Death & the City Book Two (35 page)

I think Cooper and I are thinking along a similar line of sadistic wit tonight, avoiding our fixed positions in favour of free roaming, neither of us having been shown any gratitude or loyalty for supporting the new venue. Cooper whispers to me in passing that he has raided all the condom machines until the only thing left in them are breath mints, looking quite pleased with himself as he wanders away in search of more mischief. I'm not sure whether he wants them for himself or just did it to spoil everyone else's chances tonight. If he's got a booty-call after work, Des will think she's finally met her match when he empties his pockets at her place later. I picture her face as he tells her to call two friends to come over and join them, as he's got more than enough Coop to go round tonight. Aiming to out-animal Viv Henson in the bedroom reputation stakes.

I bump into Animal Henson walking around the rear of the bar island area, closest to the shadow dancer screens, which does not come as much of a surprise.

"Coop says if you see him doing a cash register run, just hold open the nearest Fire Exit and push him out of it," Animal jokes. "Sounds like a good plan to me."

"It'll be all card transaction receipts," I point out. "Knowing Cooper's luck. How many Lottery tickets does he buy a week now?"

Animal offers me a soft mint. I take it, wondering if he tried to get condoms just now, and had to make do with what was left.

"You going back to The Plaza?" he asks me.

"That's what they told us in the meeting earlier," I shrug.

"I meant tonight, after work. Staff lock-in."

"No, I've got plans." Two lots of plans, I think to myself.

"No, you don't. I know you." Animal smirks, but I can tell he's not so certain. "You're one of those girls who just dashes off home to look busy and play hard to get. Come back to The Plaza with us and get sloshed for once."

"Last time I was sloshed with you lot, I ended up wearing your clothes," I say, in a tone of voice that suggests it's the least part of the event that I don't want repeated.

"It was you not wearing them that I was remembering," he reminds me.

Luckily, my phone interrupts with an MMS. I open it to view, trying to recall whose Caller I.D. is listed as
Motion Sensor.

It's a five-second clip of shapes or shadows flickering against a brick wall. I play it twice, wondering what weird crap is turning up on my phone now, and whether head office is responsible for sending me more of Alice's uploaded internet fantasy world.

"Who's that?" Animal asks, his eyes challenging. He still doesn't believe I have such a thing as a life away from door work.

"Boyfriend sending me random stuff," I tell him, and my phone rings in my hand on cue. Awesome - even though I don't recognise the number, I answer anyway. "Hello?"

"It's Yuri, Lara," Yuri's voice greets me. "Looks like a cat jumped on your car and triggered the appropriate security camera. What do you think?"

"Oh. Yeah, I didn't know what it was. Forgot all about those. Pretty cool."

"I'll get the surveillance boys to filter out anything unimportant, so you don't get interrupted by dead leaves and hailstones on your phone," he says. "Glad it's working okay, though."

"Yeah, me too."

"Catch you later," he says, and disconnects.

I feel in my inside pocket. In a second or two I find the WXYZ Logistics business card with Warren's phone number on. I check Yuri's mobile next to it, against the number on Caller I.D. on my phone, before pressing
Add To Contacts
on the Options menu, typing his name in. Animal watches a bit slyly, but with a growing uncertainty around the edges.

"He's just got a new number, I hadn't saved it yet," I remark idly. "I should have known he would check up on me."

"He gave it to you on a business card?" Animal taunts.

"I get a lot of business cards handed to me," I reply. "Much classier than numbers scrawled in lipstick on toilet paper, like what you lot get. He didn't want to be the one to miss out joining my card collection at the back of the kitchen drawer, so he got some printed."

True as well. I never ring any of the numbers on them. I don't know how many are fakery, like Kaavey Canem's supposed FBI/CIA Post Office print-machine fun card. All with intriguing job descriptions on, that sound like convoluted language to mean 'glorified desk pilot.'

Warren and Yuri's job description I would have thought of as very Desk Pilot as seen on paper, but having met them, consider it more a case of camouflage by business-card language.

"What does he do?" Animal demands.

"Police officer," I reply at once, nearly catching myself by surprise, with another blind stab at the truth of whatever my current situation is.

Animal smirks.

"You don't have a boyfriend," he says. "You've always been single, as long as I've known you. That's a really contrived lie as well, coming from you. I'd have thought you'd say jungle warfare correspondent, or Russian Mafia accountant. No way would a boyfriend suddenly just appear like that."

I shrug, and walk away, unable to explain it myself.

"I'm just jealous?" Animal calls after me, as if prompting me with a line I've missed out on telling him myself.

"I'd say Yakuza boss," I mutter to myself, in retaliation. "A French-speaking one."

I should have known he'd be cocky towards me. Likes to think he's the only one who's managed it. It's not as if I was expecting any respect or special treatment, just that I thought –
hoped
- he'd still consider me to be the human being and colleague we were before anything happened. I guess not. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to that sort of thing, but I did have some sort of concept that it didn't change anything.

So this is what it feels like to be wrong about someone, I think. No great loss, anyway. Except it is, in a way. I used to enjoy his sense of humour and anecdotes. Now it just feels like I
am
one of the latest anecdotes he'll refer back to in future, entertaining others with his witty views on life.

I go to check the toilets, and find Pascaline sitting on the edge of the sinks, texting.

"Comme ça va?"
I greet her, without consciously thinking that she doesn't know the extent of my French. But she doesn't seem to react in surprise and just nods, replying in English.

"I have problems with my Brazilian," she tells me, opening a whole new topic of conversation I'm not sure I need information on.

"What kind of problems?" I ask, wondering if itching or a rash is involved.

"I met her at Lesbian Speed-Dating," Pascaline explains, to my relief. "She is very beautiful. And quite rich, which is nice. But I think she is a fraud. She isn't a real lesbian."

"What, you think she might be just curious?" I ask, perching on the opposite sink unit.

"No, I think she is looking for something else. Like maybe she is a reporter. Or a novelist doing research. But more sinister. I keep thinking - maybe a cannibal, or she is looking for black market human organs."

"That does sound sinister," I concede. "Do you get many creepy folks at Lesbian Speed-Dating?"

"Sometimes even men dressed up," Pascaline nods gloomily.

"Really?" I do a bad job of not laughing. "That sounds kind of dangerous. Sounds like you should report this Brazilian to the police if she's acting strange."

"She says it is just a little vampire fetish," Pascaline tells me. "But I'm not impressed. Too many women trying to be different, like more exotic than everybody else. It all becomes normality. Like if you read magazines, every woman is a little bit lesbian now. No surprises any more."

"Must make life quite dull," I agree. "But why would a heterosexual pervert, or fraud, target lesbians? Unless that was her perversion specifically?"

"I think she needs something obtainable only through intimacy with other women," says Pascaline. "When I find out what it is, I will report her if it is illegal."

I don't feel adequately qualified to pursue the subject any further.

"Good luck with that, anyway," I sigh, sliding off my perch, and doing the rounds of the cubicles, checking for slumped bodies against doors and suspicious movements. "Hope it's nothing too serious."

"Ah, comme ci, comme ça,"
Pascaline grunts, returning to her messages. "Relationships are complicated for you too, I imagine."

"Really?" I ask again, curiosity about this new assumption too enticing to dismiss. "In what way?"

She looks back up at me, as if for the first time making a connection between the conversation, and who she's talking to.

"Oh, of course," she says, vaguely. "I forget. You don't have a relationship yet. I always get you confused with, what's her name, Jade. The other door woman with blonde hair, at Manifesto."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," I grin at her.

"I make sure I remember you properly. You are Laura, she is Jade." Pascaline nods to herself, satisfied, engrossed in her phone again.

Still can't get my name right, fake or otherwise. I smirk to myself, leaving the club toilets. Here I am, working under the impression that my colleagues are familiar enough with my face, but all they register is a blonde ponytail and I could be any one of several Barbie-doll door supervisors. From thirty-one-year-old mud-wrestler Jade at R&B hip-hop venue Manifesto, to twenty-two-year-old Carlynne (with the piercings and tattoos) at fetish club Xcite, to Czec Sam, only a year younger than me, who left door work at Sin Street four years ago - to open Pole-Ka-Doodle-Doo as owner/manager. It's a mistake I experience regularly from customers - although I'm still not sure who, exactly, the guy that always says he wants to see my trapeze act thinks I am. But so far I thought most of my co-workers knew me easily as Lara, the single mum who stays single. Pascaline might be winding me up, deliberately forgetting me, and still getting my name wrong. I'm not ranked as anything of importance on her radar. I'm just a blip with a badge and a radio, getting on her nerves when she wants to be the only female on a team.

I don't know if her insecurity and arrogance is part of the job to her, or founded in her sexuality. I'll never understand it, I reckon. It's not like I'm her competition for dates. If lesbians are so good at sussing out non-lesbians, then there's no mystery to them about my ongoing singledom and what it might mean.

I look at my watch, which says 00:14, and just as I look up again, register two firemen passing me via the front lobby. Some women wolf-whistle on their way to the toilets, but I've recognised Zack from Red Watch, and they're not male strippers. It means Evac drill is imminent.

So I loiter around the entrance to the Ladies' conveniences, waiting for the inevitable alarm, as both servicemen go in through an office door behind the box office.

Pascaline looks bemused at the noise, and hasn't moved from the sinks when I go back into the toilets to holler all the customers out. As I'm holding the door and directing them to the main entrance, which is the nearest designated Fire Exit, she gives me a competitive glare, as if I triggered the alarm myself or somehow failed to defer to her with an early warning. Which I guess I could have done, but if she hadn't been sitting in there skiving off, she wouldn't have needed it.

The customers, in their day-glo plastic platform clubbing shoes, muddy fake tans and variety of hair and nail extensions, totter outside like herded sheep, exclaiming about the alarm, voicing concerns about the occurrence of a real fire, and generally squawking and protesting like seagulls. Mgr Stacie is commandeering the radio channel to remind everyone that all staff have to report to the bus stop across the road at Pittarama for roll call after evacuation, while out of the corner of my eye I see Cooper running around checking all links and staff-rooms, ranting that he wishes she would shut up as he can't call the Fire Exit checks in while she's hogging the channel. There isn't even a gap in her air-hostess announcement voice in which to get the others to switch over to a separate one. I'm sure it's going to feature quite prominently in his feedback in tonight's meeting. If he hasn't already decided to cut his losses on that, and go find a use for his condoms instead.

"Pascaline, take over from Lara on the door," he calls out, as she eventually emerges from the toilets, looking unimpressed behind the last two customers to exit their cubicles. They waddle after the others, in too-tight satin corsets and hot-pants. "Lara, come round with me and do final checks. Make sure there's nobody left in the venue."