Get Katja (3 page)

Seven of them in total, in the middle of the vacant parking lot of a burger joint which is no longer there, all lined up like school kids after a fire alarm.

A woman with bright pink, dyed hair clipped in place with a dozen little clasps stands before them. She holds a clipboard in purple-gloved hands and one by one takes down the details of those gathered.

Nikolai recognises most of them as scene regulars—a collection of chemical misfits and wasters who are probably as close as he will come to a social circle. As he waits for his turn, he studies the crumpled leaflet he holds in one hand, the same leaflet some of the others have brought with them, torn from the walls of research labs and universities and subtly noting the details for the gathering. In his other hand, something that none of the others have—a poster for a punk gig.

The Broken,
a dense, jagged scrawl announces, along with the dates and times of the show.

And a picture of a girl, one hand clutching a microphone so tightly the bones of her hand show through the graininess of the printing.

Despite the shaven head and new tattoos he has no doubt that it is Katja. He recognised her the moment he came across the poster earlier that day, the first time he had seen her face since being kicked out of the Stumps a couple of months earlier. After he had fucked up yet again.

“Not seen you around for a while,” one of the others says to him as they wait. “I heard you got into a lock-away?”

The man who stands beside Nikolai is short and weedy looking with lank hair tied back in a ponytail. He’s wearing a death metal band T-shirt and his smile is punctuated by only three or four crooked, stained teeth. He wears a small chain with his name spelled out in little silver letters: DAMIEN.

Nikolai shrugs. “It was a . . . a laxative.”

“And did it work?”

“You said yourself you’ve not seen me around for a couple of weeks—what do you think?”

“Eeep,” Damien says.

The woman with the pink hair and clipboard moves onto the next volunteer.

Damien nudges Nikolai. “Thought I’d landed myself a dream one a week or so back.”

Nikolai ignores him but the man continues. “Some sort of sex pill. They had this other pill that was like an off-switch for it but they’d been having problems getting it to function in their previous test subjects so I basically spent a solid week fucking day and night whilst they figured out what was causing it to not function. One hundred bucks and a bunch of weeping sores, that’s all I got out of it. Wouldn’t have been so bad if the women they’d brought in had been something to look at, I’m telling you.”

Nikolai continues ignoring him.

“One hundred fucking bucks, how can they expect us to live on that? I spent the lot on creams for the sores which they didn’t even provide as part of the trial, by the way, those cheap bastards. This one, on the other hand—it’s that old inverse proportion rule, right?”

“The what?”

“You know. The shittier the location we have to go to for assessment, the more underground it all is, the better the pay. And vice versa.”

He stops talking when the woman with the clipboard reaches him.

She shines a small torch into his eyes, examining his pupil response, then asks him to open his mouth and shines it in there too. Her lip curls involuntarily at the sight of his crooked teeth. She asks him several questions, then scribbles down his responses on her notepad.

“Are you currently on any medication?”

“Nope,” Damien says, winks at Nikolai.

“Any illegal substances?” she asks, as aware as those gathered that it’s like asking a prisoner if they are innocent.

“No ma’am,” he says and winks again.

The woman makes more notes then takes a step back and looks him up and down. She says, “Thank you.”

She repeats the procedure with Nikolai, checking his eyes and mouth, then his fingernails.

“Are you currently on any medication?”

“No.”

He’s aware of Damien grinning madly beside him but takes no notice.

“Any illegal substances?”

“I’m clean,” Nikolai answers.

“Thank you,” she says, then turns and flicks through her sheets of notes. She walks up the line and back again and it shifts with her presence as if she exerts some sort of gravitational pull on each person there.

“You,” she says finally, pointing her pen at Nikolai.

He hesitates then steps forward when she motions for him to come towards her. He stands beside her, looking back at the crowd from which he has been plucked.

“Thank you all for coming,” she says and then guides Nikolai towards the cherry red Honda she had arrived in.

“You’re fucking kidding me. That’s it?!” one of the others complains, loudly enough for the woman to hear. “You’re only taking
one
?”

“One is all we’re looking for, guys,” she says, opening the door for Nikolai. He climbs inside.

“And you choose
him
?” Damien shouts. “He’s the biggest fucking junkie out of all of us!”

She closes Nikolai’s door and climbs into the driver’s seat. “Maybe next time fellas,” she says.

The group has now gathered in front of the car, blocking its exit. The woman starts the engine, revs it a couple of times. She hits the headlights, flooding the group in light and for a few moments there is a stand-off, nobody prepared to make the first move. Finally the crowd splits, though only just enough for her to squeeze the car through them, and, as she passes, fists and palms slap against the roof and window.

She pulls the car onto the main road and joins the light traffic, glances in her rearview mirror at Nikolai.

“It’s not true,” he tells her, nervously rubbing his hands across his thighs. “I’m not . . . taking anything. Not anymore.”

The woman says nothing, her indifference as tangible as it had been when assessing them. She swings the car into a u-turn to head back the way she came.

Nikolai looks out the window as they pass the parking lot.

Damien stands at the front of the crowd and gives him the finger.

“I hope they
fuck you up, Nikolai
!” he shouts, then disappears from sight.

But before that, there was this. . . .

• • •

Bridget watches the couple from a booth at the back of the club, away from the main throng and bathed in the glow from a couple of slot machines lined up against one wall.

The woman is of medium height with rich black hair, multiple tattoos adorning her arms. The man is taller, bright blue eyes and short blonde hair. He says something and the woman laughs, placing a hand on his chest, fingers spread.

Bridget sips at a glass of water, leaning to one side when someone entering blocks her view momentarily.

“Loving your look,” another man says to her. He wears a suit with his tie and top shirt buttons loosened, the gel in his hair losing a battle to keep it slicked back from his forehead.

She follows his gaze to her hands, sheathed in purple latex gloves. She tucks them into her pockets, removing them from sight.

“How do you get your hair that colour? So pink?”

“I dye it.”

“Oh. May I?” the man asks, already starting to sit down.

Bridget blocks him with one booted foot, shakes her head. “Sorry,” she says, then peers over his shoulder.

The couple are leaning into one another, exchanging breath and scents. The woman stands and pulls her coat on. The two make their way through the crowd.

Bridget gets up, pushes past the man without another word, and hurries to follow the couple outside.

A cold breeze snaps her to attention as she looks farther up the street. Locked in one another’s arms, the couple stagger along then cross the road before entering an apartment block. She climbs three floors and unlocks the door to her apartment, snaps on a light. On the wall beside her is a large corkboard littered with photographs of the man she had been watching in the club; some of them blurry Polaroids, others what look like grainy screen-grabs. Amongst these are sticky notes with times and addresses scribbled on them.

She peels off her gloves and takes a fresh set from a box on the counter, pulls them on.

She crosses to a desk on top of which are several small TVs and powers them on one by one. Static slowly gives way.

The first is a row of apartment blocks similar to Bridget’s own, fronted by a communal grassy court. The scene emerges just as the couple she had been watching come into view. They walk across the grass, the man’s hand sliding up and down the woman’s arm, caressing her tattoos, then they enter one of the buildings.

Bridget’s attention switches to the next screen, awkwardly positioned on top of two VCR decks. This one is a stairwell, the lighting dim but the couple still recognisable at the edge of the picture. The man presses the woman against a wall, kissing her neck. The woman smiles, then eases him away, takes his hand and leads up towards the stairs.

The next screen, showing a small and cluttered studio apartment. There’s a flare of light as a door opens, the glare blinding Bridget’s view like a nuclear blast. When it subsides the couple are wrapped in one another’s arms, frantically removing each other’s clothing. The door slams shut behind them. They move out of view.

The next screen is blank. Bridget waits, thinking it is just too dark to see anything, then slaps the side of the device. The TV blinks into life, the image jumping and fizzing. She hits it again and a bed comes into focus.

The woman lies out on it, her arms extended above her head towards the pillows as the man tugs at her jeans to remove them.

Bridget opens a drawer in a unit next to the TVs and removes a headset of the sort call centre workers would wear. The audio cable ends in a small, plastic box. She slides a button to switch it on and a red light glows. In her ears now, the sounds of laboured breathing. She closes her eyes to it for a few moments then opens them again. Reaches in with her gloved hands and removes a small, latex-coated vibrator.

She pulls a small armchair into position before the TVs and settles into it.

The couple are both down to their underwear now, the woman almost lost beneath the broad expanse of the man’s back. Her legs wrap around the back of his.

Bridget lifts her skirt and switches the vibrator on.

She watches the man pull on his trousers and T-shirt then quickly tie his shoelaces.

He says something to the woman but the words are lost amidst static crackle. Bridget takes off the headphones and lets them sit around her neck. Then the man is gone from the TV screen, appearing on the one showing the staircase a minute or so later, still tucking himself in. Back on the bedroom camera the woman is now getting dressed, buttoning her jeans and pulling on a fresh T-shirt, black with the yellow smiley face on it, her tattoos like bruises in amongst the graininess. She quickly re-applies some make-up then pulls on a jacket and leaves the apartment.

With the woman gone, Bridget gets up and cracks open a fresh bottle of whiskey. She tips a couple of fingers into a glass then adds some coke. Swallows half of it in one go. Tops up the liquor.

She quickly burns through two glasses and is pouring herself a third when there is a knock at the door. She checks the spyhole before undoing the locks.

“Hey Liz,” she says, opening the door and letting her visitor in.

The woman breezes past Bridget, removes her coat and hangs it up on a peg on the back of the door. Medium height with rich black hair and multiple tattoos peeking out from beneath a black T-shirt emblazoned with a yellow smiley face.

“Thanks,” Liz says, taking the whiskey and coke from Bridget and downing several large gulps before handing it back to her. “You mind if I—?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, crossing to the counter and pouring a glass for herself. She takes a swig, brushes her hair from her face.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Liz asks.

“How . . . how was it?”

Liz smiles, takes another swig. “How did it look?”

“Fine,” she says. “Good, I mean.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you didn’t smell him,” Liz counters.

“Smell him?”

“Stank like he hadn’t taken a shower in a week.”

“Oh,” Bridget says, taking a sip of her own drink. “I thought he looked nice.”

“He looked the part, I’ll give you that. But not everything comes across through the screens, Bridget, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“He screwed pretty good but we’re not having him again, okay?”

“Okay,” Bridget says, knowing she has little choice in the matter despite all the planning she put into the evening.

Liz returns the armchair to its normal position in front of a larger TV suspended from the adjacent wall, then sits down. Bridget turns off the little screens one by one, then the recording decks beneath them. She plucks the photos and sticky notes from the corkboard and drops them into a wire-rimmed bin.

“Then we’ll find someone else,” she says, stamping on them to crush them into the bin. “Tonight.”

“
Tonight?
”

“Hey, you may have gotten your rocks off but I certainly haven’t,” she says. “And this time
I
get to choose, okay?”

“Okay,” Bridget says.

Liz grabs a pen and paper from the desk next to the TVs and scrawls the word
Romeo
across the top of the first page.

“First up—looks,” she says. “Johnny Cash—obviously. A young one . . .”

She writes that down then tilts her head upwards in thought. “What else?” she ponders aloud, rolling the pen around in her mouth, the devious grin still on her lips. “Smart. He’s got to be, like, stupid smart.”

“Body?”

“Athletic is fine. Oh and maybe a bit of nail polish or eyeliner just to spice things up.”

“You don’t ask for much do you?” Bridget says, downing the rest of her drink and perching on the side of the chair. “Look, I’ve got to head out for a bit,”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“But what about my dream man?”

“I won’t be long, I promise.”

“At this time of night, what . . . ?” Her words trail and she feels stupid for even having asked the question. “Oh.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Bridget says, taking a clipboard and pen from another drawer in the desk.

“I’ll be waiting,” Liz sings, adjusting her position to get comfy in the chair. Then, more seriously, “Be careful, okay?”

Bridget says goodbye then is gone. Liz shifts her position again, something hard beneath her, then reaches under her legs.

Pulls out the vibrator.