It was almost Spring. The endless rain suddenly ceased and the city lost its forlorn look. The days lengthened and the sky softened and opened up into a lofty blue canopy. Cats sunbathed on the warm concrete and in the inner suburbs the greenery burgeoned. Perfumed oases of freesias bloomed under hedges and sprouted out of cracks in old walls and the jasmine outside my window transmitted its erotic scent all through the apartment. I cleaned the windows and hung some new yellow curtains that suffused the bare white rooms with golden light.
‘Très flattering,’ said Grace. ‘Now what you need is some furniture. We could go shopping, doll. We could have a little spree.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m sort of half thinking of moving. I don’t want to be encumbered.’
‘Where to?’
‘Out of town, maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe somewhere near the water. I haven’t decided.’
‘God, the first sign of a fine day and everyone puts their hair up in pigtails and rushes off to the country. It’s unnatural, if you ask me.’ Grace shuddered and lit a cigarette. ‘And speaking of hair, doll. Don’t you think yours could do with a little interference?’
After work the next day I went to Grace’s salon — From Hair to Eternity. He shooed out his cohorts, locked the door, shoved Victoria de los Angeles into the CD player and opened a bottle of wine.
‘You are entirely at my disposal, doll,’ he said. ‘Lie back, relax and prepare to be transformed.’ Grace washed my hair and I closed my eyes, letting myself subside into luxury. His gentle fingers massaging my scalp, the music and the sweet smells of the salon allayed the momentary jab of panic generated by the mention of transformation. The confounding image of myself as a different person. It was the same panic I felt at the thought of moving house. He would not recognize me. He would not know where to find me.
When Grace had finished with me I was transformed. He had cut my hair shorter than I had worn it for years and lightened it a couple of shades. I felt blithe and wide eyed, as though I had sloughed a skin.
‘Voila,’ said Grace, angling a mirror for me to admire the back and sides. ‘Sort of Tab Hunter meets Liza Minelli, don’t you think? All you need now is a pair of drop dead drop earrings and the Fords will be beating your door down. The agency, doll, not the clinic.’
Grace replaced Victoria with Dusty Springfield and turned down the lights. We sat in the twilit salon, finishing the wine, listening to Dusty wishin’ and hopin’ and watching the sky turn royal blue and then, incredibly, turn even bluer, a heartbreaking aquamarine. The buildings silhouetted against it looked as though they were pasted on to a vast cyclorama.
‘C’est l’heure bleu,’ said Grace. ‘C’est l’heure du cocktail. How about we kick up our cha-cha heels, doll? What do you say? We haven’t been out on the tiles together for yonks.’
We toured the chic new little bars and cafés that Grace loved to make fun of but couldn’t resist. He was known to the owners of many of them and drinks were often on the house. He appraised the décor and the clientele with wry savagery.
‘Don’t you think grunge has had its day, doll’ Grace assessed a barmaid dressed in layers of tattered lingerie. ‘It just seems to make one look so... well, not to put too fine a point on it, shagged out.’
In one of the bars — the bar of the moment, Grace said, I watched a group of people playing some kind of game. They were all expensively dressed with sharp fashionable hair cuts and they were playing that game where someone whispers into his neighbour’s ear and then that person passes the message to the next. But instead of whispering they were leaving messages on each others cellphones. As I watched their silent game one of the women turned from the table and discreetly vomited her drink back into her glass.
‘Now this,’ Grace said, ‘is the home of the archetypal martini of all time.’ He steered me into a tiny bar where every surface was covered with fake leopardskin. The bar, the carpet, the upholstery, wallpaper — everything. It was called Predator. When he saw Grace, the barman curtsied in his leopard apron and reached for a fur covered cocktail shaker.
‘Just remember,’ said Grace, hoisting himself up onto one of the precarious stools, ‘the vermouth must never, ever, at any time, come in contact with the spirit.’ The barman dropped two ice cubes into the shaker, filled it with chilled vodka, gave it a shake and then made a pass with the vermouth bottle in the air above it. He emptied the contents into two iced glasses and Grace took a tentative sip.
‘Rapture,’ he sighed, rolling his eyes and then he clutched at the barman’s hand. ‘Marry me,’ he beseeched, ‘and I’ll bear your child. It’s absolutely imperative that we perpetuate the martini gene.’
The evening unravelled. I let myself become absorbed in Grace’s decadent extravagance. He bought us dinner in a trick bistro where the food consisted of ornamental arrangements of unidentifiable flesh and vegetation sitting in bitter little puddles on enormous plates. Cuisine anorexique, according to Grace.
It was inevitable that we would end up at Shooters. Grace had never been there before and was immediately intrigued.
‘Doll,’ he whispered, ‘it’s so butch. And not a shred of linen in sight. What should we drink do you think, Bighorn or Old Thumper?’
‘Definitely not Campari,’ I replied. ‘And don’t you dare ask for a Crème de Menthe frappé.’
Grace ordered two rum and cokes in a gruff, gravelly voice. I had to stop myself from laughing. The barmaid was a sullen young woman with a ring through her nose and rococo eye-makeup.
‘Where’s the Scot?’ I asked.
‘What?’ she slammed the drinks down on the bar.
‘The big Scottish guy with the tattoos.’
‘Sick,’ she snarled. The song on the jukebox had just ended and the word reverberated in the smoky silence. I felt suddenly helpless, as though my bones were melting. The word had become charged, amplified. Was he sick or just sick.
‘What’s... what’s wrong with him?’ I stammered.
‘Got cut. Throwing someone out. Dude with scars on his face. Had a knife.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘He’ll live. Stupid prick.’ She slapped down the change and flounced off to insult another customer.
‘You’ll have to tell him,’ Grace said. ‘You have to let him know there’s a chance...’
‘I know. I know,’ I said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know. It’s all I can think about.’
‘All right, doll. But make it soon, eh. Sooner than later.’ Grace stroked my hand. ‘Now, get a load of her,’ He indicated the group of bikers congregated around the juke-box. One of them was tall and lithe with a swimmer’s shoulders and a cascade of blond curls. He was wearing a black vest, cut low, exposing his nipples, and tight leather trousers. A tattooed serpent twined up his arm.
‘She’d toss you around, doll. She’d show no mercy, that one.’
As we were ogling the beauty, the Scottish barman arrived. He had his arm in a sling and looked pale and flattened in that way that large people look unwell. It’s as though they take more of a beating because there’s more of them to harm.
He went behind the bar and below the shriek of the jukebox I could hear him berating his sullen deputy. She rolled her eyes and folded her arms as he ranted. There seemed to be some discrepancy in the cash register. He slammed the till shut and surveyed the bar in exasperation. When his gaze came to rest on me, his face softened. He shrugged his big shoulders and gave me a crooked smile. Then he raised his good hand in a mock salute.
‘Talk to him,’ said Grace. ‘You have to tell him. I’ll get out of your way.’ He got up from the table.
‘I can’t,’ I said. Suddenly I felt filled with guilt and shame. I felt like a slut and a leper. He was too nice, too gentle hearted. How could I tell him his life may be on the line and it was my fault?
‘Tell him,’ Grace shouted into my face. He went over to the jukebox and made a pretence of perusing the selections. I knew that Grace was as blind as a bat without his Armani half-specs, his lunettes as he called them.
‘Are you all right?’ I said to the barman. We were sitting in the upstairs store-room under a dim light bulb, surrounded by boxes of bottles. ‘I heard about the... accident.’
‘It was your mate Fox,’ he said. ‘He started making trouble. He had to be got rid of. But the blade took me by surprise.’ I remembered that knife. The way Fox liked to flaunt it. He would flip it open when you least expected it and wave it under your nose as if to say don’t fuck with me because I’ve got the power. I thought it was just bravado and I shuddered at the realisation that he might well have used it on me.
‘That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,’ I said after a while. The music thudded beneath the floor and the freezer hummed in the corner.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ said the Scotsman. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘How can you know?’ The light in the tiny room seemed to fluctuate and I felt a flicker of alarm.
‘Sykes came to see me. When you came back from the island. He told me everything.’
‘Why would he come to you?’
‘Oh, it’s a long story. Sykes and me, well, we go back a long way. Before either of us met you. When he was living with Fabulina, God rest her.’
‘You and Sykes. You mean...?’
‘You weren’t supposed to find out, man. You know Sykes. You know what he’s like. I couldn’t help myself and then I couldn’t handle it. But it’s a long time ago, sweetheart. History.’
I felt a surge of jealousy and betrayal. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to wrench that wounded arm out of its sling and ram it up his back. Suddenly there was a double dagger suspended over my head.