The rest of the night was hazy for Michael, with just certain details pushing through to clarity the following day. The club, although apparently plush, had the air of a cross-channel ferry. Its low ceilings betrayed grey stains of damp about the air vents. The arms of the chairs were faded and frayed. From their booth the group had a clear view of the main stage, onto which a succession of women appeared, each heralded by the bars of a new song, to strip and perform on a polished steel pole. Michael couldn’t help staring at them. It had been almost a year since he’d last gone to bed with Caroline, since he’d last been close to a naked body. Not that the women onstage were naked as Caroline had been that night. Their bodies, corded with muscle and spray-tanned, were sheened under the stage lights. Caroline’s skin, despite her year-round tan, had always been matt. Her breasts, too, had been natural, small, but with the shape of a younger woman’s. The breasts of the women onstage were often hardened by implants, strangely immobile across their straining chests as they held themselves in slow, descending positions on the pole. Whenever they bent over, or spread their legs, the pink of their labias blinked suddenly honest amid the show, biology briefly disturbing the fantasy of their dance.
In comparison to Michael, the others in the booth appeared disinterested in the women onstage, familiarity defusing the potency of their display. The dynamics of the group, it seemed, were more powerful than any performance beyond it. But then the women had begun to join them, and everything had changed. Some had just been on the stage, from where they’d sensed the weight of the group’s wealth in the room. The Mexicans ordered bottles of champagne as the women introduced themselves with false names and foreign accents — Croatian, Romanian, Nigerian. As they did, the group’s focus quickly fragmented. Each man, within the radius of a woman’s attention, became individual again. Within minutes the group was breaking up, the Mexicans being led away, sometimes by one woman, sometimes by two, through a velvet curtain and into the private rooms beyond.
When they’d returned, Josh and his colleagues began pairing off with the women too. As Josh took the extended hand of Bianca, a tall Serbian brunette wearing a parody of a green evening dress, he’d called across the table to Michael.
“Hey, Mike! You wanna dance?”
Michael raised a hand and shook his head to show he was fine. Crystal, a petite blonde sitting beside him, leant in to whisper to him, a Russian childhood shadowing her voice. “No, come on,” she’d said. “You must have fun, too. Please.” As she spoke she’d tapped the stem of her glass with her flat-cut nails, chequer-painted.
“Ah, c’mon, Mike!” Josh said, as Bianca drew him away from the booth. “It’s on me.”
When Michael, smiling, shook his head again, Josh had raised his own hands in surrender and shrugged towards Crystal, as if to say, I tried, but he won’t learn. Allowing Bianca to lead him on towards the curtains he’d pointed a finger at Michael, like a coach reminding his young charge his training was far from over.
After going for another two dances, one with Crystal and then another with Bianca, Josh had kept his word. Putting on his jacket he’d leant down from behind Michael and given him a tap on the shoulder. “C’mon, soldier,” he’d said. “Let’s get you out of here.” He seemed suddenly more sober and Michael wondered, not for the first time, how much of the night had been an act on Josh’s behalf, a display, like the girls onstage, for the benefit of the Mexicans.
As they’d made their way out of the club, the host enthusiastically shook Josh’s hand with both of his. While they’d talked, Michael looked back at the booths, where the Mexicans continued to drink and talk with a new set of girls. Their earlier polish had left them and they seemed newly exposed, like children almost, under the glitter balls and the lights. The power with which they’d entered the club had been transferred to the women for whom they’d bought drinks, whom they’d paid for minutes of their time. The Chinese-speaking engineer, Michael noticed, sat on his own to one side, his tie undone, absentmindedly turning his wedding ring with his other hand. Michael watched as, with a sigh, he drank from the champagne flute before him, its rim smudged with pink lipstick.
“Don’t worry about them,” Josh said, as they’d collected their coats from the cloakroom. “They’re big boys. They can look after themselves.”
The next time Michael saw Josh after that night had been in his kitchen, a few days later. Samantha was giving the girls their dinner. Lucy, as she ate, was overseeing another battle of wills between Molly and Dolly, both of whom had received recent and drastic haircuts. Michael had come round to give Sam a couple of books — a treatise on photography and the proof of a friend’s new novel. They were sharing a pot of tea when Josh entered, dropping his briefcase in the hall and giving each of the girls a peck on their heads. Drawing a bottle of red from the wine rack, he began to open it.
“So what did you think of those Mexicans?” he asked Michael as he’d poured the wine. “Pretty interesting guys eh?”
“Certainly more lively than my old professors,” Michael said.
“You bet they are,” Josh said. “Very interesting guys. Very interesting. And smart businessmen, too.”
“Did it work out?” Michael asked, as Josh pulled up a chair between his two daughters. “The bank side of things?”
“Too early to say,” he’d replied, reaching out and stroking Lucy’s hair. “But that’s where it’ll be coming from soon enough. Mexico, Brazil. They’re bucking the global trend. Christ knows, they’re doing it better than us.”
Whether Samantha had picked up on the subtext of Josh’s comments, or whether she’d just chosen to ignore it, Michael couldn’t tell. But whichever, Josh had seemed to enjoy the private knowledge he and Michael were sharing in his home. As if, in however small a way, he’d initiated him into his life beyond this kitchen, this house, and in doing so had carved out a bit of Michael for himself alone.
Josh’s reaction a week later, when Michael came across him and Maddy at a wine bar in Belsize Park, couldn’t have been more different. There had been, in itself, nothing suspicious about what Michael had seen. He’d been returning from the supermarket with a couple of bags of shopping when he’d seen them through the bar’s window. Had Josh not been looking directly at him, he wouldn’t have disturbed them. But as it was, their eyes met and Josh had waved him inside. They were just finishing up, so Michael sat with them only long enough to ask Maddy how she and Tony were settling in, and for her to enquire after the progress of his new book.
Throughout the conversation Josh seemed on edge, looking at his watch twice in the same minute. Maddy, however, maintained the same distanced interest she’d always held on every occasion Michael had met her. As if the person with whom she was speaking was just one of many in an invisible receiving line on either side of her.
When Michael picked up his bags to leave, Josh waved him off casually enough. “Sure, I’ll be there,” he’d said, confirming their jog on the Heath the next day. “See you by the ponds at eight.” But when they’d gone for that jog the following morning, it was as if their meeting in the bar had never happened. Michael wouldn’t have expected Josh to bring it up, but he’d interviewed enough people to know when the omission of a subject was enough to conjure it.
At the end of that jog, as they’d sat on their regular bench on Parliament Hill, Michael had thought Josh was about to mention his drink with Maddy. He’d taken an intake of breath like the beginning of an explanation, or perhaps a request for Michael to keep what he’d seen to himself. But no such request had come. Instead, he’d just leant back against the bench and stared out over the city, as if, after all these years of working at its heart, he was still trying to figure it out.