“Been stood up?” Mike asked.
“No.”
“I saw you sitting across the road.”
“Well…Yeh.”
“Boyfriend?” asked Mike.
“Ex-boyfriend’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Messy.”
“You’re probably right,” agreed Jamie.
Glancing over Mike’s shoulder, he saw Ryan standing outside the cafe, looking up and down the street. He seemed balder than Jamie remembered. He was wearing a beige raincoat and carrying a little blue rucksack.
Jamie turned away.
“Tell me a secret,” said Mike. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”
“When I was six my friend, Matthew, bet me I wouldn’t pee in this flowerpot in my sister’s bedroom.”
“And you peed in the flowerpot.”
“I peed in the flowerpot.” Out of the corner of his eye Jamie saw Ryan shake his head and begin walking off toward Soho Square. “I guess it’s not a secret, technically, because she found out. I mean, it smelt really bad after a few days.” Ryan was gone. Jamie relaxed a little. “I had this little plastic guitar I’d got on holiday in Portugal. She burnt it. In the garden. But it burnt, like, amazingly well. I mean, Portugal probably didn’t do Trading Standards in 1980. I remember this scream and the sound of strings snapping. She’s still got this scar on her arm.”
His parents would look at Mike and assume he stole cars. The razor cut, the five earrings. But this…this thing passing between them, this nameless charge you could feel in the air…it made everything else seem shallow and stupid.
Mike held his eye and said, “You hungry?” and seemed to mean at least three things.
They went to a little Thai restaurant on Greek Street.
“I used to do tiling. Upmarket stuff. Fired Earth. Marble. Slate. Kitchens. Fireplaces. The bike’s for money. Get me through the Alexander Technique and massage courses. Then I’m going freelance. Make some money so I can move back up north so I can afford a place with a consulting room.”
A fine drizzle was falling in the street. Jamie was three pints down and the lights reflecting off the wet vehicles were tiny stars.
“Actually,” said Jamie, “the thing I like best about Amsterdam…well, the whole of Holland, actually, is…there are these amazing modern buildings everywhere. Over here people just build the cheapest thing possible.”
Jamie was a bit vague about Alexander Technique. He couldn’t really imagine Mike doing any kind of therapy. Too much swagger. But every so often Mike would touch Jamie’s hand with a couple of fingers or look at him and smile and say nothing and there was a softness there which seemed sexier for being so well hidden the rest of the time.
Nice arms, too. Little ridges of flesh over the veins, without being wiry. And strong hands.
The massage. He could imagine that.
Mike suggested they go to a club. But Jamie didn’t want to share him. He looked at the salt cellar and steeled himself and asked if Mike wanted to come back to his place and felt, as he always did, that little lurch, half thrill, half panic. Like the parachute jump. But better.
“Is this, like, an estate agent’s dream pad? Steel balcony? Island kitchen with granite work surface? Arne Jacobsen chairs?”
“Victorian terrace with a white sofa and a Habitat coffee table,” said Jamie. “And how do you know about Arne Jacobsen chairs?”
“I’ve been in some very nice houses in my time, thank you very much.”
“Business or pleasure?” asked Jamie.
“A little bit of both.”
“So, was that a yes, or are you keeping me in suspense?”
“Let’s catch a tube,” said Mike.
They watched their reflections in the black glass opposite as the carriage rumbled through Tufnell Park and Archway, their legs touching and the electricity flowing back and forth, other passengers getting on and off oblivious, Jamie aching to be held, yet wanting the journey to last for hours in case what came later didn’t match up to what he was picturing in his head.
Two Mormons got onto the train and sat in the two seats facing them. Black suits. Sensible haircuts. The little plastic name badges.
Mike leant close to Jamie’s ear and said, “I want to fuck your mouth.”
They were still laughing when they stumbled through the front door of the flat.
Mike pushed Jamie against the wall and kissed him. Jamie could feel Mike’s cock hard inside his jeans. He slid his hands inside Mike’s T-shirt and saw, through the living-room door, a tiny red light blinking.
“Hang on.”
“What?”
“Answerphone.”
Mike laughed. “Thirty seconds. Then I’m coming to get you.”
“There’s some beer in the fridge,” said Jamie. “Vodka and other stuff’s in the cupboard by the window.”
Mike detached himself. “Fancy a spliff?”
“Sure.”
Jamie went into the living room and pressed the button.
“Jamie. Hi. It’s Katie.” She was drunk. Or did she just sound drunk because Jamie was drunk? “Shit. You’re not in, are you. Shit.”
She wasn’t drunk. She was crying. Bloody hell.
“Anyway…today’s exciting news is that the wedding’s off. Because Ray doesn’t think we should get married.”
Was this good or bad? It was like seeing the adjacent train start to move. It made him feel a little wobbly.
“Oh, and we went home for the weekend and Dad’s in bed because he’s having a nervous breakdown. I mean a real one, like, with panic attacks and nightmares about dying and everything. And Mum’s thinking of leaving him for that bloke from the office.”
Jamie’s first thought was that Katie herself was having some kind of breakdown.
“So, I thought I’d better ring you because the way things have been going over the last few days you’ve probably been involved in some truly hideous road accident and the reason you’re not answering your phone is because you’re in hospital, or dead, or you’ve left the country or something…Give me a ring, OK?”
Beep.
Jamie sat for a moment, letting it sink in, or drift away, or whatever it was going to do. Then he stood up and made his way to the kitchen.
Mike was lighting a joint from the gas stove. He stood up, took a drag and held the smoke down with the obligatory startled expression. He looked a bit like Jamie felt.
Mike breathed out. “Want some?”
There was going to be some ghastly scene, wasn’t there. You drag someone halfway up the Northern Line for sex which doesn’t happen and suddenly you’ve got a disappointed and muscular stranger in the house who no longer has any reasons to be nice to you.
He wondered if Mike had ever stolen a car.
“What’s up?” asked Mike.
“Family trouble.”
“Big?”
“Yup,” said Jamie.
“Death?” Mike took a saucer off the draining board and laid the joint on the rim.
“No.” Jamie sat down. “Not unless my sister kills her fiance. Or my father kills himself. Or my father kills my mother’s lover.”
Mike leaned down and took hold of Jamie’s arm. Jamie was right. They were surprisingly strong hands.
