There was a loud scraping noise as the brake handle of the last bicycle slashed its mark deep into the shiny red petrol tank of the first motorbike, then the crash as they too tumbled to the ground, one, two, three, four, then silence. Very strange, to hear silence in a crowded city street. Eerie, almost, though it didn’t last for long. Someone laughed. ‘Oh, shit,’ said someone else. From the bikers’ bar — I noted here that it was called ‘Valhalla’ — there came a roar as a group of immense red-faced men pushed through the crowd towards the beloved bikes that now lay, wheels spinning, in a pile of polished chrome.
All of this took a matter of perhaps ten seconds, and absurdly I wondered if I might still be able to walk away. After all, it wasn’t exactly my fault. It was gravity, it was the bike, it was a chain reaction, nothing to do with me. Perhaps if I just walked away, perhaps if I whistled as I walked, as in a cartoon, no one would notice.
But I was standing alone at the precise centre of a great circle of destruction, and soon the men were barrelling towards me, the four of them like the fingers in a fist, hatred in their eyes. The Dutch accent didn’t seem so affable now, it seemed harsh and guttural as they quickly formed a circle around me, hands gripping my shoulder as if steadying me for a punch that I knew would surely come. The man with his nose touching mine was blond as a Viking, with a face like a cheap cut of meat, missing teeth — never a good sign — and beer on his breath. ‘No speak Dutch,’ I repeated idiotically, ‘no speak Dutch,’ on the basis that bad English is more easily understood than the good kind. But it’s possible to spot swearing in almost any language and now four other hands were grabbing my arms, walking me — carrying me — through the crowd that had now gathered to watch the sport. Three motorcycles were hauled upright and inspected, but the nearest bike lay on its side in a way that seemed suggestive of a dying horse, the owner crouching beside the beloved creature, keening quietly, rubbing his thumb over the horrible scar on the highly polished fuel tank. Unusually for a Dutchman, he seemed to speak fairly limited English, because the only words I could pick up were ‘You pay, you pay,’ then, as he grew in linguistic confidence, ‘you pay big’.
‘I didn’t do it!’
‘Your bike did it.’
‘Not my bike. My bike over there,’ and I gestured across the devastation to where my bike stood, immaculately vertical. There was, I suppose, an interesting debate to be had here about causality and the notion of ‘fault’, intention and chance, but it might save time if I simply reached for my wallet. I had never re-sprayed a motorcycle. How much might that cost?
I began negotiations. ‘I can give you … eighty euros.’ This made them laugh in an unpleasant way, and an immense paw took my wallet and started searching through the folds and pouches. ‘Excuse me — could you give that back?’
‘No, my friend,’ said the blond man. ‘We are going to the bank!’
‘Give him back his money!’ said a voice to one side, and looking over my shoulder I saw that a woman was pushing her way through the crowd, a large black woman with improbably blonde hair, tying her dressing gown over what appeared to be some sort of white fishnet body-stocking. ‘Here,’ she said, snatching my wallet and returning it to me, ‘this is yours. You hold this until I say.’
There was, at this point, a certain amount of shouting in Dutch, the woman jabbing her finger into the lead biker’s chest — her nails were extravagantly long, curved and painted — then throwing her shoulders back and pushing her chest towards him, using it as one might a riot shield, while pointing at me and gesturing up and down. She shouted something, causing the crowd to laugh and the biker to shrug defensively, then suddenly she changed her tone and tack, flirting with the man instead, her arms draped over his shoulders. He laughed and pinched his nose in thought. Looked me up and down. I seemed to be the subject of some sort of negotiation.
‘How much in your wallet?’ said the lady who, I surmised from the body-stocking, was either a prostitute or very outgoing. Would she be coming to the bank too? Perhaps she wasn’t my ally after all. Perhaps they were all going to rob me and toss me in the canal. ‘About two hundred and fifty euros,’ I said, defensively.
‘Give me one hundred fifty.’ She beckoned with two fingers of her hand. I hesitated, and she spoke fast and low. ‘Give it to me and you might live.’
I handed over the money, which she packed into a tight ball and stuffed into the biker’s fist. Then, before he’d had a chance to count it, she took my arm and pushed her way through the crowd towards a flight of stairs. Behind us, the bikers were protesting loudly: ‘You pay more! More!’ But the lady gestured dismissively, hissed something about the police, and I was bustled up the steps of the townhouse, through a red-lit doorway.
My saviour’s name was Regina — though that may have been a pseudonym — and she was terrifically nice.
‘What is your name, my new friend?’
‘Paul,’ I said, then with an awful inevitability, ‘Newman. I’m Paul Newman.’ I’m not sure where my pseudonym came from. It lacked the ring of plausibility, and probably wasn’t even necessary. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong. But too late; for the time being I was Paul Newman.
‘Hello, Paul Newman. Come …’
I took a seat on a sort of vinyl platform. The bedroom, if bedroom is the right word, contained a sink and a rudimentary shower and was lit in a deep red, and I thought for a moment what a terrific place it would be for developing photographs. A cheap fan blew ineffectually, a kettle sat in the corner. There was a microwave, and a powerful smell of some chemical approximation of coconut. ‘I watched the whole thing from the window. You are a very unlucky man, Paul Newman,’ she said, and laughed. ‘They were big guys. I think they might have killed you, or at least emptied your bank.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him to claim on insurance. He has insurance, that is what insurance is for! You are shaking.’ She illustrated with juddering hands. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Tea would be lovely. Thank you.’ While we waited for the kettle to boil I became very aware of her bare bottom, which was large, dimpled and never more than half a metre from my face. I turned to the window onto the street, intrigued to see the booth from this point of view, and noted that she had exactly the same swivelling office chair that I’d once had in my lab, though I didn’t point this out. Instead I turned to the TV.
‘Ah, I see that you have Downton Abbey here too!’
Regina shrugged. ‘You want to watch something else?’ she said, and indicated a small pile of pornographic DVDs.
‘No, no. Downton’s fine.’ Without asking, she stirred two sugars into the tea and passed me my mug, and I noticed that my hands were indeed shaking. I used my left palm as a saucer. At a loss for conversation, I asked, ‘So — have you been working here long?’
Regina told me that she had been doing this for six or seven years. Her parents were Nigerian, but she had been born in Amsterdam and had started working here through a friend. The winter was depressing and it was hard to pay the rent on the little booth without the tourists around, but she had some regular customers that she could rely on. Summer, on the other hand, was too busy, too much, and she shook her head woefully. ‘Stag nights!’ she said, and wagged a finger at me as if I had been organising them all. Apparently a lot of men required drink to get their courage up, then found themselves unable to perform. ‘They still have to pay, of course!’ she said, pointing a finger with some menace and I laughed and nodded and agreed that this was only fair. I asked if she knew her colleagues and she said they were mainly friendly, though some girls had been tricked into coming here from Russia and Eastern Europe, and this made Regina sad and angry. ‘They think they’re going to be dancers, can you believe that? Dancers! Like the world needs all these dancers!’