Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Here you go,’ Raine said, setting my whisky down in front of me. It was a double. ‘Here; I got you some more water, ah, Paul.’

‘Phil,’ said Phil.

‘Ya. Sorry. Phil.’ Raine smiled at me and raised her glass; it looked like a G &T. I raised mine. ‘Down the hatch,’ Raine said, and drank deep. I put my glass to my lips and made a big show of drinking, but didn’t, keeping my lips tightly closed. I sniffed it, instead. I was getting paranoid about this, thinking that Raine was watching me drink. I made my Adam’s apple bob, like I was swallowing. I put the glass down on the table, keeping it covered by my fingers so the level wasn’t obvious.

‘Nice. Bit peaty. Is it an Islay?’

‘Ah, ya,’ Raine said. ‘Ya, that’s right.’ She wore tight leather pants, a couple of layers of pink and white chiffon blouse, and shades with a faint yellow-tint that made her look a bit like Anastacia. Mid-twenties, like her waist. Awfully good cheek-bones and a jaw line like David Coulthard’s, except smoother, obviously. Her nipples were kind of obvious through the chiffon – was it fashionable again? Looked good on her, anyway – and something about her bare shoulders reminded me of Ceel. Raine’s hair was blond and thick and she kept flicking it back off her face.

‘So, Raine,’ Phil said. ‘Ever sky-dived in La Mancha?’ He grinned inanely at her, then at me. I got the impression he was at least as drunk as me. We’d started mob-handed in the pub, gone on to the Groucho, then the Soho House, and ended up here, losing co-workers en route to pathetic excuses like food, prior engagements, life-partners, children; that sort of thing. I had the vague impression we’d had a good talk about the show during some part of this and come up with some new ideas and stuff for me to rant about, but I couldn’t recall any of the details at all. Luckily Phil usually did, and he normally took notes in tiny writing in the Useful Diary he always carried with him.

It was a Friday, so we didn’t have a show tomorrow; we were allowed to go out to play, dammit. Jo was absent for the weekend, with the Addicta boys in Stockholm and Helsinki. Also, it had been three weeks since I’d seen Celia and I’d been hoping there would be a couriered package for me immediately after the show and an Anonymous call on my mobile; in fact I’d spent the show, the day since I woke up, even the week, if I was being honest, looking forward to signing my name on a dispatch rider’s acknowledgment form; received in good condition, sign here, print here, insert time here… But there had been nothing, just an empty feeling.

I’d decided it was time for a jolly good drink.

‘Sorry?’ the girl said.

Phil waved a hand woozily. ‘Nothing. Ignore me.’

‘Ya.’ Raine looked rather meanly at my producer, I thought. Bit cheeky, I thought. This man was one of my best friends and a very fine producer, too. Who did she think she was, looking at him with a just-fuck-off expression? How dare she? This man deserved respect, for Christ’s sake. While she was distracted, I took the opportunity to pour about half my whisky over Phil’s jacket, then brought the whisky glass up and did the pretend drinking thing again, just as Raine switched her attention back to me, and a smile reappeared on her face. She clinked glasses once more. I thought I could smell the whisky fumes evaporating from the dark surface of Phil’s old but still serviceably stylish Paul Smith. I swirled my whisky round in the glass. Raine was watching.

‘You trying to get me drunk?’ I asked her in a sort of kooky, role-reversal kinda stylee.

She lowered her eyelids a little and slid up to me on the seat until I could feel the warmth of her through my shirt. ‘I’m trying to get you to come home with me,’ she murmured.

‘Ha!’ I laughed. I slapped my thigh. ‘You shall go to the ball, Cinders!’

Phil was snorting with laughter on the other side of me. Raine gave him a dirty look. I took her chin in my hand and brought her mouth towards mine, but she put her hand on my forearm and gently pushed my hand down. ‘Finish your drink and let’s go, okay?’

I’d already disposed of most of the rest of the whisky and could happily have slugged the rest because it wasn’t enough to make any real difference, but by now it had become something between a game and a point of honour to dispose of the whole lot without a drop passing my lips, so I looked over Raine’s shiningly blond head and said, ‘Okay… Shit, is that Madders and Guy Ritchie?’

She looked. I dumped the last of the whisky onto Phil’s jacket and stood up, lowering the whisky glass from my mouth as Raine turned back again. ‘Guess not,’ I said. I felt fine, I thought. The prospect of sex with somebody new, especially somebody new who looked as good as Raine, was a profoundly sobering influence all by itself. Still, I felt myself sway as we edged out of the booth.

‘Phil, got to go.’

‘Fine. Have fun,’ he said.

‘That’s the intention. You take care.’

‘And you precautions.’ He sniggered.

‘See you Monday.’

‘I just have to visit the loo,’ Raine said as we crossed through the crowds.

‘I’ll see you at the cloakroom.’

I spent a couple of minutes nattering to the cloakroom girl on the ground floor. Unlike Phil I usually checked my jacket in, but then I didn’t use mine as a wearable handbag.

‘Ready?’ Raine asked, passing her receipt to the girl.

‘Very,’ I said.

Raine let me help her on with her coat. It was an Afghan, which I interpreted as a retro-fashion-driven coincidence rather than some subtle geopolitical statement. She turned and looked me in the eye, gaze switching from one pupil to the other. It felt good, very sexy, to be inspected so closely. She hadn’t tipped the cloakroom girl but I didn’t care. I kind of fell against her and she let me kiss her, though not deeply. She pushed me away and glanced at the girl. ‘Come on,’ she said.

It was raining as we left. I nodded at the bouncers, who smiled and nodded back. I was moderately certain I knew their names, but I wasn’t absolutely sure, and getting bouncers’ names wrong was a lot worse than not calling them anything. I stared at the rain and the traffic sizzling up and down the Avenue, lights bright in the drop-jewelled darkness. ‘It’s rain, Raine,’ I said.

‘Right, ya,’ she said, gazing down the street. Yes, Kenneth, I thought to myself, like she’ll never have heard that one in her life before.

‘Friday night in the rain,’ I said authoritatively. ‘Our best chance is a taxi dropping somebody off. I’ll bravely volunteer to make a dash for one if it pulls up.’

‘Right.’

‘Or I could just phone a mini-cab,’ I said, taking my mobile out after a struggle with the little holster at my hip. ‘I’ll tell them there’s an even more exorbitant tip in it than usual.’ I squinted down at the little Motorola as I flipped it open. ‘Just don’t say anything about curry,’ I muttered, closing one eye to see the display properly.

Raine looked round. She put her hand over mine, over the phone. ‘No, it’s all right. Here’s a taxi now.’

A black cab had just pulled up at the kerb. ‘Glory be,’ I said, putting the mobile away again. ‘Na, its light’s off…’

But Raine was already pulling me across the pavement towards the cab. ‘Ya, I flagged it.’

‘Fine work, Raine,’ I said, grabbing for the door handle and missing. She opened the door but I insisted on holding it open for her. I then hit my head getting in. ‘Ouch.’

‘You all right?’

‘Fine.’ I started searching for my seat belt. ‘This is a really good omen, you know, Raine,’ I told her, raising my backside off the seat to grab at the belt.