Skippy Dies (26 page)

‘Thinking?’ Howard repeats, as if the word is unfamiliar.

‘Just now. You were away off somewhere.’

‘I was wondering why the DJ is playing all these old songs.’

‘You looked sad,’ she says. She lays a finger on his chest and gazes at it, like an electrician into a nest of wiring. ‘I
bet,’ she says slowly, ‘you were thinking of the dances you went to, when you were young, and wondering where all the time
went, and what happened to all the dreams you had then, and if this life is anything like the one you wanted.’

Howard laughs. ‘Bingo.’

‘Me too,’ she says ruefully. ‘I suppose it’s inevitable.’ She turns her gaze over the hall, where two-personned silhouettes
are swaying almost motionlessly to ‘Wild Horses’ by the Rolling Stones. ‘So how did you do, at your Hop?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Howard, eventually this playing-dumb routine is going to stop seeming charming. Did you score? Did you dance a slow-set?
Or were you one of the losers watching from the sidelines?’

Howard considers lying, then comes clean. ‘Loser,’ he says.

‘Same here,’ she nods dolefully. Howard rounds on her in disbelief. ‘You? You’re telling me no one wanted to kiss you?’

‘What can I say? I was your classic ugly duckling.’ She looks away. ‘So do you feel like making up for lost time?’

He starts. ‘What?’

She shrugs, inclines her head towards the crowd. ‘I don’t know. Take home one of those little nymphets. I’m sure they’d love
some extra lessons from a handsome teacher. They’re all so gorgeous, aren’t they? And
skinny
– God, none of them must have eaten for a week.’

‘They’re a little young for me.’

‘Take two. Fourteen plus fourteen is twenty-eight.’

‘I have a girlfriend who might object.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she says ambiguously. She clams up, addresses herself to the music, leaving Howard to wonder just what has
passed him by. ‘This is such a great song,’ she remarks, and then, forthrightly, to Howard, ‘Would you like to dance?’

Only by a miracle does Howard manage not to drop his paper cup of punch. ‘Here? Now? With you?’

She arches a gamine eyebrow. Howard’s mind is a sea of flying chicken feathers. ‘We can’t,’ he stammers, then adds hurriedly,
‘It’s not that I don’t
want
to… but, you know, in front of the kids, and everything?’

‘Then let’s sneak out!’ she whispers.

‘Out?’ he repeats.

‘Somewhere no one will see us. For five minutes.’ Her eyes glitter at him like mirrorballs.

‘But what about the… didn’t Greg say…?’ He gestures weakly at the costumed teenagers.

‘Five
minutes
, Howard, what’s the worst that can happen? Just till the end of this song, it’s practically over anyway… we’ll just go out
into the corridor… ooh, we can make Cosmopolitans!’ She views his expression of agonized vacillation, cringing at her like
an animal begging to be put out of its misery, and takes his hand. ‘You owe it to yourself, Howard,’ she says. ‘You have to
dance at least one slow-set in your life.’

The lights are low and he doesn’t think anyone sees them leave.

‘Wild Horses’ fades into REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’, extending the mass kissing for another three minutes. To a dark corner where
a boy in a red Formula One outfit is welded to the mouth of a sexy secretary, a girl in a dress unfortunately resembling an
exploding wedding cake totters up. In a trembling voice, she says, ‘Titch?’ Formula One ignores her. She waits a moment, unsure,
then taps him on the back. ‘Titch?’

He breaks off and turns round, exasperated. Sexy Secretary, looking daggers at Wedding Cake, wipes a damp chin with her sleeve.

‘Titch, we need to talk,’ Wedding Cake says.

Elsewhere, a thirties gangster with a pencil-moustache adorning her upper lip approaches a sexy GI and a princess. ‘Hey, Alison?
– Oh my God, sorry Janine, you look just like Alison from behind!’

‘That’s okay, Fiona! I think Alison’s over there with Max Brady?’

‘Thanks!’ Thirties gangster moves off. Sexy GI’s smile vanishes instantly, and she says to the princess, ‘That bitch, there’s
no
way
I look like fucking Alison Cummins from behind. Her arse is like three times the size of mine!’

‘Fiona looks like a lesbian in that suit,’ the princess says.

‘She’s such a stupid cunt,’ the sexy GI says.

The princess, the GI, the scuba-diver and the Victorian-lady-who-looks-like-a-wedding-cake knew it would be dodgy trying to
sneak drink inside so they had three Breezers and a naggin of vodka each before they came in – well, no one actually finished
the naggin except Victorian Lady and then she kept falling over on the way up here and they practically had to carry her past
the pervy old priest. Still, the princess is quite locked, and the GI is even more locked. In
the car park she took two of the pills, and now she’s talking really fast and loud and not making that much sense.

‘Looks like KellyAnn’s finally hunted down Titch,’ the princess says, looking at the scene unfolding in the corner.

‘Oh my God, she’s not going to tell him
now
?’ the scuba-diver says.

‘What does she think he’s going to do,’ the GI says, ‘stop kissing Ammery Fox and get down on one knee right here in the fucking
Seabrook gym hall and say, Oh, KellyAnn, please marry me? I mean, hello?’

‘He’s
quite
good-looking,’ the princess judges.

‘He’s nothing special,’ the GI says dismissively. ‘He’s a
boy
, you know?’

A strongman with a handlebar moustache and leopardskin leotard interposes himself between the girls and glances from one to
the other, smiling. They gaze back at him with expressions of naked disgust of the kind ordinarily reserved for, say, sex
offenders. The strongman withdraws, looking significantly less strong.

‘God, I’m so sick of these fucking
boys
,’ the GI declares. ‘I need a
man
.’

‘Me too,’ the princess says.

‘Oh Jesus – Lori, don’t look but that weird fucking Robin Hood thing is completely staring at you again,’ the scuba-diver
says.

‘Oh my God, what is his problem?’

‘Maybe I should go over and tell him to stop freaking you out.’

‘Don’t waste the oxygen.’

‘Did you hear anything from Prince Charming?’ the GI asks.

The princess’s face falls.

‘Oh, Lori…’ The GI reaches out and lays a hand on the princess’s shoulder. ‘Don’t let him ruin your night. Switch off your
phone and stop thinking about him.’

‘I’m not thinking about him,’ the princess mumbles, hair falling over her face.

‘I suppose he at least might have had some drugs,’ the GI says. ‘God, this thing is
so
fucking boring. Seabrook boys are such
invertebrates.’ She withdraws her hand, wraps her bare arms around herself. ‘I need a shag so badly.’

Near the heart of the dancefloor, Niall/Trudy has been arrested on his way back from the toilets by a heartstoppingly lovely
girl dressed as Natasha Fatale, arch-enemy of Bullwinkle the Moose. The girl wants to know where he got his lipstick. Niall,
sweating profusely, is not sure how to proceed. Should he tell her he got it from his sister and he doesn’t know the name?
Or should he tell her the truth, that he fell in love with it in a little boutique in Sandy-cove village? The heartstopping
girl waits expectantly. Niall feels one of his breasts slide inexorably out of his corset.

Dennis and Skippy, meanwhile, are over by the punchbowl watching Ruprecht, who has somehow got talking to a girl.

‘Is he the guy from
The Karate Kid
?’ the girl is shouting over the music.

‘He’s Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stanford,’ Ruprecht shouts back.

The girl looks utterly lost for a reply; after a few moments, she simply gives up and walks away. Ruprecht, who initiated
the conversation only because the girl, dressed as a saucy waitress, was carrying a chocolate cake, which turned out to be
fake, is unphased, and rejoins the others just as Mario trudges over with a grim expression.

‘How’s it going, Mario?’ Dennis asks innocently.

‘Pff, fuck these school-going girls.’ Mario makes a dismissive gesture. ‘In Italy, I prefer to date the girls who are in college
– those who are nineteen, twenty, and have a good knowledge of sexual techniques. These girls, who are repressed and frigid,
do not know which way is up.’

‘They don’t know much about science either,’ Ruprecht adds.

‘Also, what is with this music from days of Yore, that is badly cramping my style?’

Mario’s not the only one asking. Over in the DJ booth, Wallace Willis has just segued from Led Zeppelin into ‘All Right Now’
and is so engrossed in Paul Kossoff’s classic riff that at first he pays no
attention to the irate voices emanating from somewhere below: ‘Yo, cracker!’ ‘Hey, honky – yo, you jus’ gonna ignore me?’
Finally he realizes that the voices are addressing him, and peers over the side of the booth to see two smallish, disputatious-looking
boys in trousers the size of refrigerators making inscrutable hand-gestures at him. ‘That’s right, nigga, we be talkin’ to
you!’

‘Dang, G, what up wid dis music y’all playin?’

Wallace, who’s dressed in a pristine white sailor-suit and holding an enormous lollipop, slides off his headphones. ‘What?’
he says.

‘Nigga, this be the shit my dad listens to!’ one of them says.

‘Yeah, homes, what is it,
One Hundred Greatest Jeans Commercials
?’ the other adds, waving a plastic machine-gun at him.

‘This is Free,’ he informs them.

‘G, I don’t care if it cost you fifty fuckin’ dollars, put on som’in wi’
bass
!’

‘Yeah, motherfucker, this ain’t yo’ Aunt Mabel’s birthday party, play some hip-hop, dawg!’

‘No requests,’ Wallace says.

‘You makin’ a mistake,’ one of the voices warns.

‘The Acting Principal asked
me
to be the DJ,’ Wallace replies primly, and replaces the headphones over his ears. The two bad-tempered gangstas, both of
whom are, incontestably and in spite of their best efforts, white, lour at him a moment longer, and then abruptly disappear.

Midway through the next song – ‘Hold the Line’ by Toto – the sound cuts out. The crowd shuffles to a halt, and the hall is
filled with a frazzle of consternation. It can’t be the storm that’s to blame this time, because the turntables are still
lit up, and the disco lights still skirling over the now-static heads. There must be a connection loose somewhere. Wallace
Willis casts about for grown-up assistance, but can’t seem to locate Mr Fallon and Miss McIntyre. He unlatches the half-door
to his booth, descends the steps and is stooping to examine the jumble of cables beneath it when the music starts up again.
Everybody cheers and resumes dancing. But the song that is playing now is not the song that
was playing a moment ago; in fact it is not a song that features in Wallace’s music collection at all. Wait, he shouts, stop
dancing, this is the wrong song! This is the wrong song! But nobody appears to hear him – they are too busy throwing gangsterish
shapes and shaking their booty to the interloping song’s extremely loud bass line…

Bass. It’s only now that Wallace realizes what has happened. This is not a programming error, or a crossed wire, or a freak
occurrence brought about by the storm. His sound system has been hijacked! By the boys with the giant trousers!

I’m a case of champagne and she’s falled off the wagon / I’m slayin the ho like St George slayed the dragon…

Hunched over, he follows the wires in the hope of finding the point where the takeover has occurred. But it’s so
dark
, and behaviour on the dancefloor is getting increasingly raucous, and after he has been bumped three or four times Wallace
decides to concentrate instead on finding the teachers. Even after a full circuit of the hall, though, they are nowhere to
be seen. Wallace begins to get worried. The unauthorized music is having a strange effect on people, making them shoutier,
jumpier, and their dance moves decidedly more provocative. Things are in danger of getting out of hand. Where are the teachers?
A terrible thought hits him. Are the wide-trousered boys behind this disappearance too? He remembers those Uzis slung around
their necks – is the whole party now under the control of gun-toting, rap-loving gangstas?

‘But it’s for charity!’ Wallace squeaks, out loud. No one hears. Picturing the two unfortunate teachers tied up in a closet
somewhere, he hurries towards the back door, fighting his way through writhing bodies that, a moment ago, belonged to titchy
piffling second-years, but now, as if bathed in some new colour of light, appear quite unfamiliar…

A group of boys has managed to fish down some of the black lost-soul-like balloons, unknotted their umbilici and sucked in
their contents; now they are rapping over the bassline in voices squeaky with helium, like a chorus of gangsta rats. One of
them,
a Colonel Kilgore with a cheroot between his teeth and cheeks daubed with axle-grease, reaches into his fatigues and pulls
out his phone: pressing a button to call up a message that reads:

Strafing the dancers with his machine-gun, he moves towards the double-doors…

She gots the assitude/And I gots the latitude / We in-ex-tric-er-ab-ly linked, like heart attacks and fatty food
…

The floor quivers with bass; the staticky, alien energy that had been buzzing about the edges of everything earlier in the
night seems now to converge, infiltrating the space like an invisible gas.

‘Hey, Skipford, look, your girlfriend is on her own!’

‘Her friend ran off to get sick, you should go and talk to – hey, she’s looking at us! Hallo there! Hey! That’s right, over
he– ow! What?’

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘What’s the problem? You want to talk to her, right? Do you want to talk to her or don’t you?’

‘Well, yeah, but not right this second…’

‘Skippy, if you want to talk to her, I can now reveal to you a chat-up line that is one hundred per cent foolproof and fail-safe.
It is something I have been developing for several months for personal use, but I will tell it to you because you are my friend,
and I would rather see you nailing this hot bitch than Carl, who has spat in my lunch more times than I can count. So here
it is: when I see a chick I want to score, I go up to her and say, Pardon me, you are stepping on my dick.’