Anne Billson - Suckers

She looked as if she'd downed a few too many Rubies. Strands of mousy-coloured hair had escaped from her chignon and were spilling over one of her eyes. Her make-up needed reapplying — especially around the nostrils — her nose was running, and her mascara smeared where she'd been rubbing her eyes. And then there were the large, greenish-grey blisters on one side of her face — blisters which even the thick foundation failed to conceal.

Of all the toilets in the world, Patricia Rice had to walk into mine.

And I thought the jig was up until I remembered she wouldn't know me from Eve, because she'd never set eyes on me before, so I gave her my best ring of confidence and headed towards the door. She loped alongside me in a chummy manner until something pulled her up short and she swung into my path. 'Wait a minute,' she said, racking what few brains she had. This is very strange. I can see your reflection.'

'Not really,' I said. 'It's this new type of mirror they've just developed in the Pharmasan labs, especially for putting on vampire make-up.'

She frowned, and for a moment I thought I was going to get away with it. No such luck: she was dumb, but not that dumb. She squinted at the mirror, then back at me. 'But I can't see me ,' she said, her voice rising in shrill excitement. 'You're a nip, aren't you? My God, you are . You're a nip spy .'

There was no time to think, because she grabbed at me. All I did was bring my hand up out of my pocket to fend her off. There was a dull crunch as the knuckles mashed into her cheek, but it wasn't my fist which hurt her so much as the rosary wrapped around it, and the blisters instantly cracked and spurted a greenish liquid. She backed away from me, clawing at her steaming complexion and making a noise like a whistling kettle. I charged through the doors, pausing in the airlock to thrust my fist back into my pocket, and then I took a deep breath and sauntered back into the bar. I felt horribly exposed, but no one was looking. They all went on chattering and drinking and being boring, so I started to pick my way through them. I went past where I'd been sitting and, out of the corner of my eye, glimpsed Dexter and Josette and their friend. I could feel Dexter's eyes boring into the back of my skull; he was trying to put his finger on what it was about me that had piqued his curiosity. I had no intention of hanging around long enough for him to figure it out.

I wasn't thinking far ahead, but I had a vague idea that if only I could reach the Multiglom reception desk, I'd be safe. I was counting on the black clothes, brisk pace, and garlic to see me through the night. The receptionist could call me a cab to take me back to W11. All I had to do was get out of the bar. I squeezed past some standing customers, and wove around some tables, and the Exit sign was there, right in front of me. I was so close I could have stretched out and grasped the door handle. I was so close I could almost have punched a hole through the glass and flexed my fingers in the night air. So close, but not close enough, because at that moment there was an almighty crash. In front of me, the glass door quivered in sympathy, and I knew my number was up. Someone shouted, 'Stop her! ' and then there were other voices, and I couldn't work out whether they were shouting or sighing or gasping, but the sound was elemental, like the ocean trying to rip pebbles off a beach. This was it. This was the beginning of the end. I'd made a complete mess of things, and now I would never see Duncan again.

Even then, there was a residual thought that, if only I wanted to badly enough, I could still make it to the door. And I wanted to very badly indeed. There was an outside chance all that yelling had nothing to do with me, so I pretended not to notice it, and prepared for one last desperate lunge. I might have made it, too, if the slimeball sitting nearby hadn't stuck out his leg and tripped me up. As I scrabbled for balance, someone else sank his fingers so hard into the fleshy part of my upper arm that it made me squeak with pain and I brought the rosary back out of my pocket and clouted him with it. He fell back screeching and clutching at his face, just as Patricia Rice had done. I liked the effect, but I didn't get a chance to try it again because I was spun round, and dragged back, and then somebody did something to the nerves in my arm which made my fingers jerk open of their own accord. The rosary dropped to the floor, and someone kicked it away and I couldn't see it any more. The first thing I saw when I looked up was Patricia Rice standing on a table, her legs splayed out like a striptease artiste, hair flying all over the place and half her face mashed into raw hamburger with cucumber relish. She was pointing a finger and shrieking that she'd seen me, in the mirror , and she didn't have to stop and explain, because they all knew .

Now I was on the receiving end of their attention, they didn't look in the least bit human. How could I ever have imagined I would blend in? They loomed over me, jockeying for position with the points of their elbows, the hunger sharpening their features so they looked like painted demons. I could smell their breath, and it was worse than bad — it was like the gas coming up from a bucketful of pig's entrails left too long in the sun. And their colour was unnatural; under the white lighting their skin was flat and dead, and the make-up made it look like mouldy old dough.

But I got a grip on myself. I told myself sternly I wasn't like the student, I wasn't some hapless nip who had strayed in off the street. And this had obviously thrown them off balance. They couldn't work out what I was doing there, dressed and made up to look like one of them. I glared defiantly, and — I hoped — a little contemptuously. Dead or alive, they were scum and I wanted them to know it. They had led worthless lives and now they were leading equally worthless deaths.

'Let's party,' hissed the man who had made me drop the rosary. Once he had been fat, but death had left him sagging like a perished balloon. He pinched my arm like someone testing an oven-ready chicken and licked his once-plump lips with a rasping sound.

'Wait.' He was held up by a woman with eyes so pale they were almost transparent. 'We should question her. What's she up to?'

'And who else knows about it?' snarled a man with a nose like a vulture's beak. Ex-Lardo rounded on Vulture Man and sneered. 'What does it matter who knows? Nothing can stop us now. Rotnacht here we come.' At mention of the R-word, there was an outbreak of shushing. It was some sort of military code, like Operation Sealion or Market Garden, a nip too far, and careless whispers could prove costly.

'Ssshh. Don't even talk about you-know-what in front of nips.'

'They might as well know they've got it coming.'

Some of them were bickering now. I felt myself being pushed and shoved and pulled, first one way, then the other, until it started to hurt. So this was how it was going to end. It might have been my imagination, but out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the barman shrug in resignation and duck out of sight once more.

But no, I wasn't like the student. I wasn't going to stand for this shoddy treatment. If they'd homed straight in, I wouldn't have had a chance, but the squabbling had given me heart. It helped me forget the masks and see them as I'd seen them before — as little people with tiny brains and no imagination, drones who hadn't a hope in hell of doing things properly.

Unfortunately, Ex-Lardo came to a unilateral decision. 'I don't give a toss,' he said to no one in particular, and raised one of my arms to his mouth. His breath warmed the inside of my wrist as he paused to seek the most direct tap into the vein. So disagreeable was this sensation that I started babbling for all I was worth: 'Stop it I wouldn't do that if I were you Violet wouldn't like it Rose Murasaki wouldn't like it or Clara Weill or Livia or whatever she's calling herself nowadays.'