The Afterparty Read online

  Sip.

  And very nervous, yes, despite the room’s prevailing ease. That Cuzco people felt so comfortable in one another’s company only served to magnify his oddness. They dressed well, but casually, and as they liked. They did not smoke, for the most part, but neither did they protest. Guests seemed required only to relax and enjoy themselves. To Michael, this was the very strictest rule.

  I’m losing my edge. I’m losing my edge.

  And there were so many beautiful girls. They made a sad ache hum in Michael’s chest. He wondered what it would be like to take one of them to dinner. It didn’t matter which. He wanted to ask her about herself, and he would really want to know. Did she realise how beautiful she was? Did guys bother her all the time? Had she been born to high society? Or grown up the darling of a little town? Hacking out her path to privilege through the overgrown feelings of men. And did she realise that she was nothing here? Ripe fruit in a glut. Destined soon to rot or be devoured.

  Sip.

  And the toilets were marked LOOS.

  ‘Scuse me, sorry.’ Michael was hurrying past a grand piano to the end of the room. He felt dizzier than ever, and longed for a wall to put his back against. But mirrors, tables, people, doors conspired to prevent him. At last, he found a slot, and stopped there, noticing for the first time a large iron balcony that hung above the entrance. There was a bar up there, accessed by a spiral staircase. How had he not seen that before? And there!

  Hugo Marks.

  He was standing by the balustrade, chatting animatedly to a large woman and a man in a business suit. He looked somehow different from the man Michael had watched perform Arcadia on stage. Smaller, but perhaps a little heavier too. Even so, he was still a very good-looking guy. Wholemeal hair, elegantly plumped above the brow. Aristocratic cheekbones, neat mouth, sturdy spadeish chin, not completely unshaven. In his suit of blazing blue sat a birthday twist of flowers. There was no sign of Mellody, his wife.

  I’ve never been wrong.

  In his reverie, Michael had missed another tray. This time pipettes containing green and white had passed him, laid out in a line, as if for surgery.

  Did one need permission, he wondered, to climb up to the balcony? Perhaps some people had a special invitation, printed on a different colour card?

  Sip.

  Not that he was going to try. Hugo Marks would be so busy.

  ‘Best fucking live act?’ A London voice, very near him. ‘Fuck off! Since when has lip-syncing been live?’ Michael turned, and found that he was looking at Elton John, in peach sunglasses, addressing a group of people. ‘I think everybody who lip-syncs in public on stage, when you pay like seventy-five quid to see them, should be shot.’

  That was gossip.

  Excited, Michael took out his phone and began to transfer the fast-disintegrating quote from his memory into its.

  Everybody … who … lip-syncs …

  ‘Canapé, sir?’

  … should … be … shot.

  He finished typing and looked up.

  It was the porcelain spoons, five of them. Goldilocks waited, her unused hand tucked, in accordance with its training, into the small of her back, as if it were the rule that all non-serving parts of her body must be tidied deferentially from view. Perhaps it was.

  Michael peered at the lumps, heat-edged with brown, in their drip of soup.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Foie gras, sautéed in oloroso sherry.’

  ‘Mmm, foie gras,’ he enthused, making a hash of the r.

  He picked up one of the spoons and tipped it into his mouth. The liver deliquesced.

  ‘Wow, that’s fabulous!’ He nodded with vigorous sincerity, and a gentle swirly drunken feeling lingered in the movement’s echo. He closed his eyes to steady himself.

  When he opened them, Goldilocks had gone.

  He still held his phone in one hand, and the spoon in the other. The spoon went in his pocket. On the phone, he saved his note, grateful for the pretext to look busy.

  I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.

  He wanted more to eat.

  I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.

  ‘Oh I’m sure that’s true!’

  A sprightly voice was saying this beside him. Turning, as if without interest, he saw a dark-haired woman. Fairly young and almost pocketably small, she was talking to a suited older man. He looked smart and serious, but also, with his back against the wall, a little cornered.

  ‘So you guys are going big on Hugo’s movie, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Oh definitely. Absolutely. There’s been huge interest nationwide.’

  Enthusiasm sprang out of her in leaks, as though her tininess had pressurised it.

  ‘When’s it out?’

  ‘This month. It comes out later this month. It’s definitely going to be the biggest opening of the year so far.’

  She was a publicist, surely? Working for a cinema distributor, by the sound of it. The man would be a journalist, or some other person worth impressing. And his interest seemed to have been caught, because next he said:

  ‘Sorry, remind me of your name again?’

  ‘Rosanna. Rosanna Neophytou. Blue Box Comunications. That’s my company.’

  She tried to shake his hand, realised that hers had a champagne cocktail in it, laughed, placed the glass on the floor, wiped a palm on her dress, tried again, accomplished it.

  Who the man was clearly did not need saying.

  ‘Got any time with Hugo to give away?’

  He was a journalist then, probably an editor on another paper.

  ‘We’ll see. I’m pushing for it. It would be easier, of course,’ here the woman’s cheeks bunched, ‘if I could say there was a paper out there that I knew would treat him fairly.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ the man said back, with the decision to smile.

  This seemed to conclude something. They stood in silence, drinking.

  Michael loitered, being ignored.

  He was going to have to start a conversation of his own.

  But fear. A little pouch of anxiousness, some enemy gland, was squeezing hesitation through his blood. Who would he talk to? And who would talk to him? There had never been a time in Michael’s life when he felt good at this. Those friends he possessed, a loyal unit, had been acquired only through the circumstantial engineering of work, education or mutual acquaintance. Out in society, he was a sterile node. Humanity’s appendix.

  Sip.

  Even these self-recriminations were preferable to action. It was all delay.

  Sip.

  Sip.

  And now his champagne was gone.

  A fresh tray appeared immediately beside him, waving in a flap of kitchen noise.

  He took another glass.

  Sip.

  So. It was time to talk to someone.

  So. Keep moving. It was a strategy he had used before, when alone at parties.

  1. Walk, without appearing aimless.

  2. Prepare an opening line, but be ready to improvise.

  3. Make decisive eye-contact.

  4. Pretend not to be doing 1–3.

  Sip.

  So. Walk. Michael decided he would walk to the DJ booth.

  He leaned sideways into Elton John’s group. It yawned him through.

  ‘Ever since then I’ve watched him,’ Elton John was saying. ‘He’s chosen his roles. And he’s dedicated himself to not being that teen star that he could have been.’

  Michael felt a flicker of temptation to stop and listen further, but he did not dare appear conspicuous. Instead, he pressed deeper into the throng, sorrying and scusemeing a channel to the DJ’s lights, scanning for unattended guests, the young, the old, the weak.

  On arrival at the booth, he idled, glancing casually inside as if assessing the equipment.

  Eye-contact status: no eye contact.

  Swig.

  Giving himself
no time to brood, he selected his next waypoint – the piano – and launched off.

  ‘Phew, lots of people, eh?’ was to be his opening line, to a lone drinker, friendly but conspiratorial. Who after all, at parties, did not welcome the companionship of complaint? Michael knew he did.

  Sip.

  He tocked his glass on to the piano polish, beside the cocktails of an old couple who did not look up.

  You don’t know what you really want.

  You don’t know what you really want.

  You don’t know what you really want.

  On the ceiling, a large unlit glitterball revolved without a reason on its wire. Most of Hugo Marks was visible behind it. He was talking on a phone.

  ‘Canapé, sir?’

  A different waitress had appeared, in the same wig and pinafore, the same arm tucked back fencer-wise into its securing strings. And on her slate was something new: three tiny crabs, gridded out like Victorian examples, the remnants of a six-corpse display. In the corner sat a white ceramic ramekin with bitty liquid in it.

  ‘They’re softshell crabs,’ the waitress told him. ‘And that’s a Vietnamese dipping sauce.’

  She was pretty. Perhaps part-Indian.

  ‘Are they good?’ Michael asked, in a nice voice, that came out louder than he planned.

  ‘Mmm, delicious. I hadn’t tried it before tonight, but they’re really yummy.’

  ‘You’ve been eating them yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’ Prettily. ‘We taste all the food before service.’

  ‘And you just eat the whole thing?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Michael stared at the sequence of sandy-brown bodies. They looked exactly as three small deep-fried crabs might be expected to look. It was too late to withdraw. He grasped the nearest by one of its legs, squashed it in the sauce, and tucked the dripping package into his mouth without hesitating, chomping rapidly to disperse the shape. It was soft indeed, and very good.

  A new song had begun. Another thumper, so far without words.

  Michael continued to chew, looking at the waitress’s expectant face.

  Though the animals were small, there was quite a lot of food involved. Two bites, next time, would be the method.

  Still she watched politely, awaiting his reaction.

  ‘Thraaf,’ he said hurriedly through his crab, a little of which escaped.

  What must she make of him, he wondered? Might he be a rumpled but powerful newspaper editor? An Internet millionaire? A young literary curmudgeon?

  With his tongue, he stored the second half of the food in his cheek, and tried again.

  ‘Nice,’ he managed. ‘Yooer right.’

  The waitress laughed and left.

  Michael finished his mouthful alone.

  Up on the balcony, Hugo Marks had gone. Below, some people had started dancing, including Tracey Emin. Their movements must have driven others away, because the space had now opened up enough for Michael to see himself reflected in the mirrors on the other side.

  And then he realised something bad. It was obvious now.

  He had dressed appallingly.

  At home, the choice seemed simple. Jeans, trainers and so on clearly would not do. (Though here they were many.) So this left just his charcoal suit, a present from his parents years ago on the occasion of his first job interview, and two possible shirts, for reasons of hygiene, which could combine with it. The white one made him look like he was going to a job interview, so the navy was the only option – tieless, as he had seen done. Looking into the upper mirror now, however, its ornate gold plasterwork twisting lavishly around his torso, there was no doubt that he had made a mistake. Navy and charcoal! Michael could not understand how he had overlooked such an incompetent blend. Footballers wore dark suits with dark shirts, it was true, but usually a matching dark. And their clothes were expensive, and fitted well. Unlike Michael’s double-breasted jacket, which flapped like bunting round his middle, and overshot his shoulders with a rueful droop.

  There probably were people, he imagined, who had the beauty or the confidence to survive such an outfit. Or even posture it with brio into a design. But he was not one of them. He had not been a pretty baby or a good-looking boy, and he was not now a handsome man. At twenty-nine, time had not yet done its scuffing up; he still had tolerable teeth, only a very mild slouch, black hair of no consequence with, it was true, one or two infiltrating filaments of white. But even while he kept his youth, it would never be enough. Not with his low brow and rubberish complexion, which invited pinches and jocundity, and seemed to swaddle any hope of handsomeness beneath a blurring gauze. His body always gave the impression, Michael thought, that it had been made with slightly too much skin, as if waiting to be fat. (Which, no doubt, would come. The thought of that slack capsule ageing empty was not a thing he cared to contemplate, much less bring about by doing exercise.)

  Yet somehow, tonight, he had left the flat believing that he looked OK. If only he had worn the white shirt. That would have been better. Or attempted jeans … Or he could have just not fucking come.

  Michael felt himself reddening, and saw it too.

  What was he doing here?

  Nobody was going to talk to him. What did they know, or care, about his life? With their post-production and their golden globes?

  He picked his champagne up, and finished it.

  The dancers danced, without attracting any more.

  Michael needed a dump. Then home.

  He had come; he had a quote. Sally, Camille and the rest of them could be satisfied with that.

  He went directly to the LOOS door. It led into a large and elegant bathroom that made no mention of gents or ladies. A young woman, slim and dark, was standing in front of the mirror. A shining stripe of hair slipped down her back like the first wet stroke of a brush.

  ‘My look is very much girl-next-door,’ she said into her mobile phone, ‘just with tanned olive skin.’

  She was looking at herself, and her words slapped the empty room, all its cubicles ajar. Nobody but Michael then, not one other person in this gathering, had craved escape. He felt weak, and a little wild. He hurried to the nearest stall.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Publicity

  Date: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 15:41:20

  Dear William,

  Thank you very much for your chapter. I’m enjoying it. Do you have any more?

  Regards,

  Valerie

  * * *

  From:[email protected]

  To:[email protected]

  Subject: Re: Publicity

  Date: Tuesday, 18 August 2009 22:08:09

  Chapter 2 – Calvin

  Hi Valerie – Wow! That’s great to hear! I thought you’d forgotten about it, to be honest. I’m still doing a final polish on the rest of the book, but you can certainly have chapter 2.

  All the best

  William

  Friday, April 1 2005

  21:02

  WITHOUT WARNING, A thick forearm swung around Calvin’s shoulders. The dial of a Tag Heuer lolled beneath his chin.

  ‘Hey Calvin! How’re you doing?’

  He turned his head to see a smiling face he recognised. He had met the man recently, at another party. But his name … The name was taking a little longer to come back to him.

  ‘Hi. Yeah. Good thanks. You?’ Calvin’s forehead glistened with a light cocaine dew, and he was buzzing gently, though the acceleration phase had passed.

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ the man replied, nodding in tanned agreement with himself. ‘Not bad at all.’ He wore a ruffle-chested cyan dress shirt from the Seventies, older perhaps than he was, and open to the hair.

  That’s right, thought Calvin. They had met at that Puma launch party in the stately home. A music video director. Or was it advertising? Whichever it was, the man had the coolest little car that he
had ever seen, a grey Jaguar XKR. The pair of them had split some MDMA on the dash and taken it for a roar around the dark blue morning lanes. Calvin could recall the twisting flume of lit-up hedgerows. The veering flashes of the man’s reflected face, concentrating viciously.

  But what was his name?

  ‘This is Rich,’ Calvin said, playing for time, and introducing the Jaguar guy a little reluctantly to his colleague. ‘He works with me at Warehouse Records.’

  Rich looked relaxed, but Calvin could tell. He was an office man, Rich was, with kids. Sort of dry and cool when he wanted. But you know, not young any more. Parties were not where he belonged. Not in his suit and shoes. Calvin’s green and orange trainers, on the other hand, they were prototypes from Japan, humbly submitted with wearing instructions. And clinging to his torso was a couture vest of butter-coloured silk by Alexander McQueen. Around his head the scent of toffee putty curled, used tonight to tweak his haircut to a slant. Yes, Calvin, unlike Rich, was young. And he looked fabulous.

  ‘Hi,’ Rich said, with a friendly smile.

  ‘Hi Rich,’ said the man. ‘Caspar Rose. So what’s your beat over at Warehouse?’

  Caspar! That’s right! Calvin knew it was something weird.

  ‘Talent management.’ Rich presented Calvin with bracketing hands. ‘I’m babysitting this talent for the label tonight.’

  Everybody laughed, but the joke stung Calvin with reminding pain. Because it was true. Babysat was how he felt. He itched to free himself, to circulate, to have another line if possible. Though he would need to find a well-stocked friend now his own stash was finished. His brown eyes shone like wet little chocolates, and he offered them around the room.

  ‘So Calvin,’ Caspar said excitedly. ‘I’m making a film of the party for Hugo’s people. Want to say a few words for the camera?’ And without waiting for an answer, he was calling his companion over. ‘Hey Clive! Come here!’