The author, Lisa Scullard - on duty, Ocean & Collins nightclub, Southampton 2008
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Death & The City - the story:
Lara Leatherstone - not her real name, she picked it from an online Porn Star Name Generator - is just trying to live in peace with her daughter 'Junior', with whom she discusses the everyday mundane aspects of life such as zombie console games, changes of identity, and occasionally, the best means of despatching unwary hit-men.
Her regular job as nightclub door supervisor - bouncer, if you're old-school - is the best vantage point from which to deal with contract killers as they pass through the hospitality industry. At least as far as her blackmailers, 'head office' are concerned. It's an amicable arrangement - she stops contract hits from being carried out, and they try to find out what her weak points are, now that her former dissociative psychosis seems to be wearing off. They've tried just about everything - offering designer shoes, plastic surgery, holidays, tree-houses, knitting vouchers - the fact that she already feels like a schizophrenic Barbie doll, with a wardrobe full of possibly knocked-off designer gear bought in online sales next to her uniforms and bar-crawl fancy-dress, means they're not getting very far with that. And it looks like they might need to start recruiting replacements pretty soon, if she can convince them she's fully capable of walking away from the job.
So they try a different tack, and give her a promotion and a wing-man to watch her back. She's not keen on their first choice - but once they agree on a second, it's not just head office's hidden agendas that she's concerned about...
DEATH AND THE CITY (Genre: romance/mystery/crime) is available in these formats - 'Tales Of The Deathrunners' 2-in-1 paperback & hardcover exclusive to Lulu.com, paperbacks from Createspace, Amazon and other outlets such as Barnes & Noble, and in the special extended DEATH & THE CITY:HEAVY DUTY EDITION eBook from Amazon Kindle, Kobo, B&N, Diesel Ebooks, or Smashwords for ePub/Nook/Sony.
Alice heads upstairs with her Ginger Latte and a cream Bath bun, and Connor and I follow presently, after a fight over the last chocolate brownie. He wins by rock-paper-scissors, meaning I get carrot cake instead with my Maple Syrup Latte. As we sit down in the window sofa as before, side-by-side, he splits both in half so we share equally anyway - and I realise he just enjoys winning a fight, over just about anything.
Alice is curled up in a huge armchair in the opposite corner like a Jackanory storyteller, the 'Kitty, Kitty' free Spring catalogue open on her lap. She's texting behind it, obviously adding to her own story with her latest inspiration.
"What did you get?" Connor asks, nodding towards my shopping bag. "And when do I get to see you in it?"
"Never mind," I say indignantly, not sure I can handle this level of conversation in public, under the circumstances. "Something they recommended."
Connor just grins, not in the least bothered. I think he likes seeing me squirm as well.
"You could wear it on our next proper date," he suggests, catching me out.
"When?"
"Sunday," he reminds me. "I did ask already."
I nod, vaguely remembering something to that effect. I feel as though it was someone else having that conversation at the time. Connor watches as I peel off the biker jacket, and after I put it down, he picks it up and finds my wallet in the inside pocket, flipping it open and sliding out my cards and I.D.
"What are you looking for?" I ask, not in the least fazed by his curiosity.
"You," he says, finding my photo I.D. "Here you are. Recognise yourself?"
I glance at my driver's licence in his hand. My hair used to be dark, but it's still me. I have a weird feeling, sort of a settling sensation, as if I've been in an out-of-body experience all morning. Seeing the photograph of myself is the necessary grounding force to bring me back down to Earth.
"That's what I thought." Connor puts it away again. "Transference. Spend too much time focusing on someone else, you lose your own sense of self. Remote influencing acting on the observer, not on the subject. Like Flynn said, you're a psychological sponge. To be honest, I don't think this is the work direction they should be pushing you in, for your own sake."
I shrug.
"They think I'm good at it."
"Yeah, you are, because you forget yourself in the process. I think you should be doing something that reinforces who you are, instead of steals you from yourself."
"Maybe I don't want constant reminders of who I am," I remark.
"Too late," Connor smirks. "Because you've got me backing you up now."
As I look at him, with no idea of what to say, he leans over and gives me a kiss.
"I don't know who I am in this situation," I confide, before he moves away. "Only what I read in other people."
"Nobody knows who they really are," he whispers in return. "You just have to wait and see how you deal with your own reality, not try and predict it, by projecting how you'd cope in someone else's."
He sits back and rests his arm around my waist as he sips his black coffee, glancing out of the window. Now I find myself wondering how he does it. Apart from admitting to his own self-control issues. Even without that, he still has a stronger sense of his own identity than I do.
Also, I don't know how he seems to have all the answers to mine as well. It's as if I've been studied under a microscope. He seems to know fairly certainly what's me and what isn't, and how to keep what is me on the right track. And without all the peer counselling techno-jargon of the sort I'd get from either group therapy, or someone like Warren. Connor just cuts out all the social niceness and politically-correct preliminaries, and gets straight to the point.
"What do you suggest I should be doing instead, then?" I ask, more as a challenge than a concession. Connor smiles to himself and doesn't quite make eye contact.
"I've got a pretty good idea," he admits. "Been trying to talk you into it for a while already."
"Now I reckon you really are just brainwashing me," I tell him, and he chuckles and shakes his head.
"More than you were getting brainwashed before I turned up just now?" he says, looking at me. There's still a slight smirk on his face, but his eyes are saying something else I'm not familiar with. Before I can start trying to break it down into logical conclusions, my phone reminds me what I'm doing here with another update.
Out of the corner of my eye, Alice is now settled with her soup-tureen-sized coffee, gazing out of the window in a Hollywood starlet faraway-thoughts photo-opportunity pose. Probably at least half real, the other half part of her developing current secret life fantasy, acting how she wants to appear to others. Mysterious and thoughtful and aloof. Not empty-headed, gullible and suggestible. That would be me, if I put on any act. The dumb blonde reality would show me up every time. I can't even do cute and scatty, the generally accepted face of internalised self-denial. It's like Martha, adhering to her cultural background in the modern world - watching Alice hang onto her fantasy life in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I don't seem to have any tenacity in comparison. Too willing to let go of ideas, and self, and reality.
I pass my phone to Connor and let him read the incoming update first, in case he considers anything in it hazardous to my allegedly ongoing identity crisis, or at least to allow him to pre-empt anything in it that is. He scrolls through, before handing it back.
"Reminds me of a documentary monologue by someone not otherwise known for their introspection," he remarks. "Reaching around for something deep and meaningful to say when you know they get their groceries delivered by Harrods and unpacked by their house staff, and all their laundry done by a hotel service. The most they see of a kitchen is when they go to look for a corkscrew."
I nod, familiar with that type of entertainment in the Media. Give a celebrity a camera and send them off to survive for a week in a Council flat, or working in a fast-food joint. Suddenly they come over all philosophical and philanthropist, not realising they're going to be showing themselves up as having thought nothing much about anything for the last decade or more. Other than their pole-position ranking on the red carpet, and their page number in the tabloids. But then the broadcasters probably don't see it either, being part of the same bubble. It's hard to say what is intentionally ironic in the Media nowadays. With so many people wanting to challenge the public perception of themselves, and ending up reinforcing it, it's no wonder there's an endless supply of it about. Running vicious circles around themselves as they try to stay in the public eye, and yet be more to the public eye than just eye candy. Exploiting anything of any humanitarian value within their own comfort zone, as if the rest of the world isn't aware of humanitarian issues, in order to somehow become more human themselves. There is something vampiric about it, eternal life by the suffering of others. I can't remember a time celebrity pressure ever changed the licensing laws at The Plaza, so why they think it should change laws and policies in foreign countries is a mystery. Probably easier to get public support for, than carrying no formal I.D, coked out of their heads, and drunkenly trying to bluff their way past a nightclub door supervisor (who's already having a crap night) into a gay strip bar.
Probably the reason they do it, I muse to myself, re-opening the file Connor has just browsed on my phone. Proving they're more than those sweaty alcoholics falling off kerbs and out of taxis in London's West End, where they're mostly known for wasting police time, and that getting on TV in places like The Gambia is better than being seen in Groucho's. As if central Africa is a posh yob's club outside of SIA and the licensing law's jurisdiction, where they don't have to adhere to a dress code and not swear. A combination of edgy open-air rock festival celebrity dive, and minimalist detox holiday for the rich. The opposites of Robin Hood, feeding their self-image and ego off the poor locals.
Connor was bang on the money in his response to her internet blog post. There's a lot of I feel that… opening sentences, fairly typical of someone with nothing real to say and a lot to speculate about. Speculating about the risks of underestimating the dangers that could be ahead, and keeping her identity secret, the thrill of a new challenge in uncharted waters, and the responsibility of such a task being given to her. And about what levels in society she must now be expected to mingle and familiarize herself with, whether her acting skills are up to standard in order to fit in, and not arouse suspicion. All acutely contrived clichés that could be applied to any new job, from Benefits Fraud Investigator, to Mystery Shopper, to Government Advisor On Education. She's got the skill of weaving stereotyped statements together vaguely enough to attract unqualified attention, not quite Mills & Boon standard, but definitely bored online bingo chat-room fodder, or Miss Haversham's Raffia Mafia audience. But still with nothing substantial or detailed or concrete enough to be termed a work of serious insight. More a fashion-victim of her own storylines, following whichever path she notes gains her the most attention. Maybe increasing her blog followers today by me and a couple of idle police monitors is spurring her on to write more about anything that comes into her head, fulfilling what she perceives is her public's demand.
Remote influencing by audience. Like offering a reward for information, but not specifying either the information or the reward. The speaker knows a reward is forthcoming for filling their airtime in a worthy way, and the Scheherezades all come out of the woodwork. Kiss and tell or kill and tell, it's all filling the same awkward silence there would otherwise be instead, if everyone kept everything about themselves confidential.
I put my phone away and lean on Connor as he pulls me towards him gently, my brain wearing me out as it tries to smash holes in anything that looks like a cliché in my own present situation. Even not saying anything, I'm glad he's here, because so far he's the only person who can listen to my silences and seems to understand them.
"I think she just likes the sound of her own voice, in any given format," he murmurs. "This is just the outlet she has when there's nobody in front of her to share it with. Share whatever fantasy she's currently living in."
"Speaking her internal voice out loud, like internet Tourette's Syndrome," I sigh in return. "That's why it's so weird. It sounds like someone thinking aloud, but not with anything genuinely on their mind. Clutching at straws for things to say."
"Do you have an inner voice like that in your collection?" he asks me.
"I have an inner narrator on constant watch whose job it is to wrangle all the others, so mostly I hear that one trying to keep track of everything, and who are the real people and who are the ones inside my head," I admit. "I'm sure I did have a voice like hers, when I was about four, and thought that the Christmas Tree Fairy was a real job prospect for the future."
Connor just grins.
"Aha," he remarks. "Christmas Tree Fairy."
"What about it?"
"Nothing. Just something I was thinking about earlier."
I get another text, this time from Niall Taylor. Fancy a drink b4 work 2nite? X
"Is it Thursday today?" I ask Connor. "I thought you lot were picking him up?"
Connor glances at the message, frowns and gets his own phone out, pressing Autodial on his last caller to ring head office. He keeps the speaker on Privacy due to the public surroundings, but considering the clamour of shoppers, and chatter of other people on mobile phones, there would be little chance of being overheard in the cacophony.
"What's the latest on Taylor?" he asks. He listens for a few moments and then hangs up without saying anything else.
"Girlfriend withdrew her complaint," he says, abruptly. "Doesn't sound good. Try to avoid him, unless you want to end up in his next photo album with her."
"Is he off the list, does that mean?" I ask.
"Unless he picks up a contract any other time he's bored, and looking for extra cash," Connor tells me, and drains the last of his coffee. "But when I'm bored, I can always pick him up for something minor and make him an appointment with the rubber-glove team. Along with the rest of those perverts you work with. Keep away from him."
He looks at his watch as he replaces his cup back on the table.
"I've gotta go, they want me back on site," he says. "I'll catch you after work tonight. Don't buy too many more shoes to go with that outfit."
He gives me a kiss and squeezes my hand, before he gets up and heads out.
"Yeah, be careful," I mutter to myself.
I put my phone away without replying to Taylor. I don't know whether I have any loyalties at all at the moment, never mind divided ones.
Alice starts texting again. On top of everything else, now I'm going to have to wade through more of her Twaddle looking for anything useful. At least this is where having been a blackmailer comes in handy. If anything has any leverage value, my past self will recognise it. But not necessarily for the reasons head office want me to.
I find the free catalogue in my shopping bag and flick through it idly, my rebel streak finding the shoe pages and skimming through them. Designer hi-jacked styles in PU and faux suede look attractively photographed but fail to thrill me much, seeing as most of what I've already collected is the real thing, and was cheaper on iBay and official sales than they're charging for their brand new plastic rip-off copies. Although I do get an idea or two for customising shoes, including corsage decorations and big satin bows, the kind of thing not suitable for work in any context. Sitting-down shoes. The most walking they do is between taxi and front door.
My phone vibrates again with the latest update, and I'm doubtful how long the battery will last under the onslaught of all the attention. It's a Tweak update.
I'm looking at my first assignment now. Tall, dark, attractive, Sicilian - possible Mafia connections. My heart is racing. He doesn't know he's being watched - just walking his Great Dane like he hasn't a care in the world. Not like I imagined a murderous crime lord. I'll have to keep my emotions cool and distant - otherwise I could be in a different sort of danger…
I look up at Alice quizzically. She too is perusing shoes in the catalogue, tapping her phone against her bottom lip and smiling to herself. She seems to have another idea and starts texting again, entirely in a world of her own.
Fuckanory, my inner teenage critic announces. She's not just a slightly brainwashed attention-seeker. She's a liar.
Head office must have something evident to want her followed, otherwise I'm on a pointless mission to read her FBI assassin fan-fiction while she sits blogging in coffee shops, like a younger Rowling planning to harvest the souls of a generation with her thinly-disguised Blyton meets Pratchett mash-ups. I text head office. CAN YOU BACK TRACE THE CASH SHE PAID IN KITTY KITTY? They reply immediately with: Will do at point of banking. I put my phone away and turn to the underwear pages, looking for a distraction. It's bad enough that I have my own alternate realities to contend with in everyday life. Now I'm going to have to deal with at least three more of Alice's - the reality, the brainwashed cult identity, and the escapist fiction...
A staff meeting at The Zone prior to opening reveals that after tonight, those of us on loan from The Plaza will be heading back there (to the sound of much groans and moans by those not looking forward to returning to Mgr Diane's clutches), as enough new door staff have now been recruited for the venue to run on. And also a heads-up about a fire drill Evac at some point tonight, as the Fire Brigade are due to check our new alarm system and evacuation procedures.
I notice already that Hurst and Jag Nut are absent, replaced by new recruits, and also Niall Taylor, which gives me a small amount of relief. So it's pretty much only me, Animal, Cooper and Salem left of the original reinforcements, that I'm on familiar terms with. Cooper is looking kind of deflated, like he can't wait to leave and get back to his comfortable Plaza, with its dozens of secret links, corners and offices he can hide in. And Salem can't wait to ditch the neon pink Zone front-door hi-vis, which he says is only suitable for Downtown Willy's gay comedy club, opposite The Dog Star, where I shot camp hit-man Phil Preston the other day.
The new guys, in contrast, look serious and overly-professional, like an Airfix model Army. Probably recruited straight from the membership list of Heath Gardner's gym and sauna, then vetted by Mgr Stacie's eye for sun-bed use and good dental work. Hurst would call them shirt-fillers - new licence-holders, no old school experience in any of them. Just the one goofy-looking guy, who is probably the token First-Aider, perhaps from leisure centre pool life-guarding or the Territorial Army. Solange is flirting relentlessly with most of them, while Pascaline ignores everyone, texting on her phone in a corner, or vanishing to the toilets to make calls. Apparently those two girls are staying on here. Solange is happy, with so many Action Man dolls around her to choose from, while Pascaline just looks pissed off. She used to do Downtown Willy's front doors with Phil Preston. Funny, I haven't heard anything about who might have been sent to work there, as replacements. Mostly the two managers stand on the front doors of the club, as per their SIA licence-holder status entitlement, so Phil and Pascaline were the eye candy. Whose eye - it's hard to say.
Mgr Stacie looks happy with her own new eye candy, anyway. I imagine it won't be long before Mgrs Diane and Melanie are sneaking up here, with their camera phones, or arranging V.I.P. staff nights out to The Zone in order to Facebuddy the new door supervisor talent. Mind you, most of the Zone's barmaids also look like supermodels, so it'll be a full claws-out competition if they set their sights on anyone working here. Would be a relief to the likes of Ryan, Joel and Harry though, to get a bit of breathing space for themselves. Doorman Harry's actually married, although you wouldn't think so to look at him, and by the way he behaves. Apparently his wife's a geriatric nurse who likes to pole-dance when she's drunk. My psychosis has a problem with trying to picture this, having never met her face-to-face. I don't know if it means she's a pole-dancing retired elderly nurse herself - or a nurse who treats older persons, and I don't like to ask. Either would be believable - Harry has celebrity crushes on everyone from Shakira and the Olsen twins to Tina Turner, Ruby Wax and Joan Rivers. His only regret in life is he's too young ever to have met Mae West. Bit of a strange lad at times.
I think I've missed his greetings of announcing he wants to punch someone, over the last week. It's all a bit uptight and image-conscious here in The Zone.
Cooper hangs around the end of the bar, chatting idly with me as the shift starts on my bar island position, and I have a weird sense of him looking for his own reality check, which I can't help noticing I don't have a copy of on me tonight. He seems a bit too random, a bit too escapist in mood, like someone's been trying to pin him down of late. I can imagine who that might be. He seems to want to talk work, and general doorman gossip, in a way I realise makes him feel more secure in his senior door role. Even though he's several years younger than me and I've been doing the job twice as long as him, I'm always polite enough not to point this out. Not to his face.
"Have the others gone back to The Plaza already?" I ask instead, encouraging him with my lack of inside knowledge on current migratory door staff events.
"Hurst and Niall are back there tonight, Jag Nut went to his uncle's funeral today, so he's on annual leave," Cooper divulges. He accepts a glass of water from one of the bar staff, and looks at the swirling bubbles from the tap suspiciously, putting it down on the bar and watching to see if they settle.
"What happened to his uncle?" I ask. "I heard it was something sudden."
"Old landmine. He was clearing No-Man's-Land ex-security checkpoints with his team abroad. Tripped a twenty-year-old roadside bomb. Unlucky sod. Puts me off the thought of going to war for real." Cooper shakes his head as a thin cloudy layer of scum gradually forms on the surface of his glass of water. "What the Hell is that stuff in the water, are we really drinking this shit?"
"Might be residue from the glass washer tablets," I point out.
"Don't think I want to drink that either, the last thing my intestines need is a diamond-like sparkle to them," Cooper remarks, and feels in his pockets around his phone and keys for change. "Another crappy tight-wad venue that won't give its staff free drinks. Do you want a can of pop? It's all right, I'll sort you out."
I accept a cola and we both snap our tins open in front of a passing Mgr Stacie's cold nod of disapproval. Cooper glugs half of his in one gulp in order to summon a deliberately mutinous burp.
"Lara," he teases, blaming me humorously. "Gross."
I know it's immature, but I grin anyway. The situation needs lightening up generally.
"Doesn't matter, we're out of here for good at the end of tonight," he reminds me. "Might as well do what we like. Have a wander. It's this bunch of stuffed shirts who have to impress the managers now, not us. I'm off to see if there's anything not nailed down that would look good in the boot of my car."
He grins at me and saunters off. This time I know he's joking. Everything here is nailed down.
I head up to the D.J. capsule overlooking the club, and find Crank in a similar rebellious mood, eating Chinese out of the cartons, listening to Santana, and chatting on Waffle on the venue's 'Free Whiffy' wireless internet, while R&B chart trash is piped out of the mixing desk into the club.
"Thought you were off to Vegas," I greet him, as he offers me a salt-and-pepper battered king prawn.
"Decided to take the double or nothing route," he says. "Baccarat at 11:00 p.m. If I win I get to take a plus one to Vegas and fly First Class. Got any annual leave? You could be my close protection security for my million dollars."
"Sounds like fun," I remark, washing down the prawn with a gulp of cola.
"I'm serious," he says, eyebrows raised. "I'm planning on taking my winning trip in time for the Dance D.J. convention. If I win that in Vegas, I get a trip to Miami to perform at the Latino Beach Ball. From there, it's a short hop to Trinidad and Tobago to go house-hunting. Come fly with me. It'll be fun. Get you out of this dive for a few days."
I chuckle.
"Just show me the tickets, and I'm all yours," I joke, taking another prawn as he holds out the container.
"Deal," he grins.
As he withdraws his hand holding the empty container, and stretches out to drop it on the D.J. console beside his feet, which are resting up on it, the sleeve of his grey marl No Fear sweatshirt hikes up. Before I turn to leave, my brain has registered a huge diamond Rolex on his wrist, high-roller style.
Imagining things, I tell myself. Not that I'd even have recognised it, from some P. Diddy promo or anything like that…
...Crypto's impressionable barmaids have undergone a transformation overnight. There's so much fake tan they look like they lost a peanut-butter vs. gravy-browning fight. Primarni's underwear section must have sold out of jello-bras. Blingtastic Booty has definitely done a good deal on shoulder-dusting dangly earrings and clip-on hair extensions today. It looks like it was buy the earrings, get the Porn Star locks free. Waists are cinched in, hipsters are low and diamanté-spangled thongs are pulled high. Pierced plastic nails are in serious danger of gouging the bar, as change is gathered and counted.
Sadie, whose weekend off bar-duty for a family wedding last night meant she missed the newcomer, has come in for a drink to gloat about 'being virtually a bridesmaid' and to show off photographs of herself yesterday in her designer frock. Upstaging the bride evidently not a concept in her Universe. And has turned up rather tragically for her in her occasional anti-fashion-statement baggy brown trousers, innocent-farm-girl lumpy sweater, khaki Moon boots, Michael Caine National Health glasses, and Detective Columbo dirty mac. Which she wears when she wants to make everyone else look tarty, and herself look suitably student-like, interesting and artsy (and to get compliments about how she scrubs up well in a posh dress and heels when she shows off the photographic evidence). To be faced on her arrival with a red carpet effort by the other girls, and a new Adonis in a black uniform on the door team. A clamp could not have kept her mouth shut when it dropped open in shock. I wonder whether to warn her that walking around in public dressed like a tramp is quite hazardous at the moment, but Elaine runs around from behind the bar and gives me a massive hug and conspiratorial giggle.
"I've just looked at Sadie's Twaddle update, and she's posted on it that the Crypto Club has gone really downhill all of a sudden and not worth a visit," she confides. "Look at her - just because she thought the object of attention was going to be her tonight, and she missed the whole Joel Doorman boat. It's like she just fell off the Moon. I think a disciplinary might be in order for slagging off her place of employment on a public website, don't you?"
"Yeah, but you know the people who understand Sadie," I reply, unable to hold back a smile myself. "It'll only attract more people here wanting to know what's wound her up, so they can wind her up even more about it."
"Very true, very true, but I don't want to keep encouraging her," Elaine agrees. "I can just imagine that she'll have one glass of wine then go home to change, and come back wearing a La Senza baby-doll nightdress and Perspex heels with fairy-lights in. Then get as drunk as a skunk and pretend she can't get home to suck up to the door staff for a lift. I've a good mind to send her down to the cellar saying she's got to re-set all the rat-traps."
"No, she'll just milk the attention and pity for it afterwards. Let her do her worst with the Porn Star outfit and drinking like a skunk, it'll be funnier," I say. "Wow, it looks like the make-up counter Oscars in here. Is that Charmaine Lysander wearing a basque? Blimey. Jag Nut is really losing his street cred to this new guy."
"That's him over there," says Elaine, pointing to the console, where D.J. Sammy is talking to the newcomer. "Just graduated in Sports Science, ex-Rugby boy. You might have spotted Chelsea and Yolanda and the other Gucci Cheerleaders, lurking around territorially trying to make our barmaids miserable."
I look at the new guy. Broad shoulders, short dirty-blond hair, twinkly eyes when he smiles, Yankee-style sports good looks - very 'Nick Stokes' from early original CSI. Enough to bring the hardest chav girl to her knees (and not because she's about to grovel either). Funnily enough, I already know him.
"Oh, Joel," I muse. "Joel Hardy. Yeah, I worked with him when I was covering The Galloping Grimaldi Bar on Tuesdays in West Village last summer. He's nice, I had an unrequited crush on him."
"Really?" Elaine's eyes light up like Blackpool Illuminations. "Oh, good, you can introduce me properly!"
I spot Elaine's hidden agenda just as she grabs my arm, and is about to lead me protesting to the D.J. stand, when I look across helplessly and see Joel already turning and striding our way.
"I think he's going to do that for you," I say, relieved.
"Hey Lara." Joel grins his easy grin, and greets me with a kiss on the cheek. "I thought that was you I saw coming in. You look well. How have you been?"
"Yeah, good. Busy," I answer, smiling in spite of myself. Joel was, after all, one of the few genuinely nice guys I had ever worked with. Everyone who met him liked him. He didn't have any of the arrogance, or stand-offishness or attitude, that seemed to go with looks and a door badge. I try to block any traitorous feelings of glee that he noticed me come into the club. "How about you?"
"Yeah, well, finished Uni, looking for a day job, the usual," he says wryly. "Are you working here now?"
"I was, but not any more," I say. "I'm down at The Plaza. You know, the nightclub mall."
"Yeah, I heard they don't like us Heavy Duty doormen because we get paid more than the in-house staff."
"Yeah, tell me about it," I agree with feeling, having felt plenty of backstabbing going on in the last eight months. "I'm just calling in to see my best friend here. You must have been introduced to Elaine already, staff manager and strict mistress of Crypto."
"Of course," he grins, but she doesn't get the chance to do more than smile coquettishly. "I better leave you ladies to catch up. I'll give you a ring after the weekend, Lara, we should catch up properly. Go for coffee or something."
"Yeah, that would be nice," I say, not quite sure I believe what I'm hearing, as the barmaids' ears all point my way like little radar dishes. "See ya later."
He leans over and gives me another kiss on the cheek, before walking away with almost an apologetic grin over his shoulder. Elaine thumps me on the arm.
"Did you just get asked on another date, right in front of me?" she asks, in mock horror. "You strumpet. I'm shocked."
"He said coffee, not nookie," I say, trying to get her to lower her voice, as all the female bar staff seem about to aim their psychic W.M.D.s at me.
"It means the same thing, to a man!" Elaine hisses.
"Not to Joel, he is actually just a nice guy," I reply. Hoping that I'm right. Otherwise I might be put in the position of having to choose, I think, almost making myself laugh out loud. Just picture it. Me, the psychopath. Getting to choose between Connor, who knows everything about me already, and is a good kisser, and Mr. Genuine Nice Guy With The Normal Life of the kind I would like to escape into one day, when I've finished with this hit-man lark. It's a nice thought, thinking I might have options like that. But not the kind of thing that happens every day. Most usually, in my world, coffee means coffee. With milk and two sugars, if I'm lucky. I say so to Elaine.
"Goodness me, I should be so lucky as youare," says Elaine. "You've just got men falling over you, haven't you? First P.C. Connor asking me for your number, then Niall Taylor trying to booty call you over to the casino last night, and now somehow my hunky new doorman already knows you and wants to talk to you alone, not in front of me, your best friend. Whatever next, the head doorman of The Plaza ringing you at all hours demanding First Aid for his special needs that only you can fulfil?"
"Yeah, actually Cooper already does that. I get about six missed calls or questionably necessary texts every night from him," I admit wretchedly. "Special needs sums him up pretty well, I'll remember that."
"What about Mr. Blonde Venice Beach you were telling me about too?"
"Oh, he just wants to fiddle with my car. He's got it at the moment actually."
"Sounds like he wants to fiddle with you, you mean." Elaine's look of comedy horror is one I want to frame and hang on my kitchen wall to cheer me up whenever I'm doing the washing-up. "I think it's very selfish of you hogging all these men, you should learn to share like a nice girl."
"I have no idea what you mean - none of them have got my name tattooed on their arm or put a diamond on me," I tease her. "It's just men being random, fishing for random encounters, like they do with all women. I'm sure there's far more deluded women than me who think they're way deeper into relationships with these guys than I am. Anyway, how dare you, Niall lives with his girlfriend. He was talking about her last night as well."
"Ooh, looking for sympathy or your trust that nothing untoward will happen, I bet," says Elaine. "You better make sure he doesn't get you drunk ever. Sounds like a very naughty boy to me."
"Cheers. Nothing's plain or innocent to you, is it?" I ask, realising I sound like I'm arguing with my own prejudices about men's agendas.
"Well, I don't think you've looked in the mirror lately," says Elaine, tapping my sternum. "It's not just the fact hunky Joel said hello to you that my staff are giving you their bestest evils right now. You look like Paris Hilton with boobs. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it, because men are starting to notice, and women are starting to get jealous."
...Something like seventeen customers were ejected or voluntarily walked out. Meaning I have a collection of people's details to write up at the end of the night, on scraps of paper torn out of doormen's notebooks and handed to me. Having to translate descriptions into correct report-speak things like: Fat Buddha white polo shirt, or Grey jumper greasy ginger chav, and White Snoop Dogg torn back pocket in fight & was commando not pretty. The African doormen's notes are more polite and say Gentleman blue shirt white sneakers, or Lady blonde pink dress flowers red shoes attractive. While the Polish guys like Axwel say useful things like: Yellow tee shirt drug dealer barr'd from Crash, and Short man FCUK shirt bootleg pimp razor bladez in shoe fake £20 notez stolen driving licence white yellow powder on chin (cokain or wiz) lot of pillz found in pocket three week ban.
Luckily I spotted this one and called police on site by radio, just as the delightful-sounding individual was leaving the mall so they could stop and question him. I mentioned to Niall, now acting deputy head doorman, that Doorman Trebor could use a quick chat about the two types of ban - three months or life - no soft Equal Opportunities alternatives for customers under five foot three. Even if they are socially repressed, and requiring an understanding light admonition not often seen in law courts. Niall thought this was funny, and said he'd suggest the idea to Cooper about introducing the mini-ban of three weeks for short audacious criminals.
I'm sitting in V.I.P. after work where the tables are clean enough to lean the report book and First Aid book on, writing up this epic and drinking Jungle Juice out of the bottle. The cackling and squawking of the barmaids keeps the boys' attention occupied.
Manager Damien approaches me holding out his phone.
"Police want a quick word," he says, with a look on his face that translates it as: 'This better be properly documented or I'll be hearing from the company directors at Cobra Star Leisure blah blah blah…'
I nod and take the phone.
"Hello," I say, tucking it into my shoulder and still scribbling, crossing out the word 'Buddha' where I've accidentally copied part of a customer's description verbatim from Doorman Harry's scrawl.
"Hey Trouble," head office greet me. "We've got a target for you down at Origins Bar, closing at 4:15 a.m. Kaavey Canem."
"Wasn't he your walkie-talkie man?" I ask, hoping Damien is getting his money's worth out of eavesdropping, while he's pretending to watch the bar staff tidy up.
"Yar. He's working with Igor on the front doors tonight. We've got a special request on him, you'll need specific arms for it. If you can get yourself to Sin Street you'll find what you need in their stock-room."
"That's only an hour," I say, looking at my watch. "If you give me five minutes to write this fight up and get back to my car, you can call me on my phone and give me the details."
"No problem." They hang up and I put the phone down on the table. I slide it in Damien's general direction, without trying to play at calling him over, knowing that he was already paying attention. He strolls over and retrieves it.
"Everything all right?" he queries, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, just something they're concerned about generally, nothing to do with the venue," I sigh.
I can see Damien isn't easily convinced, but that's his problem. My problem is, what excuse am I going to come up with for going to Sin Street, and poking around in their cellars?
...I slide the car sideways into a parking space on the snow and get out, pulling the Skellington hood over my head and face, and lock the car, catching my reflection in the car window. I look determined and businesslike and efficient through the eyeholes, like I know too well what I'm doing, sulky and resentful or not. I always surprise myself that I don't look desperate or anxious. Why don't I look scared of people, of what I'm about to confront? Maybe because I'm wise to the fact that the scariest things are inside my own head. I look like someone who has read a hundred psychology books and understood them all, and turned my own mind inside out applying all of the rules and finding the answers. I look like I know what I'm thinking and why. I look like I gave the laws of nature a fair chance, analysed all of the options and possibilities, and I'm just here to iron out a small kink in it, change a light bulb or battery to set the order of the Universe back to rights, replace a fuse. Not so much as even rewire a plug or do any painting. Something so minor that anyone with the right knowledge could have done it. Nothing to get dressed up for or flash any special identification, or make a big song and dance about. Nothing to advertise on the side of a Transit van, or open a shop for, or launch a website to tout for business on. I look like I'm just stopping off to buy an extension lead that no-one else has thought of on my way to a party, which will turn out to be crucial later on. Even on a bad day, I look like I know what I'm doing and that's the reason it's me there doing it. I intimidate myself, seeing that in the mirror every day. I think I'm the person who expects more of myself than everyone else expects of me. And that's the reason I expect to look nervous, because I FEEL nervous, on the inside. I just don't understand why it doesn't show. I guess something in my past taught me to hide emotions.
I pass a postman as I head towards the City Centre Council offices, swinging my baseball bat cheerfully. We both grin and say good morning. He thinks I'm walking home late from a party. I think he's a postman. It's all good. Just goes to show, there could be a postal services employee tied up, minus his clothes in the back of a van somewhere, and someone was about to get a very special delivery. Anyone can put on a uniform. It's the conduct of the person wearing it that counts towards its reputation. Postal uniform at 7:30 a.m. indicates postal worker going about their business. Skellington outfit at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday indicates party straggler. We share a humorous thought about the snow falling around us but don't voice it. It would be too much like stating the obvious. The eye language says it all, the snowflakes melting into his sideburns, the flurries stirred up by the loops of my bat as I swing it. Snow in April. Wicked.
I look up at the roof of the Council offices. So, he's up there now, with the seagulls and pigeons, thinking about his career and how it had led to this. Inflating himself psychologically, whether he was compensating for something deficient elsewhere or not. He's earned the right to be up there, in his world and his life and in his mind. He's styled his life and image and personality around it, seamlessly meeting his destiny, waiting patiently 300 feet above the nearest decent toilet - while 300 feet above him he IS the nearest decent toilet for the sky denizens that like to crap on the town from a great height. He's got through eight cans of Red Akuma just to get through the night, and will be lucky if he doesn't have a stroke driving home afterwards. Who'd be a hit-man, I ask you?
He doesn't look very comfortable as I step over the parapet. Looks like cramps, possibly a dead leg. A nice massage would sort him out. Shame I'm not in therapist mode. Could have made a good future customer contact. He looks itchy and cold and tired and that snowfall wasn't on his agenda either. How do you expect a clear shot 300 feet below you through snow? Any normal person would have gone home. He obviously wants this one badly. Either for his ego or his reputation. The cold obviously means higher likelihood of his gun jamming through metal contraction anyway. He'll have frostbite, cramps, probably break his collarbone if the gun actually fires with the kind of recoil it would give him, and the dead leg would mean he won't be able to make a nice clean escape. He'll be a sitting duck, 300 feet above a dead or injured body, with the police looking speculatively upwards while he tries to rub pins and needles out of every limb. If he had a plan before, I'd have loved an insight onto it.
I cut the City Council flag down with my penknife, wondering why he hadn't thought of using it to keep himself dry and a bit warmer, then I walk up behind him. I don't hesitate, exactly - I just sort of wait a moment. Maybe it's just me. I always speculate about this. Natural selection. A tiger never attacks from the front. The survivors are those with eyes in the backs of their heads.
I look over my shoulder. A seagull is watching me from the parapet, and I put my finger to the lips - or rather teeth - of my Skellington mask. I look back at the sniper lying at my feet. He hasn't looked up, and I'm disappointed. I've yet to meet another doorman with eyes in the back of his head. Some of them even seem to have problems with the ones in the front. I guess it's me that's waiting to meet my match, at the end of the day. When one of these guys finally turns around and clocks me standing behind him, I'll have met my match. Then again, I probably don't deserve that, doing what I'm doing. Maybe no-one's coming for me. Maybe I'm alone in the Universe. I'll get to the end having erased all the undesirables from the List, having made no friends out of it - just done what was expected of me, finished the job and gone home...
...Work later on is pretty much the same. Drunk people, bad dancing, good dancing, drunk people wanting to high-five, drunk people not wanting to go home, one drunk gay male who runs down the Fire Exit away from us just like a cartoon Brian from My Parents Are Aliens. Perhaps he thinks just coming out of the closet wasn't enough to convince people, so he had to invent an extremely camp way of walking and running just in case there was any doubt left.
I spend most of the night working out my shoe budget, when I'm not comparing passing male DNA with the Fridge. It's true. There's some bizarre thing that means when and where you're looking for it, like out in a popular nightclub, it isn't there, but at the checkout of B&Q, or in a fast-food restaurant car-park, or delivering your milk, there'll be a totally random occurrence of a TDH, as Elaine would say. For every polo-shirt-wearing hobbit and Gollum in the club, there are five wannabe supermodels in their best club-wear, vying for attention, without really noticing the kind of men they're competing for the attention of. If women really took notice of where the fit men are, they'd wear their fake tan, hairpieces, UV halter necks and Lycra hot-pants to the nearest fishing tackle shop, or golf course during the day.
I doubt that the Fridge was ever a doorman. He looks the type of guy who never needed the personal validation, to prove anything to himself. He'd only have to look in the mirror. I guess I'm as fickle as the door supervisor stereotype says we are. It's the perfect job for window-shopping, so long as it's only looking and not handling - not so perfect for anything more involved though. Leads to complications of the sort Jag Nut is hoping to escape by keeping his new venue quiet.
If anything, at least I no longer have any emotional insecurity about Jag Nut, and it's also walked all over my traitorous hormones around Connor. In the space of a week I've gone through three perspective shifts without a distinct personality change, which is an improvement for me. I'm still a certain incarnation of myself, but the other people I see are not determined as a threat, or fixed in a specific role, from my point of view. I used to view others as stronger - now it seems the reverse is starting to be the case. Maybe it's the List, and personality reinforcement or changes go with the kills, as I thought before. It's like a transaction, every time - what I lose is exchanged for something new in return. Maybe what I'm killing off is aspects of my dysfunctional personalities, and gaining one that's designed to survive the new kind of world emerging from the work being done on it. I hope it's not an ego I'm gaining. Ego sabotages almost as much as insecurity does.
Both Axwel and Niall Taylor are working, with Niall as temporary deputy head doorman. I'm the only one who obviously knows Eric Dylan won't be making a return to his job, that is, if he hasn't magically resurrected himself. I make a mental note to ask head office if Special Unit made a successful recovery from the vehicle impound. I'm pleased to see both guys, and equally they seem pleased to see me, which is nice and feels like something normal is happening for once.
Elaine rings me as I'm getting back into my car afterwards, and requests my attendance at Crypto. She's going to sort out the Jag Nut Fan Club and wants a witness. Oh dear. Well – it'll save ME the trouble…
...Stalkers are a huge source of entertainment at work, and make up quite a large percentage of the usual customers and staff. There's nothing more entertaining than following the desperate exploits and tribulations of the romantically deluded. Which kind of explains the enduring quality of most traditional fairytales. I've always been able to spot them as I was partly raised by one, my Godmother, during my impressionable teens, and it was only when I was seventeen and released into the wild (left home) that I realised it wasn't normal behaviour for women. I shortly found that some men did it too. It took me until I was in my thirties to find it funny though.
That answered my dress code problems for the evening though, and I text back to say I would catch up with the group later, between 11:00 p.m. and midnight. I pick out one of my Jason Friday 13th outfits, and cook my daughter's tea while making sure she does her homework.
"Are you taking the piss?" Uniform asks me, when I open the front door.
"No, I'm going to a party afterwards as Jason Vorheese," I say. "What, too slutty for you?"
"Do you realise nobody has ever seen you out of either uniform or fancy dress?" he points out, leading the way back to the squad car. "If you ever get caught you'll be labelled the Costume Party Serial Killer."
"My boots have got real blood on," I tell him. "They're my old work ones. Customer had his throat cut with a bottle. I saved his life, you know."
"Yes, you must be faced with a permanent conflict of interests in your professional life," he says, sourly. "Which imaginary friends are you out with tonight?"
"All of them," I grin.
He shakes his head wryly. He doesn't trust me. He was one of the officers who picked me up when I was sectioned. He's got a cynical look about him anyway, which reminds me slightly of the Batman actor Christian Bale - on his guard, brooding internally about something.
"What are they telling you to do now, the voices in your head?" he mutters, as I do up my seatbelt and slam the passenger door.
"Always follow the instructions on the packet," I say, which is the first random phrase I think of. He just looks at me curiously before starting the ignition, and doesn't say anything else as we set off. I wonder what particular significance that phrase has to him, before remembering that very few men read the instructions on anything before use… particularly on packets of condoms...
...The pub crawl is still in the early-comers stage, with Mgr Lenny in his Sumo wrestler fat-suit adorned with fake Hawaiian garlands from his barmaid sidekicks, Desdemona and Lynette, whose grass skirts will probably have moulted quite a bit by the end of the night. Desdemona, who likes to be called Des or Desmond (but freaks if you call her Mona) is Jason Green's lift home from the other night, one of my favourite stalkers to watch. When she has a crush on a guy she rounds up every other girl with a crush on him and forms a little fan club so that she doesn't look like the psychotic obsessive that she is, giving her the opportunity to first endear herself to and then slag off the other fan club members, so that she looks like the best of the bunch. She goes for the real tough unapproachable guys because she likes a challenge. Her approach is to mollycoddle and mother and gently bully them, usually giving them a girl's nickname in contrast to her boy's one - I think she calls Jason 'Josephine' - possibly on the premise that behind every bastard is a closet Mummy's Boy wanting attention. In some cases she could be right. I wonder briefly what she'd make of Connor, who hates everybody. She'd probably think she'd met the love of her life. Connor would probably think it was his worst nightmare after his own mother. I have a feeling Connor's relationship with his mother probably ended as Korean dog food.
Lynette is Desdemona's regular sidekick, and seems to be her accessory of choice because she has huge boobs she can be persuaded to show off, and no personality, meaning that boys stare hypnotized at her cleavage while Des does all the talking and brainwashing. Lynette also drinks more than Des, probably because Des's gob is too busy opening and shutting with noises coming out to keep up. Consequently, Des scoffs at Lynette for being a lush and waking up in random guy's beds, while appearing less loose and available in comparison. It's all comparative, when you work on people's minds that way. Few girls seem to realise that once you're alone with a guy, he's judging you and your behaviour alone, not your friends' behaviour compared to yours. Unless he's starting to look at them more favourably now he has to put up with just the one you.
"Oh, my life, you look scary," Des greets me as I arrive. And then, predictably, "Where's all the other door staff?"
"Dunno, I don't talk to them," I shrug. Then add, not too kindly, "Probably having quality time with their wives and girlfriends."
"I don't see why anyone would want to, they're none of them that bright, are they?" she says. "It's not exactly a job for an intelligent person, is it?"
She seems to have forgotten who she's talking to, but I turn away without gratifying her unwelcome remarks. I give Mgr Lenny a hug instead and ask him what his poison is. Des gets her mobile out, joining me at the bar, and starts texting and Facebuddying all the door staff guys, harassing and abusing them, sharing any replies she gets with Lynette like trophies, while Lenny's triple Tequila Sunrise is assembled. My mobile vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out with dread expecting a text from head office, but instead it's Doorman Jak who has cc'd his reply to me as well. It says: shuv of des door ho i'm married. Out of the corner of my eye I see Des muttering 'Junk mail' and pressing delete on a message, twirling her hair idly. Jak has clinical Dissociative Identity Disorder and occasionally thinks he's other people, including me. He's separated from his wife but still wears the ring for his own sanity, as well as spending his alone time playing online War games. When he's at work he speaks to nobody except on occasions when he's mentioned his medication to me because I'm the First-Aider. As I delete his message also, my phone rings.
This time it is head office.
"We've got a tramp acting suspiciously out back of you where the bins are," they say. "He's just handed over money to two guys, stripy jumpers and jeans, who are at your front door now. Could be a set up. The tramp's hiding just by the rear Fire Exit fiddling with what's either a metal bar or home-made firearm."
"Who are you talking to, who is it? Are they coming out?" Des shakes my arm excitedly.
"It's my mum, and no she isn't likely to be coming out - she's babysitting for me," I hand over Lenny's drink and head for the doors, throwing Des a sarky look. Two dark-haired guys in stripy jumpers are just getting out their I.D. I nudge Salem, one of the doormen at this venue, and whisper to him about the two guys being barred from other venues for use of stolen credit cards and fake notes. It's a lie, but will stall them and get them searched. I continue outside with my phone still stuck to my ear, pulling my Friday 13th mask back down over my face as I head around the back of the building.
"What, you're going to go right round and confront him?" Head office sound surprised.
"It's attention-seeking barmaids. They always give me a death wish," I say. "I'm just some innocent student in fancy dress walking down an alleyway to have a private phone conversation, is that okay with you?"
"He's right in…"
A shape steps out of the shadows ahead, and the so-called tramp raises his iron bar - and asks me to go away in impolite language.
"…Front of you," say head office.
I close my left hand around the bar on its downswing and shove, chinning him with the other end of it. My right hand is still on the phone at my ear.
"Yeah, I've found him," I say. "How do you want him?"
"We've got no back trace on him, looks like an actual tramp. Got a couple of uniforms right behind you, they can take over from here."
Head office disconnect. From behind me, two shiny black hat-wearing high visibility jackets stroll up and look past, at the dirty groaning individual dribbling his own blood and teeth into his hands.
"Is that all he was armed with?" W.P.C. Drury asks.
"You'll have to check," I say. "Apparently he paid money to a couple of chavs before they tried the front doors, while he lay in wait out the back here."
"Yeah, one of ours is taking the chavs' details now. Fake notes found on them by door staff."
Bonus, I think. What an imagination.
"Why did they call you on this one?" she asks me. "He's just some dirty old homeless guy."
"They didn't say," I reply. "Maybe was a doorman once. Maybe someone is subcontracting on the dirt cheap. On fake notes, even."
They cuff him and drag him off, not before putting on their medical exam gloves, taking the metal bar with them. I go back to my party.
Thankfully the bar-lads have arrived and are providing consolation to the girls for lack of door staff appearance. I keep to myself that none of the door guys trust Lenny not to try and rape them drunk. It would be like getting violently cornered by a Christina Aguilera-scented hippopotamus.
We move from the bar to Crash, a club popular with off-duty bar and door staff due to its no-exclusions policy, and the fact it used to be a pole-dancing club and left the poles in place for the customers to dance around. I start to feel bored already as the others in the group get more drunk, and more bitchy including Lenny, because some of the door staff are found to be on their own night out for someone else's birthday, and not in fancy dress. But the barmaids are of course ecstatic to see any doorman on his night off, and have done all but bring their own Rohypnol in their determination to be as accessibly comatose as possible in the arms of the nearest one by the end of the night. Lenny begins one of his massive sulks, and is only cheered up by Doorman Stuart turning up in a Batman costume and buying him forty shots, with the intention of wiping his surly gayness from his memory and implanting one of him enjoying himself. I'm glad I stick around for a little while helping Batman procure the shots, because as I leave I get to see Des outside the club screaming blue murder at Lynette, who is lying on the pavement next to the taxi rank with vomit in her hair. Des is screaming that Lyn has ruined her night because by the time she gets her home it will be too late to come back to the club. So much for caring friends.
As I debate whether or not to offer to take Lynette home, more to spare her from Des than anything else, I get another call from head office.
"Sooner those two choke to death on their own puke, the better," head office say. "They're responsible for half the Facebuddy stalking and leaking in the last few months that we've traced. One of your guys is trying to get a serious job in Home Security, and has been refused because the fat blonde barmaid in front of you is on his Facebuddy account and told everyone about his application. He's stuffed now, won't get anything. Stuck being a doorstop for life."
"Did you want something?"
"What we're saying is, we know you're stood there wondering whether to be nice. Don't risk it. You don't want those two leaky bitches in your car or anywhere near you."
They hang up.
"Subtle," I say, and go to the kebab shop before heading home.
UPDATE:
What a relief, according to Random House it's all just a coincidence - I'd hate to think any of my terrible writing had been turned into 'Twilight' fan-grooming porn by 'The Snow Queen' from Hans Christian Anderson... my psychosis is probably just having a good day, I expect... :) Further update: The Random House Group investigated further in June 2012 after receiving more detailed analysis and comparisons of verbatim prose, scenes, descriptions and dialogue. The original complaint was not about 'ideas, plotlines or characters which are generic in their very nature' as they solely addressed in this earlier general response (my books do not have the same genre, storylines, or adult subject matter). Their later conclusion, despite the frequency of apparent imitations in writing style, scene content and prose throughout the books, was that it could only be explained as 'coincidental'. They provided no evidence or specific dates of their own.
