You Don't Know Me

‘Fuck where’s the towel?’ I say. Suddenly I feel my head spinning in panic. My hands start to clam and I wipe them over and over across my clothes.

‘Shit it must be in the hold-all in the skip. Here use this,’ he says and pulls out the other hoodie in the bag, the one meant for Kira, and hands it to me.

I take it and wrap the gun in the sweatshirt keeping one hand on the handle of the gun.

‘Okay man. I’m about to do this thing,’ I say and step into the corridor.

I walk quickly along the darkness. I haven’t got time to use my phone for light. It’s okay though because I can see a crack of light where the top of the steps meets the bottom of the door. I head for it.

I push to open the door but it’s stuck. Shit we hadn’t checked. Why didn’t we check while we were sitting there for all that time waiting for Ki to radio? Shit. I push against it but it seems to be locked. My mind is stumbling around and it can’t think in a straight line. What the hell am I going to do, I am thinking. I pull the two-way from my pocket and talk into it.

‘Curt I need you man. The door is locked or something. I can’t get in.’

He doesn’t answer but in seconds I see the light from his door spread into the corridor as he opens it and heads towards me. He reaches me and waves me silently out of the way. He takes one step back and then crashes straight into the door with his shoulder. The door swings open. The music comes flooding into my ears. Curt looks at me raising his eyebrows and then turns back to the room that’s been spilling light into the hallway.

I take a step. It’s still dark once I get through the door but it’s lighter than it was in the hallway. The bass is pounding like a giant heartbeat and it feels as if it’s coming from inside me. I see the matt-black toilet door with a stick drawing of a man exactly where Ki said it would be. I push it open. The gun is wet in my hand from sweat and I drop it more than once into the sweatshirt that is covering it. I regain my grip and look about. There’s nobody at the urinals. The sinks are empty. He must be in one of the cubicles. I wait. I look at the floor to calm myself. It is a kind of deep green that makes me feel like it is sucking me in.

My heart is doing its thing. Bam bam bam and for a second I forget I need to breathe. The pictures aren’t coming to me. What am I supposed to do? Do I kick the doors in? Do I wait for the doors to open? We have never spoken about this part of it. It seemed unnecessary at the time. Now I think it was the most necessary part. I decide to wait. I walk to one of the urinals and stand over the bowl, the damp sweatshirt still wrapped over my hand. There is a smell of shit and piss and bleach. It is so overwhelming that I feel for a second as if I am going to pass out.

I can hear the bass coming from the club in here but it’s still low enough for me to hear the splashes coming from one of the cubicles. Then as the flush goes, suddenly the deep drum beats from the club rise in a wave and then pitch down once again. Like it does when someone has opened the door. Shit. Somebody has come into the toilets. I look round as casually as I can. How will I even know whether this guy is with Face or not? What do I do with him? Do I wait? Do I shoot him too? My eyes begin to focus and the person who has just walked in becomes sharp. Almost too sharp.

Fuck. It’s Ki. Her legs out wide over the green floor so that she seems like the Statue of Liberty. Her face is like glass, telling me nothing.

She puts her finger to her lips signalling me to stay quiet as I am about to scream out at her. Fuck.

I point at the cubicle where the flush has just gone and she nods. I don’t know why she is here. I wave one arm crazily telling her to leave right now. But instead she reaches into her handbag and pulls out a door wedge, puts it on the floor and then kicks it under the main door to the bathroom. I want to push her out but there’s no time. The cubicle door begins to rattle. I turn around to face it, my gun at waist height. The gun is doing its thing again and whispering at me. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. The weight of it is now making my arm ache and I feel like shooting it will make it lighter. And at that moment it is all that I want to do. Just to shoot it and lighten this weight. I see the face. Then it hits me. I don’t even know what Face looks like.

The man looking at me is tall and good-looking. He has a face like a film star. He looks expensive. He looks like a man who could rule the world. He looks at me, just about registering my presence and then follows my eyes to where Ki is standing. You can see the look of confusion in his eyes before something clicks in his brain. He shouts out to the other cubicle like he’s begging it to open.

‘Face!’

Then it does. The other cubicle door opens.

Time freezes.