TheRapist (19 page)

Jezzy looked up from her bag, pulled out her license and credit card. ‘Really? I didn’t realize you could buy peace of mind.’

Rash laughed aloud and dug Eddie in the ribs, who conveniently joined in with the appropriate
amount of
mirth.

‘Do you want to sign now or when you’ve seen it?’ Rash asked. Eddie stifled a laugh, stuffed somewhere down the back of his throat. So obviously part of their routine. Jezzy looked quizzically at Rash and said, ‘later.’

Rash came around to the front of the counter. The floor behind the counter must have been raised, because he had suddenly dropped a few precious measures of height as he came towards her, looked up and said, ‘you want to come with me or wait here?’

Jezzy hesitated momentarily and said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

He suddenly thrust his right fist toward her. She jerked out of the way, apparently unnecessarily as he lunged a key, hidden in his hand, past her left ear and unlocked a narrow door.

Rash grinned, ‘let’s go. Fourth floor.’

Jezzy wiped a bead of perspiration that had appeared on her top lip and followed him. They were suddenly in the middle of an empty indoor parking garage with drips coming down the walls and greasy puddles on the floor. There was a strange, almost anachronistic shop to one side, filled with the kind of rusty spotlights you get in old Hollywood movies, a Victorian looking birdcage with a stiff bird hanging from the perch and a few pieces of furniture, all covered in silver leather and lurex. Rash noticed her gaze. ‘Been closed for months, the owner just locked up one day and never came back, didn’t take long for the bird to die.’

‘Don’t tell me that bird is real?’ Jezzy asked slowly.

‘Well, it was once,’ grinned Rash, never missing an opportunity, insensitive or otherwise, to show off his teeth.

He pressed a grimy button, a lift door creaked open and he held the door to let Jezzy in first. The lift smelt as they always do in parking garages. Stale piss and B.O. Jezzy tried to hold her breath unti
l they reached the fourth floor, gratefully sucking in the air
when the door opened. It wasn’t fresh but it was less
sour
.

The fourth floor was empty, except for five cars, parked in various spaces. It was dark and as damp as the ground floor. She could hear a constant drip from a rusty pipe that ran down one of the walls, creating a puddle that was confined to a dip in the floor.

‘There’s your little beauty,’ Rash pointed to a small blue Honda clamped to the edge of the wall. ‘Get in and I’ll drive us down. You can’t drive it until you’ve signed for it, but I’ll show you what a great little number it is.’

Jezzy slipped into the passenger’s side and reached for her seatbelt as Rash started the engine and lurched forwards.

What happened next left Jezzy feeling as if she were on a rollercoaster.

‘You want to go out with me sometime?’ asked Rash with another of his smiles.

Jezzy
looked at him, startled. ‘No thanks, I’m only here for a car.’

‘Could have fooled me,’ Rash’s smile was turning into a snarl and he lurched the car forwards again, hitting the accelerator as hard as he could and zooming around the bend to take them to the next floor. He approached fifty as he tore around the next corner.

‘Stop!’ screamed
Jezzy
.

But Rash didn’t stop, tearing down the slope and around the next corner just as fast.
Jezzy
was sure he would lose control. He didn’t. But she did when they reached the gro
und floor and he skidded to a halt
.

*

Mary & Edie

Edie eased her creased neck forward to look down at the fluffy blonde head resting on her lap. Her skin was damp with fresh, warm tears that had caused iridescent casts against the furrows in her cheeks, her eyes, the color of faded cornflowers, were tinged with red, and soft, forgotten lights were beginning to show in her irises. Edie’s right hand, blue-veined and slightly trembling, was stroking the soft blonde hair. A perfectly manicured hand reached up, covering Edie’s hand. Edie looked down at the hand. Smooth white skin and long cherry red nails. Their hands held on tightly to each other. Mary lifted her head from the warmth of her mother’s lap and kissed her hand. ‘I must do your nails today Mama,’ she whispered.

‘Before you go?’ said Edie gently.

Mary gazed up at her mother, so old and so sweetly worn. Flickers of recognition moved swiftly across Edie’s eyes, delicate memories that she held onto with all her might.

Mary trembled with lost love as she sat on the floor at her mother’s knee. ‘I’m not going Mama. Not without you.’

They looked at each other tenderly. Mother and child, trying to recapture the lost years. It was as if there was nobody there but them as they drifted away together to another time.

Back to a meadow, where flowers grew wild. Where cowslips and primroses curled over the edges of a pale green gingham blanket and the sun shone through the apple trees and
windfalls lay in crisp green abundance, leaves still attached to their stalks. A young beautiful mother and her angelic child, hair as blonde as fresh cream, chasin
g
butterflies with a small yellow net, laughing at the joyous day, then sinking onto the blanket to eat chunks of homemade soft, buttermilk
cakes and drink cups of sweet apple juice. The afternoon
had been
one of perfection. A series of moments so pure, that even if lost for a while, they are carried inside minds for eternity.

The others were beginning to wake from their naps. Dribbling mouths and crusty eyelids. Medication spooned, help to the bathroom or diapers changed. Fay trotted over, looking as if she were getting ready to spit at Mary. Edie reached out her bony arm and jabbed her in the stomach with a stiff finger. Fay squealed and backed away towards the fireplace. Everyone was looking at Edie and Mary, even those with only vacant gazes.

Edie stood up very slowly, uncurling her bent back as she clung on to Mary’s arm. Mary’s other arm was around her mother’s shriveled waist. An anachronistic hush fell across the room.

Edie looked up into Mary’s eyes, then towards the window.

‘This is my child,’ she whispered softly to the sky, ‘she is here to take me home.’

*

Jezzy

Jezzy
again wiped at her top lip. This time, an entire row of perspiration beads had formed along it, like a regiment of soldiers. She thought, fleetingly, that she had never seen the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Born and raised in London and never even seen the sights. Her bottom lip curled into a slight grimace. The only sounds to be heard were the continual drip drip down the walls of the garage. Otherwise it remained desolate. Just like it had been when she had ar
rived
. Good thing really. It was almost eleven. Elevenses. Time for tea. A cup of tea and a Custard Cream. Maybe even two. A well needed, much earned morning break. Mourning in the morning. Not for her, but for someone there. There must be somebody who would miss Rash, maybe
Eddie
? She wondered who would inherit his gold sovereign rings?

Pulling aside a big bolt with the edge her torn jumper,
Jezzy
slipped through a heavy, greasy back door, which led onto the side of the railway tracks. Perfect. Pulling the door silently behind her, leaving the grimy garage behind, black drips on the walls and red drips coming from the hole made by the ignition key that was sticking out of Rash’s neck. Sssh.

*

Adrian

Adrian squinted, opening his eyes just a sliver, as a vibrant light escaped from beneath the window blind, shining directly through his half-closed eyelids. He uncurled his stiff, thin legs, encased in very tight black Armani jeans, from their scrunched position up against the
seat
in front and grimaced. Somehow, he had convinced the person in front of him to allow him to dangle his feet over the edge of their armrest. It was one of those annoying things that ninety nine percent of people would not allow, but Adrian had an innate ability to seek out that rare one percent and charm them into doing anything. Isn’t that what he had done with
Jezzy
? He squinted at the small, square screen stuck into the back of the seat and gazed at the map, all blue except for a tiny, white airplane, hovering somewhere close to the Irish coast. He was only minutes away from England. He needed to pee but the toilets were packed and smelt terrible, despite open bags of coffee shoved into their crevices by thoughtful flight attendants, two of which glided down the aisle, dressed in blood red suits, grinning smugly at the passengers. They gleamed, not a hair out of place despite the ten hour flight, while their wards tried desperately to gain mere morsels of stylish appearance with combs, breath mints and lip salve.

Adrian thought back to the time when flight attendants were referred to as stewards and stewardesses, a time when sexism had yet to break out like a scabby head in full force, back to when he flew to Tenerife or Palma with his mother and father on a tinny BOAC plane.

He must have been very young, because his father was there. He recalled the shiny smiles of the stewards, his mother tipping the little plastic salt and pepper pots into her handbag for souvenirs and how scorchingly hot it felt when he emerged from the narrow plane and climbed down the steps to continental tarmac, never having felt heat like that before.

Lapsing further into nostalgia, Adrian remembered the first bullfight he ever saw, how he had clung onto his father’s sleeve as they sat in a giant, dusty stadium, watching with horror (and at moments with glee) as the fearless matador plunged sword after sword into the taut, hard, muscular neck of the bull, ribbons of bright red blood, running along the body of the bull. Eruptions of Spanish cheers, as the bull drew its dying breath, could be heard all over the world, he was sure of that. His mind gave a little jolt as he remembered
one of the young matadors, resplendent in a stark white shirt, contrasting vividly against the golden skin of his chest and hair as black as that of the bull itself, curling over the back of his collar. He carried a blood red cape over his left forearm and glanced at Adrian as he strode proudly by, a look which made Adrian’s heart quiver, leaving a small,
unidentifiable throb somewhere deep inside his
Y-fronts
.

That night, in an annex off of his parents room in a small hotel in Spain, with sawdust on the floors and lace curtains at the window, gently blowing in the night breeze, Adrian experienced his first orgasm, alone but aided by strange thoughts of the matador. As he gently exploded with a small, strangled yelp onto the frayed linen sheets, he thought for a moment he had died, immediately followed by disgust and
repulsion over what had happened, closely chased by terror as he dreaded what his mother would say if she found out. Reaching for the bottle of juice by his bed, Adrian purposely tipped it all over himself and the sheets. In the morning he would pretend that he had accidentally knocked it over in his sleep, and on that note, he sank down between the sheets,
sticky with sperm and juice and let his thoughts take him back to the matador and his hands drift back to the gentle throb that had seeped back into his penis.

‘Cabin Crew prepare for landing,’ bellowed the Captain.

And just like that
,
Adrian was sucked from his memories and delivered back to another time and another runway.

He looked out of the window, at the grey skies, the drizzle, the chill that England reliably throws across her verdant counterpane. A sunny English day is nothing but a royal tease, not leading to much more than a momentary, hot thrill, a streak of what could be in a country whose majesty began unravelling long ago.

He had returned, but what would he do next?

*