From the corner of my eye I could see Mike lying prone on the floor and Gina bending over him with tears in her eyes. The sight of them should have been enough to take my mind off everything else, but when Iggy paused, halfway through the door, and fixed me with his deadly stare, the rest of the world disappeared.
I was alone in the darkness, standing on a chair, and all I could see was the sterile light of Iggy’s eyes, searing into mine.
Stilling me.
Draining me.
Shrinking me to impotence.
He still had Candy gripped by the arm. She wasn’t struggling at all, she was just standing there, hanging from his hand like a lifeless trophy, waiting to be taken away. Iggy’s lips moved—a silent word in her ear—and she languidly turned her head toward me. I caught a brief glimpse of her lightless eyes, a glazed look of recognition, and then she was gone, ghosted away into the night.
B
y the time I’d got down off the chair and made my way over to the door, there wasn’t much left to see. Candy and Iggy were long gone, Iggy’s crew had disappeared, and now that the fight was over, most of the onlookers had lost interest and were beginning to drift away. Things seemed strangely
normal.
Apart from the state of Mike’s face and Gina’s obvious shock, it was hard to tell there’d been any trouble at all.
Mike wasn’t hurt too badly. He’d taken some hefty kicks to his head and his ribs, and his mouth and nose were bleeding a bit, but at least he was back on his feet again. In fact, he was more than back on his feet—he was livid. Standing tall, glaring angrily around the club, trying to work out what had happened.
“Where’d they go?” he spit. “Where’s the big guy? Where’s the girl…?”
Gina was trying to calm him down—holding him,
hugging him, fussing with the wounds on his head—but she looked pretty shaky herself. Her hands were trembling, her lips were quivering, and her shocked-white face was streaked with tears.
I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t know what I
wanted
to do.
I wanted to rush out into the street and start looking for Candy, but that would mean leaving Gina…and I didn’t want to do that. She was my sister. She was hurt and upset. I wanted to be with
her…
where I belonged. And besides, I knew in my heart that looking for Candy was a waste of time. Even if I
did
find her, she’d be with Iggy and his crew, and what chance would
I
have against
them?
So I stayed where I was, my heart beating hard, watching Gina as she hugged the life out of Mike.
After a while, Mike spotted me over her shoulder.
“Hey, Joe.” He grinned. “Great night out—thanks for inviting us.” He wiped some blood from his mouth.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I’ll live.”
Gina let go of him and turned to face me. She was still crying. I went over and put my arms around her.
“Are you OK?” I said.
“Yeah…” She lowered her voice. “God, Joe, I thought they were going to
kill
him.”
“What happened?” I said. “How did it start?”
She sniffed and wiped her nose. “I don’t know…there was this girl—”
“Christ—what are you
doing?
” a voice interrupted. I looked around to see Jason walking briskly toward us. His face was all twitchy and tight, and his eyes were alight with
a curious mixture of anger and excitement. He came over and grabbed me by the arm. “Come
on,
” he said, pulling me toward the dressing room. “They wanna see you.”
“Who?” I said, shrugging his hand away.
“The record company guys…” His face lit up. “They’re really keen, Joe. They wanna talk to us…
all
of us. Come
on
—”
“I can’t—”
“What do you mean, you
can’t?
This is big stuff—”
“I have to talk to my sister—”
“Your
sister?
” His face screwed up in disgust. “
Sod
your sister. This is important—”
“So is this.”
He glared at me, his eyes a rage of disbelief, and I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. I know I felt like hitting
him,
and if Gina hadn’t stepped forward and put her hand on my arm, I think I probably would have.
“It’s all right, Joe,” she said calmly. “I’d better take Mike home, anyway. We can talk about what happened later…You go and see your record company people.”
I looked at her…pale and quiet.
I looked at Jason…forcing himself to smile, trying to control his anger, his contempt, his impatience.
It wasn’t a hard choice to make.
“You’ll have to do without me,” I told Jason.
His smile wavered. “No, you don’t understand, they wanna see
you
—”
“Tell them something came up—”
“Christ’s
sake,
Beck,” he hissed. “What’s the
matter
with you? You can’t just bugger off whenever you feel like it—”
“Look,” I said, “I’m really sorry—OK? But I
need
to go home with my sister—”
“Why?”
“I just do, that’s all.” I turned to Gina. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” she said, slightly puzzled. “I mean, it’s no big deal—”
“Yeah, it is,” I assured her.
She looked at me, her eyes full of questions. “Is this about—”
“Not now,” I said.
She gave me another thoughtful look, then nodded slowly, took Mike’s arm, and started for the door.
I turned back to Jason. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll explain everything another time.”
“Yeah?” he said sulkily. “And who says there’ll
be
another time?”
I looked at him for a moment, started to say something, then decided against it. I just couldn’t be bothered.
I turned my back on him and walked out.
It rained on the way home, a fine black rain that misted the air and dazzled the night with kaleidoscope lights. As Mike eased the car through the slick city streets and on toward the M25, I stared through the window at the starburst colors spinning in the darkness—the headlights, the streetlights, the bleak neon signs…all blurred and vacant in the rain.
Blurred and vacant.
Cold as glass.
I couldn’t think.
I’d tried ringing Candy on my cell phone as soon as I’d got in the car, but the number was dead. No tone, no voice mail, no nothing. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t
know what anything meant. I was torn in too many ways. Too many highs, too many lows, too many feelings all at once…and I couldn’t put a voice to a single one of them. I didn’t know where to start.
But Gina did.
“I think it’s time to talk,” she said, turning around in the passenger seat to face me. “Is there something we ought to know about what happened tonight?”
“I’m not sure…” I said.
“Come on, Joe…all that stuff with what’s-his-name, the singer—what was that all about? Why do you need to talk to me so much? Is it something to do with the fight?”
“I think so…”
“You
think
so?”
“It’s hard to explain…Look, I’m not trying to
hide
anything, it’s just…well, I don’t know what happened with you and Mike…and the girl.” I looked hard into Gina’s eyes. “I need to know what happened.”
She looked back at me, thinking hard, then she glanced across at Mike. Without turning his head, he said, “Tell him.”
She told me.
“It was during the last song,” she said, “the one you were singing. I was watching you, listening to you…I couldn’t believe how good you were, Joe. It was fantastic.
You
were fantastic. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mike. “It was really good.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Gina nodded. “Anyway, I was watching you, and I was watching the crowd as well. They were really getting into it. Especially the girl at the front…the one you kept looking at.” She paused, waiting for me to say something.
When I didn’t, she kept on. “I thought at first she was just a girl…you know, just a pretty girl you’d seen in the crowd…but then I realized I’d seen her earlier—”
“Where?” I asked.
“In the toilets. About five minutes before the last song.” She looked carefully at me, her eyes hesitant, as if she was unsure what to say. “Is she…I mean, do you
know
her?”
“What was she doing?”
Gina didn’t answer for a moment. She lowered her eyes, then looked up again as Mike flicked her a quick glance. She said to me, “I went into a cubicle…I thought it was empty…but it wasn’t. The lock was broken. She was in there…this girl…She was crouched on the seat, smoking heroin…”
“Heroin?”
Gina nodded.
I said, “Are you sure?”
“Positive. She had a strip of aluminum foil and—”
“She was
smoking
it?”
“Through a plastic straw.”
“I thought you had to inject heroin?”
Mike said, “You can do what you like with it—smoke it, snort it, pop it…whatever.”
I don’t know why I felt shocked, really. I knew that Candy took drugs and I’d kind of guessed it was heroin, but I suppose I’d chosen to ignore it, as if it didn’t really matter or it wasn’t really
there
…
But now it
was
there.
In all its dirt-cold reality.
And it was hitting me hard.
“Joe?” said Gina. “Are you OK?”
I looked up, still plagued with the picture of Candy—
crouched in a toilet cubicle, smoking heroin through a plastic straw…
“Who is she?” Gina asked gently. “Is it—”
“What happened then?” I said. “After you’d seen her?”
Gina hesitated again. Then she said, “Nothing…I just apologized and left her to it. She didn’t seem to mind. She just sat there, smiling. I found another cubicle, then went back to Mike…Then, five minutes later, that’s when I saw her again, dancing in front of you.”
I remembered how Candy looked—dancing alone, her eyes closed, moving like a dream, like a child lost in time…
I gazed out the car window. We were heading out of London now, speeding through the orange-lit darkness on the way back to Essex. The rain had stopped and the night was starless and black.
“What about the fight?” I asked Gina. “How did that happen?”
She took a deep breath, picturing the scene. “It was near the end of your song. A gang of black guys had been hanging around the door for a while. They seemed as if they were waiting for someone. Mike had noticed them earlier and said they looked like trouble. Then this really big guy came in—big and hard, nasty-looking, scary eyes. One of the guys by the door went up to him and pointed out the girl at the front of the stage. The big guy looked over and nodded his head, then a couple of the guys by the door shoved their way to the front of the stage, grabbed the girl, and started dragging her back to the big guy.” Gina paused and looked at me. “Didn’t you see any of this?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” she continued, “that’s when it happened. I saw
the girl getting dragged over to the big guy, and it was obvious she didn’t
want
to go, she was really struggling…and no one else seemed to be doing anything about it…so I pointed it out to Mike.” She sighed. “God, I wish I hadn’t now. I’d wish I’d just turned a blind eye like everyone else.”
“No,” said Mike. “You did the right thing.”
She looked at him. “What—getting you beaten up?” She turned to me. “Mike tried to stop them. He went over and asked the two guys what they were doing, and the next thing I knew he was surrounded by the rest of the gang, getting the crap kicked out of him, and the big guy had taken the girl away.” She glanced at Mike again, reaching out and stroking his hair. “I’m sorry, Mike—I got you involved for nothing.”
He smiled at her. “Like I said…you did the right thing.”
Gina smiled back at him, then turned her attention to me. She didn’t say anything, she just looked at me, waiting for an explanation.
I thought about lying again, making something up…but it was all too complicated, and I was too tired to think, and Gina and Mike didn’t deserve any more lies.
So I told them all about Candy.
I told them everything—finding her phone number, ringing her up, making a date, going to the zoo, asking her to the gig…
“You went to the
zoo
?” Gina said incredulously.
“Yeah…”
She stared at me, her eyes wide open, shaking her head in disbelief. “Let me get this straight—when you rang her up, you
knew
she was a prostitute, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah…I suppose…”
“And this guy who was with her before, the one who threatened to cut your throat—you
knew
he was her pimp?”
“She said he was just someone she knew—”
“What—and you
believed
her?”
“Not really.”
“But you went ahead and made a date with her, anyway?”
“Yeah…”
“And you took her to the zoo?”
“Yeah…”
“God, Joe…I don’t
believe
it.
Why?
Why would you
do
that?”
“Because…I don’t know…because I like her, I suppose. She’s nice…”
“
Nice?
”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a
prostitute,
for Christ’s sake. A heroin addict…” A sudden flash of fear crossed Gina’s face. “God,
you
haven’t taken anything, have you? If she’s been trying to get you—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I haven’t taken anything, and she hasn’t offered me anything.”
“Honestly?”
“I wasn’t even sure what she was taking until you told me.”
“But you knew she was taking
something?
”
“Yeah,” I admitted, looking Gina in the eye, “but that doesn’t make her a monster or anything, does it? I mean, she’s just a kid, the same as me. Do you think she
likes
what she’s doing?”
“I don’t know,” Gina shrugged. “Have you asked her?”
“Sort of…”
“And?”
“She lied—she told me she was a dancer.”
“A
dancer?
Oh, right—and this Iggy guy’s her choreographer, I suppose?”
“Yeah, all right…but she’s bound to lie, isn’t she? She’s not going to go around telling everyone she’s a prostitute—”
“She probably doesn’t have to…”
“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” I said angrily.
“Nothing…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“God,” I sighed. “I thought
you’d
understand.”
Gina reached back between the seats and laid her hand on my knee. “I’m sorry, Joe…It’s just…well, it’s hard. I mean, it’s difficult. I’m your sister…”
“Yeah…”
“I’m just a bit shocked.”
“Me, too.”
She smiled gently and squeezed my knee. We looked at each other for a while, renewing our closeness, and my momentary anger began to ease. I don’t often lose my temper, and I’m not sure why I did then. I suppose I was just disappointed with Gina—the way she was putting Candy down, making catty remarks, jumping to stupid conclusions…
I don’t know.
Maybe it was too much to expect, but I just wanted someone to understand how I felt.