The Blueprint (27 page)

‘Him, and
anyone else you’ve murdered,’ Charlie replies.

Phoebe
shrugs.

‘He wouldn’t
have cared if I’d lived or died, and the feeling was mutual. If he
wanted to live, he should’ve killed me first.’

‘And what
about us?’ Charlie asks. There’s still an eerie casualness to his
manner. ‘Are you going to off us, just in case we decide to do you
first?’ Freddy, though trembling, raises his hands slightly and
forces himself within throttling range of her, in case she goes for
a weapon. Phoebe fixes him with a glare, but doesn’t bother to move
anything more than her pupils.

‘I wasn’t
planning on it.’

‘Well that’s
good enough for me,’ Charlie whoops. ‘Anyone fancy a pint?’

‘So answer me this,’ I
say to Phoebe, as I walk to the restaurant to meet Liz and her and
Charlie walk towards a pub which happens to be on the same route.
Freddy elected to stay at home. ‘Where the fuck did you go?’

‘You said we’d
be in and out in under ten minutes,’ she replies. ‘I gave you just
under ten minutes.’

‘And a dead
body,’ I reply. She raises her eyebrows, then quickens her pace to
catch up with Charlie. A homeless man they pass asks for spare
change, and I notice Charlie surreptitiously remove a large wad of
bills from his back pocket, fold it in half and toss it into the
man’s lap, all without the slightest break in his conversation with
Phoebe. The homeless man barely seems to notice; either that or
he’s – understandably – assumed he’s hallucinating. I wonder to
myself how much of the takings Charlie pocketed last night. All of
it? Even with the strange way he’s been acting over the last
twenty-four hours, I can’t see Charlie stealing mine and Freddy’s
shares, right from under our noses. Phoebe, however…

Despite the
fact that I can feel my knee angrily protesting at even my current,
meandering pace, I force myself into a stumbling jog until I’m back
alongside her.

‘You know,’ I
say, ‘you never struck me as someone who takes losing particularly
well.’

‘Actually, I
think she’s someone who doesn’t take other people winning
particularly well,’ Charlie corrects.

‘Whatever gave
you that impression?’ Phoebe asks me.

‘Every
conversation we’ve ever had.’

‘What, all
four of them?’

‘Don’t dodge
the question,’ I reply. ‘You wouldn’t have bailed out without
taking the money first. I wouldn’t have put it past you to burn it
once you’d got your hands on it, but I’m fucking positive you
would’ve wanted to get your hands on it first.’

She
smiles.

‘You want the
truth?’

‘I wouldn’t
have asked if I didn’t.’

She lifts her
arms up slightly, as though in a half-arsed gesture of
surrender.

‘I was
planning on shooting the tall guy – just a gut-shot, of course,
nothing too serious - then I was going to take the money off him
and stuff it in an air vent, where I could come back a few days
later to collect it. Unfortunately for this dastardly plan, I only
realised you’d rationed me out three fucking bullets when I pulled
the trigger on him.’

I wonder if
Charlie has gone so pale because he’s realised that if he’d paid
his share towards the guns, Freddy might be dead right now. God
works in mysterious ways, I suppose.

‘I wondered
why Freddy didn’t seem so happy to see you,’ I remark. Phoebe
shrugs.

‘You win some,
you lose some. I don’t see why he has to hold a grudge.’

Since I already told
Liz that I’d get us in at the Italian place, then stupidly left my
phone at home so I won’t be able to tell her if there’s a sudden
change of plans, it is with no small amount of trepidation that I
ask the Maître d’ whether he has a spare table for two available.
He says that they’re all booked up. I look around the empty
restaurant and ask if he’s sure. He informs me that every table in
the place is booked from fifteen-to-thirty minutes hence until
closing time. Rather that call him out on this lie, I slip my hand
into my back pocket, into my wallet, and tease the fifty quid I had
budgeted for tonight into my fist.

‘Are you sure
you can’t find anything?’ I ask mischievously, bringing my hand up
to shake his. The three balled-up notes fall out of my hand and
onto the carpet between us. We both glance down for a few
conspicuous moments at the scrunches of money, and then we glance
back up at one another.

‘You get the
gist,’ I mutter. He gives me an almost sarcastic appraisal, then
grunts:

‘The table by
the window. Over there.’ I follow his gesture, take off my coat,
sling it over the back of the chair and sit myself down. After a
couple of minutes’ silence, I call to him:

‘I wouldn’t
mind a beer, to start me off.’ I give a very deliberate look around
the empty restaurant. ‘If you’re not too busy, that is.’

Liz is led over to the
table by the waiter. She walks in the ethereal, gliding fashion
that first made me fall in love with her on that night in the
student union. Being in her company has instilled so much unease in
me lately that I’d begun to forget just how gorgeous she is: her
eyebrows, which can, with the slightest movement, convey even the
slightest hint of emotion; the brown-in-darkness,
blonde-in-sunlight hair she’s always made such an effort to tame,
but which retains just a hint of disobedience, as if it has its own
unshakeable character and cannot be cowed by any mere appliance;
that peculiar way her toes point inwards when she’s abashed, like
Tommy from
Rugrats.
All these small things, and all the
others, adding up to something that will always and forever be her,
no matter how much the years may grey and wrinkle the details.
Something that I, in all honesty, never had any right to claim as
my own. The waiter, who had continued standing quietly polishing
glasses when I asked for a beer, now puts on all the bells and
whistles that his employment demands, pulling out her chair and
offering to take her coat. ‘Noting’ that my trench coat is slung
over the back of my seat, he offers to take it as well. I
refuse.

‘Please, sir;
it’s the restaurant’s policy to leave coats at the door.’

‘It’s my
policy to keep my possessions where I can see them,’ I reply,
firmly. For a moment his mask of propriety slips, but he quickly
hoists it back up when Liz looks up at him. ‘Now, could we make a
drinks order?’

‘By all means,
sir.’

‘Great. I’ll
have a pint of beer, and Liz…’ I pick up the cocktail menu and look
it up and down in a theatrical fashion. ‘…Liz will have a Bellini.’
Liz raises her eyebrow ever so slightly. I wonder if I’ll be able
to pop to the bathroom between courses and apply for an overdraft
extension without her picking up on it.

‘Very good,
sir,’ the waiter responds. I watch him walk away, and try to
imagine the look on his face now that I can’t see it.

‘So,’ Liz
begins. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Why am I
here
, specifically?’ I ask. I pick up the cocktail menu
again. ‘Apparently, because I’m sixty-grand deep in student debt,
but I’ve still got more money than sense.’

Twenty minutes later,
the whole thing is going so well that I don’t even notice the
restaurant filling up around us, nor the fact that the waiter
hasn’t even taken our orders yet. I zone out of the finer details
of what we’re talking about and allow the sensation of the
conversation to take over me. This must be the reason why some
people treat dating like a more expensive drug habit, as they
scrounge for a hit of:
I think this person might want to fuck
me! Please God, let him or her want to fuck me!

The slightest
of twinges on Liz’ expression brings the whole illusion suddenly
crashing to the ground. I follow her grinding gaze over my shoulder
and see Charlie and Phoebe chatting to the Maître d’. Charlie’s
bleary eye meets my own, and the contents of my stomach flop down
into my bowels.

‘Ah, the
lovely [
bleep
]!’ he exclaims jovially, wandering over like
George Plimpton dressed in a tuxedo when he’s in fact rather drunk,
dressed in a T-shirt and torn-up jeans. ‘Ah, and Liz, who is so
very much lovelier that I’m forced to amend my previous comment!’
He turns back to me, and - with his sincerest commiserations -
informs me that, by comparison, I look like an aspiring crack-whore
who was never quite pretty enough to join the professional ranks.
As he unravels this spiel of greeting, he drags the empty table
next-door up beside ours. He then pulls over a chair and sits down,
leaving Phoebe to drag over her own. The Maître d’ suddenly
materialises at the table – or tables – but Charlie heads him off
before he can even open his mouth:

‘So sorry, I
didn’t mean to be rude,’ he claps the Maître d’s hand in both of
his and shakes it passionately, ‘but I was simply excited to see
these great friends of mine; I haven’t seen them in a very long
time, you must understand, and I don’t want to waste this chance to
be in their company. I do hope you can accommodate us.’ He lets his
hand fall gracefully southwards and allows it to caress the stem of
his wine glass, leaving several notes poking out of the Maître d’s
fist.
Smooth prick
, I think to myself. Even blind drunk, he
pulled it off far better than I did. The Maître d’ looks torn, for
a moment, between his principles and the potential tip he’ll be
getting at the end of the meal. The moment doesn’t last long.

‘Not a problem
at all, sir,’ he responds, with a simpering smile.

‘Wonderful,’
Charlie grins back. He picks up Liz’ unfinished Bellini and hands
it to him. ‘Would you please take this away, and replace it with a
bottle of your second-most expensive champagne, and four chilled
glasses. I always find that the second-most expensive one is the
best, don’t you, Liz?’

Liz seems
half-confused, half-annoyed, half-intrigued.

‘I wouldn’t
know,’ she replies.

‘Oh, but you
will,’ Charlie winks back. He plucks our menus from the empty place
settings in front of us and hands them to the Maître d’. ‘On the
food front, we’ll defer to your judgement.’

A smile creeps
up one side of the increasingly well-off Maître d’s face.
If
he’s buying, at least I won’t have to extend my overdraft
, I
think to myself. As the Maître d departs Charlie goes quiet,
leaving poor Liz to force conversation:

‘So Charlie,
what’s with the sudden wealth?’ she asks.

‘I will never
be wealthy, Elizabeth,’ he replies, holding up his empty wine glass
and inspecting it for some reason. ‘You’ve spent enough time in my
company to realise that much. And, as such, I would like the chance
to play the part of a rich man, just once, before I drop dead.’

He leaves no
avenue down which to pursue this conversation, and doesn’t seem all
that inclined to provide Liz with another, so she instead turns to
Phoebe:

‘Sorry, I
didn’t catch your name.’

‘Daphne,’
Phoebe replies. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Liz.’

‘I dread to
think,’ Liz chuckles. The chuckle is forced. ‘So, you’re the one
who finally tamed Charlie.’

‘“Tamed” is a
strong word,’ Phoebe remarks, with a wry glance at me. Again, the
false laugh from Liz.

‘Then I’ve
heard a fair amount about you, too. So, Charlie has a girlfriend; I
never thought I’d see the day.’

‘Girlfriend?’
Phoebe replies, with a smirk.

‘Well, Johnny
seems to think so.’ A pause. ‘Is he mistaken?’

‘I’ve never
quite understood what being a girlfriend entails,’ Phoebe/Daphne
answers. Liz looks at her as though she’s a caveman she’s just
defrosted, and Charlie butts-in to translate:

‘It means you
have a verbal contract with someone that says neither of you will
fuck anyone else.’ Phoebe raises her eyebrows in amusement, like a
parent surveying a macaroni picture their kid threw together.

‘Well, I
wouldn’t exactly…’ Liz begins, but I interject:

‘Nah, nah;
it’s where you can spend half your time telling someone how perfect
they are, and the other half telling them how much of an arsehole
they are.’ Liz shoots me a glance before responding, half-smirking
and half in a growl:

‘Don’t be an
arsehole.’ All of the tension I’d been holding in since I first
spotted Charlie walk in here bursts out in my laughter:

‘Ha! Told
you.’

Liz leans back
on her chair, like a high-rolling gambler, and throws her own
witticism onto the table.

‘It’s that
thing men are most afraid of, until they get old enough to worry
about dying alone,’ she declares. Charlie raises his glass at her,
as if to agree.

‘Hilarious
though I’m sure all those are,’ Phoebe drawls, ‘it still doesn’t
bring me any closer to a definition.’

‘You want to
be serious?’ Liz asks. ‘Fair enough: it’s when someone you’ll admit
to being in love with will admit the same thing about you.’

‘I’ve never
quite understood what that means, either,’ Phoebe shrugs. Once
again, I burst out laughing.

‘What are you,
the fucking Terminator?’

‘The what?’
Phoebe enquires.

‘You’re trying
to bail the Atlantic Ocean with a pint glass here, Liz,’ Charlie
comments, taking the bottle of champagne from the Maitre D’,
pulling out the cork with his teeth and pouring the overflowing
bubbly liquid into each of our glasses. ‘When I sat her down and
made her watch
Star Wars
the other day I actually had to
explain to her which ones were the bad guys. That’s the level of
sociopathy you’re up against.’

Phoebe
shrugs.

‘One side blew
up a planet full of people; the other blew up a space station full
of people. I don’t see the difference.’

‘I’m not so
hot on
Star Wars
,’ Liz admits, ‘but I’ve watched too many
French films to not know what love is. Love is when someone sees
you for what you are - the real you, buried under all the make-up
and sexy accents - and still likes you more than anyone else on the
planet.’