice, nor ibuprofen. I felt, in short, absolutely, gloriously, abnormally – fine.

Millicent came in with two cups of coffee. She opened the window and offered me a cigarette, which we shared, sitting up on the bed and listening to the sounds of a London morning. An operatic tenor was practising with his own window open. A mother was shouting at her children. A helicopter passed overhead but didn’t stay. I took her hand and drew her towards me, certain that last night’s whisky and cigarettes masked the smell of sex.