When I came back from the toilet, Fox was sitting at the bar. He had struck up a conversation with one of the bikers. They were negotiating the price of a deal. Fox’s face was illuminated by the red neon strip overhead. He had a narrow scar running along his cheekbone and when he turned to me I could see that there was an identical scar on the other cheek. They were fine and precise and accentuated the planes of his face. There were faint suture marks where the lips of the wound had healed together.
‘What happened to your face?’ I asked.
‘Pretty cool aren’t they. I was in this bar a while ago and I met these twins. Cool fucking dudes. They’ve got this really crazy apartment uptown. Heaps of dope, booze, you name it. I started hanging out there. At first I thought it was a bit scary, what they were up to, I mean, you know, man, all that piercing and branding and shit. Then I sort of got into it. And when they offered me the cash, well, what the fuck. A bit of recreational surgery. No big deal. I think it looks cool. Like some kind of Masai warrior dude. Whaddaya think man?’
I looked at him for a while and everything seemed to come into focus.
‘I think it’s shit,’ I said. ‘And you know what? I think you’re full of it.’
‘Well fuck you,’ said Fox, his eyes switched off and his long elegant fingers bunched into fists.
‘And you can fuck off right now, princess,’ said the barman, towering over Fox, blowtorching him with those Atlantic blue eyes.
‘Fucking queer cunts,’ Fox shouted back as he slouched to the door.
‘What day is it?’ I asked the barman as we walked home through the slick dark streets. I was pushing my pink broom along the kerb. The wind had dropped and a halcyon moon hung down from a black sky stippled with stars. Everything looked charged — the reflections of the streetlamps on the wet pavements; the cigarette butts and beer cans in the gutter; the leaves of the trees; the green grass coming up blue in the moonlight; the hairs in the Scotsman’s beard. Every detail vibrated with significance.
I imagined all the people asleep in their beds. The radiant family I had spied on through the window would be tucked up under their expensive duvets. Grace would be tossing in his zebra skin sheets or pacing the corridors of some sex club. The Poole twins would be staring up at the fluorescent tubes recessed in the ceiling of their cells, sleeping with their eyes open. Fox? No, Fox would still be prowling, sniffing out somewhere to doss for the night. And Sykes? Where was Sykes? I wondered.
‘It’s Friday. Well, Saturday morning, I guess,’ the Scotsman replied.
‘But what’s the date?’
‘July something. Must be the twenty fourth.’
‘It’s my birthday,’ I said. The barman stopped and studied me for a moment.
‘Well, fuck my dog,’ he said. ‘Happy birthday, sweetheart.’ Then he let out a whoop, snatched the broom from my hands and hurled it high up into the air. He picked me up and kissed me and twirled me around in the middle of the road and then he carried me home in his arms like a bride.