Jed cracked a beer. ‘It’s all true,’ he said, ‘every word of it,’ and he sent Mitch a wink.
‘No, really.’
And suddenly he felt a slippage, a letting go. His nerves had been on hold for days. No sleep and all that road unwinding before his eyes, inside his head. It only took this one slight pressure when he was least expecting it and he came loose.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ he snapped. ‘I’m only a fucking driver, all right?’
The black girl shrank. ‘Christ. Sorry I asked.’
Jed drank two more beers and a couple of shots of tequila. Suddenly the room smelt of dead flowers and stale smoke, and it was loud, even during silences, with the ticking of Mitch’s clocks. He went to the bathroom, hung his head over the toilet bowl. The ammonia helped. This hunchback darkness on his shoulder and the room behind him, high and narrow. It was all the liquor, he wasn’t used to it any more. In the old days he could’ve swallowed a six-pack in half an hour and then gone out and walked a tightrope. Not any more. He shut his mouth and hung his head. Waited for the darkness to lift.
‘How did you get to be a driver, Jed?’
He slowly looked up. It was much later. He was back in the lounge. Mitch was rolling a cigarette, running the tip of his tongue along the shiny edge. ‘Somebody say something?’
‘How did you get to be a driver?’
Jed shrugged. ‘I’m pretty good mechanically. I don’t mind working long hours —’
The black girl cut in. ‘It’s his eyes.’
‘His eyes?’ one of the bikers said. ‘What d’you mean?’
She leaned forwards. ‘I’ve seen eyes like his in jails. Eyes that’ve killed. Or look as if they could.’ And she shuddered.
Jed stood up. He stared into the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece. He’d often asked himself the same queston. What had Creed seen in him? He thought he had it now. It was what that girl had said. It was what he looked like.
‘He never blinks,’ he heard her say. ‘It’s like those lizards.’
He was still looking at himself. His qualifications, so to speak. They were all there, in the mirror. A tall thin body built almost entirely out of angles. A body which, cramped in the black livery he wore, became still thinner, still more angular. His face was flaky in some places, the texture of dried glue, while in others it bore the pin-prick traces of acne. His glasses with their steel frames made his eyes look chilly, merciless. He was ugly, there was no denying it. He was verging on the grotesque. And yet, looking at himself now, he couldn’t help taking a kind of pride in his appearance. For as long as he could remember, people had stared at him. His ugliness set him apart; his ugliness had made him vain. He was smiling now. His lips didn’t curve or pucker when he smiled. They just lengthened. His smile seemed to prove the point.
Later the black girl came and sat beside him on the sofa.
‘I want to apologise,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be personal or anything.’
‘What’s your name?’ he said. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘Sharon.’
‘I’m Jed.’
‘I know.’ She was staring at him intently. ‘Tell me something. Are you a virgin?’
She was close to him now. Her pink shirt blurred. Her breath smelt of damp hay, hay that had been stored too long.
‘You are, aren’t you?’
He admitted it.
‘You want to do something about it?’
He began to shiver.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘You cold?’
‘Yes.’
Her voice softened. ‘Well, you’re the driver. Why don’t you drive me home?’
They left in his Chrysler. At the first stoplight she leaned over and kissed him. Something flashed pale-mauve in the side of her teeth.
‘It’s amethyst,’ she said. ‘It’s my lucky stone.’
He was too drunk to be driving, he thought, angling a glance at her wide, sloping thighs on the seat beside him. Her breasts slopped like water under that pink shirt of hers. Like the bags of water you buy goldfish in.
Then a room with blue lights, the whining of a child. A swirl of orange as he lurched to the window.
‘Baker Park,’ she said.
Her voice, the room, tonight. All gritty and distant now. Dregs in the bottom of a bottle. One week when he was fifteen he’d slept under the pier. Seaweed dangling from the metal struts like matted hair, wind so rough against his skin. You could’ve used that wind to scour pans. And the dragging of the waves all night. Water like slurred words. The bottom of the bottle.
And then marooned on her black flesh, two circles round her throat, and her chin pointing at the ceiling like the toe of a boot on a corpse, one arm bent backwards, nothing on except the slacks around her ankles, but no way in, at least none that he could find, and the cheap carpet burning his elbows and his knees, and sleep beginning to ooze from her ridged lips.
He woke on top of her, she might’ve been a beach, he might’ve been abandoned there by waves. He rolled away from her and she woke too. One absent-minded hand moved up to scratch a breast.
‘Did we do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’
She yawned. A mouth like ice-cream. Strawberry and chocolate. ‘Want to try again?’
‘When?’
‘How about now? Morning after’s always good.’ She reached for him with one blind hand.
He moved away, sat up. ‘Not now. Maybe tonight.’
Her eyes opened. She looked at him across her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like me?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘You don’t like my body.’ She handled one of her breasts sorrowfully, the way you might handle a bird with a broken wing. ‘It doesn’t do anything for you.’
‘It’s not that. It’s just I’ve got things to do.’
It wasn’t true. He had the whole day off. It was just that everything seemed too close, like staring at a light bulb. He was looking down at her, and seeing green and purple on her skin.
‘I can’t figure you out.’
He buttoned his pants. ‘Where did I leave my car?’
She was lying on the carpet, the lips of her cunt, soft and blunt, pushing up through a mound of black curls. She shrugged at him, and he looked away. She was still lying on the carpet five minutes later when he left the apartment. He saw her knees and calves through the half-open door.
‘Well?’ she asked him, when he showed up again that night. ‘Did you find it?’
He scowled. ‘In the end.’
It had taken half an hour, the inside of his head fitting loosely, like a drawer in an old chest. He’d searched the streets around her house that morning. Streets scratchy with children, broken glass and weeds. He’d even searched the vacant lots. A trunk with burst locks. A drunk in a yellow armchair. Those things shouldn’t’ve been there, for some reason they’d infuriated him. The night before he’d driven drunk. OK, so he’d lost his virginity (well, almost). But he’d risked losing everything else too. His licence, his job. His entire future. When he found his car he sat behind the wheel, gripping it so tight he could’ve snapped it.
‘I can’t stay long,’ he told her.
‘You better get those pants off then.’
‘What’s that round your neck?’ He’d noticed it the night before. A small leather pouch on a string. It was the only thing she’d been wearing that hadn’t come away when they undressed.
‘It’s nothing you need know about.’
His anger was still there, and he used it to break into her. He liked the way her eyes widened in alarm, as if he was forcing a lock, as if he was breaking and entering. It was the first time he’d ever slept with a woman and it felt like burglary.