“Fuck you, Micky. You were a crap lay anyway,” Jack hisses. “I’ve had more fun pissing in the gutter. Small dicks just don’t do it for me.”
I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. I reach for Micky’s hand, trying to wrap my fingers around his fist, but he shakes my touch off.
“Dick size? That all you got? I knew you were shallow, but that’s ridiculous. You need to grow up, Jack. People are getting pretty fucking sick of your attention seeking,” Micky says.
I stare so hard at the squares on the carpet that they fill my vision. Sometimes the best thing is to take yourself out of the equation, but if I get up and go to the kitchen, Micky might want to stay here, and I want to protect Micky more than I want to leave. The only other solution I can think of is trying to get Jack back to his bedroom. He’s not going to like it, but his build is a lot like Micky’s and I’m bigger (and not drunk), so even if my shoulder hurts, I can probably manage to sling him over it and carry him a few meters down the hall.
“I reckon you feel sorry for him,” Jack slurs. “You let him fuck you out of pity. I reckon it gets you off.”
The sudden sound of skin hitting skin is unexpected and loud. When I glance between them, Jack is holding his cheek with a shocked expression and Micky is cradling his hand.
“Go fuck yourself, Jack. You’re the one I feel sorry for. Danny is a better fucking man than you’ll ever be,” Micky spits, looking furious, and at the same time he reaches for my hand. I’ve never seen him angry. He kind of glows.
I wonder if my expression looks as stunned as Jack’s.
“Why the fuck is it always about
him
?” Jack shouts. The imprint of Micky’s hand stands out on his skin quite spectacularly, but I don’t think that’s what’s causing the pain in his voice. “If it wasn’t for
him
, none of this fucking shit would have happened. If it wasn’t for
him
, that stupid bitch Dashiel wouldn’t have come around to Dieter’s that night to have a go. If it wasn’t for him….” Jack tails off, his hand over his mouth.
As soon as he says Dashiel’s name, Jack has my complete attention. It’s a kind of light-speed realignment of my awareness, and it disorientates me so much I feel a little sick.
Jack knew Dashiel, saw Dashiel at Dieter’s?
What shit happened? Shit to do with me?
That
night?
What night?
“What night?” I whisper as dread surges through me. My fingers trace the shape of the pad in my pocket over and over as though it’s some sort of talisman.
“Forget I said anything,” Jack mumbles from behind his hand, but something in his voice is broken.
“What night?” I repeat.
“Forget it.”
“No,” I say simply. “What night did Dashiel go to Dieter’s?”
Making this awful sound that’s half wounded animal, half hysterical laughter, Jack slams his head against the sofa cushions and claws against the fabric.
“Jack, do you know what happened to Dashiel?” Micky asks shakily.
My fingers dig into Micky’s hand. I can’t take a deep breath. My heart flutters and flutters like a butterfly swept away by a hurricane.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t want any part of it,” Jack babbles. “I swear. It was a stupid accident. Dieter… he said we’d—” He gasps and gasps like the words are filling his throat, choking him. “I can’t! I can’t do this anymore.”
“What accident?” I feel a million miles away from this room.
“The stairs….”
Jack begins sobbing hysterically after that and the only distinct words I can make out are “Dieter made me help him dump the body.”
“I’M COMING
with you,” Micky says, his eyes wide and scared as he rushes after me to the front door.
I shake my head. I won’t even look at him properly. He needs to rest, and this is something I have to sort out. This is between me and Dieter,
and Dashiel
.
“What’s going on?” Donna asks, peering out of the door to what is presumably her, and maybe Vinny’s, room.
“Please stay,” I say to Micky as I open the door. I try to close it behind me, but Micky is there, gripping onto the frame.
“Don’t do this on your own, Danny. You’re scaring me.
Please
.”
“I’ll come back for you,” I say. I cup his face with my hands and kiss him softly before turning away and taking off down the graffitied stairwell lit up in all its sickly yellow glory.
WITHOUT MICKY
beside me, my heart is as cold and frozen as the night. I run down the road, heading toward the place Dieter lives. After Jack broke down completely, the only thing I managed to get out of him that made any sense was that Dieter discharged himself from hospital a few days ago.
I feel like a knife cutting through the dark, all sharp with purpose. If anything gets in my way, I will cut right through it. There is no thought in my head but making sure Dieter tells me what happened to Dashiel.
THE OLD
Victorian building where Dieter lives is run-down and not what I expect. Dashiel told me where it was a while ago, but I had no reason to ever visit Dieter here, and absolutely no longing to follow him. It’s the sort of house that could have been beautiful, and probably was once.
The front door is wide open, and inside it looks like a squat.
Some of the rooms I can see have locks and doors and others are just open wide and full of darkness. A few of the floorboards in the hallway are missing, and I step carefully across the gaps to the stairs. People are everywhere, but they are mostly sleeping. I have to step over a couple lying on the stairs. All of them are so vulnerable and unaware like this—I could be a shark; I could be the darkness come to devour them. If I really was a knife, I could cut through them, and they wouldn’t even know. No one would know. Perhaps no one would care. Like no one cared what happened to Dashiel.
I don’t like thoughts like this. I don’t like it here.
Dieter lives on the top floor. There are a lot of stairs. Somewhere music thumps like a heartbeat. On the last flight of stairs, the banister is splintered and broken, the plaster crumbling from the walls.
There is only one room up here, and the door to it is open.
Inside, Dieter is lying on his back on a dirty mattress in the middle of an empty, long, low-ceilinged room. At first I think he’s passed out with his eyes open, but his gaze follows me as I walk from one end of the mattress to the other.
He’s wearing a ripped dress and one of his heels is broken. The makeup plastered on his face is smudged. I sense he’s waiting for someone, or something. I doubt it’s me.
“What happened to Dashiel?” I’m surprised at how steady my voice is.
“Jack told you,” Dieter says quietly. He doesn’t sound surprised. Only resigned. “I didn’t think he could keep his mouth shut.”
“What happened?”
“It was an accident.”
“What was?” My voice sounds so cold and so far away. All I can think is
This can’t really be happening
. The past hour seems like a dream.
“He fell through the banisters out there.”
Dieter chokes back what sounds like a laugh, and for a second I hate him. I hate him so much. But when I look closer, I can see tears slipping down both sides of his face to soak the mattress.
“I never wanted to
hurt
him. I only wanted him to leave, but he wouldn’t go, he kept telling me how fucking wonderful you were. What a bitch I was for constantly putting you down.” Dieter takes a shaky breath, as if he’s relieved to be talking about this at last and that surprises him. “But you know what, Danny? If you’d ever stood up to me, I would have stopped. If you’d ever lifted your head up and looked at me like you are now….”
Dieter squeezes his eyes shut. I keep my gaze on his face, on the tears spilling down his cheeks. This isn’t about me anymore. I wish it had never been about me.
“Dash kept going on and on. He knew I was in love with him. It made me hate him a little bit. I just wanted him to go, to leave me alone and stop cutting my heart up. I only pushed him gently, but he lost his balance and fell, right through the banisters. They’re broken and old, and he fell so far down. Broke his neck, I guess.”
I stop breathing. I’m frozen. It’s as if I can feel it, or at least I’m trying to—that moment when all the lights went out for him. And Dieter keeps talking and talking, the words overwhelming me. I bring my hands up to my face.
“He was dead by the time we got there. I guess I panicked. Someone was sure to have heard us arguing, and the police would say it was murder or manslaughter or something, but it wasn’t, it was just an accident!
“Jack was with me. He was scared. I told him the police would see him as an accessory and he had to help me. He knew someone with a car, and we dumped the body on the wasteland, ripped his clothes, made it look like he could have been killed by a punter.” Reaching out, Dieter grabs my hand, pulls it down toward his throat. “I’m a coward, Danny. I can’t kill myself. Here, press here. Harder.”
His eyes are wild and desperate, as though he’s sick and he needs to get better. But this isn’t going to make him better!
I feel so disconnected, split into so many different parts, I’m not sure which part of me is real. For a moment I let myself feel it, let myself think a part of me wants to ignore the fact Dieter’s crying such silent, helpless tears. It wants to ignore the fact that his skin is gray, that he doesn’t look well, that he tried to kill himself not long ago. It wants me to sink down to my knees and press my hands around his throat where he wants me to press.
It wants me to be a knife.
But the truth is—I’m not. Dollman is wrong, so wrong: we’re not all sharks, we could be, but we’re not. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone in my whole life. Not even the person who has just told me my best friend died because of him. The person who lied to me, and to everyone this whole time.
Letting the pain lance through my shoulder, I link my fingers with his and circle his throat with my bad hand. I stroke the skin there, feeling his terrified birdlike pulse and the strong tendons of his neck.
Tonight started out so beautiful, but now it’s all wrong. Everything is wrong, but that doesn’t mean it can’t ever be right.
“It hurts,” I whisper, laying my head against Dieter’s chest. His heart beats fast and uneven against my ear, just like any other broken heart. Just like mine.
I let go of his throat.
“Why don’t you hate me?” he asks in a whisper. I shiver as his hand touches my hair.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper back.
I think Dieter hates himself, though. It runs through him like a poison.
“Are you going to tell the police?” he asks.
I don’t answer. Instead I lie with my head on him for what feels like hours, thinking about Dashiel.
Eventually I push myself up off the dirty floor. His mattress smells of urine. My whole body aches.
“There’s this guy, this shark. He talks to boys out on the streets. Scares them,” I say. “Dashiel was frightened of him. I thought he was the one who killed him.”
“A shark?” Dieter looked at the ceiling. “I remember Dashiel used to say stuff like that.” More tears slip down his cheek. “Looks like I was the shark, though, doesn’t it?” he whispers.
I shake my head. Dieter’s not a predator. He wouldn’t be destroyed like this by what happened if he were.
“I followed him, and he threatened me.” I’ve no idea what makes me admit this. Maybe the openness I have with Micky has become addictive.
“You followed a shark?” He fixes me with this hard, unblinking gaze, and I kind of wish those words hadn’t come out of my mouth. “You think this a game? That Dashiel would want you to get yourself hurt?”
It’s the first time Dieter has ever expressed any sort of concern about me, even indirectly.
“Dashiel’s gone,” I say.
That’s the truth, and it’s all that matters in the end. It’s all that’s left. I turn away and close Dieter’s door behind me.
I think about what I would have done if it really had been a punter who killed Dashiel. A real shark. If Dollman had been the one. For a brief moment, I wonder if I would have felt different, if I’d have wanted to hurt them. But I think I would have just wanted them taken away so they couldn’t hurt anyone else. I don’t think Dieter is going to hurt anyone else, only himself. I’m not going to tell the police. What would it change?
My fingers trace the shape of the splintered banister as I make my way down the stairs. One of the steps about halfway down is broken as if something heavy landed on it. I sit there for a while.
Am I wrong to believe Dieter so readily, to believe Dashiel’s death was an accident? I’m not sure why I do. Perhaps because Dieter wanted me to take the weight of his life so badly he had no reason to lie. If he had meant to kill Dashiel, wouldn’t he have told me that? Wouldn’t he have thought I’d be more likely to hurt him like he wanted as a result?
THE SKY
is beginning to lighten as I walk back to Donna’s. The world is all blues and grays and violets.
Around me everything is peaceful and still, but I’m not sure how I feel. Something big inside me has gone, and I don’t quite know what to do with the space. It’s all happened so suddenly.
I press the buzzer to Donna’s flat and someone buzzes me in. I drift up the stairs as if the world beneath my feet doesn’t quite exist, as if I’ve been untethered. I’m empty and unreal.
Barely half a second after I knock on the door, Micky swings it wide and looks at me fiercely, making me feel as if he’s reading everything that’s happened from my face. Then he knocks me backward against the railing with the force of his hug.
I’ve never been more grateful for anything. I need this. I need Micky to hold me, to need me, to be here, exactly where he is. He squeezes me tight, and I take breath after breath, filling up every space that needs to be filled. If either of us is crying, I try not to notice.
And as we stand locked together outside Donna’s flat in the cold dawn light, I slowly work out the words and tell him everything that happened at Dieter’s. I know I’d be better writing it all down, but I don’t want Micky to let go of me. Ever. And I don’t think he cares how long it takes for me to get my words in order. He’ll wait for me.