It was already the end of February. Lucy and I had been in Washington half-a-year. Spring Break’s sudden emergence so soon after Christmas and so long before April had surprised us. The Friday afternoon it began, Lucy and I had taken a rare trip together downtown to the Mall. We walked hand in hand by the Capitol with a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, and went on in sunlight, into the war gardens, and drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
What I wish to remember most of that day is the sun’s dazzle – and our delight wandering off along the Reflecting Pool’s fringe, and Lucy’s sigh and gentle caress of the back of my neck as we kissed.
But after we’d returned home to Georgetown our classmate Sylvie Macdonald arrived at our house with a plan. It was jungle night at The Fifth Column. We could be part of her glamorous sounding friend Alejo’s party. We had to come out this time, she had reasoned fatefully… It was, after all, my last night. She’d be back at nine, she said, to pick us up. And Lucy brightened up like she’d received a present.
The next morning I was returning home to Ireland for my cousin’s wedding. I hadn’t intended to go - I’d decided I wanted to avoid seeing my once wild cousin Sorcha marry her passive aggressive beau and his bright corporate future. Besides, Lucy and I’d planned to spend the week of Sorcha’s wedding exploring the Blue Ridge mountains. But Sorcha had called me up a couple weeks beforehand and insisted. I think it was probably because of all of our history together. She really seemed to care whether or not I was there. In the end, really, I couldn’t refuse.
I would have been happy not to go out at all that Friday evening. Despite our lovely afternoon together, there was still a residue of ill feeling between Lou and me. The term paper – Revenge Now- I’d just handed in was, I had thought, brilliant. Lucy, though normally my greatest champion, had said it had made her gag with disgust. She wouldn’t, she’d said, be surprised if they didn’t kick me out or arrest me if I submitted it. It was too late to rewrite it so, basically, it had gone in unchanged that morning. My paranoia about the paper, now, was growing.
Around nine Sylv returned with a few wraps of what we took to be coke. I was a changed man!
“You’d better not stay away for too long,” Sylvie teased me as she cained the first line. She passed the DVD case and rolled $20 bill over to Lucy, adding as she did so, “You’re not Lucy’s only admirer in DC, you know.”
“Perhaps,” I replied. “But I am the only one who truly loves her for her mind.” I passed over Lucy’s back with the palm of my hand while Lucy bent over for her line. She let it rest there a moment or two. Soon afterwards, climbing into her black Range Rover, I asked Sylvie when she was dropping.
“I dun’ know. Guess when we get there?”
“I might now.”
“You’re a monster Jamie.”
“I haven’t had an E in ages,” I whined.
“Go on, then.”
“Best wait,” I re-considered. “Don’t want to come-up in the queue.”
“Stress not, Meister Jamie. We are on the guest-list.”
So I dropped. Sylvie started the engine and launched some tunes from the, as I had christened it, quadriplegic stereo. Sylvie had recently introduced us to Georgetown Eurotrash’s dealer of choice. Brett lived about half-a-mile away. He did green, coke, x, trips, whatever. We drove there directly through the alleys running behind the houses in which most Georgetown students lived. Sylvie raced into his house and re-emerged with ‘three whole grams’.
At the doors of The Fifth Column, Sylvie confidently announced we were on the guest-list.
Once inside, I remembered something the coke accentuated: I wasn’t really used to being out in such situations with Lucy. Being there suddenly sort of made me feel, I don’t know, as different from her, as perhaps I in fact was. In the classroom we were equals – aristocrats of the mind and all that. In a posh club she seemed at home among the beautiful people. Whereas I, I felt something lacking. We bumped into Sylvie’s boyfriend, our fellow classmate Tom. Sensing perhaps I’d appreciate it, after hellos, Tom suggested we peel off from the women for a bit. We arranged to meet the girls upstairs in a while.
“Let’s find our own level,” Tom suggested, guiding me towards a crowd-free space by the
mezzanine balcony. Leaning over it our eyes scanned the heaving crowd on the dance floor below.
Music blinked, beeped, vastly loud, from neat speakers suspended, amongst the light rigs. Camouflage netting hung from the ceiling. Lasers sliced up the room into slow, immediate, motive, psychedelic segments.
“Alejo’s such an ass,” Tom said of our host. “He still believes he can win anyone he wants.” Tom showed me an SMS he’d received earlier that day from Alejo: ‘Tonite jungle party at 5th Bring Sylvie Were have a table with champagne and vodka from nine Wear your jungle suit’. “I mean, I don’t have a fucking jungle suit. Who has? And anyways, leave my fucking girlfriend out of it. He only wants me here otherwise Sylv wouldn’t’a come. I’m only here cos if I wasn’t he’d be more over her than he already is.”
“Still… free champagne,” I tried, only half -joking.
“That’s just it. Then he owns you. And your girlfriend.”
We were both looking down at the same exquisitely cool girl. Light hair, tied up in a cone, a black sweat band, like an Alice band dividing her hair from her forehead. Dimpled left cheek. And a black scarf loosely arranged around her neck. I saw Tom smiling the same as me as we took her all in. The exquisitely cool girl slowly made her way through the crowds up the stairs in our direction.
“Looking forward to going home?” Tom interrupted my contemplation of her features.
Lucy was definitely fitter, but that sullen, small mouth… God. Wait. She wasn’t wearing shoes, just puffy white socks, her loose Indian trousers tucked into them. “I’ll miss Lou. But yes. Yes I am. In a way,” I said finally.
“Seems a bit ready, you going back? Sylvie was, like, ‘Lucy’s so pissed at Jamie for throwing over their plans for Spring Break’.”
“Fock,” I exclaimed. “She was pretty cool about it with me. She really said that? Shite.”
“I’m cool with Sylv going to Jamaica with the Eurotrash crew,” Tom replied. “Sans Alejo, though… See, I’m even talking like Eurotrash now?”
I’d warmed to Tom’s wit and self-awareness in the very first class we’d met. In Georgetown argot Lucy-from-London and I-from-Dublin were clearly á priori Eurotrash. Only apparent uncouthness could dislodge Europeans at Georgetown from being so categorised. Sylvie qualified because although from Manhattan her aristocratic German mother and casual New York manner identified her as a vrai cosmopolitan. Tom, from Connecticut, and prep-school educated, was as high-class an American as you would ever meet, but his appearance and outlook was all-American. He was closer to a jock, than to Eurotrash.
“Why don’t you go to Jamaica, if Alejo’s not going?” I asked. The exquisitely cool girl was closing in on us now. She was definitely Eurotrash. Any Georgetown kid could spot that, from a thousand paces.
“Alejo’s always after something but at least he’s alive,” Tom replied. “A week with the other Eurotrash… I’d die of ennui.” Tom made quote marks as he said ennui. I knew where he was coming from. “Eurotrash,” he continued, “they think all you need for a party is a ride in a private jet to get there. Speaking of Alejo, we should definitely get back to the women,” he said, as he already started moving off. Was he trying to avoid the exquisitely cool girl? I wondered to myself. She was coming right towards us.
I was feeling the first rush from the E as it was about to erupt, tingling through my body. Not even the bad vibes from what Tom had just told me about Lou could dispel the feeling of chemical joy growing over me. “You go, man. I’ll be up in a sec,” I replied.
Upstairs, so I would later read in Lucy’s diary, Lucy and Sylvie had been settling in - seated on a leather sofa before a table which was littered with champagne glasses, heavy crystal ashtrays, packs of cocktail cigarettes and bottles of European mineral water. Condensation dripped from filled champagne buckets within easy reach. A sign on the table warned it was reserved. Alejo, whose table it was, flopped down with proprietorial familiarity beside Lucy. He leaned towards her, glancing down between her legs, as he poured Cristal into the glass in front of her.
“Thanks,” Lucy said. No gratitude in her tone.
“So Lucy,” Alejo began. “I never see you. Why is that?”
“We are not in the same class, I suppose.”
“That’s true,” Alejo oozed. “You’re in a class of your own, Lucy. I love your name Lucy.” He sort of seeped out Lucy’s name. “It’s so typically, well, London, is your name Lucy. I love London, Lucy.” Alejo offered Lucy a cocktail cigarette. She refused with a slight shake of her head. He lit his. Lucy retrieved hers from her bag.
“I did not mean that. I meant ‘I am doing environment studies’ and you are not,” she said crisply.
“I’m in business,” Alejo replied. “I truly would like to see more of you Lucy. Lucy…” He reached for an ashtray but kept his eyes locked on hers.
“I cannot actually imagine why.” Lucy looked away. She lit her own cigarette.
“You’re going to Jamaica with Sylv? Your boyfriend’s let you down. I might…,” Alejo continued.
“No actually. Actually, I am staying in DC. Jamie did not -” The quickness of her reply revealed she was anxious to defeat Alejo’s presumptuousness.
“Well, if that’s true,” Alejo interrupted. “Why don’t you come over next week? I cook very well, Sylvie’s told you that, I’m sure.”
“I actually have heaps of work to catch up on.”
“Yes, Sylv said you are very studious. We’ll study together Lucy. I work very hard too. Celice, you know my girlfriend, yes, Celice will ask you,” Alejo concluded without any help from Lucy and slowly stood up.
“Where do you find them, Sylv?” Lucy asked, as soon as Alejo was out of earshot. “Even by your usual standards, this one’s properly weird. It’s like, actually the way you look at me, why look at me like that? He’s properly properly weird.”
“Alejo’s amazing,” Sylvie replied with her easy grin.
“He can amaze himself,” Lucy said firmly. “I’ll kill you if you leave us alone.”
“He’d rather have us together. Alejo loves ménages.”
“He actually can ménage himself… I would rather be dead.” Lucy arranged her hair as she spoke.
“Wish you could come to Jamaica,” Sylvie said, changing tack.
“I wish I could kill Jamie with his sudden Irish trip,” Lucy replied.
“There’s fourteen of us, already.”
“You said. I’ll be fine. I’ve got heaps of work to catch up on anyhow.”
“Why don’t you… Why don’t you go to Ireland with Jamie?” Sylvie wondered as if she’d only thought up the idea then and there.
“No one asked me to. Besides, I don’t know his family… I actually wish…”
“…That bitch would give up, and realise he’s yours?”
“No, Sylv,” Lucy laughed. “I just wish Jamie and I were spending Spring Break in a cabin like we’d planned.”
“But you said when he first suggested it… ‘Actually, Sylv, help! Jamie is wanting me to spend Spring Break in a hut’?”
“Your English accent’s still appalling, Sylvie.”
Standing there alone overlooking the dance floor, the exquisitely cool girl ended up beside me. When she was that close, I recognised her from campus.
“Why aren’t you all dressed up?” she mock mocked me. I was flying. I could hardly hear her above the noise. I must have looked puzzled because she carefully added. “It’s jungle night? I guess maybe your friends wanted t’embarrass you.”
A guy in a tiger fur suit passed. Then a girl who was dressed, for all I could tell, as Biffo-the-Bear.
“I see,” I smiled. “I thought it was jungle music, not jungle clothes.”
We shared a stoned, giggly moment. “I didn’t dress up either,” she said, changing register. I looked her up and down. She had invited me to. Her hair was swirled exquisitely into a bun. Everything about her looked accidentally perfect. She offered me a cocktail. I nodded. I watched her elegantly thin fingers with their long translucent silver inscribed nails dance impossibly quickly all around the key pad as she apparently SMS’d our order to the bar. While we waited, we started conversing animatedly about what you talk about in such situations.
“I mean, when you’ve blocked off the weather, school, mutual friends, how good the coke is, what are you left to speak about?”
“I know,” she replied. “It’s easy when you’re having a bad time. You just get loaded. Drop all conversation and exude, I dun’ know, an air of being part of it all.”
Our drinks came.
“Fuck conversation,” she said randomly after sucking some of her drink through the straw.“Let’s dance.”
We made our way past a few jungly dressed heads. A throbbing aero-bar bass began, accompanied by a now seering, now building, now dropping, now re-building, now repeating synth riff. Bono’s voice began to cry hauntingly, repeatingly, at intervals, just above the music: “so lonely.” Or was it “Salomé”? Either way, something primal was stirring.
The exquisitely cool girl stopped and turned back towards me. Her loose white top fell from her right shoulder. I’d seen fleetingly the back of her neck as she’d turned. I wanted to touch it just where the hairband was framing her browny gold hair. Our eyes met for a second longer than normal. She offered me a powdered finger. She seemed to expect me to, so I took it in my mouth. She tasted of candy.
There were two platforms, just by us, in the middle of the dancefloor with poles running from them between the floor and the ceiling. At each, petite girls dressed in very mini camouflage Miu Miu skirts were dancing, vacant looking, around and about the poles. I found it difficult not to stare. Obviously too difficult - because the exquisitely cool girl asked which of them I wanted the most.
“Don’t know,” I replied. “They seem underage?”
“Cares? Mine’s on the left,” she danced, hypnotising me, and taking me by the hand, letting go, turning me around before I could properly reassess the-one-on-the-left.
The exquisitely cool girl kept my back to the poles and me looking at her instead. Looking steadily back at me, now deeply into my eyes, now beyond me to the pole girls. The song went mesmerisingly on.
“Salomé.”
Afterwards, I wondered if the exquisitely cool girl wasn’t trying to make the-one-on-the-left jealous.
“So lonely.”
I held my hands behind my back. Neither of us moved our feet much. We just shook our upper bodies, rocking to and fro. Every time she slipped back away from me, her neck tilted to the right and her jewel nose ring seemed to shine.
Dry ice rose enveloping us from neat little holes in the dancefloor. Visibility was eventually pretty much zero. Then a seriously weird moment. We almost kissed. It happened like this. I was rushing. She was already somewhere. Our eyes locked. We were all we could see. I reached out as if I was about to put my arm around her neck. She moved perceptibly closer.
“Salomé.”
I was coming up beyond belief. For a moment we were one. Neither of us looked away. Our eyes became locked. All of our power, all of our strength… to stopping ourselves… One move forward and like metal shavings to a magnet we’d… Everything around us slowed. One, two, five seconds… And the dry ice disappeared as fast as it had arisen. And within one of those mad seconds our lips touched, and the exquisitely cool girl’s small mouth and exquisite tongue touched mine. But mine stayed where it was, I remember that now, really. And we moved back at exactly the same time, both exchanging glances. She looked away again, first.
Alejo, standing up there on the mezzanine gazing down at us, witnessed the whole damned scene, though I wouldn’t know that till long afterwards. The tune finally ended and she said she wanted to go back upstairs. I followed.
“That’s MDMA for you,” I offered, as I stepped around some kids lolling around the steps with cocktails. We ascended. She didn’t step around. She waited for them to move first. In the face of her shoeless feet and waifishness, they always did.
“More like Special K or Meph, who knows, who cares?” she replied. It was the first time I noticed her accent. Staccato and New York.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I asked.
“Celice. You didn’t know?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I know totally who you are Jamie Dwyer,” she concluded slowly, looking at me suspiciously carefully.
We halted our ascent on the middle floor, near the stairs.
“Like the song?” I tried to ignore how she knew who I was.
“Which?” she asked, momentarily querulous.
“A-ha’s?” I pressed.
“Yeah, right.”
Some kid, a glam nerd - shirt way too tight, sweater well too fluffy, glasses vastly too horn rimmed, hair enormously coiffed, middle-parted and wimpy body wrapped up in fake animal skin - offered to dribble icy Absolut from a bottle into her mouth. Celice turned and began to be dribbled into.
And, as I stumbled away from the scene to go find the others, I narrowly avoided bumping into the girl dressed as Biffo-the-Bear. Or was there more than one? Who could tell?
Upstairs, when I’d found her, Lucy said that she’d missed me. She was on her way back from the loo. “What’s been happening?” she asked. We squeezed each other’s hands.
“Nothing,” I replied. I so loved her. What on earth had I just done? I held it together. There’s no way she could know. The dry ice. Anyway, the Special K was a legitimate excuse. It was definitely Special K, for sure. We’d spoken before about “acceptable adultery”. Being faithful to one another was about more than actions. Maybe it hadn’t even happened? “I love you, Lou. I’m focked,” I replied, (I think) without awkwardness. “This place’s mad.”
“Have you noticed it isn’t jungle music they’re playing? Everyone looks like they think they’re dressed like they would be in the jungle.”
I agreed. “Sylvie deserves a proper kick in the arse for not explaining what she meant by jungle.”
“Let’s find her…”
So we made our way over to where Sylvie was sitting. Through the Eurotrash all done up in fitted jungle wear. Through the bunches of kids mad and loaded enough to be tailor dressed even at one-off parties like this one. Fanning out over the leather sofas at the back of the room were elegant tight girls in little black numbers interspersed with middle-eastern business studies’ majors and east coast preppies – the types whose lives from afar seemed like Ralph Lauren ads (or was it the other way around? (Everything just then was seeming the other way around)).
At the sofas a tanned kid about our age rose to meet me. He’d been watching Lucy striding across the floor in front of him – leering almost. I’d already clocked that. But Lucy just passed right by him, apparently ignoring him, to greet Sylvie. The tanned kid was dressed in olive green Miyake fatigues, tee-shirt and a sleeveless matching photographer’s vest. He presented his hand to me to shake.
“So you’re Jamie,” he said with conviction. “I’m Alejo.”
“Pleased to meet you Alejo.” I was amiable, guarded.
“I’ve so looked forward to making your acquaintance.”
“Really?”
“For sure, sure. Ever since Sylvie told me you and Lucy are ‘in love’? Whatever that means.” I could feel something in the palm of my hand as Alejo withdrew his. “Can you tell me what love means?” he asked, looking me in the eyes.
“Ecstasy?” I tried.
“Sure, sure,” Alejo replied. “That’s a very clever answer, my friend.” I don’t think I showed that I was confused. Alejo melted back down into the black leather sofa. “There’s plenty of room just here,” he added, pointing to a space just big enough for me. “But no, not X. 2CBI. You do know what that is?”
I indicated ‘’course’.
“Well this is the best you will ever taste. Take it. I’ve had 2 already. I’m pleased by everything.”
Lucy came over and sat down. “Watch him,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “Alejo de Focking Eurotrash,” I added, christening him.
Lucy’s smile showed me she knew what I meant. Then she asked if I would like a drink. Alejo overheard.
“Have some of my champagne Jamie,” Alejo interrupted and pointed to some freshly poured into a glass by a gorgeous blackly clad waitress. “Lucy there’s no need for you to go to the bar. You are my guest.”
“Thank you, Alejo. But I’m in a bar kind of mood,” Lucy replied moving away.
I wondered suddenly had she meant for me to go instead. Oh well! I disengaged Alejo’s pills from the package I’d just been given. I shook one into Sylvie’s palm. I knew Lucy wouldn’t do one. Sylvie looked at me questioningly. With a flick of my head I indicated Alejo. He looked back at her expectantly. She smiled. And she took it. Picking up a glass of Badoit from the table, I washed mine down without even looking at it.
Alejo asked how long I’d known Lucy. “How long,” he added, “have you known her as a man knows a woman?”
“A lady,” I corrected him gently.
“Ah, her father is a Lord?… That makes sense. I did not know that,” Alejo responded.
“What?” I was puzzled again – me? Him? Drugs? “No. I don’t think so… Not long enough. There any women here who interest you?” As I asked this of Alejo, Sylvie was applying lipstick while Tom was making going-noises beside her. Alejo indicated straight in front of us the exquisitely cool girl and in so doing said with a certain degree of serenity. “Celice is my only proper interest here. That is how Lucy would put it, isn’t it?”
“Celice knows this?” I asked. I was taken aback and confused. I think I disguised it well. Alejo was watching me very carefully.
“She should,” he replied. “She is my girlfriend.” As he said this Celice turned around and smiled that sullen, small mouth at us both. I felt another rush from the X, K and, now, the 2CBI, whatever the fock that was. What a head wreck. “Celice, Lucy and Sylvie make a fine threesome…” Alejo went on.
“You think?”
“I do. I truly do,” Alejo declared with conviction. He seemed to expect something more from me.
“They’re beautiful, that’s true,” I tried, submitting.
“It’s more than that, Jaime”. I noticed his Spanishy eyes just then for the first time. “It’s more than that,” he repeated. His brow was knitted as if he was mulling very hard over this matter. “They’re not only beautiful,” Alejo continued, “they’re attractive. Truly attractive. Can you imagine what it would be like to have them all together? I think we should all come together. The five of us.” There was something at once repellent, fascinating and quite foreign about Alejo’s expression as he said this.
“Maybe,” I concluded, cooly as I could.
“I’ve invited Lucy over next week. You don’t mind. Do you?” He adjusted his feet on the table in front of him as he said this.
“That you’ve invited her?” I responded.
“Sure.”
“There’s no law against making invitations.” I wasn’t certain at all I wanted Lucy spending time with him. I felt that even then; even when I was so high.
“… But there is one against accepting them?… I see. You mind. I understand.”
“Course I don’t mind,” I said, a little too sharply. I was needing all of my powers of concentration to hold the thread. Just the sort of challenge I genuinely loved meeting whilst high.
“Well, my opinion is we must wait till you return from Europe. Both of you can come then. I’m sure Lucy won’t mind waiting de trop. Celice needs me now,” Alejo said finally. He stood up. He was up and down like a yo-yo.
Lucy was coming back managing to hold two drinks in one hand, a pack of fags in the other, while a lit cigarette dangled from her lips. Alejo went to try to help her. Anticipating him even before he knew himself how he was going to accost her, she deftly, successfully ambiguous, avoided him. She sat down in the space Alejo’s departure had just created. She put her arm around me. She was tight. “What was he saying?” Lucy asked half-nodding at Alejo’s back.
I paused for a moment, before saying I’d tell her later.
“If he gives you any pills, don’t take them,” she said to me. “Okay, darling?” she insisted.
“Uhh. Why? He gave me one just now.”
“You didn’t take it? You’re such a nightmare Jamie,” she replied, perfectly Englishly. “Sylv says he’s got these these things with horse tranquilliser, speed, acid, and ecstasy all in one. You don’t want all that, isn’t it?”
Fuck. “I should’ve asked what 2CBI is.”
“Jamie? You took it. You don’t know what it is?”
“Basically. It’s cool Lou. Everything’s cool. A bit weird. But cool all the same. At least I’ll know what Special K’s about now,” I said referring to a Placebo track she and I both knew well.
“You’re going to be strung out for days and days… I am actually glad you’re going back to Ireland.”
Outside the club - Lucy, Sylvie, Celice, Alejo and I (Tom had left a few hours earlier) made our way through the crowds gathered round trying to work out how or if to continue the night.
Sylvie went off to get her car. Alejo remained behind with us. He motioned to one of the bouncer guys, who nodded back at him. The guy sprinted off around the corner. I rubbed the back of Lucy’s neck. We had danced a bit and things had cooled down between us. She had chilled. I was high still. Not astronomically so. Not any more. I was kind of on edge.
Lucy had told me that on a trip to the loo she and Celice had done a line together in a cubicle. Just after Lucy had keyed hers up her nose, Celice had tried to kiss her. I considered for a moment telling Lucy that Celice had done basically exactly the same thing to me. I don’t know why I didn’t – there never would have been a better time to. I suppose I was thinking how amazing it would be for us all to come together. Or that no one would ever find out. Had I, just then, told Lou – everything would have been different all of our lives. I may just be projecting, but I am sure I had that sense even then, even in that split second I dared not to eat the peach.
The bouncer guy Alejo had motioned to stepped out of a black Maserati with a diplomatic number plate. Bouncer guy waited there patiently with the keys while Celice and Alejo seemed to be arguing about something or other. Celice appeared to want Alejo to drive or at least to go with her, wherever she was going. Alejo didn’t look as if he wanted to leave us. He kept looking back towards us, at Lucy mainly, but also to me. Whenever he would do this, Celice would look back over too. She smiled at me once, a private momentary flick of a smile. They were then calm with each other, but after another few seconds they both were disagreeing about something or other again. This cycle repeated a couple of times. I was transfixed softly sweeping the back of Lucy’s neck. Meanwhile bouncer guy stood beside them patiently still. It seemed to be Alejo’s car… I just couldn’t work out what was going on. Eventually, it seemed like they settled the issue and Celice hovered over to the Maserati. The bouncer guy followed her. When she turned he was right there just as she seemed to expect him to be. He carefully dropped the key into the outstretched palm of Celice’s hand. She slipped into the driver’s seat. She waited for the bouncer to shut the door. He did. Alejo, then, barely looking at the bouncer guy or the car, tossed a crumpled bill over at him and turned away towards us. Bouncer guy caught the money with his two hands and headed swiftly back towards the club.
“Jamie,” Celice said from inside the Maserati through the descending window. She flicked open the passenger side door. “I need company.”
I instinctively moved towards her.
“Don’t worry at all about Lucy,” Alejo added from behind. “I can take care of you. Can’t I Lucy?”
I looked at Lucy.
Lucy didn’t say a word.
I hesitated then tried, “I’ll see you there, okay?”
“Where, Jamie? You don’t actually know where she’s going.”
“We’re sticking together, aren’t we?” I replied, turning my head back even as I moved towards the Maserati, passenger side. And I got in. I looked back at Lucy, still for some sort of acquiescence I suppose.
“I thought we were,” Lucy muttered.
Celice and I were about to take off. Sylvie wasn’t back yet with her car. Alejo was trying to say something confidential, in subdued tones to Lucy. I think he was trying to show her nothing was up.
“Sorry, Alejo… Celice… Wait,” Lucy commanded.
Celice waited and Lucy walked slowly over. She whispered in my ear something that completely stunned me: if I went with Celice right then that was it over between us. I got out.
“Why on earth did you actually get into that car, Jamie?” Lucy asked when I was safely back on the sidewalk. “Did you think you were going to get kissed too?”
I was so focked I didn’t know what to reply to in all she had just said. I stayed silent. When we got back to where Alejo was standing Lucy put her arm around me. I was shell-shocked. I didn’t really know myself why I had gotten into the car with Celice. “What do you think they’re up to?” I finally managed.
“I don’t know Jamie,” Lucy responded, taking the bait and conceding. “Just don’t leave me alone with him.”
“I was only asking.”
“I know, darling,” Lucy replied. She must have noticed how her outburst had shocked me. “I just needed you to get out of that car. You’ve just taken another pill, isn’t it? You probably can’t see what’s going on here. He’s properly creepy.”
“I’m sorry Lou. I am a bit slow sometimes.”
A short while later after Sylvie had come back with her Range Rover we took off. Now we were again waiting, just finishing up a couple of lines off the aeroplane-like tables on the back of the front car seats, in a lay-by near RFK bridge. As had been arranged because she had gone to pick up some more gear, Celice flashed her lights as she passed right through the lay-by at speed and then back out onto the turnpike without stopping. Within a mile or two Sylvie had caught up with the Maserati and our two cars ran on in some fast convoy. Outside the passing lights illuminated the warmth and security which radiated from inside the Range Rover. Kissing Lucy I didn’t then register Alejo’s staring at us through the passenger seat sun flap’s green lit mirror. Sylvie just wove in and out of the four am traffic through the outskirts of Alexandria onto the Parkway following fast on Celice’s tail. Sylvie’s cell-phone began to bleep. The music automatically faded when Sylvie conferenced the call. It was Celice’s voice through the speakers.
“Picked-up,” Celice declared. “Where we gonna’ go do some Horse… Now?” She sounded completely manic.
“We oughta’ go back to Georgetown. I don’t wanna drive around totally all soir,” Sylvie replied.
Alejo interrupted. He suggested Atlantic City “… We’ll get the suite. Gamble. Drink Champagne… Be there by dawn.”
“Dawn?” Lucy replied Englishly. “Jamie has to be at Dulles at 6.30.”
“Dulles…,” Alejo repeated. “Okay. Why don’t we do this? My plane’s at National. Let’s drop Jamie. We’ll fly to Jersey? I’ll wake the pilot. He needs to earn his salary for a change. We will be in the air within an hour. Just say?”
“Alejo?” Sylvie put in. My flight to Kingston’s around seven tonight?” She seemed annoyed. He didn’t remember, or something.
“Well, that’s not a problem, Sylvie, my sweet. We can deal with this. If we’re winning and we decide to stay,” Alejo drawled, half looking back at Lucy, “then you can fly back by yourself in time for your flight to Jamaica. You’re flying on the Mortgenthaus’, aren’t you? They’re at National too. Perfect. Celice and I can take care of poor lovely, lonely Lucy. At last, a plan.” He seemed to know better than to look back to Lucy now for agreement.
“I don’t care where the fuck we go,” Celice’s voice came ghost-like through the speakers with a little feedback. “I just wanna’ get wrecked.”
Stemming the debate, Sylvie, now calmly, insisted we consolidate cars at her house first. “Maybe there do some lines and then decide what to do.”
“Okay, Sylvie. You win. For now,” Alejo conceded.
Lucy squeezed my hand. “Alejo de Fucking Eurotrash,” she whispered. I knew exactly what she meant.
“Last one there’s the biggest losa’ of them all…” were the last words of Celice’s which came through before a beep ended the call and the music’s volume crept back up. It was Placebo. Nice one, I thought. Special K.
Just as we approached Key Bridge. Just before Celice’s black car, suddenly zigzagging, was just about to turn off onto it, an elevated wheeled pick-up truck just came from behind us at speed. Overtaking… Just between our two cars now. Foreseeing what was just about to happen, Lucy crushed my hand with one of hers, leaned forward and just about covered her eyes with the open palm of the other. She didn’t say a word – none of us did as we just silently watched the pick-up, in attempting to overtake the Maserati, suddenly veering, take it from behind with such force… Such force… Both it and Celice’s car span. They span. Just like child’s tops. And again, pick-up smashed into it again, but this time back of the pick-up hit the driver’s side of the Maserati real hard, bounced back and Maserati went up onto its side and pick-up smashed into it again. And both cars just came to a rigid rest right there. Right there against the concrete side wall of the bridge’s approach; crushed upended Maserati between the wall and the pick-up.
“What? What?”
Sylvie totalled her breaks and as Alejo leapt out of her car I noticed the lights of a small boat calmly passing by Roosevelt Island.
By the time I reached what was left of his car, Alejo was already crawling over the ground around it, calling Celice’s name, now softly, now desperately again, and again.
“Oh! My! God! …”
Other people were running towards them. All around, cars had stopped moving. Smoke was rising from the Maserati, and the pick-up.
“Are they alive? See if they’re alive? Get them out…”
“Celice, Celice…”
“Don’t fucking touch. Anyone. Wait…”
“Celice, Celice…”
“Can you see them in there?”
“Celice, Celice…”
“Can you reach her?”
“How many people in there? Somebody call a fucking ambulance.”
“Celice, Celice…”
“You okay?”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Celice, Celice…”
Everyone seemed to be shouting. You could hear Sylvie slowly speaking something sounding sadly somewhat out of place. Lucy caught up with me and said she’d already dialled 911. Her shaking hand was still over her mouth.
“Celice, Celice…”
Alejo was on the ground still trying to find a way into the mess with his eyes. There was no way. The roof of the Maserati was touching where the window used to come up from. Lucy went to him. She knelt down.
“I’m so sorry Alejo. I’m so sorry…”
“She’s okay. I can feel it. Celice, you’re okay. I’m here for you. I’m here for you. Just hold on. Celice, Celice…”
And her sullen, small mouth. God.
“It’s okay. Alejo. It’s okay…”
“She’ll be okay? Lucy, she’ll be okay?…”
“I’m so sorry Alejo…”
Alejo was alternately sort of groaning and saying Celice’s name suddenly seemingly quite foreignly. I hardly even knew at that point that Alejo was Mexican, so slick and prep school American he had seemed. But in the panic, in the primal reality we were then facing, he became Mexican again.
Sylvie was speechless. White as paper.
And I was standing back, for fear of being burned.
Couple of guys, one who’d retrieved gloves from his trunk, looked like they knew what they were doing. They were trying to wrench the hood of the Maserati up.
“Careful. Glass from the windscreen.” They ignored me. Eventually they got to the battery and disconnected it. Minutes were passing.
Some other people were around the pick-up. Its front windscreen was smashed and its driver was sprawled inside, like a dead man, awfully stiff. Its engine was still running. No one, it seemed, could reach the keys or find the battery to turn it off. A white man had a medical looking bag. Smell of petrol. The guy with the gloves and the others now turned their attention to the pick-up.
Cops arrived with red determined faces. Then fire engines. Men leapt out, with giant pliers attached to engines on wheels. They began to cut at the Maserati’s roof, peeling it off like a tin can. They worked very quickly, methodically. Another team started on the pick -up.
“Back. Back.”
Glass was splintering all around.
Alejo was still on the ground, barely moving. Lucy was still there just beside him, saying something soothing softly into his ear.
“Back off. Everyone.”
“Got it. We got it,” shouts went out as the roof of the car had been completely removed. The ambulance men brought what looked like a surf board to just beside the car. I couldn’t make out the scene inside.
“Stay back. Back.”
“She’s our friend.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Back. Let the men do their work.”
Around the Maserati were, maybe ten, maybe fifteen assorted uniforms. Firemen on the outside. Ambulance people on the inside, around the car reaching in from every edge. Torchlights flickered all around and everywhere, red sweaty faces. Suddenly, a couple of the ambulance guys stepped down and back from Celice’s car. Some others retreated too. Words exchanged. Heads moved from side to side. Firemen had their surf board thing ready by the car. Something was said to the cop who’d asked us to stay back. Another ambulance arrived.
“What’s happening? Okay?”
The ambulance man’s expression said it all. “You guys know her? You don’t wanna’ watch this. Take time to get her all outta there.”
“She’ll be grand?” I asked.
“She wasn’t even wearing a seat-belt for christ’s sake.” There’s no way he meant it badly, just casually. An every-evening occurrence in his life.
Overhearing this, Alejo suddenly stood up. Lucy tried to hold him tight and I moved to stand between him and the now retreating ambulance man. Two cops watching us started moving towards us urgently.
Lucy was pulling Alejo’s arms back.
The cops shouted over. “Calm right down, Sir.” I wasn’t clear if they meant me or Alejo. But Alejo was.
The man from the pick-up was being treated by other ambulance men.
“Alright. He’s alright. It’s alright,” I said, stepping sidewards my palms raised reassuringly to let the cops through. But then they stopped. “That’s his girlfriend in there,” I added.
“He has got to calm down. Sir,” said one of the cops to me. “You get that?” the other cop said. Now I was sweating.
“He is. Grand. We’re sorry. He’s fine. It’s cool. It’s cool.”
One of the cops stayed staring at us, just to make sure. But the moment was gone. Alejo had surrendered. Lucy crouched down with Alejo, her arms encapsulating his head, which was resting on her. The other cop and the ambulance man were now walking back to the Maserati.
I went over and crouched down too on the other side of him and I too put my arm around him. Together we comforted him.
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
“It just happened.”
There were people hanging about. Talking by the cars. Some spectators began to drift off.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
Alejo’s attention shifted again; back to Celice. But he didn’t look up. Just saying her name over and over again. I couldn’t bear to watch. It was turning into the most horrifying operation imaginable around the car.
What a focking mess. The whole thing. Being here. Me. Lucy. Us. Drugs. Death. God. America. Empty. Horrible. Archaic America.
Sylvie came over and took over from me supporting Alejo and she and Lucy held on to him while he seemed to stop sobbing and everyone was silent.
A short while later four black cars with tinted windows arrived all at once. One of them had diplomatic plates. Two besuited men approached us while others from the cars fanned out to speak to various of the guys in uniforms. When Alejo noticed these two coming towards us he stopped slouching, stood up, broke gently free of Lucy and Sylvie. Went up to them.
The guy with the medical looking bag was by the pick-up talking to an ambulance man. One of the suits started talking to both.
I just stood fidgeting. Alejo was now standing up straight as he and the two suits conversed. From their body language they could have been talking about, I don’t know, politics or something. I didn’t know what to do. Alejo followed the two suits as they approached one of the other suits.
A minute or two later I went over.
“He’s fine, thank you.”
Alejo flashed a brief smile at me as if to say he agreed he was fine. It was none of my business anymore.
Other guys from the black cars were still with the cops. Another was speaking to a fireman. Several of them were speaking on phones. Still others were taking multiple photographs very quickly. And one was filming the scene. I blinked when their cameras flashed us.
Eventually, two more black limo long embassy-looking SUV’s arrived. Alejo walked towards one of them and completely without even looking back at us slid in. The SUV slunk off before even its doors were completely shut.
“Where the fuck…” Sylvie threw her arms up. “Holy shit. He’s just gone. Can you fucking believe that?” she exclaimed. “Alejo?”
“Who is Alejo?” I asked eventually as the car carrying him disappeared over the bridge towards DC.
“I dun’know,” replied Sylvie distractedly. “His family, like, owns Mexico. That is so fucking typical. He leaves us here with all this shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
I could have done with a spliff, maybe even a line. We all could. Suddenly the three of us, now standing together, had become spectators along with the few strangers who were still watching.
A cop asked us to move back along with all of the others. On the crash side of the road, traffic was backed up.
Two of Alejo’s suits came over to us. They asked for our names, and numbers, and thanked us. For what, we didn’t know.
“How is Alejo?”
“He’s fine, thank you.”
“Where is he going?”
“Home.”
“Mexico?” Sylvie asked.
“New York. Mexico. His father says he’s real grateful for what you’ve done. I am sure we’ll be in touch. Thank you.” And then the suit walked off to confer with one of his colleagues, before they too left the scene.
On the other side of the reservation cops already were transforming three lanes-two ways into three lanes-one way. On our side of the reservation one lane was opened up and a phalanx of police was laying down traffic cones in a long row to block off the other until, I suppose, they were able to lift the mangled wrecks out of there.
“Whose car is that?” another cop shouted while pointing to Sylvie’s Range Rover. It stood in the way of their impossibly neat and growing line of traffic cones. When Sylvie answered, the cop ordered her to move her car outta the way. She, Lucy and I walked silently over to it.
“Where should I move it to?” Sylvie shouted back over somewhat tetchily.
“Anywhere. Just get it the hell outta the way. The men need access.”
And when she had moved her car with us now all in it back off the main part of the road, Sylvie asked me for a line. I took out my house key and from Lucy’s proffered stash carefully spooned a bit onto it. Sylvie snorted and then I took a tip of the key full. Just as I was taking the last of it up my nose the white guy with the medical looking bag lightly tapped on the window of the passenger side where I was sitting. He had a sort of concerned look on him. He was on his way back to his car. I looked up.
“Are you guys…”
His expression changed. I sneezed.
“What the fuck are you guys doing? Georgetown kids are crazy, fucking crazy. Your friend’s dead and you’re snorting cocaine?”
And when we were sure he had gone. When we saw he’d gotten into his car. When he’d driven off. Lucy got her line. We all did – Fock him. Fock it. Fock America. Fock it all.