35. Sweetness, I Was Only Joking

It's all getting a bit oooooooh

1am or 2am or thereabouts.

Bigmouth Strikes Again rages to a close like a train coming off the tracks, at least in Med’s mind it does and she stops spinning on the dancefloor and her cardie is half off and the girls she’s dancing with are laughing and panting, and Time of the Season breaks through the mist with its heavy breathing and finger clicks and the coolest people in the club stay right where they are on the floor and finger click and heavy breathe along with. And Med is one of them, but as she arches her back to take in a lung full of damp smoky sweaty air she sees that female copper reaching up to whisper something in Moses’s ear. Med has been trying to get it out of her head. What the fuck does she care if Mo wants to get it on with the weird-looking copper old enough to be his… well, his much older sister if nothing more. Still gross. In the toilets Med finds herself in the mirror looking damp and smoky and sweaty and yet still wondering why Moses can’t just be honest with her about everything. That cop may have some mystery, some authority, and perhaps has the experience to tie Mo around her little finger, but Med is looking right now at the reflection of her large beautiful eyes, her button nose, cupid mouth, and nice pert tits, albeit hidden beneath a Pipistrelle work t-shirt and baggy woollen cardigan. Everything a boy could want. She’s twenty-three and pretty much at her peak. The lager may here be giving her both the confidence to know her physical attributes are strong when it comes to the male gaze, and to assure her this is the best she’s ever going to be. But she shakes that out of her head, this examination this evaluation, is about trying to figure out why Moses is being such a dick, and if it has something to do with Med’s physical appearance. It’s not though, is it? She’s better than that. It’s the booze making her analyse like this. And that afternoon in Tintern. If she could shake that tree a damn sight more would fall out of it.

So, it’s not her. At least not her looks. She has all that in place. Shot out of the turmoil of her teenage years to a first year at Uni where she was emotionally eviscerated by a series of brief sexual flings which left her out the other side hardened and confident and a grown up. Richard fucking Moses wasn’t going to pull the rug from under her. As she walks back out of the toilets a Vardaman special comes on, The Fiery Furnaces with Single Again and it’s like a prophecy. My pockets did jingle when I was single. She can almost hear the jingle as she walks across the dancefloor over to the DJ booth. Moses sees her coming. Did he not know she was there? He looks got. He opens the latch like he normally does and Med steps up into it, going no further than just inside the door.

“I want a song,” she says. And she looks over her shoulder at the copper who’s still at the table on her own. From up here now, in the booth, Med can also see just how busy the club has become. It’s that kind of place. You get chatting, get dancing, get fixated on something, and next minute there’s five hundred in there and it’s three deep at the bar and there’s a queue for the ladies and there’s a right buzz going on and you look up at Moses and Vardaman and they do begin to look special, lit by the spots in ice blue, bobbing about up there playing these fucking awesome records you wouldn’t likely hear anywhere else outside of London or Manchester or New York, even. And it’s impressive, it really is, and she feels herself becoming attracted to Moses just like she did in the first place. She remembers now. Okay so he made her laugh but he also shined up here in this booth. He’s looking at her now, a bit shabby, dark rings round his eyes, but also he’s moving a bit to the record, breaking in to the drum fills but just from the wrists down, and he makes eye contact with Vardaman who’s bent over the decks, and they grin at each other like the two of them choosing this record at this time is the greatest achievement of the creative urges of men, and they might not be far wrong. The dancefloor is pounding and most people don’t even know who the fuck this band is, and only know this record because Vardaman plays it every fucking weekend.

“What record?” Moses says.

But she didn’t want a record. Or at least she didn’t have one to mind. From somewhere comes The Beat, Tears of a Clown. Maybe it was on the radio this morning. But there it is, and she says it, and it’s surprised Moses and his eyes narrow and a respectful smile comes over his mouth. “Great choice,” he says. He nods approval. She’s never even mentioned The Beat before, and even though Moses isn’t a huge fan of Two Tone, not his thing, that is a great track and he turns to Vardaman and whispers it in his hear, and Vardaman nods, and he raises a thumb and grin to Med over Moses’s shoulder. Moses turns back to her. “Next,” he says.

“Great,” Med says.

What else was she going to say?

Moses feels she’s got something else to say. Wait, is she drunk enough to speak her mind? Nobody wants that. Not hear. Not now.

“Will you do me a favour?” Moses says to break the awkward pregnant silence. “Would you go and get us some beers. Usual for us and whatever you want.” He hands her a tenner. Med looks at it between her fingers. Moses knows she’s further away from saying whatever it was she wanted to say than she’s even been. Job done. She goes and he watches her walk across the dancefloor all energy and impetus sucked out of her somehow.

“What’s all that about?” Vardaman says.

“I don’t know, but she had that look in her eye,” Moses says.

“The ultimatum.”

“Something like that.”

“What are you going to do? We can’t get mashed up every time you get depressed abut Med. Look what happened last time.”

“What happened?” Moses’s mind is foggy.

Vardaman’s eyes widen. “Fucking Aaron died,” he says.

Oh that. “Yeah right. My fault.”

Vardaman punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t even joke, mate. This is a dangerous time. We have eyes on us.” He gestures over to Waingard, fully aware she’s looking the other way.

“Don’t worry about her,” Moses says. “We are background.”

“Do not fuck her,” Vardaman says.

Moses actions for Vardaman to keep his voice down even though the volume of the music drowns everything out for a sixty-mile radius. “That is not what’s going on,” he says.

“You should tell her,” Vardaman says. “She’s an apex predator.”

“She’s a copper letting her hair down. And she needs background. I like that we’re able to help.”

Vardaman dead eyes his friend. He puts the back of his hand up to Moses’s forehead. “You’re sick. I knew it. There was me trying to help you out by getting your mind of troubled love, and all along you have a fever and you’re going to probably die of a terrible sickness.”

Tune. Vardaman turns and flicks up the faders and Tears of a Clown comes in. Moses looks across and Med has given up her place in the queue at the bar for the dancefloor. He loves watching her dance. He’d play any song for her, and he’d play it forever, if it meant he could stand up there and watch her lose herself in the music. He watches her for the whole song, and She’s Lost Control that comes next, and is prepared to watch her for the entirety of I Am the Resurrection too, but he has a tug at his elbow and turns to see Waingard looking up at him from the side of the booth.

“I have to go,” she says as Moses leans down to her.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry to hear that.” They’re shouting into the musical tidal wave. “Hope you’ve enjoyed the night. I guess you have a lot to do tomorrow.”

Waingard shakes her head. “Come with me,” she says.

“What?”

The chorus drowns her out.

She gets on tiptoes, pulls Moses down to her by the collar and repeats herself.

He looks back at Vardaman who has his arms raised screaming out to the euphoric hundreds on the dancefloor “And I am the liiiiiiiiiight.”

Euphoria. It can encourage recklessness. Moses goes with Waingard.