Alex put his head down and plunged on, wriggling through the thickest part of the crowd. As the crowd thinned he caught up with Carey, grabbed her arm.
He risked a backward glance. He couldn’t see the Elvises. He pulled her down and against the wooden barrier between the pavement and the road. They squatted there, between a thicket of legs. As he squatted, his trousers tightened at the hip, and the ring box dug in.
Carey’s face was bright with exhilaration. She grabbed the back of his head and kissed him on the lips, then let him go.
‘Not funny!’ he hissed. ‘It was me they were going to beat up -’ and then he stopped momentarily as he saw what looked like three sets of white legs, trousers tellingly flared, coming through the crowd. He pushed his hand over Carey’s mouth and studied the pavement. The legs went past.
‘Not funny,’ he repeated, but now they weren’t actually going to be beaten up what had been scary started to seem funny. He was shaky with adrenalin.
‘Marry me,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ she said.
He got up, thighs creaking, from his squat and meerkatted up. There was no sign of the Elvises. A wooden walkway coming off the pavement at right angles led to the entrance to a casino. Alex pointed, steered Carey by the elbow, and jostled through into the lobby.
‘Drink,’ he said.
They walked, Alex still holding Carey’s elbow, across the wide hideous carpet in the direction of a large, brassy, over-marbled bar in a thicket of slot machines and palm trees.
Behind the bar was a girl who looked from the waist down like she was playing Dick Whittington in panto at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, Guildford, and from the waist up like she was a bellhop in a pornographic movie.
‘Champagne,’ said Alex. ‘We’d like, please. Two glasses.’
‘Sir,’ she said without smiling.
‘Care, you are a psychopath,’ he said. Carey beamed.
‘Not taking shit from Elvis,’ she said.
The woman set two tall flutes of champagne in front of them. She slipped a silver tray down between them with a paper bill face down on it. Carey picked it up.
‘Crap!’ said Carey. ‘That’s eighty bucks.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Alex said. ‘I won in the casino earlier, remember.’
‘But eighty bucks!’
‘Seriously.’ He made a point of looking into her face as he smiled. ‘This is a special occasion.’
He moved his hand over hers, took the bill, replaced it face down on the silver tray. Then he dropped one leg off the bar stool so he could get into his pocket. He pulled out the box, and he put it in on the fake marble bar top between them. He looked at Carey.
She looked at the box. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears. The moment was right.
‘Open it,’ he said.
Carey looked very unsure. She didn’t move at all.
‘It’s for you,’ Alex said. ‘Have a look.’
The waitress behind the bar was listening with her back to them, pretending to polish some glasses. Carey fiddled with her hands. He could see that she knew what was in the box, and the expression on her face was one of shock and fear. She pushed the box away from her, no more than half an inch, with the back of her knuckles.
‘Open it,’ he said again.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Open it.’
She did, sadly, and she looked at the ring, its glitter. And then she looked at him, and she looked away. She looked miserable.
‘Carey -’ he said. Something cold settled in his chest. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. ‘Carey. I want us to get married.’ He heard his voice say that. But now it felt like he was watching the scene from a long, long way away. As if he was sitting on the moon, watching his proposal of marriage stall through a telescope – its details scratchy and distant and oddly painless.
She continued looking at the ring. Her eyes were welling.
‘Can we just forget this?’ she said in a small voice. Alex was accustomed to Carey having a brisk bossiness, a confidence in her manner – but she seemed floored, lost suddenly. He was sitting at this bar with a stranger.
He took a sip of his champagne.
‘Yes,’ he said coldly. ‘Of course. So sorry.’ He reached out and went to retrieve the ring, getting as far as snapping the case shut before Carey yelped and put her hand on his, holding it there. Her knuckles were pale. Her face was contorted. The mole on the corner of her chin – where he’d kissed. It was nothing: a blemish. How suddenly and how absolutely what was familiar had become strange; someone he had imagined part of him was just another human animal.
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she said. Alex left his hand where it was. He looked at the surface of the bar. He was conscious of the waitress not watching, polishing glasses.
‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said. His face felt very cold. You can’t come back from this. He took his hand away and got down off his stool, not looking at her, and put the ring box back in his pocket and walked towards where they had come in without looking back at her. They hadn’t gone deep enough in for casino geography to do its work. He still knew how to get out.
He had just reached where the walkway began when he realised that he hadn’t paid for the drinks. He turned and went back, fast, feeling a burst of anger. Carey was where she had been and she was looking at him. Her face was wet, and it opened – the whole face – like she’d seen him giving her a second chance.
He ignored her, pushing up against the bar, snatching at the little silver tray with the bill on it and leaning forward to catch the attention of the waitress. Alex thrust his hand in his right-hand jeans pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes – what were these? – twenty, twenty, ten, a five, ones… not enough.
‘Alex,’ she said. She put her hand to his elbow and he jerked it away. He didn’t look at her.
He pulled his credit card out of his other pocket. ‘Waitress,’ he said with a venom that surprised him. She ignored him. ‘Waitress!’
The waitress turned round with slow ostentation, took in Carey crying, and looked up at him. If there had been a hint of a smirk, a hint of an arched eyebrow, in her expression Alex would have hit her. Her smile was bright and icy. She hated him.
‘I need to pay this bill.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Alex, please,’ said Carey – pulling this time at his forearm. Her face was imploring him. ‘Please. I’m sorry, please, don’t go – don’t be so horrible, talk to me, please, I’m sorry…’
‘You have nothing to be sorry about,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake and -’ he pulled away with real violence this time – ‘get off me.’
She looked startled.
‘Don’t touch me, Carey. I’m serious. Do you know what I -’
The waitress came back with the credit-card machine. It ticked and chirred. She passed it to Alex. It was deadweight in his hands. He punched in his pin then waited, looking at the gaudy ceiling of the casino and clenching his jaw.
‘Aaaand…’ the waitress said, pulling the strip from the top of the machine with bright professionalism, hitting a button with the heel of her hand and handing card and slippery receipts to Alex. Her overlong red fingernails fanned in the air as she did it.
Alex turned round and went again, and Carey made no attempt to follow him.
He fought through the crowd that was still hanging round the end of the pirate show and walked in no particular direction up the street, and kept walking.
Chapter 20
I detest Alex, don’t you? I didn’t want to mention it, at first, but I can’t keep quiet any longer. What sort of a hero does he think he is?
The self-pity! The petulance! And so wet. He didn’t want Carey for Carey. He wanted Carey because he couldn’t think of anything else to want. But really he didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted someone to save him from the awful monotonousness of being Alex.