What Came Before He Shot Her

            When his ride arrived, he didn’t therefore climb into the passenger seat and tell the driver—one Calvin Hancock, whose copious dreadlocks were carefully capped in deference to the manner that a hairless man might be suspected of preferring to see them—to take him to Portnall Road, where a seventeen-year-old girl called Arissa was waiting to service him. Instead, he jerked his head at the backseat for Ness to get into the car and he climbed in after her, leaving Calvin Hancock in the position of chauffeur.

            He said to Calvin, “Up Willesden Lane.”

            Cal—as he was called—looked into the rearview mirror. This was a change of plan, and he didn’t like plan changes. Having taken on the responsibility of protecting the Blade, having successfully done so for five years, and having received the questionable rewards of this success—which were the Blade’s companionship and a place to sleep at night—Cal knew the risk of impulsive decisions and he knew what his own life would be like if something happened to the other man. He said, “Mon, I t’ought you wanted Rissa. Portnall’s clean. She been keepin it dat way. We go up to Willesden, no way in hell we c’n tell who be dere you walk in.”

            The Blade said, “Fuck. You questioning me?”

            Cal put the car into gear as answer.

            Ness listened and admired. When the Blade said to Cal, “Give us a ziggy,” she felt a frisson of wonder and excitement when the other man obediently pulled the car to the kerb, flicked open the glove box, and rolled the spliff. He lit it, took a hit, and handed it back to the Blade. His glance met Ness’s in the rearview mirror as he moved the car back into the nighttime traffic.

            Next to her, the Blade leaned back. He ignored her, which made him seem even more appealing. He smoked his cannabis and offered Ness none of it. She ached and put her hand on his thigh. She slid it to his crotch. He knocked her away. He did it without a glance at her. She wanted to be his slave.

            She said in a murmur that came to her from the countless fi lms she’d seen and the bizarre image of successful human contact they provided,

            “Baby, I do  you. I do you in ways make your head feel like it goin to ’splode. Dat what you want? Dat how you like it?”

            The Blade tossed an indifferent glance her way. He said, “I do you, slag. When and where. It don’t happen opposite and you best remember that from the start.”

            What Ness heard was only “from the start.” She felt the warm, wet thrill of what the words implied.

            Calvin drove them north, away from the Harrow Road and beyond Kilburn Lane. Fixed upon the Blade as she was, Ness made no note of where they were going. When they finally came upon an estate of low brick terraces sprawling through a system of narrow streets with most of the lamps and all of the security lights long ago shot out, they might have been anywhere from Hackney to hell. Ness couldn’t have said. Cal parked and opened the passenger door on Ness’s side. She slid out. The Blade followed. He handed the roach to Cal, said, “Check it out, den,” and leaned against the side of the car as Cal disappeared along a path and between two buildings.

            Ness shivered, not with the cold but with a kind of anticipation she’d never felt before. She tried to appear indifferent, a type, as it were. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the Blade. Everything she wanted. That was how she thought of him. It seemed to her that a miracle had come about on an evening that had earlier appeared disastrous. Cal returned in a few minutes. He said, “Clean.”

            The Blade said, “You carrying?”

            Cal said, “Shit, mon. What else you t‘ink?” He patted the pocket of the tattered leather jacket he wore. “Who love you more’n your gran, baby? You safe long ’s Cal Hancock watching.”

            The Blade gave no response to this. He jerked his head towards the path through the buildings. Cal led the way.

            Ness made up a third, like an afterthought. She kept close to the Blade, intent upon looking as if— wherever they were going—they would arrive together.

            The estate they were on was a place of noise, acrid with smells that combined rotting rubbish, cooking odours, and burning rubber. They passed two drunken girls vomiting into a dead shrub and a gang of young boys accosting an old-age pensioner who’d foolishly decided to take his rubbish to the bins after dark. They came upon a vicious, ear-splitting catfight and a lone broom-thin woman plunging a hypodermic needle into her arm in the shelter of a discarded mattress that balanced against a leafl ess tree.

            Their destination was a house in the middle of a terrace. To Ness, it looked either unoccupied or asleep for the night. But when Cal knocked on the door, a spy hole opened. Someone checked them out, found them acceptable, and opened up. The Blade stepped past Cal and entered. Ness followed. Cal remained outside.

Inside, there was no actual furniture. Instead, there were old mattresses piled three high in several locations, and large upended cardboard boxes scattered nearby to serve as tables. What light there was came from two lopsided floor lamps that cast their glow on the walls and the ceiling so that the floor with its tattered maroon carpet squares was mostly in shadow. Aside from graffiti depicting a wild-haired man and a nude woman riding a hypodermic needle into the stratosphere, there was nothing on the walls, and taken as a whole, the house didn’t appear to be a place where anyone actually lived.

It was  occupied, however. One might have thought that a party was even going on because there was scratchy music coming low from a radio that needed to have its station adjusted. But what one normally expects to see at a party—people engaged in conversation or some other activity with one another—was not a feature of this place. Instead, the activity was confined to smoking, and where there was  conversation, it was limited to comments about the quality of the crack and what it was providing in the way of mental and physical diversion.

Other smoking was going on as well, cannabis and tobacco, and substances were being bought and sold, with transactions completed by a middle-aged black woman in a purple negligee, which displayed the unfortunate, pendulous condition of her large breasts. She seemed to be the responsible party, aided by the doorman who, by means of the spy hole, inspected individuals wishing to enter.

There was no question in anyone’s mind about whether this place was a safe house in which to engage in their chosen pursuit. Across the neighbourhood and spreading out in all directions, these sorts of dens popped up like toadstools in a moist woodland. The police couldn’t keep track of them, and on the off chance that a neighbour developed the courage to report such a place and to request an arrest of its proprietor, the police had too many other irons in the fire to deal with the problem.

            Purple Negligee supplied the Blade with what he’d come for, a request from him being unnecessary. Since she existed because he existed, she wanted to make him welcome. This house was his first incursion into territory controlled by an Albanian gang, and she owed him not only the roof over her head but also the form of livelihood that this business provided.

            She said to him, “How your gran, darlin?” as he lit up the pipe she’d given him. It was small, disappearing into the hollow of his hand, and a thread of smoke issued from it. “She still in hospital? Dat’s so rough, innit. Your mum still keepin you ’way from the rest of the kids ’s well?

            Bloody slag. Wha’ else I get you, darlin? Who dis anyway? She with you?”

            The she was Ness, the Blade’s shadow, who stood one step behind him like a royal consort. She was waiting for an indication of what she was meant to do, her expression an attempt to hide uncertainty through a display of indifference. The Blade reached around and put his hand on the back of her neck. He pinched his thumb and forefi nger beneath her ear and through this means brought her forward. He put the pipe in her mouth and watched as she sucked. He smiled and said to Purple Negligee, “Who else she be with, gash, if she not wiv me?”

            “Looks young, man. Dat not like you.”

            “You t’inking dat cos you want me f ’r yourself.”

            She laughed. “Oooh. You way too much man f’r me, baby.” She patted his cheek. “Give a shout can Melia get you anyt’ing else.” She took herself down the darkened corridor, where the only couple in the place who were engaged with each other were having an inexpert knee trembler up against the wall.

            Ness felt the effect of the drug quickly. Everything that was her life receded into the background, leaving her open to the present moment. The fact that she was in danger from any number of sources didn’t occur to her. How could it when her rational mind had departed, leaving in its place what seemed  not only rational but superior to any mind she’d ever possessed? The only thought she had was that she wanted more of what made her feel like this.