After the Party (13 page)

“No way!” Rosey's eyes were alight with the scandal of it. “And you were in love with her at this point?”

He nodded. “Totally,” he said.

“Oh, my God, you must have been gutted. And did he know, did Smith know that you had the hots for her?”

“No. In his defense, no, he had no idea, but it was extra galling because he didn't even really like her that much. He was . . .” He was about to tell her about Cheri. He was about to tell her how Smith had been almost psychotically in love with the girl who lived on the top floor of their house, a girl called Cheri, a dancer with hair the color of expensive sauvignon and a total disregard for anyone who couldn't immediately improve her situation. He'd been obsessed with her for the best part of eight years, even while sharing a bed with Jem, and there was a story, a terrible story, that Ralph would love to share with Rosey, the story of how Smith had humiliated himself in front of strangers and lost his real girlfriend and his imaginary girlfriend within the blink of an eye, but as much as it was one of Ralph's favorite ever stories and as much as it would have brought joy to his heart to be able to retell it to this stunning girl sitting to his left, Ralph found himself feeling curiously loyal to his oldest friend and left it there, untouched, untold, maybe something to bring out on another day. “He was in love with somebody else,” he finished circumspectly. “He was just using Jem, really, using her to make himself look more unattainable. But it didn't work.”

“Yeah,” said Rosey, clicking the indicator on to left, “that shit
rarely does. Us women aren't as stupid as we look. Well, here we are.” She brought the car into a space outside a building that looked curiously like a church hall. “And there are the guys.” She got out of the car and waved at a bunch of young men, all wearing gray T-shirts and faded jeans, all fresh of face and long of hair and bright of teeth. There was something about them that reminded Ralph of an advert from the early nineties, possibly for chewing gum. Or possibly for a fizzy drink. He couldn't quite remember which.

She wandered toward them and kissed them each in turn. “Hey,” she said, turning toward him, “this is Ralph. He's a buddy of Smith's, from London.” Ralph shook various hands and smiled and said hi and then followed Rosey and “the guys” through the church hall and into a small room at the back where the band proceeded, in their own words, to hang out. Rosey disappeared without a word and someone handed Ralph a bottle of beer and he perched himself against a low bookshelf, feeling vaguely awkward among all the camaraderie and easy banter.

“So, what is this place?” he asked, during a quiet moment.

“This?” said a guy whose name was Ryan. “It's just the community hall for this neighborhood. We've played here before—it's cute. You know, it's a good chance to do something intimate for our fans, but really, we prefer to play the big festivals.”

“What are you called?” Ralph asked.

“We're called Pure and Simple.” Ryan said this without a trace of embarrassment.

“Oh,” said Ralph, resisting the urge to grimace and say: shit, that's the worst band name I've ever heard. “Cool,” he managed.

“Yeah, it's good. And you, what do you do?”

“Oh,” said Ralph, “I paint. You know. Art.”

“Cool,” said Ryan, nodding appreciatively. “And you make a
living with that, do you?” He smiled apologetically and laughed. “If that's not too personal a question?”

Ralph smiled. “No,” he said, “it's fine. And yeah, I do. Not a lot, but you know, just enough.”

“That's cool,” said Ryan again, “that's my goal. You know, make this pay, give up the day job.” He finished his beer from the bottleneck and slammed it down on the tabletop. “Right,” he said, “I think we're on. I'll see you out there.” He winked at Ralph and picked up his guitar before leaving the room followed by his identikit band members. Ralph sighed. He had a strong and unassailable feeling that Pure & Simple was not going to be quite his kind of thing. And as the playing field behind the community center began to fill up, it soon became clear to Ralph that neither were their fans going to be quite his kind of people.

There was something peculiar in the air, something intangibly wrong. It was impossible to define, just a feeling that the people surrounding him were there for something other than the rock and roll, a feeling that he was not among like-thinkers. There was an eagerness in the air that he had never before encountered at a gig, a fervor that went beyond excitement. He stood toward the edge of the gathering and he sipped his beer and he waited for what he was now quite sure was going to be a revelation.

The band wandered onto the stage. Rosey was luminous in a white sequined slip, her blond hair pushed behind her ears, her lips painted rose pink. “Hello!” said Rosey.

A hundred fans shouted hello back. “It's good to see you all!” she shouted again. “We're all gonna have a great great GREAT night!” The band built up a riff behind her and she tapped out the rhythm with her white Converse sneakers against the stage,
the audience whistled and hollered and clapped their hands in the air above their heads and then Rosey sang. At first Ralph was so mesmerized by the vision of Rosey, the light from three lone spotlights catching the white sequins and turning her into something celestial and divine, her mouth wide with words and song, her hair swinging back and forth with the rocking of her body, that he failed to notice the content of her lyrics. In fact, he failed to notice the content of the lyrics of the next three songs until a man next to him, whipped up into some state of frenzied joy, took to a chair, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Christ ROCKS!”

A woman to his side turned and beamed at the man on the chair and hollered, “AMEN!”

Ralph blinked, slowly and calmly.

Okay, he thought to himself. Okay. This is FINE. They're only Christians. Do not panic. Do not panic.

He looked once more at the quintet on the stage. Pure & Simple. Did that mean that they, then, were a Christian rock band? And did that in turn mean that the edgy, husky, slightly dangerous Rosey was also a Christian? He looked at the cross around her neck. It was so small, so innocuous, nothing more than a pretty piece of silver, an adornment for her pretty neck. He mentally replayed the few brief conversations they'd enjoyed over the past forty-eight hours and at no point did he recall a mention of Jesus, of Christ, of prayer, of conviction or faith. At no point had she appeared wide-eyed with love for Our Lord or quoted the Bible or tutted at a casually uttered word of blasphemy. In fact her language was far from gentle; it was laced with Gods and Christs and even the occasional Jesus fucking Christ. She oozed something both cool and carnal, something fundamentally in control. She did not seem like someone who needed the crutch of organized religion in her life.

The rest of the gig passed in a blur. Beyond the occasional Jesus- and love-related hollers from the crowd, there was nothing to suggest that he was listening to Christian rock. They were good songs; on the whole, the band played well; Rosey sang with guts and soul. Not, as he'd suspected, his kind of music, but really not too awful.

After the show, Ralph found Rosey on a deck chair behind the church hall, sipping water from a plastic bottle and chatting with a fan. He waited for the fan to slink away before taking a seat next to her and saying: “Congratulations. That was excellent.”

“You liked?” she said, wiping a lick of water from her upper lip in the manner of a weary cowboy.

“Yeah,” he said, “I liked. You sing very well.”

“Why, thank you!” She smiled at him, languorously, her tone set as it always was, somewhere nonspecific between cynical and bullet-straight up-front.

“Christian rock?” he said a moment later, having tried and failed to find a less direct way of asking about the genre.

“Hah!” she slammed her beer bottle down against her lap. “Yeah! Christian rock! Woo!”

Ralph glanced at her, trying and failing to gauge her inference.

“I guess so,” she said eventually. “I guess if you had to give us a ‘tag,' ” she made the quotes with her fingertips, “then, yeah, that would be it. But, you know, it's not as clear-cut as that. I mean, I'm not even a Christian.”

Ralph felt something hard and abrasive inside his chest melt to liquid at these words. Such relief, but he had no idea why. “Oh,” he managed.

“Yeah. I believe. You know. I believe in, you know, the spiritual, like, completely. I go to church. I say my prayers. I have a relationship with God. And I guess I have a very Christian
outlook on life. But Christian with a small
c.
If such a word even exists.”

“So, how come you're in this band? How come—”

She interrupted him. “Saw an ad. Applied. They liked me. I liked them. They were prepared to overlook the fact that I don't live my life according to some screwed-up words in a really weird old book. I was prepared to overlook the fact that they are a bunch of cheesy Jesus-loving old fucking virgins. We hooked up. We made it work. And yeah, now I'm on the Christian rock circuit. Woo!” She wound her fist in the air and then rolled her eyes.

He looked at her, unsure what to say next.

“Are you shocked?” she asked.

Ralph shrugged.

“Yeah, you Brits, you're so scared of God, aren't you?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “It's not that I'm scared of God,” he said, “I just don't believe he exists. Therefore I'm scared of people who believe in him. It's like . . . it's like being with someone who believes in leprechauns or believes in the tooth fairy. It makes them seem a bit mad.”

Ralph inhaled sharply. That last sentence had just slipped from his lips inadvertently.

But Rosey laughed out loud. “I know,” she said, “I know exactly what you mean. It's tough having a God thing, knowing that most of the people you come into contact with think you're a loon, and I do question the God thing.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, constantly. All the time. I mean, I am a bright girl and I know that logically, rationally, there is nothing to suggest that the big man exists. I've tried the Bible and frankly it just goes over my head. But still, it's there. When I talk to him, I can feel
him listening. When I'm in a church, I can sense him watching. And I like having him around. You know.”

“And Smith . . . ?”

“Smith has his own spiritual shit going on.”

“He does?”

“Yeah, he does. Not in the conventional sense, but yeah, he has a relationship with something bigger than himself.”

Ralph blinked.

“You are freaking out right now, aren't you?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“Just a bit,” he replied.

She smiled, almost fondly. “You shouldn't, you know. It's just another way of living. It's just another way of making sense of it all. It's nothing to be scared of.”

“Hmm,” said Ralph, rubbing his chin, “try telling that to the fundamentalist, terrorizing, murdering nutters of the world.”

“Oh, come on”—she rolled her eyes—“if they weren't doing it for God they'd be doing it for something else. It's just a pretext.”

They fell silent for a moment. Ralph picked at the paper around the neck of his beer bottle and stared into the dark trees. Cicadas chirruped in the shadowy grass, someone was plucking at a guitar round the corner and the air was honey warm. He wasn't in the mood for a shouty discussion about organized religion. “Yeah,” he said, “you're probably right. A nutter's a nutter's a nutter.”

“So, you want to come to the pub with us?”

“Us?”

“Yeah, me and the guys. It's tradition. After a gig we go to the pub. I get drunk. They get tipsy and call me a heathen. It's a hoot.”

“But what about the car?”

“The pub's right next to my apartment. I'll park and we can walk.”

“And how will I get back to Smith's?”

“Cab. I can lend you some cash if you need it?”

“No, it's cool. I've got plenty.”

“Great, I'll call Smith, see if he wants to come along when he's finished his class. He won't, but it's only polite to ask.” She winked at Ralph and Ralph smiled. There was something flirtatious in the wink. And there was something dangerous in the invitation. Ralph felt too strongly attracted to this woman to be spending any more time with her away from Smith. But on the other hand, there were still a million things he didn't know about her that he wanted to find out.

“Cool,” he said, “let's go.”

I
t had come almost as no surprise at all to Jem that when she left her sister's house that afternoon the first person she'd seen was Joel.

But of course
, her subconscious had whispered to her, like a conspiratorial friend.

“Hello,” she'd said, feeling awkward, as if their relaxed conversation at the weekend had never happened.

“Hello,” he'd replied, looking at her curiously.

“You're off the beaten track around here,” she'd said, more as a question than as a statement.

“I was about to say the same to you.”

“And no Jessica?”

“She's with my son.” He nodded, as if that should be enough information for now.

“My sister's place,” she'd said, pointing behind her to the large house.

“Ah,” he said, sounding strangely relieved to have been given a plausible reason for Jem's presence in this precise spot.

He was clearly not about to elaborate on the reasons for his own presence in this precise spot, and Jem didn't like to ask. There was something shifty about him, as though he'd been caught out in some way. She smiled at him reassuringly. “I've
been meaning to text you,” she said, “arrange something for the girls.”