The Smell Of Her

“I sold one for four fifty,” he said.

“Wow, really?”

There was noise and conversation all around them, the two colleagues in their dark suits, out of place in this small bar tucked away from the rest of the drinking establishments in this part of town.

The juke box was loud, and they were having to huddle together over the small round table. The quieter of the two men was playing with a beer mat. It was advertising a Belgian beer called Kwak, and was a postcard as well as a beer mat. He stared at it for a while, barely listening to what his colleague was saying. His shirt was white and crisp, even after a long day in the office. His suit was a very dark and subtle charcoal grey. Elegantly tailored without being ostentatious. Everything about him was muted but stylish. His edges were perfectly soft.

His colleague had the blonde, mussed hair and brash arrogance of the recently moneyed. His skin was just the wrong side of tanned and looked strange. Not precisely orange, but not a natural brown either. He spoke loudly above the noise, not caring if other people heard him; quite enjoying it when they did.

“Yeah,” he was saying. “Some couple moving into the penthouse in the Box Works. Wanted some art. I was trying to shift. Bored with it now. Cut out the middle man, advertised on eBay, and the price went up and up.”

“Wow, eBay? I never would have thought.”

He tapped the edge of the beer mat absent mindedly against the table and looked across the room at the group of men and women sitting in one of the orange upholstered booths. They were already sitting there when he and Marc had arrived, and by now they were drunk. Their laughter was almost as loud as the music from the juke box, and because they were seated directly under one of the speakers, they were shouting their conversations at each other.

The loudest of them was American. He talked long and loud, above all the others, silenced only by the occasional, “Shut up, John” from one of the group.

“Jesus, how fucking loud are they?” Marc said, looking back over his shoulder at the raucous collection of people.

“Hey!” shouted the American, seeing Marc look over at them. “Don’t you look at me, man. Don’t you go looking at me, asshole. Fuck off.”

Marc held the American’s stare for a few seconds, before slowly and deliberately turning his gaze away and resuming his conversation with his colleague.

“Yeah, so the woman was really pleased with it. I don’t think the guy knew that much about art, but she was spot on. If her bloke hadn’t been hanging around, I’d have been in there. She was spot on. You know?”

“Really?”

“Foxy little minx. Too right.”

“Do you want another one?” He stood up and looked down at Marco, who lifted his glass, drained it, then waggled it from side to side.

“Another one of these, thanks mate.”

He pulled his wallet from his pocket and walked over to the bar. As he stood waiting to be served, he looked out through the window onto the street. He wondered vaguely what they were going to do with the office blocks that had been done up recently.

Behind him, back, deep into the bar, he could hear the American guy’s voice rising. He was shouting something. He could hear Marc’s affected bray competing to be the loudest.

He distracted himself from the noise by thinking about the smell of her skin, and the way she had stood among the sand dunes, dressed in the flimsiest cotton dress. There had been very little breeze that day. Her hair was thick and glossy, her fringe reaching down past her brows, almost into her eyes. Her eyes were laughing, and she had one arm pulled across the front of her, held in place at the elbow by her other hand, so that she was looking at him over her shoulder. Her lips were curved into a half smile, and it was all he could do to stop himself pulling her down to the ground and fucking her right there.

He wondered what she was doing now; where she was.

The bar man asked him what he would like, and he asked for the same again. He could hear one of the women from the group sitting in the booth saying insistently, “John sit down. Just sit down. It’s not worth it.”

The bar manager was keeping his eye on what was going on, standing just behind the bar, ready for the first sign of trouble.

He could hear Marc goading the American. He wished now that he hadn’t ordered another round. It would have been more sensible to leave.

He paid for the beers and carried them back to the table.

“What a cunt,” Mark said, picking up the pint glass as soon as it hit the table. He said it loudly and clearly, enunciating every word.

The American stood up.

“What the fuck?” He looked around at his friends. “What the fuck did he just call me?”

“I think he called you a cunt,” one of his friends said.

It happened quickly. He was sitting back, taking a drink of his beer, and suddenly the American was looming over Marc with a bar stool raised above his head. Before it even registered with him what was happening, the stool came crashing down onto Marc’s skull.

Marc fell forward slightly in his seat, but in a flash regained his balance. His hand went straight to his jacket pocket, and he pulled out a flick knife.

“For Christ’s sake, Marc,” his colleague said, putting his beer down violently and standing up. He didn’t know what he hoped to achieve by this, but some impulse forced him to do it.

Marc paid him no attention, and swung the blade towards the American.

The juke box was still playing, but the rest of the bar had gone quiet. All eyes were on Marc, swinging his blade back and forth in front of the American guy. Every so often he would make a lunge towards him.

The American had his hands up, and was standing his ground, but trying not to be too confrontational.

“Hey, man, be cool. Be cool. There’s no need for that.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Marc said, inching closer to the American guy.

“John, sit down. Leave him alone. It’s not worth it,” the same woman who had tried to reason with him earlier was saying.

“No, no. We’re cool, baby. We’re cool,” the American said to her.

“I’ll give you fucking cool, mate,” Marc almost screeched, and lunged at the American.

Everything seemed to freeze. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened. Marc’s hand was missing a knife. The American had shut up, his hands raised in the air as though in surrender, and was now looking down at his stomach.

Marc had stepped back and was also looking at the American’s stomach.

He looked too and saw the slow bloom of a blood rose spreading through the material of the American’s t-shirt. It was almost beautiful to watch. It was like watching the blood seeping through her wet cotton dress as she lay there in the sea, at the shore, with the waves lapping around her.

He had stood silent and helpless that day, too. He had been unable to think what to do. He didn’t know if she was speaking or just mouthing the words, but she seemed to be saying, “Help me.” He hadn’t known how.

“You fucking stabbed me, man,” said the American.

“Shit,” Marc was saying. Over and over. “Shit, shit, shit. Mate, I’m sorry. Shit.”

The bar manager came over. He held a towel to the American’s stomach.

“Are you okay, John?” he asked. “I’ve called an ambulance and the police. Just sit down. We’ll try to hold the towel tight, eh? Stop you losing any more blood.”

His friends started to come back to life. They started to take action, to help their friend sit down in the booth.

Marc had sat back down on his chair, and was looking at his hands, which were clean. No blood. No knife, either.

He looked around on the floor, and saw it, lying where it had dropped when Marc had let go of it. He must have stuck it in and pulled it straight out, when he realised what he had done.

She had been pregnant, quite a way gone, that day she started bleeding on the beach. She had looked so pretty earlier, up in the sand dunes. And then it was all over, right there in that split second that their child lost its tenuous grip on life.

She had pleaded with him to help her, and he had done nothing. He was paralysed, incapable of thought, incapable of movement. It had taken a stranger to come along and sort things out. He hadn’t even called an ambulance for her.

He gave his witness statement to the police while the paramedics were seeing to the American guy. He was free to go after that. They were taking Marc in. The American was taken to hospital, and his friends dispersed soon afterwards.

Marc was taken out to the police car and driven away. He picked up his case, checked his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and his keys, and started to walk out of the bar.

“Don’t come back, eh?” said the bar manager. “You or your mate.”

Don’t come back. That was what she’d said to him, sitting there in the hospital bed, after he’d spent another half hour at her bedside, not knowing what to say.

It was the last time he’d seen her. Three years ago. And the memory of the bloom spreading across her thin, wet cotton dress remained.

He wondered what she was doing, where she was now. He remembered the smell of her skin.

© J R Hargreaves August 2006