The Kiss (3 page)

T
he Gaslight is quiet and the familiar smell of stale beer hangs in the air. Someone is hoovering, somewhere. The pinboard by the double doors is covered in flyers about shows, art exhibitions and animal sanctuaries, as well as singing lessons and job vacancies at the theatre. A big poster for the Christmas pantomime –
Cinderella
– beams down at me, looking about as funny as a dead clown. The brown zigzag carpet, invisible beneath a thousand partygoers at the Start of Term party, is the same one I remember from when I was six. It crunches under my feet as I go past the box office with its cheery displays of old Gaslight productions.

A woman comes out of a door beside the bar, carrying boxes of crisps stacked up to her nose. A pair of heavily mascaraed eyes regard me, sandwiched between bleach-blond fringe and brown cardboard. I think I remember her from the party night.

‘Bar opens at six, love.’

I clear my throat. ‘I’m looking for a guy.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Smoky laughter makes the cardboard tower of crisps shake as she sets it down on the end of the bar. She wipes her hands down the legs of her tight-fitting jeans. ‘You want to get specific?’

This is suddenly feeling like one of those things you talk about but never actually do, like,
Hey, let’s leap in the river to see how deep it is!
or,
I’m going to dye my hair green and get an undercut!
I cast my mind back to Sunday night. I don’t know the bar guy’s name. What does he even look like? I hardly saw him, except on the dark theatre steps with Studs and then with half his face attached to my friend. ‘He’s, er, tall? Dark hair? Works here?’

The woman tilts her head towards the bar door. ‘JEM! Get out here!’ She rests her arms on the bar and assesses me. ‘Friends, are you?’

‘I’ve never met him,’ I say.

‘Internet date, is it?’

‘I’m here on behalf of a friend.’

She gives me a look. I get the sense that she has lots of girls coming here ‘on behalf of a friend’. All my resolve about making it up to Tabby teeters like the pile of crisp boxes on the bar. I’d like to go home now because I know this is going to be
very
embarrassing.

Jem comes out of the door with both hands full of beer glasses still shimmering hot from the dishwasher. He
is
tall, even by my five-foot-three standards. His shoulders are exactly as wide as I remember, and encased in a close-fitting grey T-shirt that brings out the ashy flecks in his blue eyes. A red and white teatowel is wrapped inexplicably around his head.

I stare. He stares back. Even with the teatowel, he is divine. No wonder Tab went primal. He sets the glasses down on the bar and pulls the teatowel off, revealing black hair spiked up and a little sideways.

‘What’s with the teatowel?’

My appropriate-first-question filter is apparently in the ‘off’ position.

He regards the teatowel in his hands. ‘It’s a teatowel,’ he says.

The blond woman has vanished so it’s just me, him and the distant hoover. He slings the teatowel over his shoulder. I try not to think about the
actual
shoulder under the T-shirt under the teatowel, which means my imagination paints it in total clarity. He leans his extremely fit arms along the bar and grins at me.

‘What do you want to talk about?’ he asks.

‘My friend. You, er . . .’

I fumble around for the words, and know I’m looking increasingly stupid. This is hideous. I would swap Tab’s stair incident for this any day.

‘Slept with her?’ he suggests helpfully.

I am stunned into action. ‘No!’ I say in outrage. ‘Kissed her, I was
going
to say. And now there’s this nightmare going on in her life that you have to help me with, because you caused the problem in the first place.’

It’s his move now. I look at him in an expectant way. Then I realize that he might think I’m looking at him in the
other
sort of expectant way – which I’m totally not – and I stare at the bar instead.

‘What’s your friend’s name?’

I make myself look up again. He’s even better looking second time round. ‘Tab,’ I say. ‘Tabitha. Tabby.’

‘What, I got with all three?’

He’s laughing at me, I realize.

‘Tabby,’ I say, holding on tightly to my dignity. ‘On Sunday, at the college party. Across the bar?’

His flecky blue-grey eyes clear. ‘Spiky brown hair? Big . . .’ He makes the gesture that translates in boy language as ‘boobs’.

‘Yes!’ I point at him in emphasis, then put my finger down because it looks a bit pervy, agreeing with the boob thing he’s just mimed. ‘Spiky brown hair. Angry boyfriend.’

‘Oh yeah, the angry boyfriend.’ Jem scratches his head, close to his hairline. ‘He should get over himself. It was a party. Everyone does dumb things at parties. Anyway, she was cute and asking for it.’

I colour angrily on Tab’s behalf. ‘She’s not a slut!’

‘I wouldn’t know. We didn’t get that far.’

His fingertips are pinkish-white. I notice the same pink-white colour all around his hairline. The teatowel thing suddenly becomes clear.

‘Have you been doing a
facepack
?’ I say in astonishment.

‘Face
paint
,’ he corrects, colouring slightly.

‘Facepaint?’ I have him like a spider under a glass, scuttling helplessly beneath my scorn. ‘What are you, Krusty the Clown?’

He’s gazing into my eyes. I’m not sure he’s listening. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ I demand when he fails to respond to my clown remark.

‘Your eyes are different colours. One’s like chocolate. The other’s more like poo.’

I lose my thread. Understandably, I feel.

‘I— it’s my contact lens, I just wear one because the other eye doesn’t need anything so it makes my eyes different— I’m sorry, did you say poo?’

Stretching up from the bar, he links his hands and cricks them above his head. His chest does this expanding thing that always happens when guys do that. At that moment he seems as big as a tree, if you can get ripped trees.

‘What’s your name?’ he asks, lowering his arms again.

Visions of burning vinyl rise once more in my mind’s eye. ‘That’s actually irrelevant, but since you ask,
Krusty
, it’s Delilah.’

‘Nice.’

‘I could say the same of you,’ I shoot back, stung. I am still battling with the poo thing.

‘I mean it. I always mean what I say.’

‘So you’re saying my eyes actually look like poo?’

‘Only
one
of them,’ he says agreeably. ‘I could go with mud, at a stretch.’

I take a deep breath. Where and how has this conversation gone so wrong? ‘I came in to tell you that my friend needs your help to get her boyfriend back. That’s it, basically. That’s what I came in here to say.’

‘I’m not convinced this is any of your business,’ he says, ‘but you’re here and not her because . . .?’

‘Because it’s my fault,’ I reply after a pause. ‘And I promised I’d fix it.’

He looks genuinely curious. ‘Why is it your fault?’

Time out, people. Stuff here needs to be explained.

You only have to scrape the surface of Delabby/Tabilah in order for things to become clear. We are
as one
. As luck or puberty or whatever would have it, I’ve always been one step ahead of Tab on boobs, periods, cigarettes, alcohol and boys. We have grown together in this way, like this amazing photo I once saw of a bicycle inside a tree. Tabby is the bicycle – in a genuine steel-and-rubber way, not a slaggy one – and I am the tree that has grown
through
the bicycle and
around
the bicycle, raising the bicycle from the ground as
part of the tree
. The bicycle wheels spin in the wind, but the tree calls the shots. All of which makes me responsible for stuff like this, whether Teatowel likes it or not.

I don’t say any of this out loud. It would sound insane.

‘You don’t need to know that,’ I say briskly. ‘I just want to give you Tab’s boyfriend’s number and ask, very nicely, if you could call him and explain what happened and how it wasn’t Tabby’s fault.’

He disappears into the kitchen, which isn’t supposed to happen when you’re in the middle of a conversation. I hear the clank of a metal locker being opened. ‘How do you square that?’ he says, re-emerging in a dark grey jacket. ‘She jumped on
me
, not the other way round.’

This is like wading through treacle in a big Victorian frock with my feet tied together. On a very cold day so the treacle has set like toffee. I am close to breaking point.

‘She’d never have done it if you hadn’t given it all that with the free crisps thing!’ I say through my teeth. ‘Can I
please
message you his number?’

He flips up a hinged part of the bar and comes out to join me, adjusting his collar. ‘Let’s walk and talk,’ he suggests, and heads for the double doors.

The afternoon is gloomier than ever. I hurry after him, the double doors swinging shut behind me. ‘What’s to talk about? Will you do it or not?’

‘You expect me to call up the angry boyfriend when I don’t have the full facts?’ he asks, jogging gently across the car park. ‘I think not.’

‘You want more facts? Fine.’ I break into a run, trying to keep up with his long legs. ‘I told her to do it.’

‘Did you know she had a boyfriend?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So why did you tell her to kiss me?’

This isn’t painting me in a good light.

‘I messed up, OK?’ I say in frustration. ‘And for the record, I didn’t tell her to kiss
you
specifically.’

He swings round so I practically collide with his chest. He smells warm.

‘Are you busy?’ he asks, looking down at me.

‘Yes!’ I practically shout. ‘I’m busy trying to unscrew my screw-up! Will you help me or not?’

‘I’m thinking about it. Keep walking or we’ll be late.’

We make an odd pair, him striding easily along and me scurrying beside him like a pet mouse on a string.

‘Late for what?’ I pant as we pause at a set of traffic lights.

He shoots me a sideways look. ‘My Krusty the Clown convention.’

I
am too breathless, too curious, too annoyed to ask anything more about where we are going. We rush along, up narrow streets and through little alleyways, heading into the yellow lights of the Watts Estate – a cluster of uneven concrete high-rises that crown the town like rotten teeth. The views across the Downs are breathtaking up here, even in the gloom of six pm.

Jem switches left and right, with me still grimly on his tail. I lose my bearings and find a whole bunch of misgivings to replace them. Why am I following a total stranger into this ever-darkening place? Have horror movies taught me nothing? I stroke my house keys in my pocket, and tuck the sharp end of the latch key between my fingers. If he tries anything, I’ll be ready.

He is the answer to Tabby’s problem
, I remind myself. I can’t let him out of my sight until he agrees to help. If he thinks he’ll lose me in this badly-lit maze of twists and turns, he can forget it.

‘I have other stuff to do tonight!’ I complain as he makes what feels like the fiftieth left turn, past a collapsing fence and a couple of mildewed greenhouses.

‘No you don’t.’

‘You’re not the one who has to explain Keynesian theory in class tomorrow afternoon!’

I don’t actually have to do that for another fortnight – fortunately, as I’m having trouble even spelling Keynes,
let alone getting my head around his ideas on macro­economics – but I have to fight back with
something
.

‘What’s Keynesian theory?’

‘I don’t know!’

I never plan on making him laugh, but I seem to do it with tragic ease.

We’ve reached a tower block at the top of the estate. He goes through a set of doors and down a bleach-smelling corridor towards a lift. I follow, practically snorting with determination. No way am I letting go now. I am double-sided Sellotape. I am No More Nails.

The lift is steel and way too small. He fills most of it. I plaster myself into the smallish corner that remains, and hope we aren’t going to break down halfway. Being stuck in a tiny space with the hottest guy I’ve ever met would be a
nightmare
.

‘You remind me of an angry squirrel,’ he says as we crank upwards. ‘You’re actually chittering.’

‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ I snarl.

‘Not all of them,’ he says, looking at me consideringly. ‘Just the cute ones.’

Cute?

Oh my God. Right here and now, perhaps even before the lift has reached its destination, I have an opportunity to dust off my newly minted no-strings-attached approach, as perfected with Laurent in the summer sand dunes, and kiss this teatowel-wearing god.

Yay!
woofs the Lust Labrador.

Don’t even
, hisses the Cat of Mistrust.

I have always found that the big questions in life boil down to the Lust Labrador and the Cat of Mistrust. It’s a useful distinction. The Lust Labrador acts without thinking while the Cat of Mistrust does it the other way round. The Cat of Mistrust is a big thing with me and getting bigger all the time. I think Laurent was a weird one-off.

Beyond the lift, a corridor takes us to another door, a battered red one this time, and into an open-plan space stretching the width of the block and filled with the sweet smell of hash. The walls are painted a riot of different colours and long windows face the setting sun, which hangs low in a sky striped with oranges and reds and greys. Music is playing quietly somewhere; there are mirrors, and curtained-off areas, and a studio set-up with lights and a white backdrop and a camera on a tripod.

The place is full of people of different colours. Greens, golds, reds, blues and pinks, all swirled up together, some abstract and some not. There’s a girl with eyes like peacock feathers; a guy with a red snake around one thin arm; silver-skinned boys with rivets studding their chests. A red-haired girl in a black dress is poised over a boy’s bare back, painting a delicate set of angel wings on to his shoulder blades.

Jem goes to high-five a full-on jungle vine heading for the camera and the white backdrop.

‘If you smudge Sukhdev, I’ll murder you, Jem,’ says the red-haired girl, barely looking up. ‘He took me three hours.’

Jem lowers his hand, leaving the jungle vine hanging. ‘Anywhere free?’

‘There’s a space by the window. Light’s terrible so no one else wants it. ’Scuse me for not chatting but if I don’t keep my eyes down, these babies are going to turn into chicken wings. Kev! How’s the lighting?’

A big guy with a bullet hole painted through his cheek lowers his light-meter. ‘When are we getting blinds in here? Sunset keeps changing the readings.’

‘Take Sukh’s pictures as quick as you can then.’

‘Guys, this is Delilah,’ says Jem.

I lift my hand to say hello, forgetting that I am still holding my house keys. They fall with a clatter to the
paint-stained floor. The red-haired girl’s hand jumps, sending a feather shooting off at a strange angle across the ribcage of her canvas.

‘All that’s missing is the tambourine,’ she growls, dabbing at the splodge she has made.

I flush and scoop my keys up. ‘Sorry.’

‘Ignore Ella,’ Jem tells me, steering me on to a stool beside a tall mirror reflecting the swiftly changing
sky. ‘She’s brilliant and she lives here, so it pays to tolerate her moods.’

My curiosity wins over my embarrassment as I gaze around at all the activity. ‘What is this place?’

‘A body art collective. We paint each other most Thursdays.’ He points at his hairline. ‘The remains of this afternoon’s skull. I practise whenever I get the chance.’

That explains the teatowel, I realize.

He rubs his ear. ‘How did our first conversation go again?’

‘“What’s with the teatowel?” “It’s a teatowel.”’ A smirk is snaking across my face. I can feel it, wiggling in there.

‘That’s bad,’ he says.

‘It wasn’t
Romeo and Juliet
,’ I agree.

I could bite my tongue off. Why didn’t I choose
Hamlet
or
Macbeth
? Or even
Eastenders
? He gives me the same searching stare he gave me in the lift, like I’m a layer of paint or a sheet of old wallpaper ripe for stripping.

‘You’re lovely,’ he says.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not going there.

‘Now that I’ve got you standing still,’ I say, whipping out my phone, ‘can I message you this number or what?’

He takes the phone from me and places it beside the long mirror. ‘Later. I was going to do my skull, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to paint you instead.’

The jungle vine posing for photos is wearing pants and paint and nothing else.

‘No way,’ I say, horrorstruck.

‘I’m not asking you to take your clothes off,’ he assures me, pulling small pots of paint and different brushes
from the pockets on his jacket. He pauses for a beat. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

I want to flirt back but the Cat of Mistrust holds me in its amber gaze. I glance around the room to regain my composure. I feel him grinning over his paints, opening lids and checking colours.

‘Does it wash off?’ I ask at last.

He circles his face with his finger, reminding me that he was a skull less than an hour ago. It has the distracting effect of centring my gaze on his features: long-lashed eyes the colour of the sea at Brighton, a strong straight nose, a small scar on his upper lip.

What choice do I have?

‘You can paint my hand,’ I say reluctantly. ‘But you have to promise you’ll call Tab’s boyfriend.’

‘Deal.’

‘You mean it?’

He takes a packet of make-up wipes from his pocket and cleans the back of my hand. ‘Not everyone in this business uses wipes, but I prefer it,’ he says, blowing to dry the surface of the skin. ‘Paint is useless over moisturizer, and these make sure the skin is clean and dry. And I already told you that I always mean what I say. Keep still now.’

This is the point at which I should relax. Job done, promise made. But I can’t. Him blowing on my hand has just sent me into orbit.

He paints on a base layer and blows again, waggling my hand in the air like it’s a straw-filled rubber glove on a scarecrow’s arm. When the base is dry, he dips the point of a smaller brush into a pot of red paint and puts the tip of the brush on my skin. I bite my lip. It tickles, and is cold. It is also the sexiest thing anyone has ever done to me. Seriously. If hands could dribble, mine would be dribbling. Mesmerized, I watch him stroke the little brush between the veins leading from my fingers to my wrists.

I do my best to sound cool. ‘What are you painting?’

‘Blood, bones, veins and arteries. The things that make us real.’

I think about this, mainly because it stops me thinking about other more dangerous things. ‘You paint what’s real in the same way that you mean everything you say?’

He pauses, as though surprised by what I thought was obvious. ‘Truth is a big thing with me,’ he says at last.

‘Get you, Gandhi.’

I shut my eyes at the warmth of his breath on my fingers as he leans in closer. The brush sweeps up and down my skin. I have to say something else or risk bursting into flames.

‘Is this a hobby or a life plan?’

‘I’m not working in bars all my life. All those sci-fi lizard men and undead zombies you see at the multiplex? Some day they’ll be down to me.’

‘So much for keeping it real.’

He laughs. ‘You may have a point.’

As he blows on my skin again, my hand zings urgent messages all over my body. The Lust Labrador starts to drag me down dark and sultry paths.

‘Do your friends let you practise on them?’ I squeak.

Blue paint next, following the tracery of my veins. ‘They’re generally too busy stealing cars.’

I laugh in a mildly hysterical way. He raises his eyebrows.

‘You’re serious?’ I say, realizing.

‘You’re learning, grasshopper.’

He keeps painting me as the rest of the artists and models take turns before Kev the bullet man’s camera lens. The smell of hash grows stronger; the music grows louder. I remain on my chair, lulled into a state of highly charged semi-sleep.

‘Photo time,’ says Jem.

I peel my eyes open at the cold blast of a spray sealant on my skin. The internal workings of my hand lie before me in gory detail. Bone, blood and tissue glisten. Veins bulge. It’s grotesque and amazing at the same time.

‘I should be in A and E,’ I say incredulously. ‘How do you get the detail so perfect?’

‘Reading lots of anatomy books.’ Jem checks his watch. ‘Whoa, that’s the time? I have to be back at the Gaslight by nine. Val’ll dock my wages if I’m late.’

When in doubt, feel guilty. It’s the English way. ‘Coming here was your idea, not mine,’ I say quickly.

‘I know.’

He plants a hand on the wall either side of me so I am trapped on the stool. His eyes are more blue than grey this close up.

‘So,’ he says. ‘Can I kiss you now?’