‘Hi there Eva,’ Zack says. ‘Welcome to my humble hacienda!’
Oh, God.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Woah, it looks different in the dark.’ Creepy. What I mean is creepy. And it’s silent.
I step inside and try not to flinch when he locks the door again behind me, though I’m vaguely reassured when he leaves the bunch of keys hanging in the lock.
‘Yeah, I’ll chuck a few more lamps on, hang on. You don’t want to make the place look too open in case you get the pissheads banging on your door or the motherfucking popo doing you for an illegal lock-in.’
I laugh, without being sure that ‘motherfucking popo’ was meant to be funny.
He throws the place into better light and I relax slightly.
‘Sit up there and I’ll mix you one of your lavender Martinis,’ Zack gestures at the bar stools, opposite the backlit bar, with its Banksy print of two policemen kissing. ‘If that’s what you’re feeling?’ he says, and I nod vigorously. I’m not feeling it, I’ve recovered the few degrees I needed to realise 1) the last fucking thing I need is a Martini, and 2) the last thing I want is fucking, but it’s too late now.
It isn’t too late as such, I know that. I am clothed, enfranchised and technically able to leave.
I hate the fact I feel obliged to do anything because I was stupid enough to initiate this. Thinking I’m now committed to some sort of sexual encounter is everything I would hotly and passionately argue against, if it was a hypothetical, and especially if it was someone else. It’s one of those unpleasant moments in life you confront the fact your beliefs in theory and behaviour in practice can be two entirely different things.
Now Zack is theatrically slapping fresh lavender heads between his hands, clapping to ‘release their perfume’, and threading them onto cocktail sticks with lemon slices, and the complexity of the drink alone feels like a debt to pay. I thought once he wasn’t working, he’d flip the lids on beers.
‘Want music on?’ he says.
‘Sure.’
‘Name an album.’
‘What, any album?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Uhm …’ Ugh, a coolness test, and I don’t want the cringe of anything overtly seductive. ‘Fleetwood Mac? Tusk?’
Zack leans towards the door, talks as if to a pot plant on the bar.
‘Alexa, play Fleetwood Mac, Tusk.’
‘Is this your place?’ I say, as it starts, struck by Zack’s freedom to entertain on the premises.
‘No, the owner Ted is in Lanzarote. He lives there part of the year. The cold part. I run it for him when he’s away. He’s like an uncle to me.’
Zack spins a coaster into position in front of me and sets the Martini on top of it.
‘Thank you!’
‘What’s your deal, then, Little Miss Nightmare Before Christmas?’
‘Nightmare before …?’
‘The Tim Burton film, like a cartoon? You look like the girl in it. Big eyes and the white raggedy dress. Kinda spooky.’
‘She’s called the Corpse Bride, isn’t she?’ I say, with a smile as I sip.
‘Her name’s Sally.’
‘Ah. My deal …?’
‘Got a husband, boyfriend? Girlfriend? Significant Other plus Side Dude?’
‘I’d not be here if I did have one?’ I blurt, baffled. I then realise how explicit this is regards my purpose, even though it’s not really my fault he asked such a direct question. I waffle: ‘… In closed-up bars in the middle of the night. Drinking drinks with herbs in them.’
‘Hey, I’m not here to judge,’ Zack says, hands up.
He’s managed to make me feel like Shirley Valentine cracking on to a Greek waiter, needing a holiday from herself. I feel patronised. Would he have asked a woman of his own age these things, I wonder? Maybe, yes – I have a suspicion that Zack has the gift of annoying people when he isn’t intending to annoy.
‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ I say, hoping my intonation makes it clear I don’t care. Although … if he says he has, that’s an easy out for me. Zack tilts his head in a contemplative way.
‘Nah. It’s complicated, but nah.’
It’s complicated means ‘I’m messing someone around and I think the fact makes me interesting,’ Susie always says.
‘Aren’t you drinking?’ I ask, as I realise Zack is now rinsing the cocktail shaker under a tap rather than sorting anything else.
‘I’ve got an Asahi on the go,’ he points to a bottle on the counter.
He dries his hands, walks round, and takes up position on the stool next to me.
‘Enjoying it?’ he says of the Martini.
‘Yeah, incredible,’ I say, politely, having some more, really wanting to take the fruit salad out of it so it’s more accessible, but not wanting to hurt his feelings.
We chat about music festivals, and hipster restaurants, and some local hoodlums who’ve taken to drag racing on the main road.
I notice, once again, that company that’s not the right fit for you is so much lonelier than being happily alone. I’ve had no existential moments while sharing pizzas with Stripy Roger.
And Zack’s curiosity about me, it seems, began and ended with my partnership arrangements.
When I open my mouth to say something about myself, after a long monologue about the benefits of his possibly moving to Australia – delivered in a slightly weary, rehearsed way as if he’s tired of having to explain his life choices to eager fangirls – Zack interrupts: ‘… I’m staying in the flat upstairs. I’m kinda hoping you enjoy that drink so much that you drink it quickly, so you can come up there with me.’
He’s trying to give me come-hither, hooded eyes.
Clunk. There it is. I knock most of the rest of the Martini down in one, and wonder if I’m realistically going to make it to work at all tomorrow.
What can I say to Zack? ‘Having become two degrees soberer and twenty minutes more aware of your personality, I’m going home’? Yes, I could and should say at least some of this, but I won’t. I ponder how many mistakes in life are born of a simple fear of being rude.
‘Show me the way,’ I say.
I feel about as enthused saying that as ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done’.
Zack slides down off his stool with a smirk and gestures for me to follow him up a narrow flight of poky, creaking stairs, through a door behind the bar. The décor budget clearly went on the kitsch joint below: the sitting room he leads me up into smells of microwaved food and sadness, and there are sports socks and pants on a plastic drying rack. A coffee table holds a clutter of vaping equipment, remote controls and empty Nando’s PERi-PERi sauce bottles with candles wedged in them, a version of trattorias and their repurposed wicker wine holders.
Zack points at a puffy pale grey pleather recliner in front of the television.
‘Can we do it on there?’ he whispers. ‘I feel weird in Ted’s bed. His wife died a year ago.’
‘Why are we whispering?’ I say. ‘Is she listening?’
‘Possibly,’ Zack says.
‘… What?’
‘She died in that bed,’ Zack says, pointing at a room next door, eyes widening. ‘Freaks me out. I feel Linda’s ghost hovering over me. She died of a heart attack and I get this pain in my chest, like she’s sitting on me. Trying to give me one.’