32. The Loft
The Temple of Dreams and Sticky Substances
Friday/Saturday 00:30
Pint done, Med goes up to the Loft. At the start of her shift she was thinking only of bed, but by the time it’s ended and she has a few drinks in her, it’s easy to just slide up the hill and dip in for another couple and maybe a dance if the boys put on some Smiths or something.
The Loft is the vast cellar room of a building that in the day houses Argos. The colour scheme of the Loft is red and black, clashing cleverly with the Argos colours, as if the building, probably a few hundred years old – sights of the original stonework can be seen between signage and frontage – has day wear and night wear. The double doors, so inconspicuous in the day, open to the throat of the club, the big base of the music coughing up and out onto the street, out to the silent church doors across the street. Boaz is on the door, the unassuming bouncer with the clipped moustache and a penchant for slipping Jack Daniels into his plastic cups of cola. He has a winning wink, and he gives them out to anyone who buys him the drinks he’s not supposed to have. Med approaches with her hands buried deep in the pockets of her puffer, not sure what to say to a colleague of Aaron. Do they go through the rigmarole of not speaking ill of the dead? Boaz employed a potent eyeroll behind Aaron’s back when he was alive, but what now? Do they pretend? Med often thinks about Boaz, what he’s doing in this town, with this job. Someone had said to her once he was the most dangerous bouncer in town, has a background in some Israeli special forces, which is why nobody messes with him despite his amenable character and unremarkable physique. Med figured if that isn’t true it still isn’t a bad rumour to have going about. Drunk once she asked him if it was true and he winked and said of course not.
“Sorry to hear about Aaron,” Med says before anything else.
“I know,” says Boaz.
And that seems to be it, so Med says, “Many people in?”
And Boaz shrugs, even though he has a click counter in his hand, and says, “Few hundred.”
Med is about to pat him on the shoulder and go past, but she stops for a second. “Heard anything about what happened?” she says.
Boaz rolls his bottom lip and stamps his feet at the cold.
“They found his body down on the train tracks?” he says but seems unsure.
“Yeah,” Med says. “I suppose unless there’s a serial killer out there targeting bouncers you don’t really have anything to worry about.”
Boaz smiles. “And even then,” he says, “I’d be way down anyone’s list in this town.” He thumbs down and they both laugh, more out of relief than anything. Med’s glad it’s not going to be a weird, morose night, full of people pretending they liked Aaron for an excuse to perform at being generous. Boaz was never going to be that guy anyway, but it could have been any number of the other bouncers out there tonight looking for an excuse to rant and rave on some angle or other.
Med does pat Boaz on the shoulder and walks into the corridor that goes long and narrow before bending and opening to a lobby at the top of a staircase that gives just the slightest hint that this dark cavernous space used to be a dance hall back in the sixties and somewhere in the thick shadows now are ornate cornices painted over black. How air comes out of the black space flashing with strobes at the dance floor and the glassy arctic neon of the bar optics and footlights. She nods a hello to the girl behind the kiosk where everyone bar Pipistrelle staff pay to get in, and she sinks down the stairs into the music, Enola Gay lifting her to her toes. Euphoria, but she doesn’t give herself up to it. It’s enough to know she’s here, she’s arrived, and the music is announcing her. Across the other side of the club, which, for a few hundred punters, has enough space and dark corners to seem all but empty at this stage, she can see Moses and Vardaman up in the DJ booth, lit in cold pastel blue, hunched over the CD boxes and players, conferring, smoking, sipping beers, looking out over their charge. Moses can’t see her, so she takes a moment to evaluate him on sight. What is it she sees in him? He’s good looking to a degree, but she’s always liked men just under the mark when it comes to looks, men with a little still to prove, and he’s up there in that booth which means he’s not a nobody, but what it really comes down to is he makes her laugh, and he made her laugh, made her laugh a lot when they first met when she started at the Pips and it was because of that she found in his looks something she liked, because whatever chemicals the laughter released seemed to train the eye, that’s how it works, right? It’s primordial. It couldn’t be Vardaman because he was too unpredictable, too volatile in those small explosions of his that could push a night out this way or that. Vardaman had chatted her up a few times, even asked her out, and yes shit they went on a date and he was the perfect gentleman and she had a good time and she liked Vardaman but it didn’t click, not in the way it did with Moses. He was a mess, talented and lazy, locked into this idea that the square mile of pubs and clubs in this shitty town was his kingdom, and fuck she couldn’t be happier he was going to Brighton even though she was sure it could either make him or kill him. Kill him to be away from all this and these people, his own notoriety and friends and influence and you shouldn’t discount the significance of knowing every nook and cranny of a place. Once after Med asked if he fancied a day trip and she drove them both up to Tintern and they sat on the grass round the back of the Anchor and drank pints of ale out of handled mugs and watched a village cricket match and ordered a pint of prawns between them, and then walked around the bookshop on the main street and saw a first edition hardback Harry Potter for seventy quid, and Moses bought some poetry by Robert Browning, and in the afternoon sunlight they walked through the ruins of the abbey and just before they were about to leave they kissed under a low arch with such intensity had Moses lured her down onto the grass she was pretty sure she would have had sex with him then and there with no regard for other pilgrims wondering around that day. She thought of this afternoon often. She wasn’t in love with Moses, at least she didn’t think so, but the way that afternoon went, she knew exactly what being in love with him could be like. But they got back to town and went to the Pips and she bumped in to some friends and so did he and inexplicably they both heard each other lying about where they’d been that day, as if they weren’t supposed to be seeing each other, as if it had to be a secret, and even though she’d been just as guilty of lying about it as Moses had been, she felt more angry with him than with herself and later that night in the Loft she snapped some sarcasm at him at the bar and they didn’t speak again for a week and she felt depressed about it the whole of that time. And even though all that happened a while back now, she wanted to know exactly how he felt during that week, and even if he felt differently to her, if he hadn’t been crushingly sad the whole time after her sarcasm at the bar, then at least she’d know; but what she really wanted wasn’t solidarity but just to be inside his head. He sees her now. The strobe has lit her up in the distance. He smiles. It’s unsure, slow, but it’s a smile. She returns it. Frankly Mr Shankly comes on. For her? It’s a bit early for the Smiths, but she takes it as a kindly gesture.