He’d definitely chosen the right place to leave The Authenticity Project. He liked the fact that he’d ordered tea with milk and not been asked all sorts of complicated questions about what specific type of leaf he wanted and what sort of milk. It came in a proper china cup, and no one demanded to know his name. Julian’s name was accustomed to being signed at the bottom of canvases. It did not sit comfortably scrawled on a takeaway cup, like they’d done in Starbucks. He shuddered at the memory.
He’d sat in a soft, scarred leather armchair in the far corner of Monica’s, in an area lined with bookshelves that he’d heard her call The Library. In a world where everything seemed to be electronic and paper was a rapidly disappearing medium, Julian had found The Library, where the smell of old books mingled with the aroma of freshly ground coffee, wonderfully nostalgic.
Julian wondered what had happened to the little notebook he’d left there. He often felt like he was slowly disappearing without trace. One day, in the not too distant future, his head would finally slip under the water and he’d leave barely a ripple behind. Through that book, at least one person would see him—properly. And writing it had been a comfort, like loosening the laces on those uncomfortable shoes, letting his feet breathe a bit more easily.
He walked on.
FOUR
Hazard
It was a Monday evening, and getting late, but Timothy Hazard Ford, known to everyone as Hazard, was avoiding going home. He knew from experience that the only way to escape the comedown after a weekend was to just keep on going. He’d begun pushing the start of the week further and further back, and bringing the weekend further forward until they almost met in the middle. There was a brief interlude of horror at around Wednesday, and then he was off again.
Hazard had been unable to persuade any of his work colleagues to hit the City bars that evening, so instead he’d headed back to Fulham and stopped off in his local wine bar. He scanned the sparse crowd for anyone he knew. He spotted a reed-thin blonde, her legs entwined round a high stool and her torso leaning over the bar, looking like a glamorous bendy straw. He was pretty sure that she was the gym buddy of a girl his mate Jake used to go out with. He had no idea what her name was, but she was the only person available to have a drink with, and that made her, at this moment, his very best friend.
Hazard walked over, wearing the smile he reserved for exactly this sort of occasion. Some sixth sense caused her to turn toward him and she grinned and waved. Bingo. It worked every time.
Her name, it turned out, was Blanche. Stupid name, thought Hazard, and he should know. He poured himself lazily on to the stool next to hers and grinned and nodded as she introduced him to her group of friends whose names floated into the air around him like bubbles, then popped, leaving no impression at all. Hazard was not interested in what they called themselves, only their staying power and, possibly, their morals. The fewer the better.
Hazard slipped easily into his usual routine. He took a roll of banknotes out of his pocket and bought a showy round, upgrading requests of glasses to bottles, and wine to champagne. He reeled out a few of his well-tested anecdotes. He plundered the long list of his acquaintances for mutual ones, and then spread, possibly even invented, a flurry of salacious gossip.
The group coalesced around Hazard in the way it always did, but gradually, as the large station clock on the wall behind the bar ticked past the hour, the crowd thinned out. Gotta go, it’s only Monday, they said, or Big day tomorrow, or Need to recover from the weekend, you know how it is. Eventually, only Hazard and Blanche were left and it was just 9:00 P.M. Hazard could sense Blanche getting ready to leave and felt a rising sense of panic.
“Hey, Blanche, it’s still early. Why don’t you come back to mine?” he said, resting his hand on her forearm in a way that suggested everything yet, crucially, promised nothing.
“Sure. Why not?” she replied, as he knew she would.
The revolving door of the bar spat them out on to the street. Hazard put his arm around Blanche, crossed the road, and strode down the pavement, not noticing or caring that they were occupying its whole width.
He didn’t see the small brunette standing in front of him like a traffic obstruction until it was too late. He barreled into her, then realized that she’d been holding a glass of red wine, which was now dripping rather comically off her face and, more importantly, was spreading like a knife wound over his Savile Row shirt.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said, glaring at the culprit.
“Hey, you walked into me!” she replied in a voice cracking with indignation. A drop of wine trembled at the end of her nose like a reluctant skydiver, then fell.
“Well, what on earth do you think you were doing just standing in the middle of a pavement with a glass of wine?” he yelled back at her. “Can’t you drink in a bar like a normal person?”
“Come on, leave it, let’s go,” said Blanche, giggling in a way that made his nerve ends jangle.
“Stupid bitch,” said Hazard to Blanche, keeping his voice low so the stupid bitch in question wouldn’t hear. Blanche giggled again.
* * *
• • •
SEVERAL THOUGHTS COLLIDED when Hazard was woken by his strident alarm. One: I can’t have had more than three hours’ sleep. Two: I feel even worse today than I did yesterday, what on earth was I thinking? And three: There’s a blonde in my bed who I do not want to deal with and whose name I can’t remember.
Luckily, Hazard had been in this position before. He slammed off the alarm while the girl was still asleep, mouth open like a Japanese sex doll, and carefully picked up her arm by the wrist, removing it from his chest. Her hand dangled down like a dead fish. He placed it carefully on the rumpled, sweaty sheets. She appeared to have left so much of her face on his pillow—the red of her lips, black of her eyes, and ivory of her skin—that he was surprised she had any left. He eased himself out of bed, wincing as his brain clattered against his skull like a ball in a game of bagatelle. He walked over to the chest of drawers in the corner of the room and there, just as he’d hoped, was a scrap of paper with a message scribbled on it: SHE’S CALLED BLANCHE. God, he was good at this.
Hazard showered and dressed as quickly and as quietly as he could, found a clean piece of paper, and wrote a note:
Dear Blanche, you looked too peaceful and beautiful to wake. Thanks for last night. You were awesome. Make sure you close the front door properly when you leave. Call me.
Had she been awesome? Since he had virtually no memory of events after around 10:00 P.M. when his dealer had shown up (even quicker than usual on account of it being a Monday), it hardly mattered. He wrote his mobile number at the bottom, carefully transposing two of the digits, in order to avoid it being at all useful, and left the note on the pillow next to his unwelcome guest. He hoped there’d be no trace of her when he returned.