In the passenger seat, Sol can’t bring himself to look round at the woman lying across the bench seat. It’s a mixture of things. Even miles down the road, with the burning flat now ten or fifteen minutes behind, he can’t seem to order the passage of events; the consequences of his decision to go to work; or the realization that his old life had faltered the moment Irish carjacked the Lexus.
And to look at her, he decides, would be to admit his complicity.
The car is smooth and Roy’s quiet, giving Sol space to contemplate the oiliness of the gas that rose from his bathtub, the mechanics of the eyeless man pitching out from it. Along with fire and brick dust, he can still smell Jeff’s rustiness. The stench mixed with car seat leather, what’s on his hands, what clings to his clothing. What’s in the recycled air.
What made the flat go up like that?
Y makes no breathing sounds, no clicking. She’s gone. Absent. And that’s his fault – his responsibility. It renders him cold and disconnected. His focus rests on a point between the windscreen and the world beyond.
“She isn’t gonna bloody bite you,” Roy says.
The calmness is menacing. Sol doesn’t reply; finds it difficult to deal with Roy’s pernicious mateyness. A critical component missing from the man’s personality.
“I can’t look at her,” Sol tells him.
“Talk to me then. Do you no good, playing silent.”
But Sol stares outside. They pass a pub, and in its garden Sol sees the indistinct shapes of downed parasols, off-white in colour. A distant glimpse of Mel smoking on her wedding morning, a contemplative cigarette before their day.
“Solomon, don’t be a pussy.”
“She couldn’t speak,” Sol says. “Nothing came out right.”
“Nah,” Roy says. “She couldn’t.”
“She’s called Y,” Sol tells him. “I know that.”
“Y,” mimics Roy. “Like the letter?”
“Yeah.”
“Y,” says Roy, trying it out. “Y not…”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, I’m gasping for a brew.”
“There’s a mobile clinic at Ordsall. We could take her there.”
Roy slaps the wheel. “You need to eat. I won’t say it again. Blood sugar. You’ve had a shock. There’s a trucker caff near Hyde – we hide this car, park our arses. Tameside General isn’t exactly far after that if you’re dead set on it, but I still reckon it’s shock talking.”
Sol holds Roy’s gaze.
“Winnie’s,” Roy tells him. “You must’ve heard of it.” Roy addresses Y on the back seat. “Good, isn’t he?” Then back to Sol: “A bloody keeper if you ask me.”
Sol holds in a breath until his lungs burn. He knows about Winnie’s: famous because the owner upended a McDonald’s sign and stuck it to her terrace. She serves full English breakfasts with ill-gotten meats in her front room at all hours, and you often see whole columns of council pig-rigs, levs and support vehicles parked outside.
“How about it?”
Sol feels restrained, compromised, by Roy’s charisma.
“What’s that? Say it loud for me.”
“OK,” Sol says. “OK.”
“Good lad. Do you right, honest. And we’ll sort her after – bury her or whatever. I know a place. It’s just shock, just shock… I swear a good brew will see you right.”
Bury her.
At last, Sol turns to look at Y.
For a second he stays detached, views her as a stranger once more. She lies there a life apart, once removed. Figurative, even. And as the seconds pass and the road rumbles beneath the car, he’s less and less sure of their peculiar closeness. The way she’d held his chin, smiled when the last staple was out, took the pen and shaded in the contours of a black tower in the workshop’s waiting room. Drew that grinning mouth. These memories feel implanted, like things that happened to another Sol.
But reality soon follows. A gut shot –
“That face for?” Roy asks, glancing at him.
“Stop the car,” Sol says. “Stop the car!”
Roy stops the car.
Sol falls onto the road, freezing tarmac under his palms. He vomits on the kerb, threads of bright acid. He leans his head against the Lexus door, eyes streaming, slime across his top lip, and looks up into the cloud canopy, the abyss of tomorrow. They’re somewhere in Manchester. Nowhere in Manchester.
He peers back into the car.
“I’m sorry about Y,” Roy says. “I am.”
Sol wipes his mouth on his sleeve.
“Honestly.”
“She was gentle,” Sol says. “I mean that.” Looking at her this time he can see where things have gone wrong. Unknown but essential elements jutting through the blanket. Angles where there should be straight lines. Her face half-turned into the leather of the bench seat, and the back of her head a muddle of wires and gunge. Protrusions, labelled things, structures that resemble antennae.
Perhaps the worst thing is that Sol almost expected biomachinery. Y’s extra arm had always been a primer.
Roy can tell Sol is trying to say something else. And for all the horror Roy has witnessed, never mind wrought, he looks into Sol’s eyes like he’s never seen fear like it. Except, perhaps, in his own.
“Come on, sunshine,” he says. “Let’s get a pint of tea down you.”
Winnie’s looks like it sounds. On the inside, net curtains sticking to wet glass. Outside, the remodelled M dim on its frame.
Roy tells Sol to hop out.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Roy frowns. “Can’t leave the motor on show. There’s a multistorey round the corner – give me five minutes. And if they ask, I like mine milky with one. Vintage brew, that.”
Sol nods because he can’t ask what he needs to ask: What about her?
“Go on,” Roy says. Sol’s hands are trembling, and he can smell Sol’s body odour – the cortisol spike. “Don’t pay either – just get them on tick.”
“Tick?”
“Set up a tab.”
Sol climbs out and closes the door; pretends he doesn’t catch a final glimpse of the hybridized woman across the back seat. He puts a hand against the terrace-row wall and glances up the road. Internally, he mashes the view with Mel’s body and Y’s wires, her stitches and burns. Futility, then: a sureness that whatever happens, all of this will be dust someday, and in time they’ll be oil.
As the Lexus drives away, Sol considers running. As if his basest compulsions, denied for a day, have reasserted themselves. He’d do it, too, if his legs didn’t feel so heavy, or if he had a clue where to go other than the workshop –
There’s Irish’s house, maybe, up in the hills. Or down south, to some unchanged village – live a nomad’s life on the marshlands.
Sol goes inside. A bell clangs obnoxiously and the patrons stop eating to register him. He apologizes silently and scans for a table.
“Born in a barn, were you?” A woman’s standing opposite, hands on hips. Sol realizes he’s letting a draught in.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, and pulls the door to.
“Don’t have to be sorry,” the woman says, smiling warmly. “Just more sensitive to the needs of others.”
On her striped pinny, embroidered over her heart, it says Winnie.
“We’d love to heat half of Manchester,” she goes on, “but it’s hard enough to keep the kettles going with these sods in charge. Now you look like you’re on death’s door. Let’s get you something warm and wet, eh?”
Winnie’s caught Sol off guard. For some reason he thought the name was convenient – a business built around the gimmick, the repurposed arches, a trophy of the end times. He finds himself nodding. Her jolly straightforwardness is refreshing, though as he crosses the café it only serves to make him sadder – here’s a woman who managed to adjust without losing her humanity.
Winnie touches Sol’s shoulder. He jumps, reflexes hair-triggered, and she pulls out a chair. “Tea for one?”
“For two, actually. My –” he hesitates “– my friend’s just parking up.”
The front door bell goes on cue. Roy saunters in and ducks the mechanism, looking round for Sol. Cast against the depth of the room, a backdrop of striped curtains, he looks totemic.
Sol leans, raises a hand. Roy weaves over and sits down without comment. He picks up a serviette – crappy two-ply paper that smells of dry storage – and dabs at the corners of his mouth where a creamy substance comes and goes.
“Two, then?” Winnie asks. She smiles broadly. Again her determined lack of cynicism. Roy and Sol nod. “And a chips and gravy, ta,” Roy adds. He motions to Sol. “Owt or nowt?”
Sol shakes his head. Couldn’t eat if he tried.
“No thank you,” Winnie says, and goes to the kitchen hatch.
On the next table, someone coughs loudly. A brawny man in a tatty police blazer. Roy eyeballs him – he’s making a whining sound.
“You want a heart-to-heart?” Roy asks. Sol watches him inspect the salt and pepper shakers, then snaffle a lump of sugar. “Nan gave us these for pudding,” he says, splitting the lump between his front teeth. He doesn’t close his mouth while he chews, making a sound like wet sand. “She was the greatest woman.”
Suddenly the whining man moves his chair. Sol jumps. The man gawps back.
Sol doesn’t know where to look. Around them, the clatter of cutlery becomes a dirge of industrial feeding. Y’s wires creep over the surfaces, her three arms extending outwards from each corner of the room, broken and reset in new directions. Food on plates becomes Y’s muscles, her fibrous joints, and a smell of frying mingles with the sickly warmth of a heater haphazardly drilled into the wall –
Winnie approaches with a rattling tray. “Two teas,” she says. “For two handsome boys. Your chips are just coming, sweet.”
“Cheers,” Roy says, and she puts down their steaming mugs.
“No bother. And listen you,” she says to Sol, “pay no mind to old Bert here.”
“What’s up with him?” Roy asks bluntly.
“Oh, says he were kissed by a giant moth or something.”
Roy stares at her. Sol doesn’t think he heard it right, either.
“Like a mothman,” she adds, and rolls her eyes. “I know. So the story goes. But I don’t flipping mind, do I? We just make his tea. Oh heck, sorry love – let me get you one of them stirrer things.”
Roy puts his tongue in his cheek. Bert carries on whining.
“Mad house,” Roy says. “The whole city’s gone frigging barmy.”
“Where’s the Lexus?” Sol asks.
Roy puts a finger to his lips. “Not here.”
“Then how did you leave her?”
Roy looks both ways. “Seriously, Solomon. Pack it in.”
“Where, though?”
“Back in the boot for now.”
Sol starts at this; bangs his knee under the table. Bert stops whining momentarily. “No,” Sol says. “No. It’s not right–”
“She’s gone,” Roy whispers. “She doesn’t know.”
Sol puts his head in his hands.
“Mate…” Roy picks up his mug. “It’s shite, but it’s happened. Think about your flat – your work. You’ve gotta look after number one now.”
“But–”
“She was just passing through. I mean they’re not even real, are they?”
“Roy, that’s–”
“That’s the march of technology, is what it is. How you can even order girls like that is crazy enough…”
Sol slams the table and stands up, tipping his chair. Everyone turns. “Roy!”
Calmly, Roy settles his mug. The only noise now comes from Bert.
“Don’t make a tit of yourself,” Roy says. “You’re being oversensitive.”
“No,” Sol says.
Roy’s face changes. “Sit down,” he hisses. “I won’t tell you again.”
Winnie’s over there with her arms crossed over her pinny. Eyebrows up, smile sliding.
Sol picks up his chair and sits down, cheeks hot. After a moment, the noise swells again.
Roy leans in, speaks slowly: “You’ve got to understand. She’s gone. And when we’re finished in here, we’ll grab a shovel and drive out somewhere nice and quiet and do the decent thing.”
But Sol can’t handle the thought of it. The chunk of a spade going into northern soil. “No,” he says.
“What’s your bright idea, then?”
“Hospital.”
“Fuck’s sakes, man. You think it’s legal? That they’re regulated or something?” Roy snaps his fingers. “They’ll have you in for murder like that. And me.”
Sol pulls out Y’s delivery note and slides it across the table. “Read it,” he says.
Roy flips it over reluctantly, frowning at the circles motif before opening it out. “What’s all this about?” he asks. “Accessories to follow? Still in transit?”
“It came with her,” Sol tells him. “And I think they bring more like her.”
“And Knutsford?”
Sol shrugs.
Roy looks away and refolds the note. His expression’s softened. “OK,” he says, “I’m gonna just tell you this. You know I said I’d heard of them?”
“Yeah.”
“Well when I started out, you heard rumours. Certain investors, on the margins. More cash in people than guns and drugs put together. Throw in customization, and you’re laughing. I mean it’s no excuse, but you see shit on that side of the fence – the worst of us. You get immune eventually – you learn to keep your nose out.” He pauses, looks at Sol as if he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying. “But maybe I’ve met one before.”
“Who told you?”
Roy sips his tea. “I dunno. It’s only ever been snatches – someone knows someone… But the story’s standard enough. They’re taken off the streets, the tunnels, orphanages, ring estates, even abroad. Ship the poor buggers away and tell them they owe money for the trouble. The rest you can fill in yourself. Take bits out or jam stuff in – train them up, sell them back.”
Sol rubs his eyes. “I can’t hack that,” he says. “I can’t. It knocks me sick.”
“Aye. And everyone round here moans about Wilbers.”
Sol closes his hands under the table.
Roy smiles thoughtfully. “At least with that lot it’s finders, keepers. At least it stays local.”
“Then who’s running this?”
Roy shrugs. “Deep pockets, though. Cars like that? Never mind the gear you’d need. It’s specialized as fuck. A business.”
“And your rumours,” Sol says, leaning over the table. “You ever heard where they change them?”
Roy takes a breath. “Oh aye, plenty of names bandied about. A few places. But the one I always remember coming up is Sellafield – the power station. Used to knock about with some steeplejacks who took down the Windscale chimneys. They banged on and on about random concrete being poured all over the site. Weird for a decommissioning job – makes you wonder. There’s so much money sunk into that place – billions, seriously – you wouldn’t be surprised if they were reusing the infrastructure, hiding stuff in plain sight.”
“Sellafield,” Sol repeats. “Is that Yorkshire way?”
Roy shakes his head. “Cumbria – up the coast.”
Something clicks. The Lexus plates. Carlisle –
“Pretty brazen,” Roy adds.
“I don’t get it, though,” Sol says, his voice shaky now. “How can people know but do nothing?”
“Well that’s just humans, innit? For starters you wouldn’t go near that shithole. Crawling with guns, barriers. Sharpline on every bloody surface. And that’s before you mention the radioactivity. The lads I knew got swabbed, tested, every day they left there. Geigers and all that. It’s fucking poisonous.”
“But…”
“Let me put it another way: there’s gulls that sit by the nuclear waste ponds all day. You’ve got bloody all sorts in these ponds – fuel and cladding… all sorts. Through the miners’ strikes they didn’t even bother processing it – just lobbed it straight in. Like a stew. And they say if one of these birds shits on your car, your car’s pretty much glowing. That’s how nasty it is. The workers get a year’s dose in a week sometimes. You had fit lads going off sick with lumps and never coming back.”
Sol shakes his head.
“Telling you. Fall in one of them, one of the ponds, and you best hope someone puts a boot on your head. That’s what I know.”
“But that’s what I’m on about,” Sol says. “If you know about it then the council does too. They’d have drones all over it.”
“Depends. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, do you? Production sector’s picking up, things are improving elsewhere – with this fix you’re getting more labour to clean up the shit no one wants to see. You’re getting control back. Why smother that? They’re onto a good thing, any way you cut it. They are. And who says they don’t benefit as well? Who says they don’t get their palms greased? Who says it isn’t policy full stop? Not like we’ve never had sleaze before. Half these council bastards only wanna cling on to their jobs.”
Sol shrugs.
Roy points at the window, as if to indicate some imaginary mass of people. “And you don’t pull off something like this without someone upstairs knowing,” he says. “Amount of nutters you’ve got running around in the countryside… aren’t you better off sending drones out for them? Win back your popular base? Trust me, pal. They’re happy leaving them to it.”
Sol tries to imagine the logistics. The oiliness of it – such a sludge of corruption and manipulation – makes him dizzy. Where usually he might turn a blind eye, just as you might turn a blind eye to a beggar and subdue that barb of sympathy, Y gives him no choice but to stare it in the face. Feel it, helpless, as the institutionalized horror of it repeats on him.
“Cruel world,” Roy says. “Cruel world.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s weirder shit, mind. Remember that thing that blew up a few years back? Up on the moors? You will do. Big nationalist cell – some guy training paramilitaries for a civil war. He throws this convention, right, and supposedly out of it comes this mad equipment that lets you cross universes.” Roy leans in and chuckles. “Other dimensions.”
Sol frowns.
Roy shrugs. “Maybe it’s all out there, Solomon. Ten, fifteen years ago, you’d never believe you could make someone invisible. Lev bikes. Never mind that someone could have an extra arm grafted on. But that’s what I heard. What’s the thing? A wormhole. And like all the decent kit you get – cloak-suits, plasma gear – it just ends up with the last people you want to have hold of it. Maybe up in Sellafield. Maybe not.” Roy stares into space for a moment. “That place in the hills got glassed by drones. You ever see the birds that came across the city afterwards?”
Sol doesn’t reply. There’s so much to internalize, sift through. Make sense of. He takes the note from under Roy’s mug and reads it again.
“I did,” Roy says. “I saw them.”
Accessories to follow. Still in transit. Cash in glove box.
“There’s something in it for you,” Sol tells him. “If you help me.”
“Help you what? Mod the vehicle I ordered?”
Sol looks down at his hands. “Find out who she is.”
Roy’s grin hardens when he realizes Sol isn’t joking. He gestures at the note. Sol passes it back, watches Roy reread it. Does something shift in Roy’s shoulders? He leans in. “And was there? Cash?”
Sol nods. “Six grand,” he lies.
“And you reckon you know where their drop is?”
“One of them, maybe. Old gent up there told us cars were turning up,” Sol says. “I mean, it’s what we do–”
“We. You keep saying we.”
“Me and Irish – Pete.”
“And Pete knows as well?”
“No – he’s in Liverpool.”
Roy blinks. “Mancs grafting in Liverpool? Christ. But someone knows you’ve got her – had her.”
“My ex, yeah. She works in the game. I guess she employed…” Sol’s voice falters.
“The web you weave.” Roy takes a final swig of tea and points at Sol’s mug. “Be going cold that.”
Sol pushes it away.
Roy cracks his knuckles and leans back. “And say the news about you hasn’t got up the chain yet. Say that biker in your flat didn’t dial it in, and the whole racket isn’t on your case. Say they’re still running drops. What do I do?”
“You must have connections.”
Roy shakes his head. “Honour among thieves.”
“They’re already hunting me. The flat’s gone, the workshop’s a no-go. And we’ve got all this metal turning up for your job.”
Roy tilts his head. “Which is why I said I’m still here. It’s manageable risk. It’s in my interests to make sure you get a new delivery address sorted.”
Sol snorts. That doesn’t feel like the only reason at all.
“Alright, listen. We scope your dropoff, and we cut a deal if there’s another car. But if you’re gonna grasp the nettle, you’re doing it my way.”
Sol looks past Roy. Sloping shoulders, poor posture, a gamut of razored heads. The glint of equipment in the servery.
“I look after you,” Roy continues, “so long as you look after my back pocket.”
Sol scratches his head.
“Serious,” Roy says. “You know the Reverend, up in Stalybridge? Unpleasant, if you don’t stay in the good books. You work for him so you don’t have to cross him.”
“The armour’s for him?”
Roy shakes his head. “Client down south. Rev’s just the handler. But there’s a week’s grace before the guy’s gonna expect photos – so I reckon you get your boy Irish on it soon.”
“No,” Sol says. “We can’t involve him.”
“Solomon. You don’t think he already is? He turns up at the workshop, he’ll know about it.”
Sol hates how Roy uses his full name to patronize him. But he’s right. “He’s going home, not back to the workshop,” Sol says. “Maybe I can get in touch.”
“And then? There’s still no way back. Not for you, not for him.”
“Not for you, either,” Sol says. “I’ll find a way.”
“Have you listened to me? An outfit as slick as this, and you think you’re gonna… what?”
“Y’s missing from somewhere. There’ll be lists. At the libraries maybe–”
“She’s forgotten, man. They’re strays for good reason. And libraries? Pull the other one. They’ve spent them on bombs.”
“I owe her,” Sol says. “And so do you.”
Roy straightens, and Sol wants to slap the act out of him. It went in, though. It touched something. Then Roy says, “Eighty-twenty,” with his hand held out. “You get your clues – your little treasure trail – and get yourself killed. Irish Pete works up my armour. And I get my spends.”
“You’d be taking the piss at sixty-forty,” Sol tells him. “Never mind the damage to my workshop.”
Roy sighs. “Look at it sensibly. Just for a second. There’s no changing this. That’s not how the world works. No bugger’s answering the phone. No one’s coming out to help. And don’t even start me on the drones. You can’t even move freely.”
“I’m going to do something,” Sol tells him. His concentration centres to a dot on Roy’s front teeth, flashing between his lips as he talks. “Something.”
I’m going now, he’d said to Mel that day. But I’m not leaving her. I’m not walking away –
“Be honest with yourself,” Roy says. “Why d’you think there’s people like me?” He’s pointing at his chest.
“People like you.”
“I sold what’s in here. Six years ago and counting. And I’m still around, aren’t I? That’s being selfish for you. You’ll learn the hard way, caring too much. I promise you’ll learn the hard way. Now where the fuck did my chips get to?”
Sloshing with tea, the men enter the multistorey behind Winnie’s. It’s vacant but for the Lexus, and Roy tuts. “Hold this,” he says, passing Sol his jacket. “And keep an eye out.”
Sol watches in quiet wonderment as Roy sets about the Lexus with a kind of precise ferocity. He pulls off the registration plates, kicks dents in the doors and bumpers. Then he bounces on the car’s bonnet and roof until its profile is completely deformed. “Just in case,” Roy says, his lumpen features absurd, and gets in.
Window down for fresh air, Sol listens to the Lexus’ tyres squealing on the poured concrete, air buffeting through the opening, the exhaust reverberating around them. “Need to drop in somewhere,” Roy tells him. “Before we get rid of this.”
Sol is queasy, frail. Beyond the car park he finds himself anticipating a sudden motorbike – every oncoming headlight a fresh twist in his stomach – while trying to ignore that Y’s body is in the boot. It seems callous to imagine her as a body at all. That she could be something so inanimate. Was it comfortable in there? The suburbs ghost past – a near-continuous smear of terraces, hand car washes, bookies.
“Where now?” Sol asks.
Roy grins. “Bit of shopping.”
For a mile or so the road hugs a train line, itself running parallel with the rear side of a housing development. Sol sees the amassed possessions that, over the years, have been thrown over people’s fences: jetsam half-hidden in the wild grasses of the bank: toys, balls, old prams, barbecues, compost, wheels, cassette tapes, oil bottles. It’s a reminder that people like to put difficult things where they can’t see them – where they might just disappear. Except Sol knows that forgotten things tend to rot, and fester, then get found again.
After Ashton’s roundabouts, the vacuum of Stalybridge, they reach a fortified gate between bushes riddled with sharpline. “Stalybridge Celtic,” Sol says, pointing to the sign in the brambles. “They were Conference, once.”
Roy shrugs. “Wasn’t that arsed by footy.”
“I think we passed that hospital on the way,” Sol says. “Signs for Tameside General.”
Roy opens his window and turns to him. “Shut up.”
A laser cuts down through cold air. Roy lets on to the approaching guard.
“Gents. Who you here for?”
“The right Reverend,” Roy tells him.
The guard’s expression is fixed. “He expecting you?”
“Always.”
“In you go, then. And behave yourselves.”
The three gates open sequentially, and the car heads through.
“What is this place?” Sol asks, gawping at the sprawl. There’s so much damp cardboard, plastic barrels strewn about. Some young kids throwing stones at a group of pigeons.
“Emerald City,” Roy says. “Basically the opposite of the Vatican.”
“It bloody stinks.”
Roy grins and wedges the car between two four-by-fours. He cranks the handbrake. “You alright with new people?”
“Fine,” Sol says. “But I think I’ll stay here with her.”
Roy ignores him. “Actually, how are you with psychopaths?”
Sol doesn’t know what to say. Instead he asks, “Why are you seeing the Reverend?”
“Because I lost my shooter playing hide and seek in your workshop,” Roy tells him. “Listen, if the smell’s bothering you that much, breathe deep – it goes away sooner.”
Sol shakes his head.
Roy gets out of the Lexus and crouches beside it, hands on the driver’s seat, eyes level. “Stop being a mard-arse,” he says. “It’s networking if nothing else. The Rev seems to think your outfit’s the bee’s bloody knees. And you could do worse than seeing the place. Might even qualify for a home here, state you’re in.”
“I don’t get you.”
“They take runaways, is all.”
“Runaways? Like refugees?”
“If you say so. Owner’s a shut-in. Wizard, they call him. Fucking lunatic rolls around in his wheelchair reeking of fish, or chills in a bath up in the old business suite. They say he cooks his hair and eats it. But each to their own – if you pay him your dues, keep your head down, you get to call this home. No questions asked.” Roy points to the reinforced power lines entering the stadium wall. “Amenities and everything.”
Roy savours Sol’s puzzled expression and pulls an imaginary zip across his lips. “Yellow brick road’s over here,” he says. And together they head for the entrance door.
“Password?” the grate asks.
“Milk organ.”
Sol blinks.
The door opens. “After you,” Roy says.
Sol edges in. A man in nothing but his boxer shorts greets them with gibberish, holding out his arms in shapes from some mysterious sign language. He’s covered head to toe in what might be Vaseline.
“Piss off,” Roy tells him.
The man totters, unbalanced. Sol skirts him, trying to come off casual.
Roy laughs. “Don’t look them in the eyes,” he whispers, letting the warning take root. Then, as he pulls Sol through the players’ tunnel and into the stadium proper – a grid of shanties crumbling in perfect formation – he says: “See? One of these could be yours.”
Sol watches his feet until they reach the Reverend’s place.
A young woman opens the door and bows at them.
Roy waves in her face. “Is he in?”
A disoriented look. Then, “Yes, yes.” From the back comes the sound of running water. “Come,” she says. It’s odd, the way she says it. “Sit, sit,” she adds, and Sol decides her invite owes more to learned custom than genuine hospitality.
The two men sink awkwardly into a deep leather Winchester. Legs touching. Beside them, an antique clock is ticking itself to death.
“Wife!” the Reverend shouts from the back. His voice echoes.
Sol shifts in the chair, tries to put space between him and Roy.
“Visitors,” she replies.
“What?” The man splutters and slops through the shanty. He appears in a towel that reveals his massive slipped gut, indecipherable green tattoos on each tumbling breast. “Royston!” he bellows. “Why didn’t you say?”
“Evening, Rev,” Roy says. Sol thinks his voice is lower, more subdued.
“And who is this vision before me?”
“S–” starts Sol.
“–olomon,” Roy finishes. “Mechanic on the conversion job.”
“Oh, fabulous!” the Reverend booms. His eyebrows twitch madly. “How’s the work progressing?”
“It’s fine,” Sol says. “Fine.”
“Bless you. Bless your hands. I’ll be sure to let our client know.” Then, to Roy: “So that being the case, what’s the matter?”
“I’ve been–”
“Speak up, Royston!”
Roy clears his throat. “I’ve been a nob and lost something – that’s all.”
“Lost… what? Should we worry?”
Roy shakes his head.
“What, then, pray tell?”
“My piece.”
An awkward pause. “But darling,” the Reverend says. “That was a present.”
“I know,’ Roy says. “I know it was.”
The Reverend exhales through his nose. “And what do you want me to do about it?”
Sol realizes Roy is gripping the leather of the seat.
“Just… just wondered if you’ve got anything going spare,” Roy says. “I can’t… you know.”
Sol tenses, too. Some power exchange is happening here; some latent fear worming out. Why, he can’t be sure – the Reverend’s overweight, clearly unfit. Eyes so small and close together it’s a wonder he can actually see past his nose. Yes, he’s brash, but there’s something deeper.
“I hate to feel disappointed,” the Reverend says, looking at Sol. “It sits heavily in the shoulders, doesn’t it?” He turns to his wife. “You’ll have to rub it out, won’t you?”
“Listen, Rev–”
The Reverend cuts Roy off. “Look at you two. Quite cute, really. Little schoolboys. And does your boyfriend have any thoughts on your forgetfulness?”
Sol stares. It takes a beat to register the Reverend means him.
“Yeah,” Sol says. “I mean it’s a shame and–”
“A shame,” the Reverend cuts in. “Yes. That’s about the sum of it. But the Lord teaches us to forgive. So that’s what I’ll have to do, isn’t it? Now, do you break bread, Sol? Do you value that body which was given for our sins?”
“Probably not enough,” Sol says. “No.”
The Reverend’s face twitches. “Come through, then, idiot-boy. Something can be arranged.”
The men stand awkwardly.
“Wife – you stay with him. No, no. The black one.” He slaps his chair next to her leg.
A lump swells in Sol’s throat. He goes to apologize – instinct, maybe. But as he does, he looks between Roy and the Rev, and Roy looks so adrift and vulnerable – his eyes imploring Sol to say nothing more.
“Ought to start going out with spares, you forgetful clot,” the Reverend tells him, and a door closes. Sol hears the Reverend’s muffled laughter, the dull sounds of drawers and heavy metal clanging.
Sol looks at the Reverend’s wife. “You doing OK?”
The woman smiles thinly but doesn’t hold eye contact.
He wills her to respond, to say anything. She picks at her sleeves – Sol thinks he can see bruises there, her skin polka-dotted.
“What’s your name?” he asks, filled with a cloying sensation.
“Jovin,” she says.
“Jovin. And you’re alright, aren’t you?”
“I am–”
The far door bangs open and Roy shouts up the corridor: “Sol! Three-five-seven or nine mil? Auto pistol? Or a proper hand-cannon?”
“Christ,” Sol whispers. He massages his eyes with his fists. Jovin stays still. Hanging on her husband’s grace –
Roy comes back into the room, a pistol held high. “Jawohl!” he shouts. “Mein new sidearm ist ein classisch!” He thrusts the gun under Sol’s nose, forcing out a laugh. “Reconditioned Luger!” Behind him, the Reverend howls with glee.
“We’ve left her too long,” Sol whispers.
The Reverend’s laughter crashes. “Her?” he asks, his wide face over Roy’s shoulder.
“He’s just being soft in the head,” Roy says backwards, waving the pistol. “Cheers for this though, man.”
The Reverend narrows his eyes and caricatures Jovin’s bow. “A pleasure,” he says flatly. Then he pushes past to stand before Sol. “I suppose I’ll look forward to hearing from a happy client, then. Goodnight and God bless.”
Sol glances at Jovin as he stands up. Her face is turned into the wall.
“Come on,” Roy says.
As they leave, the Reverend closing the door behind them, Sol catches the face of a business card on the doormat, two overlapping circles on its face.
They’re some way down the street when Sol realizes what he’s seen. He spins, sprints back, beats the door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Roy hisses. “Don’t!”
Two latches, a chain. The door swings. “What?” the Reverend asks, his face swollen with indignation.
Sol eyeballs the mat again. He has to be sure. He has to know. Is the Reverend a customer? Is he involved, somehow? Or was it simply audacious flyering?
There’s nothing there.
“Thought I’d forgotten something,” Sol tells him.
The Reverend shakes his head, his bottom lip pushed out dismissively. “No,” he says. “You didn’t.” And he slams the door.