The Pink Cage Read online

  The Pink Cage

  Derbhile Dromey

  Dedication

  To my late father, Muiris Dromey, who reckoned I’d be able to relocate to the South of France with the proceeds of my first novel. I’m on my way.

  Prism

  Beats blasted through the door to Jazz’s apartment. As I let myself in, they took shape. The Chemical Brothers, Come With Us. Jazz always listened to The Chemical Brothers when he needed to release tension. No doubt he was still pumped after kickboxing class.

  The clatter of my rucksack on the polished floorboards alerted Jazz to my presence. He appeared at the door of the living area, close enough for me to discern the wet sheen of his close-cropped dark hair. Steam from his shower still wafted from his skin. It was a black T-shirt night tonight; the T-shirt clung to his body, emphasising the sculpted muscles. Because it was Prism night, the T-shirt bore the legend M-Jazz, his DJ name, in green letters. The name was a nod to his guilty love affair with old-skool rave. I realised I hadn’t seen him since his break up with Jenny almost two weeks earlier, a yawning gap of time.

  “Astrid, don’t dump your shit in the hall,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh.

  I picked up the rucksack, yanking the top strap. It skittered across the floor, into his studio. In the living area, I laid my overcoat on the black leather armchair near the dining area, the one I inhabited.

  “Time for chips,” I said, rubbing my hands.

  “I’m getting Chinese.”

  Friday was takeaway night, Jazz’s only departure from his strict diet of grilled fish, chicken and vegetables.

  “Can’t we at least engage in a little friendly debate about our choice of takeaway? Chings’ chips taste of pig swill.”

  “You get what you like.”

  I made for the galley kitchen, where I kept my stash of vodka. It was empty.

  “What happened to my vodka?” I asked. “You decide to indulge for once?”

  “No. You drank it. You replace it.”

  He was clearly still in tragedy mode; the mourning was a little more protracted than usual.

  “Right. I’ll get my supplies. I trust you’ll have mellowed by the time I return.”

  Twenty minutes later, I returned armed with two bags of chips and a naggin of Smirnoff. Though I was more of a Stoli girl, I was forced to make do with the meagre selection at the local Spar. I held the bags aloft.

  “Got you some too. Since you always want to pick at mine.”

  He held up his hand. With their sluggish zoom, my eyes registered the phone pressed against his ear.

  “She’s back now, Mum,” he was saying, “I’ll put you on to her.”

  He handed the phone to me. I plopped onto the armchair and answered Ora’s well-worn repertoire of questions. She always felt the need to play the role of mother. Yes, I had everything. Yes, it was great that Jazz was able to bring me to the airport after the club. No, I could survive on a couple of hours’ kip. No, I wasn’t nervous. I had to go now, my dinner was getting cold.

  Ora’s anxious tones gave way to Matthew’s sonic boom. Matthew failed to realise that he didn’t need to raise his voice when he was on loudspeaker. He was suspicious of telephones, viewed them as bombs likely to detonate at any moment. As I spoke, Jazz took the bags of chips and shook both of them onto a plate.

  “Well, I’m sure that the gods will protect you and that you’ll show those people a thing or two,” Matthew said.

  “Of course.” A grin leaked into my voice. “I’ll slay them.”

  “All right then. Try not to maim yourself.”

  Ora broached the idea of the skiing trip during one of my monthly visits home. It was a Saturday morning. I was lounging on the window seat, my throne. The document I was proofing rested on my bent knees, inches from my face. My red pen, tool of the proofreading trade, was in my right hand, my monocle in my left. An heirloom from Matthew’s student days, the monocle was my long-time, trusted companion. It was heavy and substantial; I was quite fond of the Sherlockesque air it gave me. It turned the black squiggles on the page into words. A capacious earthenware mug, empty now, stood on the floor beside me. Despite the length of my body, I could nestle into a comfortable groove on the windowseat’s faded yellow cushions, created from years of curling up with various tomes.

  Ora stood at the table, her back facing me. The wood was scored with intersecting lines, jumbled routes to nowhere. She was inserting her latest batch of photographs into frames, readying them for collection by clients. The photographs were all of children, her specialty. From this perspective, they were daubs, a sea of formless faces interspersed with bright dashes of colour. The beams of February sunlight that spilled through the wide, east-facing windows shaded Ora black and grey.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you, Asi.”

  I’ve tired of asking her to stop calling me that.

  Her voice was even quieter than usual, muffled by the curtain of grey-streaked hair that curled around her face.

  “Yes?”

  I stretched my hands above my head, still feeling the effects of Thursday night’s gig at Eclectica, followed by a quick romp in the nightclub staff-room with Carl, who was always happy to oblige. I never brought my ballers back to mine; I still thought of the house as part Matthew’s.

  “I heard about something you might be interested in. It’s a skiing trip.”

  Ora’s voice was almost a whisper now, her words directed at the photo frames. Shards of memory prickled. I pushed them down and carried on with my document. It was an awkward beast, showered with Rorschach blots: the proofreading equivalent of wading through concrete. And it was due on Monday. Why couldn’t these academics learn to type?

  “You know that lunch I was at, where they asked me to do the photographs? I was telling you about it last night. There was a very interesting lady sitting beside me. She was wearing the most magnificent cream blouse. I’d say it was real silk.”

  Ora’s conversational style was crab-like; she scuttled from side to side until she reached her end point. My pen hovered over one of the ink splodges. The monocle was of little use, the paper brushed against my nose as I attempted to divine what lay beneath.

  “She’s involved in a lot of charity work; she’s so generous with her time.”

  My dictionary was wedged into the space between my hip and the window. I thumbed through it. Etiolated. That was the word under the ink splodge. Blanched or whitened due to lack of exposure to sunlight. Quite an apposite word for me to be defining.

  “Anyway, she was telling me about a skiing trip she raises money for.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “It’s called Sightskiers. They go to Austria every year.”

  Her words activated my internal firewall.

  “It’s just, it sounds wonderful.”

  Her voice was at its most emollient.

  “You get your own guide and everything. And free boots and ski hire, free lift passes. She said there’s a place left because someone dropped out. I told her I’d mention it when you came home.”

  “Forget it.”

  I stalked towards the percolator; another cup of coffee beckoned. The percolator dated from circa 1956, but made the best coffee known to man.

  “Well, it’s bound to be better than the last time.”

  The percolator clattered onto the worktop; the wood sizzled as it made contact. I picked it up. A welt now marred the worktop’s smooth surface. I busied myself with a cloth in a futile attempt to remove it, cursing under my breath. Words bubbled up in my throat, became trappe
d.

  “Fine then. Sign me up.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I do think you’d enjoy it.”

  “Whatever.”

  I poured the coffee and slathered Brie on day-old bread with savage strokes. As I made my way back to the windowseat, Matthew came in from his study.

  “What’s all this? I heard some sort of clattering noise.”

  “Astrid’s going skiing. I heard about this trip at the lunch, Sightskiers. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Matthew gave one of his explosive snorts.

  “What on earth for?”

  I shrugged, “Any excuse for a shade-shopping spree.”

  “Some sort of charitable venture, is it?”

  “Well, it’s for the blind. I mean, not exactly the blind,” Ora said, twisting her hands together.

  Matthew’s gaze penetrated my skin, made me squirm.

  “I didn’t raise you to become a trained monkey for the satisfaction of do-gooders. Why should you wish to submit yourself to such a scheme?”

  It was impossible to give him an answer.

  Jazz and I sat at opposite ends of the mahogany-effect dining table, our plates resting on straw place mats. Jazz still ate like a fat-boy, inhaling the food, his cheeks bulging. I pushed the plate of chips at him but he ignored it. His eyes were fixed on the widescreen television on the other side of the room. One of his Japanese films was playing. They were all the same to me, a blur of daggers and strange angled shapes. Sometimes, for amusement, I crouched in front of the television and tried to read the subtitles. It was rather like reading a book accompanied by moving images, but the words always disappeared from the screen before I finished reading them. The only sound came from the aural spaghetti junction of shouting voices on the television. Silence was a modus operandi for Jazz and I, but there was a different tenor to this one. It was suspended in mid-air, stretching into infinity. I speared my last chip.

  “Time for some beats,” I announced. “Since I suspect I will be enduring a musical famine for the week.”

  I crossed the room and opened a pair of wooden doors underneath the television to reveal a Bang & Olufsen sound system with a vinyl player on top. I selected Jackpot by Tocotronic (KO Kompakt Remix), crouched over the vinyl player and inserted the needle into the groove. Then I stood back and let its clean, clinical beats fill the room. The Teutonic vocal was appropriate for the occasion.

  Jazz loaded the dishwasher and went to sit on the couch, which was upholstered in the same black leather as my armchair. His legs were stretched in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Jazz liked to listen to beats with the television on mute, so he could watch the moving images at the same time. It baffled me, this conflict between sight and sound. This time, he made no move to press the mute button.

  “Turn that off. I’m watching this.”

  Jazz was particular about his pre-club rituals. They kept his mind clear for the set. I put the record back in its casing and slid it into its correct place on the shelving that lined one wall of the living area. The shelves stretched to the ceiling and contained all the records and DVDs Jazz owned. I poured myself a belt of vodka and set the glass on the coffee table, making sure to place it on a coaster. Jazz was already wound up tight enough; I didn’t want him to provoke him further. I switched on the lamp beside the armchair and angled it so that the light pooled over me without shining directly into my face. The lamp was a sleek metal contraption. Jazz claimed to have bought it because it looked cool, but he never used it. I settled myself down with my monocle and my much-thumbed copy of The Hound of The Baskervilles, which I planned to bring on the trip for a little light reading. I didn’t read for pleasure much these days; my eyes were always beat after proofreading.

  “Might as well get the party started anyway. Since there’ll be precious little partying when I slum it amongst the Cabbage Patch Kids.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call them that. Especially since you pretty much are one,” said Jazz, not looking away from the screen.

  I downed my shot.

  “Oh my eyes work just fine, St Geoffrey. Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  Jazz turned towards me. Blue lights from the television screen illuminated his face.

  “If your eyes work so well, why haven’t you DJ’d in front of anyone except me since that Eclectica thing?”

  His words found their mark, expelling the air from my body.

  “What about White Nights?”

  Good recovery. He couldn’t dispute the cult following of my Internet radio show, with its dedicated band of Mittel-European listeners.

  “You only got that show because you shagged Carl.” Carl, aka DJ Lucius. Resident DJ at Eclectica.

  “Yeah, well he’s hot.”

  Jazz wasn’t a fan of Carl’s.

  “He jerks you around. And he steals your sets.”

  “Stick to the point, Jazz.”

  “I just think this trip is a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “You might stop being cruel to people. Especially blind people.”

  “Fucksake, when did you become such a sanctimonious prick?”

  I swung my legs around and stood up, setting my monocle and book down on the coffee table. Time was ticking on and I needed to get ready.

  I decided to keep things simple that night, so I opted for a pair of denim hotpants and a red beaded top, accompanied by knee-high red boots. Then I applied industrial-strength hair gel, getting up close and personal with Jazz’s mirror as I sculpted my hair into artful waves. Under the bathroom lights, my hair was the colour of day-old snow. I slipped on my Ray-Bans: a traditional choice, but I needed durable shades for the rough and tumble of the club. These ones had the added bonus of arms which were the exact same shade of red as my top.

  At the club, we fell into a routine honed over the three years of Jazz’s residency. We hooked Jazz’s laptop, the nerve-centre of his operation, up to the club’s decks. Unlike most clubs, there was no warm-up DJ, so Jazz was free to reign supreme over his DJ universe, tweaking the decks to his specifications. Though the decks resembled the vinyl behemoths of old, the records were designed to receive digital signals, which enabled Jazz to play music directly from his laptop while still indulging his sentimental fondness for vinyl. Jazz also lined up his emergency CDs, which contained a copy of his set in case of needle failure. Then we hooked up the amps and tested the sound levels, over and over again, until Jazz was satisfied.

  As the first beats of Jazz’s set began, I made for the bar. Simon the barman slipped a double vodka my way. Instead of his trademark mellow beginning, building the vibe up with deep, soulful numbers, Jazz gunned straight for hands-in-the-air hardcore. Though punters were starting to drift in, the club was almost empty. With nothing to absorb the sound, the beats hurled themselves against the walls.

  The DJ box was high above the crowd, on a mezzanine floor which ran along the four walls of the club and which was seldom accessed by the punters. At Prism, God truly was a DJ. Lurid shapes danced on the walls, the prisms which formed the club’s logo. The shades blocked out the worst of the glare, but all I could see was the flash of the lights, interspersed with darkness: black white black white black. Good thing I knew every inch of the club. At various intervals, I sidled up to the bar for refills, or paid visits to the DJ box to help Jazz adjust his sound levels. I also brought him pints of iced water; the DJ box was an alcohol-free zone. He was working the decks pretty hard, inserting extra beats, layering records over each other, spinning them back and forth. At times, the needles jumped under the strain, but only I was able to detect the sudden jerks, the little breaks in the otherwise smooth flow of beats. The bass line throbbed, like the beating of a heart, almost obliterating the melodies. Jazz wasn’t inclined to indulge in turntable trickery as a rule. Still, the crowd were well up for it;
the dancefloor was filled with heaving bodies. There was no-one like Jazz for reading the pulse of a crowd; he was a pied piper, leading them over the edge into oblivion.

  He didn’t even look up when I approached. No shouted words of thanks, no casual hand on my arm. I figured he was deep in the zone. Besides, the noise was loud enough to induce bleeding eardrums. I figured he could fend for himself and took up residence at my usual spot, leaning against a pole at the edge of the dance floor. Light haloed my body, casting a glow over my translucent skin. I didn’t have to wait long. A shadow bobbed in front of me and a hot, damp hand grabbed mine. He pulled me out onto the floor and his hands moved to my waist. He blew hot beer breath into my ear. My hands roamed down his back. His T-shirt was soaked in sweat. It had the slick plastic veneer of a sports top. Jazz segued into a tune I didn’t recall seeing on his set list. Such deviations were a frequent occurrence; he liked to make the crowd silent partners in his song-selection process. The harsh, industrial beats were accompanied by a searing vocal, a nameless cry of love. It filled every crevice of my body, lifted me higher until I was airborne. My shadow and I writhed to the beat, our hips grinding. My hands kneaded his jean-clad buttocks. His tongue moved from my ear to my mouth, turning my insides to liquid.

  The beats came to a sudden halt and the club turned back into a drab room. A babel of voices filled the vacuum left by the beats. As the lights came up, my shadow morphed into a troll. He grabbed my hand again, but I pulled away.

  “Can’t. Got to go to the airport. Maybe next time.”

  Lucky escape. I went back to Jazz and we packed up. As we walked to the car, his laptop case thunked against my leg, sometimes with force, but he didn’t appear to notice.

  “So who was the sucker tonight?” he said, placing his laptop with care on the back seat.

  “Some old geek. Reckon at least thirty-five.”

  “Suppose you didn’t bother to find out his name.”