Something You Are (30 page)

A few men in suits were drinking and talking amongst them­­­selves at tables, while the barmaid appeared to run the place. Some low indie rock was playing from her iTunes behind the bar and the lighting was bright but tinted purple.

There was exposed copper piping hanging from the ceiling.

The man I was waiting for, Noel Braben, was upstairs in his office.

I was to find out that the Underground did in fact have an owner, a woman called Ms Edie Franco, but I was only to see her twice in the time I worked there. Noel and Ronnie O’Connell, his long-time business partner, spoke of her work­ing ‘up north’ with her other clubs. The two of them had more invested in the day-to-day management of the Underground than she seemed to.

When the door to the stairwell on my left opened it wasn’t Noel Braben who walked out of it. It was a woman with dark red hair, metallic and glossy. She had high cheek­bones and wide eyes that looked me up and down and full lips that tightened at the sight of me as she looked over her shoulder on her way out.

I watched her go, thinking that she was gorgeous but an obvious bitch and that she probably worked here
...

A man wearing jeans and a suit jacket appeared in the doorway after the woman had left, looking pissed off and eager to abdicate from this day. Tired blue eyes searched for me from under a mop of hair that made him look like a member of the Beatles, and he frowned.

‘You’re...
Seven?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Seven,’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’ I raised my eyebrows this time and he smiled.

‘OK then, come on.’

It wasn’t exactly lust at first sight. But it became appar­ent very quickly that something about me amused him, and something about him fascinated me.

I wasn’t used to finding men interesting. Women had more intricacies; they were harder to please in every sense, harder to read, and the women I had loved I could live my entire life learning how to please and how to read.

But I liked Noel Braben.

I swivelled left and right on the spinning chair as he observed me and asked things like, ‘You always lived in London? You don’t look English, exactly.’

‘I’m half Japanese but my parents moved back and forth a lot so my accent is pretty much English.’

‘It’s a bit American.’

‘Well, that’s how we speak English. We watch a lot of American TV.’

‘Do you still live with your parents?’

‘No, they’re dead.’

‘Ooh.’ A grimace. ‘I’m sorry. Was it recent?’

‘They were murdered a few years ago, with my sister.’

I think I’d wanted to shock him, or myself. It was the only explanation for why I’d stated it with such bravado.

But he wasn’t shocked.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with the blank tone of a guy who con­sidered murder no different from any other form of death. ‘Did they ever find the...
guy?’

‘No.’

‘And you survived?’

‘I was out.’

Another frown. He looked down at his desk, his only hint at a reaction, then back up at me with a smile. ‘Can you dance?’

I was surprised he had changed the subject. He didn’t bring it up again until we were in bed, three weeks later.

‘Um, a bit,’ I replied. ‘I can dance but not like...
dance. I’ve done Ninpo and some martial arts though so I can pick stuff up quickly.’

He leant in. ‘Look, this isn’t the Royal Opera House. If you can put one leg in front of the other and smile at the same time most people here will be happy. Have you got any special talents?’

‘I can sing OK and I can paint. I’m not sure if I’m par­ticu­larly special at either.’

‘Well, I can be the judge of that.’ He smiled at me again.

I decided right then that I was going to have sex with him. At some point, whether it was next week or in a few months or whatever, it was definitely going to happen. It had never not happened when I’d decided on it.

‘You know how this place works?’ he asked.

‘It’s a strip club, right?’

‘Yes...
and no. Officially, we’re an erotic club. I manage it, with my partner Ron. Ronnie O’Connell.’ He spread his hands. ‘But I’m going to be upfront, cos you don’t seem naive. We do a lot here. We’re Members Only. People... certain people... come here to meet. We entertain them, give them free drinks, give them a song and dance, and depending on who they are we send the best girls to their homes for private performances. Are you OK with that? Potentially?’

‘With going to some guy’s house?’

‘They’re never just some random guy here. We vet all our members very thoroughly; you’d be safer working here than you would be on the tube. We can promise that.’ He became very serious suddenly. ‘We’ve never had a single incident, not with a member.’

I mulled it over, but I wasn’t surprised. You’d have to be an amateur at life to go for a job interview at a club like this and not expect to be asked to partake in some mild prostitution.

‘Well...
yeah, I’d be fine with that,’ I said, shrug­ging.

‘Great!’ He couldn’t quite repress the smile. ‘Um, before you do that you will need to provide a clear and very recent STD test. Only valid within the last month.’

‘OK. I think I’m starting to understand what this place is all about.’ I tapped the arms of my chair and looked around the office again. ‘I don’t think I’ve made a very good first impression on my co-workers though. I’m pretty sure old bitch-face who just left isn’t that big a fan.’

He laughed and sat back in his chair, spinning around a bit. ‘Co-worker? You’re confident.’

‘Well, I’ve got this job, right?’

‘You’ve got it, yeah. Er...
Seven.’ He rubbed at his stubble. ‘Old bitch-face doesn’t work here though.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘She’s my wife actually. She works at PWC.’

Fuck. There wasn’t anything I could say to rescue myself from that, so I reddened and said, ‘Oh.’

‘It’s OK; she’s an accountant. She knows she’s a bitch.’ He grin­ned at me, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking. ‘But you’re probably right to say that she doesn’t like you. She doesn’t like anyone who works here. Sometimes I think she doesn’t even like me.’

I looked for the wedding ring and there it was, where I should have seen it in the first place. I’d noticed that his of­fice was eerily tidy, everything in line with something else, or perpendicular to something else, but I hadn’t noticed the wedding ring.

‘Can you stand up so I can check you over? I can call Daisy up if you want a girl in the room but it’s just a look. Nothing weird, don’t worry.’

The barmaid had seemed nice, but I didn’t feel threat­ened. On the contrary, I wanted to us to be alone.

I stood up, put my bag down beside me and pushed the chair away.

‘Everything?’ I asked.

The air in the office was hot and the one window was shut.

‘Everything you feel comfortable with, but the top layer has to go. It’s so we can check for marks, tattoos and stuff. We don’t allow anyone to use drugs here so we look for any evidence of that as well, needle marks...
weird bruises.’

‘OK.’

I took off my leather jacket and put it down on the chair behind me, then my boots. As I unbuttoned my shirt I looked down at my fingers, and then met his eyes as I slipped it off my shoulders, folded it slowly and placed it with the jacket.

His face was expressionless, but he was tapping the arm of his chair.

I slid my skirt and tights down to my ankles and step­ped out of them, suddenly more conscious than I liked of what he might think of my skinny and childlike body. I tried to remember in more detail what his wife had looked like. She’d also looked slight of frame, but more athletic than me, with broader shoulders.

With a breath, I unhooked the straps of the black bra and let it slide down my arms.

My body felt hot, inhabited by an exhilarated visceral sen­sation that squeezed my diaphragm and shortened my breath.

I saw him wet his lips, eyes down, away from my face.

‘Can you, er...
turn around?’

I turned around in a circle. As my back was to him I was overcome by the fantasy of him approaching behind me, taking me by the arms, kissing his way down my back, pushing me down on to his desk with his hands all over me
...

‘Yeah, that’s fine. Fine, I mean...
nice. Good.’

‘Only good?’

I picked up my clothes and started to dress myself, coy all of a sudden.

He gave me an exasperated look. ‘Yeah. Great. Look, stop being a smart-arse and tell me when you can start. Tomorrow?’

Pulling my jacket on, I beamed. ‘Really?’

‘Bring in some ID and bank account details tomorrow morn­ing and I’ll give you a hundred or so to go out and get together some decent outfits, then you’ll be good to go. You can shadow one of the other girls for the night.’ He was writing something down. ‘If you run off with the hundred and think I won’t find you, I will, OK? So don’t.’

It was the first time I’d felt vulnerable in front of him, but he said it so matter-of-factly that I was pressured to ignore the momentary fear and move on.

I sat down to pull my tights back up. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. Um, one question though.’

‘Yeah?’

Awkwardly, he cupped one hand beside his mouth, as if someone might be listening.

I leant in.

‘You won’t think it’s racist if we play up the Japanese thing, will you?’

I whispered back sardonically, ‘No, you’re fine. I won’t sue.’

‘Awesome.’ He spun around in his chair again, appraising me. ‘Because the whole Japanese schoolgirl thing, the little white socks, the skirts and stuff. It’s a total no-brainer.’

Nausea hit me on the tube the following morning, and I held my forehead in my hands for most of the journey.

In my mind there were images of bumping into my parents or sister. I couldn’t imagine what an alien environment my old estate would seem without them, but at the same time I was scared of walking towards my old flat and feeling too much as if I was going home.

Would I have the guts to go inside? Was I going to start crying? Maybe I’d just go crazy and start screaming and hitting things. What if I ran into someone I’d known?

It’s OK, I thought. No one had really known me there anyway.

I stared at the shoes of the person sitting opposite me until my stop.

My old block of flats wasn’t far from the tube station. In fact you could see it straight away, looming into the sky. They should have knocked it down, or burnt the fucking thing.

The houses, the roads and the pavements surrounding it were drenched in familiarity, but felt too quiet for my memory of the place. It was like walking on to a battlefield in the years after the fight, when there were no traces of blood any more and the grass had grown back, where the calm would always feel at odds with the knowledge of the violence that had taken place.

I stopped walking, midway between my block of the flats and Jensen McNamara’s. There had been a broken skateboard in the bushes next to the pavement the last time I’d walked the same route, but it was now gone.

It had been humid then. At least it had the grace to be cold now.

I walked up to the nearest building and buzzed Jensen’s old flat, wondering what the hell I was doing here. I knew I was kidding myself that this was a pointless exercise. I knew what I was really doing. I was looking for an excuse, any excuse, to call Mark Chester. I was looking for something to help me overcome my paralysis.

‘Hello?’

It sounded like him.

I swallowed. ‘Jensen?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Um, this is Kiyomi. Kiyomi Ishida. I don’t know if you remember—’

‘Kiyomi? Fuck, er... Fuck. Hi?’

‘Can I come in for a moment?’

He paused for a little too long to sound polite.

‘Oh yeah, yeah, OK, sure.’

I was buzzed up and he met me in his doorway looking exactly the same as I remembered him. Not that Jensen’s was a face that had particularly lodged itself in my memory, but there was nothing new or exciting about his features.

‘Man, you look different,’ he said with a nervous smile.

For a second, he hesitated, as if wondering whether to hug me or shake my hand, but then he just backed away from the doorway and let me come inside.

‘You look nice with shorter hair though. It’s cool. Do you want a drink or something?’

‘You know I don’t drink.’

‘Well, tea. It’s like midday, babes.’

He was just as unkempt as I remembered. His flat smelt the same, so much so that I found it hard to speak.

‘Tea, yeah. Anything herbal.’

I followed him to the other end of his flat, where a tiny stove and washing machine were wedged behind a sofa.

‘I’m sorry I never got to see you after...’ He shook his head as he moved about his space, keeping his back to me. ‘I’m sorry anyway. It was fucking horrible. I never expected to see you again, to be honest. Didn’t think you’d ever come back. Thought you’d just... go back to Japan or something.’

‘Too expensive for me.’ I sat on the back of the sofa. ‘I couldn’t even afford the flight.’