Howard Linskey - The Drop

‘Just do your job,’ I snapped at him without meaning to.

‘Sure,’ he said calmly, ‘I am doing it.’

‘Good,’ I said and left him to it. I walked away wondering why I’d reacted so strongly to some pretty mild words about Sarah and her pals. I put it down to stress.

I returned to the banquette and sat there on my own for a bit, sipping yet another mineral water, badly wanting a real drink after my one glass of champagne but knowing it wouldn’t be a good idea. I reminded myself things weren’t going too badly. I’d had it first hand from Palmer that his blokes had spotted nothing out of the ordinary. Sarah was having a good time and she wasn’t even aware I had a crew watching her every move. Just as well, she’d have gone mad if she’d known. I just hoped no lagered-up bloke pinched her arse on the dance floor because, if I didn’t get there before Palmer’s lads, the silly bastard wouldn’t know what hit him.

Two of Sarah’s friends looked like they’d pulled, leaving Sarah and her mad mate Joanne alone in a corner of the dance floor. The last time I’d seen Joanne she was at work, standing on the bar down at Buffalo Joe’s in a black bikini and a Stetson, twirling a flag and marching along, miming the words to Amarillo with four other girls, while the crowd in the bar went crazy; only in Newcastle.

I could still see them both from where I was sitting. I was faintly amused by the obvious effort they put into making every move seem effortless. They adopted a studied cool but every turn and wiggle looked choreographed. Why is it girls always know the moves to every dance and blokes don’t have a clue? I wondered if they all went to secret practice sessions we didn’t know about.

Joanne leaned forward and said something into Sarah’s ear and she laughed. It was good to see her enjoying herself. Akon and Kardinal Offishall’s Dangerous started blaring out from the speakers, an appropriate song for Sarah Mahoney if ever I’d heard one.

They piled into the back of my car, giggling like a couple of teenagers. The birthday cocktails made them braver than normal and they were pretty cheeky when they were sober. I knew I’d got to be on top form to avoid looking like a total cock in front of them.

I put Ne-yo on and turned the volume up a couple of notches for Closer .

‘Blimey,’ said Sarah, ‘I thought you’d be cranking out U2 or something!’

‘I spend my life in clubs, I hear this stuff more than you do.’

‘Bit old for it aren’t you?’ asked Joanne.

‘Are you walking home?’ I asked her in return and she laughed. ‘Can’t believe you don’t think I’m down with the kids… ’

We passed another club that used to be an old warehouse. It had a big, metal ladder stuck to the side with thick, steel steps that zig-zagged up the side of the building and there was a ledge at the top right by the roof.

Sarah leaned forward and said, ‘See that ladder… ow!’ it sounded like Joanne had thumped her one, ‘Jo, you total slag,’ but she laughed anyway and a belt on the arm wasn’t going to stop her from telling me, ‘Joanne fucked a bloke at the top of that ladder!’

‘I did not! You bitch!’ and she was laughing as well, the two of them were like a couple of breathless hyenas behind me.

‘Is that right Jo?’ I asked nonchalantly, as if she had just admitted to kissing a bloke beneath Grey’s Monument.

‘No it fucking isn’t!’ she pretended to be horrified.

‘Yeah,’ said Sarah, ‘she fucking did.’

‘I did not!’ and she could hardly breathe through laughing, ‘if you must know I just sucked him off!’

‘Oh, that’s alright then,’ I deadpanned and we all cracked up.

When they finally calmed down Joanne said, ‘I can’t believe you told him. I think I should tell him something about you now.’

‘Oh I don’t think so.’

‘I do,’ I said, genuinely intrigued.

‘Ha, you see,’ said Joanne, ‘he wants to know.’

‘Well that’s fine because you don’t know anything about me. Nothing recent anyway. I’ve been a good girl.’

‘Really?’ Joanne was teasing now and I was beginning to get a little sick feeling, in case she told me Sarah had been shagging some spotty student or footballer. I realised to my horror that I’d be jealous. I told myself I was just being protective of her but I wasn’t sure I was really buying that argument. You can fool just about anybody but you can’t fool yourself.

‘Last Christmas, we had a girls’ night in. We got really pissed on wine and played ‘Marry him, Fuck him, Shove him off a cliff’,’ said Joanne.

‘How does that work then?’ I asked, none the wiser.

“Chelle started nominating blokes we knew and we all had to say whether we would marry them, fuck them or chuck them off a cliff,’ and she giggled.

‘Oh right,’ I got it now.

‘We went through all the boys our age, then some celebs,’ then she paused, ‘you don’t even remember do you?’ she asked Sarah who seemed blissfully unperturbed by this.

‘Remember what?’ she asked.

‘Well, you had been on the vodka as well as the wine,’ was all Joanne offered by way of explanation.

‘What are you on about?’ said Sarah testily.

‘What you said when his name came up.’ I couldn’t see Joanne, so I don’t know if she nodded in my direction but it was clear that she meant me. At this point Sarah literally gasped.

‘Joanne,’ she made her friend’s name into a warning.

‘You really can’t remember can you?’ she was loving Sarah’s discomfort now. I must admit I was taking a pretty big interest in this myself. I was quietly confident that I’d made the ‘fuck him’ list not the ‘shove him off the cliff’ pile but either answer was going to be embarrassing for both of us.

‘I don’t even remember playing the game,’ said Sarah a little snootily, ‘I was mullered.’

‘What do you think you said?’ urged Joanne, oblivious to Sarah’s mounting irritation.

‘No idea,’ replied Sarah, ‘could have been any of them or all three. No offence,’ the last two words were directed towards me.

‘None taken,’ I replied like her answer didn’t matter but of course it did matter, quite a lot. I put it down to male ego.

‘Want me to tell you?’ giggled Joanne, making the words into a sing-song, playground style taunt.

Sarah had clearly had enough of this and wasn’t going to allow herself to be embarrassed by her mate, ‘I should imagine,’ she began, ‘knowing me and how I am when I’ve been on the vodka,’ there was a moment’s pause when she summoned up the nerve, ‘I probably said that I would fuck him.’ She said the last bit defiantly, daring either of us to take the piss out of her.

I got a strange, conflicting sensation of being embarrassed, chuffed and not a little bit turned-on all at once because I knew from the sudden silence that she was telling the truth.

My feeling of euphoria didn’t last long however, ‘no!’ squealed Joanne, like it was the funniest thing, ‘that’s not what you said!’

Great, so when Sarah’s really drunk I join the ranks of the lemmings. Shit.

Joanne continued, saying the words slowly and deliberately, ‘what you actually said was, and I’m quoting here, “I’d fuck him then marry him, so I could fuck him some more!” Joanne started pissing herself laughing but Sarah had gone deathly quiet in the back of my car. Joanne had finally achieved the unachievable, embarrassing Sarah to the core of her being and I knew why. The M word. Marriage. Marriage wasn’t cool or something you could shrug off because you were drunk, like a loose comment about a shag. Marriage was love and kids and setting up home together, for life, it was the real deal. Blimey.