One of Us (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I stopped at a phone box, and fed it with some change.

“Yeah?”

“I need a drink,” I said. “Very badly. And I need to be around someone, and to be out of this place, and with someone who can make me laugh just for a moment, and make me forget what a shitty place this world is. Can I come round? Please?”

“I’ll pick you up,” Daniel said. “Be there before you know it. Put the world to rights. You wait and see, I’ll make it all OK.”

We stopped for pizza on the way back to his flat. “Worse than last time,” he said. “’Cause you ate all the bits and pieces out of the cupboards then, and now I’ve got nothing.” When we were nearly back at his flat, his mobile played some dance tune.

“Yeah?” he said to the phone. “No, not now.”

He listened for a little while, pulled a face. “Paul, I said the answer’s no, mate. Yeah, busy. Yeah, course. Actually, it is.” He laughed. “You’d never guess. Not in a million years. No. No. Fuck off I’m making it up. Here, say hello.” He held his phone out at arms length.

“Hello,” I said.

“See,” Daniel said. He listened for a moment. “What if it is?” He listened some more, made a face. “Jealous, man, jealous. Anyway, what am I wasting time talking to you for?” He laughed again, hung up, tossed his phone onto the dashboard.

“Fat Paul, you know? The driver. He’s started pestering me to go out for a drink with him, gave in once, now he thinks he’s my best friend, I keep having to make excuses. Not exactly my social scene, sitting listening to that loser all night.”

“You didn’t have to tell him I was here,” I said.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Well not on purpose. Anyway, Paul’s not going to say anything, he’s afraid of his own shadow, that one.”

“So, I am your excuse for tonight,” I said.

“Well, it’s better than saying I’m washing my hair.”

“So what did he say when you said you were with me?”

Daniel laughed. “He told me to watch myself, that you were a dangerous one.”

“He’s not wrong.”

When we got in, we ate pizza, drank some wine. Daniel put on music, some soft lovers’ rock reggae.

After we had finished eating, he built a joint, took a deep hit, offered it across to me.

I hesitated.

“Go on,” he said. “Do you good.”

I did not want to lose control. But I did want to put a glass wall between me and the world, and the wine was not doing it fast enough, so I reached over, and I took the joint. It had been some time, and I had to try very hard not to cough. But I felt the world soften and draw back.

We sat in silence for a little while, passing the joint back and forth. The music finished, and for once Daniel did not leap up to put another CD on.

He looked at me. I smiled a stupid smile at him. Daniel pulled a CD case on the table towards him, and tapped some powder out on to it from a little case in his pocket.

“Fancy a line?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t mind if I do, do you?” It wasn’t really a question. He chopped the coke into two lines, bent down low over the table and did one, then came back the other way to do the other. He sat back, breathed in hard through his nose, said, “Fucking hell, yes, that’s the one.”

I watched him.

“What?” He grinned. “Go on, this is class. What you get when you have connections, you see. No crap off the streets, this is the business.”

“Not for me,” I said.

“OK,” he shrugged. “But you don’t know what you’re missing.” He chopped out a couple more lines.

I know what I miss, I thought. And it is not that. And knowing will not find it for me.

“Penny for them,” Daniel said.

“Sorry?” I do not know quite how long I had been thinking. At first I thought that it was only a moment, but then I realised that Daniel had got up and left the room at least once. I had not thought that I had smoked that much.

“You,” he said, “You look miles away. What you thinking?”

“Who are you, Daniel?

He looked thoughtful, stroked his chin. “No, no, don’t tell me, I’ll get it in a minute.” He drank from a bottle of brandy that was on the table in front of him, that I was sure had not been there before. It was like magic tricks.

“Funny. But I am not joking. You need to think about who you are, Daniel. What you are. Are you one of them, like Corgan and the others? Or are you like one of us?”

He laughed, sniffed and rubbed at the end of his nose, and started to roll another joint. “And who are you then, Anna?”

“Someone who is just trying to live. I might not do good things all the time, but I try not to do bad, and maybe that is all you can hope for. You need to think which is you before it is too late.”

“Too late for what?” he asked, but I did not answer.

He stared out into the distance for a while, took a long drink from the bottle, and then looked back at me. “I know who I am,” he said. “I’m
Daniel
. And that’s all there is to it. I don’t fit in anyone’s boxes. I’m Daniel, and I’m going to fly like a fucking comet, you watch me. You can’t tell me, I have to be this, I have to be that, no more than Corgan can. I’ve told you, I’m going somewhere fast. You going to be with me?” He rolled the joint up, ran his tongue along the edge, sealed it, folded a roach he tore from the cover of a magazine, inserted it into the end. All precise, like a watch-mender. Daniel flicked the wheel on his lighter, took a deep drag, then held his hand out towards me.

“No thank you,” I said. “Not just yet.”

Daniel took another hit on the joint. “You really should,” he said. “Relax. You could do with it, takes the edge off.”

“No,” I said. I was already feeling out of it. More than I should do on just a couple of glasses of wine and a little bit of dope. Much more. My legs felt unsteady, and I gripped the arm of the couch hard so that I would not fall over, and then I realised that I was not standing up anyway. “Is that just hash? What we had.”

“More or less,” he said, getting to his feet. “Don’t worry. Chills you out, makes you feel loose.” And he did a little staggering dance, swaying at the hips. “And ready for anything. How you feeling, Anna?”

“More or less? I ought to go,” I said, although I was not sure how exactly I was going to manage getting to the door, never mind where I was going to go after that. I did not want to stay at Daniel’s, not feeling like this. And not the way that he was tonight. Too intense, too wired, not the Daniel that I wanted.

“No way,” he said, “Don’t be a spoilsport, the evening’s just starting, chill, have another drink, I’ll get you one, we’ll put some music on, you fancy some music? I’ve got this new CD...” He rummaged about behind cushions and on the floor, throwing CD boxes across the room until he found the one that he was looking for. He stabbed his finger at his CD player until it opened, and then put it on. It was something I didn’t know, with lots of bass. It sounded like music from the future. Daniel stood and nodded his head to it for a moment, finishing the joint. Then he stubbed it out in the ashtray, grinned, and crashed down on to the sofa next to me. His eyes were red and unfocussed.

“This is cool, this,” he said. “Us. This. You having a good time? You need a good time, Anna. I know things have been shit, but you need to chill out, enjoy life while you can, live the moment.” He took another drink to reinforce his point.

“It has been nice,” I said. “But I do not feel—I really ought to...”

“Oh, shush, shush, shush.” Daniel leaned over, and put his finger against my lips to quieten me.

“Daniel—” I began, but again he shushed me, and held his finger against my lips.

“Just chill,” he said, and he left his finger where it was, and then moved it down so it parted my lips a little.

I pulled my head back. “Daniel, no, not now.” But he moved over, his head dipping to mine, his body pushing mine back into the cushions of the sofa.

“No, Daniel,” I said again, but still he pressed on, trying to find my mouth with his lips, his hand crawling my thigh like a spider. He smelt of smoke, and aftershave like lemons. I tried to get my hand between us to push him away but he pressed so hard on to me that I could not. “Daniel, stop it.”

He stopped, but did not move. “Anna,” he said, and he lifted one hand and tilted my chin, very gently, like you would with a cat. And he smiled.

“What?” I said.

“For once, shut the fuck up.” And he leaned forward very quickly, and his lips were on mine, his tongue trying to force its way through in the same way his hand now tried to slide down between my thighs. I clamped everything shut, and squirmed to find my way out. I did not want this. I wanted just to be happy, to forget the world for a while, but to do it all on my terms, not when I was stoned and slow and stupid and it was not my choice. I could hear a muffled voice making a strange sound and then I realised that it was mine. His tongue pushed forward again, and I tried to bite on it, but just missed the end of it.

He jerked back. “Christ,” he said in a shocked voice. “You ungrateful fucking bitch.”

I could not believe what he had just said. “Ungrateful? What, I am meant to sleep with you because you bought me dinner, carried my washing once?”

“No, how about because I saved your fucking life?” he said, with the outrage of the very drunk. “And you don’t even know it.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Don’t give me bullshit. You think you could have got away with that crap with Elena without getting found out?”

I did not understand what he meant, and my expression showed that.

He pushed his tongue into his bottom lip, made a noise like he was retarded. “How do you think Corgan knew that your mad friend was seeing her? That they were up to something?”

“Bastard.” I tried to struggle out from underneath him but he kept me pinned where I was.

“That’s all the thanks I get for saving your life? Don’t you get it, Anna? He would have found out anyway, and you wouldn’t be here if he had. You think you’re so clever, but you’re not smart enough to get away with something like that, you don’t know anything, you’re like a kid. So I put my neck on the line for you, I told Corgan that I’d heard Sean was seeing Elena, had been cooking something up, left you out of it. Fucking risk I took, for you. Otherwise he’d have found out anyway, and he would have gone straight to you. So don’t you see Anna, I did it for you, and this is how you treat me.”

“How I treat you?” I screamed at him. “You betrayed my friends and betrayed me so you could suck up to Corgan and you expect me to fuck you for a thank you?” I managed to get one hand free and I clawed at his face.

He slapped me, and my ears rang and the room rocked around me and for a moment or two I did not know much of anything. When the world came back into focus again, Daniel had my arms under my back, his weight pinning them down, and his hands were moving on me.

“Come on,” he mumbled. “Don’t let’s be like this, come on Anna, just you, just me, it’s right, it’s what we want, forget everything else, come on, come on.”

I thought no, not like this, I do not believe it, this is not real, I will wake up, but it is real and I can feel his hands on my skin and I can smell lemons and I don’t know if it is his aftershave or if I am remembering the journey in the lorry and I am so scared and I’m not fighting and his fingers hurt me.

I tried to shake my head as much as I could, my eyes wide, trying to see the real Daniel looking out of his, the Daniel who had made me laugh and taken me for dinner. I thought of my family and I thought of the time I lost my virginity to sweet, useless Piotr, and I thought of Elena and I thought again oh no, oh no, and then there was a loud crash, and Daniel turned his head, said, “What the fuck?” and then he went flying backwards across the room.

Corgan stood over me, looking down, no expression in his eyes. Then he turned, just as Daniel was staggering to his feet, and he kicked him hard in the stomach. Daniel folded like a fan and went down on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, and Corgan kicked him again, this time in the face, and Daniel howled and I shouted, “Stop!”

Corgan turned again to look at me. He raised one finger to his lips, very gently, and said, “Shush.” Then he turned, bent down, and grabbed Daniel’s shoulders, and threw him at the wall. Daniel hit it, slid down it and did not move.

I pulled my skirt down, and held my blouse closed with one hand, and stumbled in between them. Corgan shook his head.

“From what I heard,” he said. “Sounded like he was going to rape you.”

“No,” I said. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“Well?” he said.

“Leave him,” I said.

He shook his head again. “I’d have thought you’d want to kill him.”

“If I do, I do it myself,” I said.

“Gratitude for you,” he said. “Suit yourself. You,” he pointed to Daniel. “You stay there and don’t move. If you move, I’ll cut your cock off and give it to her.” Daniel did not move, but that might have been because he was not conscious.

Corgan turned back to me, brushing at the arms of his suit as if he had lint on them. “Don’t get ideas about your importance, Anna. My problem is, he didn’t ask permission,” he said. “To be seeing you. Not his business, I would have told him to stay out. But he didn’t ask, and I don’t like that.”

Fat Paul, I thought. Thank God for Fat Paul and his big mouth.

“You hear me?” This was directed at Daniel. “You get above your fucking station, you. You don’t do that again. I don’t like people I can’t trust. And I can’t trust you. Understand? So you don’t work for me no more.” Corgan turned back to me.

“You’re coming with me. Job for you. Urgent. No arguing.”

“No, I—”

“No arguing,” Corgan said, and the way that he said it made me stop before I said another word. “Thirty seconds to get yourself together. Then I want you down in the car.” He turned and walked out. I took a deep breath. I did not feel stoned any more, I did not feel drunk. I felt very sober. I do not know that I felt much else of anything. I tried to fasten my blouse as well as I could. Daniel struggled up to a sitting position against the wall. His face was dark with blood, and he used the sleeve of his shirt to try and blot it away.