Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (3 page)

Kruze sighed and got to his feet. ‘Get him to bed some time before the call to prayers would you please, Kim love.’

Kim put a hand on Johnny’s thigh.

‘I’ll make sure he gets back here in time for tomorrow’s show, that’s all you need to worry about.’

Kim’s engagement finger sparkled with a ring that had caused some tabloid speculation, and her voice was smug with the assurance of possession. Magnus wondered if rumours about Johnny and the rotation of pretty boys who were always in his orbit were true. And if they were, whether Kim knew and thought them a price worth paying.

Johnny shifted into the space vacated by Kruze. He coughed and then sneezed three times, hard and painful, the sound of a small train crushing bone and flesh. ‘Fuck.’ He took his handkerchief from his top pocket and blew into it.

Kruze was halfway out of the room, but he turned at the sound of Johnny’s sneezes and stood framed in the doorway, his pink shirt and pale blue suit Neapolitan-dapper, despite the late hour.

‘Why don’t I arrange cars for your guests and let you and Kim hit the sack, John?’ Johnny Dongo flapped a hand, dismissing Kruze, but the manager persisted. ‘If you come down with something, Magnus here will have to step into the breach, and you don’t want that, do you?’

Magnus had once auditioned for Kruze, way back when he first arrived in London, his accent so thick he had to repeat everything he said. He had been working as a KP in an Italian restaurant, the only white boy in a kitchen devoted to ‘authentic Tuscan cuisine’. Magnus had grown used to being ridiculed by boys with accents as thick as his own, but whose voices lilted to different rhythms and whose journeys to London had been
sans
passport. Magnus had rolled with their jokes and contributed a few of his own. After all, he too was fresh off the boat and had had the privilege of an easy passage on the
Hamnavoe
rather than the long hikes, the stowaway goods trains, overcrowded night boats and container lorries his workmates had endured. But when Kruze had stopped Magnus in the middle of his routine about the
fear
that could hit you on your way home when it was after midnight and you were fu’, and said, ‘I can’t understand a word you say, kid. Save up for some elocution lessons,’ Magnus had bunched his fists. Later he was glad that there had been no set of golf clubs propped in the corner of Kruze’s office, no handy paperknife, or pair of scissors on his desk, because the urge to score the smile from the manager’s face had been strong. Perhaps Kruze had sensed the danger. He had leapt to his feet, like a man who knew life was short and had decided not to waste a second of it, opened the office door and ushered Magnus into the corridor with a ‘Good luck.’

Magnus had put his foot in the door, leaned in close and said, ‘Awa and fuck yoursel, ya big poof.’

But as Hamza, the best pizza maker this side of Islamabad, remarked later over a consoling beer, it didn’t really matter what Magnus had said. Kruze wouldn’t have understood a word of it.

Magnus and Kruze had run into each other a few times over the years since then. The manager had been polite and Magnus had wondered if he had forgotten the incident, but now the apologetic look Kruze threw Magnus told him that the older man remembered.

‘Don’t get me wrong, you did well tonight, Mags,’ Kruze said, and something inside Magnus cringed.

Johnny flapped his hand at his manager again. ‘Don’t get your Y-fronts in a tangle. Your goose will be on stage crapping golden eggs tomorrow night.’

Kruze hesitated for a moment as if he were going to say something else, then shook his head and shut the door behind him. Johnny Dongo spat into his handkerchief again.

‘Thank fuck for that.’ He turned his bloodshot eyes on Magnus, his pupils microdots. ‘I thought you were an island boy. Stop shaming your ancestors with that piss-poor stuff.’

Johnny splashed a goodly measure of Admiral Benbow into a glass and shoved it towards Magnus who took a sip. It was navy rum, dark and bitter, and it reminded him of late afternoons in the Snapper Bar, ship masts swaying at their moorings, giving a hint of what brand of wind would greet you when you went outside. Then, if you stayed longer than was wise, the ferry docking, blocking all view of land or sky, lit gold against the black of a winter’s night.

Gold and black made Magnus think of the boy’s hair shining on the gravel, the rush of the train. Bile rose in his throat. He drowned it with a swig of rum, finished the measure in his glass and helped himself to more.

‘Take it easy, man,’ said one of the Dongolites, but Johnny Dongo laughed. ‘He’ll be all right, he’s Scottish. My old man was Scottish. He used to drink until his fists were full.’

Magnus could have gone home after his set, stood beneath a hot shower and attempted to wash the day from his skin, but he had stayed on to watch Johnny from the wings. Johnny had danced across the stage, skinny legs encased in herringbone trousers of a lavender hue that would have made old Harris weavers fear for their souls. The audience were a storm of sound, out in the dark of the auditorium. So loud that Magnus wondered Johnny Dongo was not lifted from his feet and thrown on to his arse by the weight of laughter surging towards him. It rose from deep in the audience’s bellies, firing out of wide-open mouths, each one with its share of teeth, and though he could not see them, Magnus could imagine the faces of the crowd, heads thrown back, tongues wet and shining, eyes squeezed into slits. The crowd had loved Johnny Dongo and he had steered them upward, ever upward, sending them rocket-fuelled out into the night. But now that Johnny was off stage, it was as if all his energy had turned to venom.

Kim coughed. ‘Christ,’ she said to Johnny. ‘I think I’m getting your cold. I sound like fag-ash Lil.’

Johnny hoicked up a gob of phlegm and spat into his handkerchief. ‘I don’t have a fucking cold.’

Kim produced a small Ziploc bag from her purse and chopped out neat lines of coke, white stripes bright against the black coffee table, like an inverse barcode. Johnny took a note from his pocket, rolled it tight and handed it to her. ‘Ladies first.’ Kim rubbed his thigh as if she were testing it for quality and hoovered up three lines. She passed the note back to Johnny who followed suit.

‘Whoa!’ There was a glimpse of the man he had been on stage. ‘That’ll do the trick.’ Johnny grinned and then sneezed. ‘Fuck.’ He sniffed and shook his head. ‘I think I lost it.’

Johnny’s pisshole-in-the-snow pupils had all but disappeared and Magnus thought the coke had met its mark despite the sneeze, but the comedian fished the note from his pocket again and snorted another three lines.

‘Sorry about that, lads.’ He grinned at the Dongolites. ‘Reduced rations. Share nicely now.’

Johnny’s acolytes took their turn and then there were two lonely lines, thin and shuffled-looking, waiting for Magnus. There was plenty of the white stuff left in Kim’s Ziploc and Magnus wondered if Johnny had orchestrated a shortage for his own amusement, but Dongo looked washed out despite his double dose of marching powder. The thought flitted across Magnus’s mind that he should pass up his share in case Kruze’s fears came true and he had to stand in for Johnny (
let’s do the show right here!
) but the rum had tipped him beyond such precautions. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a fiver. The blue note looked out of place in the upscale hotel room, but Magnus rolled it tight and snorted the good stuff up into his sinuses, tasting the chemical cut of it in the back of his throat. His nerves zingalinged in anticipation of the hit and, for the first time that evening, he smiled.

Time died in the hotel room and everything shrank and expanded into the moment that was now. Kim put on some music and got each of them up to dance, one at a time; all except for Johnny. The girl was broad-beamed and heavy on her feet, but she had a sense of rhythm and moved her hips in time to the music. Magnus wondered again if she was the comedian’s beard and if Johnny would mind if he borrowed her for a while, just long enough for him to lie her down on the bed in the next room and fuck the sound of train wheels from his head. He took Kim by the arm and drew her close, as if they were in some old movie and he was Frank Sinatra. Kim leaned in to him and put an arm around his back. She was shorter than Magnus and he found himself staring at her beehive. It looked hard and brittle and he felt a sudden urge to snap it from her head.

‘I like your hair,’ he said and ran an experimental hand across her rear.

Kim’s face was shiny beneath its coating of make-up. She let Magnus’s hand rove the globe of her bottom and then shoved him in the chest, dealing a blow that sent him reeling against the bathroom door.

‘Rude boy,’ she whispered, in a voice that might have been a come-on.

‘Help yourself,’ Johnny said. He was sitting between the Dongolites now, on the couch Magnus had vacated, all three of them laughing at something on Johnny’s phone. Magnus saw that they were leaning against the stage suit he had carefully zipped inside its garment bag and hung on the back of the couch. ‘That’s sick,’ said one of the Dongolites, pointing at the phone. Magnus still did not know their names.

Johnny had dispensed with his handkerchief. He spat on the floor. ‘She’s a bit of an armful, but islanders like their women big, don’t they? It comes from being such little men. Go on, fill your boots.’

It was an odd image and Magnus laughed. He wanted to tell Johnny that his father, grandfather and no doubt his great-grandfather had indeed been short men, but they could hunt and fish and farm while he, the tallest known McFall in history at five foot nine (taller than Johnny, he seemed to remember) could only jaw for a living. Then he saw Johnny’s face and remembered a Lon Chaney line:
Nobody laughs at a clown at midnight
.

‘No offence, John.’ Magnus gave Kim a glance he hoped conveyed the right balance of respect, apology and sexual attraction. ‘But I don’t think it’s in your gift.’

‘I’m Santa-fucking-Claws, Mags. Believe me.’ Johnny held his arms wide, and the Dongolites shrank into the couch. ‘It’s all in my gift. What do you think you’re doing here? I gifted you this gig. Three nights in the biggest stadium in the country, that was my present to you.’

‘And it’s much appreciated, Johnny.’

Magnus had flung his jacket on a chair by the door when they had first entered the room (how many hours ago?). He picked it up and shoved his arms into its sleeves.

Johnny Dongo said, ‘It doesn’t fucking look like it. First you feel up my fiancée and then you refuse to fuck her. What’s that all about?’

‘You’re a wanker, Johnny.’ Kim went into the adjoining bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

‘See what you’ve done,’ Johnny said. ‘You’ve upset her now.’

The curtains had been closed when they came into the room, but a thin sliver of grey dawn had reached through a chink in the heavy fabric and was stretching across the floor. Magnus took his phone from his pocket. The battery was dead.

‘What time is it, John?’

Johnny leaned back into the couch, draping an arm around each of the Dongolites.

‘Time you fucked off.’

The rumours were true then, Johnny Dongo liked boys.

‘Don’t worry, I’m gone.’ Magnus held up a hand in goodbye and opened the hotel-room door, but instead of walking into the corridor he was confronted by the ensuite.

‘I’m not jesting,’ Johnny said, as the door swung shut.

Magnus emptied his bladder, zipped up and then splashed some water on his face, grimacing at his reflection in the mirror. He had what his mother called a ‘baby face’. Some girls found the combination of shaggy black hair, wide eyes and gap teeth cute, but Magnus guessed they were not features that would age well. He drew his hands down his face, watching his eyes droop, feeling the scrub of bristle on his chin.

‘You look like a discount rent boy,’ he muttered.

The bathroom had a glass ceiling. He sat on the edge of the whirlpool bath and looked up at the view of lightening sky occasionally interrupted by a flash of high-flying gulls. Why did the birds gravitate to cities when there were wide-open seas out there? It was a question he might as well ask himself. Magnus wondered if the trains were running yet. Fuck only knew how much a cab home would cost. The thought of trains made the rum and beer in his belly threaten to slosh to the surface and he realised he would pay anything not to enter the station again.

The sound of banging startled him and he fell backward into the bath, knocking his cheek against the oversized tap jutting out from the wall. The porcelain was cold and hard, but the tub had been designed for couples to bathe comfortably together, toe to toe, or chest to spine if they were especially good friends, and it was wide enough for Magnus to bend his knees and roll on to his side. He closed his eyes. The sound of banging grew louder and he opened them again. Getting out of the bath was not easy and Magnus fell twice, but eventually he managed it and unlocked the bathroom door. Johnny Dongo was on the other side, his face beaded with sweat, his shirt unfastened to reveal a view of bony, white sternum.

A wave of fellow feeling washed through Magnus. They were all human and alive in the dawn of a fresh day. Who cared what Johnny got up to with his Dongolites, as long as everyone loved each other?

‘You’re a good man, John.’ He clasped Johnny’s elbow. ‘A good man. You want a bit of advice?’