Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

‘Why didn’t you call one of the store detectives? I’m surprised they didn’t notice him come in. Probably on a tea break.’

Jane created her own scenarios; scrupulous and disapproving. Stephanie shrugged. ‘I don’t know where they were. Anyway, I could handle it. He didn’t turn nasty. I think he was surprised. I wouldn’t let him go.’

Jane smiled. ‘You’re small but ferocious, like a terrier. Did he give you the socks?’

Stephanie tried to smile back. ‘After a while, yes. He put his hand inside his jacket and produced the socks. He threw them on to the nearest shelf. The shop seemed so quiet. He was still smiling at me.’

Jane wrinkled up her nose. ‘Yuk. Creepy.’

Stephanie continued, ‘And then he started to apologize. I don’t know why. I hadn’t expected him to. He started to apologize like he’d offended me somehow. It was strange.’

Jane nodded. ‘At least he had some manners. Did you let him go? I would’ve called the store detectives. I suppose it was too late by then though, but he shouldn’t have got away with it. Did he just leave?’

Stephanie took a deep breath. ‘Well, while he was apologizing I realized that I still had my hand on his arm. We sort of realized at the same time. And then, and then …’

Jane raised her eyebrows, ‘And then?’

Stephanie bit her lip. ‘Then we, sort of, kissed.’

Jane looked so shocked that Stephanie wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite bring herself to.

‘What? A proper kiss? A kiss?’

Stephanie nodded. ‘It just happened.’

Jane fought down two competing impulses in her gut, the first of total disapproval, the second of total fascination. Stephanie watched this conflict translate itself on to Jane’s face and said, ‘It didn’t mean anything.’

Finally Jane asked, ‘What sort of a kiss? A French kiss? What did you say after?’

Stephanie blushed. ‘A French kiss. His mouth tasted of cough sweets and smoke. We didn’t really say anything. If he did say something, it was only to apologize about the socks again.’

Jane frowned. ‘So what did you do? After?’

Stephanie shrugged. ‘I … I suppose I put my hand under his shirt. He was wearing a T-shirt.’

‘You were looking for more socks? You were, weren’t you?’

Stephanie burst out laughing. She had recovered from her earlier embarrassment. ‘No. By then I had forgotten about the socks. I was feeling his stomach and his chest. His chest was hairless, but surprisingly firm.’

Jane was silent for a moment, trying to understand what this situation meant. Stephanie had never been a promiscuous person. She stared at her face across the table and looked for any perceptible signs of distress. There were none. After a while she said, ‘Why did it happen? You’ve never done this sort of thing before. I thought you were faithful to Chris. I don’t understand you.’

Stephanie sighed. ‘I was trying to explain earlier. Of course I’ve never done anything like this before. It was strange, as though … like a compulsion. Inevitable. Dangerous but compulsive. I don’t know. I can’t understand it myself. It’s not as though we were immediately physically attracted. It was more the situation itself, the differences between us …’

Jane interrupted. ‘I suppose it was only a kiss. Maybe it was just mutual attraction.’

Stephanie looked momentarily indecisive and then said, ‘No, that’s the whole point. It wasn’t just a kiss. We had sex.’

To fill the following silence she added, ‘The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it was just a power thing. There was something explosive about the situation, the confrontation, something strangely … well, strange. Erotic.’

Stephanie looked down at her hands. She had never used the word ‘erotic’ before. Especially in front of someone like Jane. Using the word was almost as much fun as the sex had been. She felt like D. H. Lawrence.

Jane was devastated. She looked at Stephanie and couldn’t understand her, she couldn’t contain what she had done in the relevant compartments of her brain. She wondered whether Stephanie was now a slag. A slut. Finally she said, ‘You behaved like a slut, with some big, ugly skinhead.’

Stephanie shrugged. ‘If you mean “slut” in a good way, then yes, I did. The shop was so quiet. We made love behind some racks of mohair jumpers. Nobody came.’

She smiled at her unintentional pun. Jane missed the joke. Her ideas of Stephanie had now been so radically altered that any coherent discussion about motivation and intent seemed entirely fruitless. But she was like a small, common bird, like a sparrow, a pack creature, something that acts on impulse. She wanted to know the details, but this desire compromised her and she knew it. Eventually she said, ‘How was he?’ She had never been able to ask this question about the sexual relations between Stephanie and Chris, but this was different. Stephanie looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to reply, then she said, ‘Good. Strange. Condensed …’

‘Did he have …?’

Stephanie frowned. ‘Don’t ask. It wasn’t like that.’

Jane felt coarse and embarrassed. She snapped defensively, ‘I’m not particularly interested in what it was like. Don’t flatter yourself.’ She was silent for a second and then added, ‘How can we even discuss it? How can we talk about it? There’s nothing to say.’

Stephanie frowned, trying to understand what Jane meant. She said, ‘I thought I should tell you.’

Jane raised her eyebrows and tried to look ironic. ‘Tell me? Tell me what? I think you should consider telling Chris. I don’t think he’ll be too sympathetic, though.’

Stephanie cupped the bowl of her glass in both hands. She was temporarily confused. She had known that Jane would be disapproving, surprised, maybe even shocked, but the coherence and simplicity of what she had experienced … She repeated the word silently to herself and felt it to be totally appropriate. Simplicity. That expresses it best. It was so simple, unadulterated, natural and yet unnatural.

She tried to articulate her thoughts. ‘It wasn’t sordid, just natural and kind of obvious, that’s why it’s so hard to describe …’

Jane shrugged. ‘Just sex. Are you seeing each other again?’

Stephanie sighed and shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I hadn’t thought about it like that. It wasn’t like that.’

Jane seemed unimpressed. ‘So you won’t be seeing him again. But will you have sex with other people at work? When it’s quiet, just before closing?’

She was smirking. Stephanie felt at once angry and misunderstood. She spoke instead of thinking, before thinking. ‘Maybe this has changed me. I didn’t feel immediately different, but I think that I might actually be. I knew you wouldn’t approve, but I thought you’d be …’ She tried to collect her thoughts.

Jane turned away from Stephanie and looked over her shoulder and towards the juke box. It was silent. She wondered whether she could be bothered to go over and put some money into it. It then struck her that this might in fact be a good idea, a means to walk away from the conversation, to bring about a hiatus, a gap, a space, so that when she returned they could discuss other things. She took her purse from her bag and stood up. She said, ‘I’m going to put some music on the juke box.’

Stephanie didn’t reply. She nodded. She watched Jane walk over to the juke box and thought, ‘Suddenly we have no common ground. When she comes back to the table she won’t discuss this with me again. It’s as though nothing can be expressed between us which will make sense, which we can both understand. When she comes back to the table she will be assured in her own mind that she is now better than me, that she has something over me, and yet …’