When she walked into the lounge Harold was so far into the bottle she might as well have wrapped herself in yesterday’s bin liners.
He was stretched out on the settee, one leg on, one off; there were three glasses arranged along the floor, each of them partly full. “That was Mackenzie,” he said. “On the phone, earlier. The shit wanted me to go to and slime around this fucking Freeman Davis, fucking little asshole, fucking little pervert.”
Who? Maria thought: Mackenzie or Davis? And who was Davis anyway?
“Ease me out, that’s what they think they’re going to do. Little by little, little by fucking step. Freeman can handle this, why don’t you let Freeman take care of that? Relax, Harold, learn to let go a little. Keep your eye on the overall picture, let Freeman cope with the day to day. Yes, fucking Freeman.”
He leaned on one elbow, reached down towards the glasses and missed all three of them.
“Fuck him! Fuck them all. Only reason they want me up in that fucking Penthouse Bar is so they can stand me by the window and push me out.”
Harold leaned too far and rolled, slow-motion, on to the carpet and was still.
“Fuck,” he said.
There was a glass panel between the sections of the restaurant, a screen, and somehow sculpted on it, in relief, the largest king prawn Grabianski had ever seen.
“Imagine that with garlic,” Grabianski said.
“Not while we’re sharing the same bathroom, I can’t.” They walked through the lobby, low black tables holding thickly padded menus, a party of four enjoying a polite G and T or two before moving to their table. A tall Chinese wearing a dinner jacket asked them if they would like a drink and they ignored him, up two steps past the end of the screen and into the body of the restaurant. The waitress moved confidently on high heels, in a skirt that was tight and split well above her right knee. “This way, gentlemen, please.” Her accent was almost pure Suzie Wong, with only a trace of the Notts-Derbyshire border.
Grabianski smiled as he shook his head and pointed off into the corner.
Grice nearly fell over his own feet staring at her leg.
“This place going to be good?”
“Rumor has it,” said Grabianski.
“Either way,” said Grice, looking round, “we’re going to pay for it.”
It never ceased to surprise Grabianski that a man who would blow £40 on fifteen minutes of massage relief could gripe continuously about a meal that went into double figures.
“May I get you gentlemen a drink?”
“Lager,” said Grice. “Pint.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we do not serve pints.”
“No lager?”
“We have only half pints.”
“Bring me two. Right?”
“Of course, sir.” She smiled a weary smile towards Grabianski. “For you, sir?”
“Tea. Please.”
“Chinese tea?”
“Yes.”
Deftly, she removed the pair of long-stemmed wine glasses, opened menus before each of them and moved off towards the bar.
“We’ll have the set meal for two.” Grice slapped the menu closed.
Grabianski shook his head.
“You know what your trouble is, don’t you?” said Grice.
“I expect you’re going to tell me.”
“Used to be, all you wanted out of life was another species to check off in your bird book and another sodding mountain to climb. Now it’s poncey restaurants and other men’s wives.”
“I think,” said Grabianski evenly, “I’m going to have the chicken and cashew nuts and the sizzling monkfish with spring onions and ginger. Oh, and the monk’s vegetables. Special fried rice, what d’you think?”
The waitress arrived with two glasses of lager, Grabianski’s tea and a decorated cup with a gold rim.
“May I take your order now?”
Grice jabbed his finger down the menu, ordering by the numbers; the waitress seemed to have transposed them on to her pad almost before he read them out. From Grabianski she got the words and an encouraging smile.
“And bring me a knife and fork,” said Grice to her back as she walked away.
Maria Roy made a perfect 0 with her lips and released a near-perfect smoke ring. Across the room, Harold had crawled back on to the couch and was snoring lightly. The television picture was on, the sound no more than a murmur. Maria was sitting in a deep armchair, legs tucked beneath her, ashtray and glass on either arm, reading. The trouble with shopping-and-fucking books was once you’d read one you’d read them all. And she distrusted all those female managing editors or PR directors who could reach orgasm at the touch of a button, enjoy oral sex between ground and eleventh floors in the executive lift, then step into a full meeting of the board, dabbing their lips with a scented tissue.
Even so, it made her aware of a certain itch; brought back the pressure of Jerry Grabianski’s thumbs at the center of her breasts, the weight of him on top of her. The care with which he had loved her.
Harold jumped in his sleep, threw out an arm and snorted loudly.
“Jesus, Harold!” shouted Maria. “Why don’t you shrivel up and die!”
Six hundred and forty-eight pages of wish fulfilment missed his sleeping head by inches. Why don’t I keep quiet about Jerry’s offer, Maria thought? Let him think the cocaine’s gone for good and wait until his dealer cuts him into four-inch squares. Serves the sorry bastard right!
She stubbed out her half-finished cigarette and lit another. Standing over her husband of more than twenty years, she saw the wisps of hair that curled from his ears, no longer gray but white, worry lines spreading from the edges of his mouth, the way his eyelid twitched compulsively, another in a succession of bad dreams. The rug was pulled out from under his career and, through no real fault of his own, it was likely his life was in danger.
She hated him.
“How’s your pork?”
“It’s okay.”
“Better than usual?”
“Okay.”
“Because if it’s anywhere near as good as this chicken …”
“Jerry.”
“Yes.”
“The pork is pork, all right?”
“Mm.”
“So can we get back to business?”
“Go ahead.”
“Two places and then we’re out.”
“Out?”
“As in, over and.”
Grabianski lifted a piece of green pepper with his chopsticks, dipped it into black bean sauce, then bit into it, thoughtfully. “How come?”
“Sources,” said Grice.
Grabianski looked at his bowl, the dishes resting on hotplates. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Drag your mind from your stomach a minute. Up to now they’ve been-what d’you call it?”
“Impeccable.”
“Now I’m not so sure. I think a couple more at most.”
Laughter rose from the round table near the center of the room, coarse and loud, and echoed, one diner to another. Voices raised, the clatter of dishes as a hand came slamming extravagantly down. From the corner of his eye, Grabianski saw the manager appear at the far end of the screen.
“And then?”
“What d’you mean, and then? Like always, we scarper.”
Grabianski sipped jasmine tea. “How about this flat? Didn’t you tell her three months minimum?”
“I told her what she wanted to hear.”
A black woman walked in with a white escort, guided by the waitress towards their table. From the middle of the restaurant rose the unmistakable chant of the British football fan, the repeated sound of supposed chimpanzees.
“Banana fritters for that one!”
The laughter was raucous and harsh. The couple pretended not to hear.
“You know what I feel about unnecessary risks,” said Grice. “What we’ve always felt. It’s why we’ve kept clear of the law for as long as we have.”
“I know,” said Grabianski. He was thinking about something Maria had whispered into the side of his neck, the tip of her tongue moving over his skin: “Jerry, if I could have one thing in the world, it’d be to be able to do this, with you, forever.” Grabianski didn’t believe in forever, not even in the afterglow of good sex, but he did believe in a year, nine months.