Alan Goodwin - Gravity's Chain

‘You’re talking rubbish, Jack.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes you are, rubbish.’ He checked his watch. ‘Let’s go to the party.’

‘Why won’t you let me comment on his book?’

‘The company wants a planned response. The boys in Europe are anxious to go through everything with you first. In fact that shows how committed they are to you, how much they respect you.’

‘You’re so well practised in the art of spin, Bebe.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘You had better be straight with me, Bebe. If I find you lot are in bed with Driesler I would be one very sad and unhappy boy.’

The Hilton party was in full swing when we arrived. The guests babbled their excitement at being seen at one of the parties of the year. Bebe had performed his usual impeccable job in preparing the guests and the working girls mixed with the wannabes. In fact, he had excelled and the party was well stocked like a fine wine cellar. Protocol demanded I first meet the head of Taikon in Australasia. He was a short man with a wispy moustache that hinted at weak stubble on a Sunday morning and he spoke with an unusually staccato voice. I played the game, graciously accepting congratulations, talking up the company and talking down the competitors. Nodding in agreement and laughing at poor jokes, I shook outstretched hands with a firm, warm greeting. Bebe hovered at my shoulder, ensuring my drink was full and my comments bland. He had every reason to be pleased with my performance and told me so at every opportunity as we moved from one group to another. Finally after an hour Bebe relaxed his grip and let me go play.

The toilets at the Hilton are an interesting mix of Raffles and the space station: all the trappings of colonial class in a sanitised environment. I lingered in them for a while, taking care over a wash and dry of hands, combing my hair and adjusting my clothes. It was nice to be away from the sweaty mass, my work for the evening done and the fun about to begin. I toyed with the idea of taking a pew and contemplating my worries, but I really couldn’t be fucked to get morose again so I just winked at myself and left the toilet to its orbit.

Once back in the party the calves of a particularly fine pair of legs caught my attention. Thankfully the face and figure matched.

Her voice was husky, heavily accented, reminiscent of a Berlin jazz club. She wore a red velvet dress, a little cheap, with some frayed edges, but not so cheap as to immediately give away her status. This was a working dress, not a night-time special to get on the pages of Woman’s Day. Her name was Claudia and she had come from Russia to New Zealand two years ago, but her English was almost perfect. Her black hair, shiny and soft as an advertisement, formed a waterfall on her shoulders. It reminded me of a thoroughbred’s tail. She wore heavy black shoes that tightened those black-clad calves and her body swayed to an imaginary tune.

Looking into my eyes without quite focusing she answered my question: ‘Paul for my wedding ballad, John to run away with.’ It was good enough for me. I touched her arm and guided her toward Bebe. As I moved I shook more hands, took more congratulations and flashed a smile or two. Already my mind was imagining hands running the smooth path of those legs.

It was just before I reached Bebe that Jo appeared at his side. He acknowledged her hesitantly, quickly assessed the dangers and tried to distract her with an overelaborate welcome. To the outsider it must have seemed as though Bebe was greeting a long-lost lover. The diversion almost succeeded and I had just about escaped the throng when her interest in Bebe suddenly waned and she turned straight into my path. She greeted me with a sloppy kiss; her breath smelt of drink and her eyes were dazed.

‘Jo?’

‘You said to come along to the party, Jack, so here I am.’ She held out her arms as though offering me her body in sacrifice. Her eyes failed to focus on anything and slowly her gaze fell to the floor. ‘Can we go to your room? I just want last night to come again.’

‘Who’s the friend?’ Claudia sniffed the air as though Jo was a foreign body and there was a risk of contamination.

I introduced them and there was an uneasy silence as Bebe hovered on the outside of the group, ready to bring the meeting to an end. Claudia touched my arm. ‘I’m sure there’s enough of everything to go around.’ Jo was too drunk to care, Claudia looked more than comfortable with her idea and I was almost halfway up the stairs with my trousers down.

Even before I’d fumbled the cork free of the first champagne bottle, Claudia was into the coke. She divided three lines on the glass coffee tabletop and we took one each in turn. Between us, Claudia and I had enough to keep the hotel going for the night, but it was Jo who greedily consumed the most. As for the rest of the evening, though, the memory is hazy, or perhaps better to say corrupted. I know the broad brushstrokes of drink, drugs and sex, but the more precise details are lost. Everything just kind of rolled into one experience of head spinning, saliva spreading, grunting, sweating, and sniffing as though it was all one. Finally the cocaine-induced energy waned and we slept.

Never before had Bebe entered my bedroom when I still had a woman with me, but we had slept through his various attempts to rouse us—the phone had been knocked to the floor by some contorted limb. He pulled the curtains and shook my shoulder to wake me.

‘Come on, Jack, we have to do the Holmes show,’ he whined. He was dressed in an immaculate blue suit and I could smell his expensive aftershave as he leant over the bed. I opened an aching eye and saw the look of disgust on his face. ‘My God, Jack, what has been going on in here? It’s like a scene from Caligula. Come on, get up—we have to go. I never thought it would come to this.’ He shook his head.

I half sat up, trying to ignore the heavy hangover, which I had already assessed as a grade one with bells on—loud bells that echoed throughout my head the way a house alarm does when you’re inside. Claudia appeared from under a tangle of bedclothes, looked around, yawned and got out of bed. She still wore her stockings, one of which had slipped to below the knee. Bebe held up a towel, which she ignored as she collected her clothes and took them to the bathroom. Determined to use his scorned towel he held it to me, shaking it like a matador in the hope it would entice me from the bed. I obliged and wrapped the towel around my waist. Jo remained asleep, her back to us. Bebe circled the bed to her side. ‘Come on, young lady,’ he called but she refused to respond.

‘Jo,’ I croaked, my voice rebounding in my head like a bullet in a lead room, ‘her name is Jo.’

‘Come on, Jo, time to get going.’ She remained silent. Bebe touched her arm. ‘Jo. Jo? Jack, I think there’s something wrong here.’

Hearing the panic in his voice, I scrambled around the bed. My poorly secured towel fell from my body at the sudden movement. I rolled Jo onto her back. Her arm swung and fell lifelessly. She was pale but warm and although her body was limp, I could see the shallow rise of her chest as she breathed what must have been no more than an eggcup full of air. I closed my eyes and there was Caroline again and not just her feet this time, but her entire body, her head to one side, mocking that once vital, questioning pose of hers.

‘Oh fuck, Jack.’ Bebe was leaning over Jo, peering into her eyes, his finger delicately holding up an eyelid smeared with old shadow. It was the first time I’d heard him swear. ‘I think she’s in a coma.’

‘What are we going to do, Bebe?’

Claudia slid silently from the bathroom. She moved like a stalking cat, but when she saw the panic in our eyes and Jo’s apparently lifeless body, she stopped her slow walk.