As the sun slides behind the warehouse buildings to the far side of the wharf, heralding a chill in the air, Franco takes the keys from the van. He gingerly begins to climb down the embedded rungs into the dock. Each step of the slow descent delivers a jabbing pain to his bad leg. On feeling the foot on his good one hit the bottom, he walks across the rubble-strewn deck to what had been Anton, and places the keys in the still-intact jeans pocket of the sooted and tarnished body. He takes the phone and slowly and laboriously texts:
You are going to die for fucking with me, you fat arse bandit.
And he sends it to a number he remembers by heart, before placing it in the pocket with the keys.
Then Frank Begbie turns away and looks up in the fading light at those intimidating bars of iron cut into the stone walls of the dry dock, some of them filigreed by corrosive rust, illuminated by the dull lamp shining from above. His leg aches badly, and the climb looms; this isn’t going to be easy.
Placing his good leg on the first rung, he sets off. His hands feel slimy and slidy with sweat, and his leg shot with pain, ascending as darkness insinuates its regime, making for the sickly light of the reflected street lamp, not daring to look down, only glancing at the top, which never seems to get closer. Mostly, he concentrates on the bars. At one stage he imagines that his shoe sole will slip. Or perhaps he will snap a worn, corroded bar, his weight wrenching his weak grip from them, sending him crashing to the floor of the dry dock, broken and trapped. Down there, he’d just wait for death or prison, with a burnt body for company, and another one up in the howf.
Then, at last, he finally grasps the top rung. As he draws breath, he suddenly feels a crushing pain in his outstretched hand. Looking up, he sees a boot, grinding on it. Then a pressured jet of liquid blasts steadily in his face. Its pungent aroma fills his nostrils. Frank Begbie looks up at the figure pishing down on him, and knows that his time is up.
34. THE DANCE PARTNER 6
It was a clammy summer’s night. The wind had changed direction, the welcoming Pacific breeze replaced by the hot desert air tumbling over the Sierra Nevada. The yard was uplit by floodlights and Melanie docked her iPhone into the system they’d had installed when they’d gotten the place wired for sound. A salsa beat swept out from the exterior speaker, above where Jim reclined on the comfortable all-weather furniture at the large wooden decking to the rear of their house, overlooking the back garden. Melanie was urging him to get up and dance with her, as Juan and Ralph were moving smoothly to the rhythm.
Jim was reluctant at first, protesting that he hadn’t had a drink, looking to the empty bottles of wine on the table. Alcohol had been easier to give up than he’d thought. A couple of drinks were useless to him; he got a mild buzz, then just felt a bit shabby and tired. He always said that you needed loads of drinks, and when you had loads, you lost control, and his loss of control was negatively consequential to him and others, so why bother? But looking at the three of them, cheerfully lit up, playful, he got a little melancholy, lamenting how some people had mastered the art of knowing when to stop. Melanie sensed his envy of them; both recognising a skill he would never acquire.
Finally succumbing to his wife’s insistent tugging on his arm, Jim rose just as Ralph was starting to fall, his eyes popping, as he clutched at his arm, unable to break his tumble to the decking. It was like some pantomime, and Melanie couldn’t work it out, but Juan’s expression of horror was clear enough to dispel any notions of the extreme pranking Ralph was occasionally prone to. As Ralph lay on the deck twitching, his husband was screaming, neither he nor Melanie knowing what to do. Then Jim pulled out his cellphone and thrust it at his wife. — Call 911, request an ambulance straight away, tell them it’s a heart attack, give them the address, he said, crouching down by Ralph’s side.
Ralph had now sunk into unconsciousness and didn’t appear to be breathing. As she spoke to the operator Melanie could hear Juan’s anguished cries: a mixture of English and a Spanish she’d rarely heard coming from his mouth. She was astonished that her husband seemed to know exactly what he was doing.
Jim had decided that Ralph was likely to be in cardiac arrest so there was no sense in wasting valuable time looking for a pulse. Instead he immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation, placing the palm of his hand flat on Ralph’s chest just over the lower part of the breastbone and starting to pump by applying pressure using his other hand.
— He’s dying, Juan screamed.
— No fuckin way: cunt dies when ah fuckin well say eh dies, Jim snapped, so violently that Melanie and Juan looked at each other, briefly astonished. He now had his elbows locked into his side and was slamming his bodyweight down on Ralph’s chest. — One, two, three. .
After thirty thumps, he opened Ralph’s mouth, tilting his head back, lifting his chin and shouting to Melanie, — Pinch his nostrils shut!
Melanie fell down by his side and complied. Jim took a deep breath and sealed his own mouth over Ralph’s.
As he breathed into Ralph, his stricken friend’s chest rose. He started another round of thumps on his sternum, — One, two, three. . c’mon, Ralphie son, moan tae fuck!
— Oh my God, Juan shrieked, — where are they! Melanie squeezed his hand with her free one.
Then Jim was back on Ralph, back on the mouth of a man who had, in his own words, ‘blown a thousand cocks’, and Melanie recalled this drunken, scandalous statement, as she looked into the eyes of, not Jim, but Frank Begbie, the thug, who seemed to be asking himself: What am I doing, why am I here. .?
Then there was a convulsion, almost like a mini-internal explosion, as Ralph started breathing again, hollow at first, then more regular. Melanie could feel the pulse in his neck. — He’s back! He’s back!
Juan crossed himself, and kept muttering, — Thank you, thank you. . oh, thank you. .
Ralph was still unconscious, so Jim rolled him gently onto his side into the recovery position. Mucus and vomit trickled out of his mouth onto the deck. Jim asked Melanie to get a blanket, and she returned with one and draped it over their afflicted guest. Grace had woken up with the shouting and, alarmed by all the commotion, had come through, and Jim calmly explained to his daughter that Uncle Ralph had been taken ill, but was going to be fine, leading her back to bed.
When Jim returned, Ralph had regained consciousness but was bewildered. Melanie was telling him that he’d had a turn, but Juan was here and an ambulance was on its way. When it arrived, Jim said he’d stay with the kids, if Melanie wanted to go in the ambulance and look after Juan, who was also obviously in shock.
Ralph was taken immediately to the Heart and Vascular Center at the nearby Cottage Hospital. He was breathing comfortably when Melanie and Juan went up to see him, some forty minutes later.
The next day, she and Jim went to the hospital to visit him. Ralph smiled at her husband. — Hey, Jim, Juan and Mel both tell me that you’re one hell of a kisser. I’m sorry I missed it.