Confidence Read online

  In bed, later, she pulled him into her and he fucked her quite hard and fast, and she ended up coming, which she hadn’t for a while. For some reason he didn’t want to come inside her, and he just held out until she had finished and then rolled off her.

  She held his hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He was still breathing quite hard. “Just don’t think I can. Maybe too tired.”

  “It’s all the stress,” she said.

  “Yeah. No worries.”

  She let go of his hand and in a few minutes she was asleep.

  He inched away from her on the mattress and took his cock in his hand. He was quickly engorged again and thinking of the black polyester thong, it probably wasn’t silk, it was just sweaty polyester, rising from between the huge inflated buttocks of Teelah the black girl who had come on to him. He jerked swiftly, imagining her smell and her thick black nipples and spurted silently on his belly, gasping. Morgan didn’t wake up.

  When he took his walks he thought obscurely that he was doing research on the neighbourhood, perhaps in order to defend it better, and he had to defend it just because they had invested so much in it.

  He walked some days all the way to where they herded the streetcars into yards and real railway tracks began, where there was a strip club in an old hotel beside a parking lot, called Exxotica or something as childish. He would walk past it and then turn around to come home and have to pass it again. Its doors were stainless steel and had no glass in them. He didn’t know if the girls in it would be white or black or Russian or Roma or what, because he never saw a girl coming in or out.

  And he still saw no sign of the massage parlours that were supposed to be at a couple of intersections. You would probably have to call to get an address, which of course he wasn’t going to do, but he did just want to know where they were and how awful they looked.

  The sad hookers near his house were not Roma, they were the ancient white poor who had been here since they had been brought from, god, Ireland probably, a hundred years ago. Or they had been small-town girls who had come here to be waitresses and then got addicted, maybe.

  The Roma girls did pass by occasionally, in their embroidered jeans and their clippety-clop heels and their cigarettes and their big sunglasses. The jeans were always a little too tight, the track jackets synthetic, but their hair was so flowing and shiny, they were actually, amusingly, sexy, he had to admit that. He was sure they didn’t have much money, they weren’t the kind of people who got jobs as real estate agents or cellphone salesmen, really—yes, maybe they were genetically poor, what the hell, he would have the courage to say this next time in front of Vanessa and Morgan—but they still made themselves look hot with their pudgy little bellies and their supermarket clothes. And they liked being girls, too, that was the thing, they were showoffs. If you came up to one and offered to take her picture she’d probably leap at the chance, or at least be flattered, if she didn’t think you were weird.

  But if you did it right, if you were very polite and professional—if you had a card, too, you’d need a card—and you offered money, it probably wouldn’t have to be a lot, because they weren’t real estate agents and for sure they needed money.

  Because he was almost home and didn’t want to be home yet, he stopped outside the Blue Star Bar, with its scarred plexiglas windows, a dim place he had only glimpsed inside. He saw that there was a TV screen above the bar and a young Indian or Pakistani guy running it and no obvious drunks in the corners and he just stepped into it as quickly as he could, so he couldn’t think about it.

  It was too warm inside. There was one white guy at the bar and he had been drinking for the better part of his recent life. In the far corner, around a table, in darkness, was an entire Indian family: an ancient grandmother in a sari, a fat mother, a crawling kid and a baby in a stroller. They had shopping bags on the floor around them. They stared at Tracy when he came in but their expressions were neutral.

  He stood at the bar and asked over it, “You open?”

  “Sure, boss,” said the young guy. He was pointing a remote at the TV on the wall, scrolling channels.

  “Okay.” Tracy sat on a stool. The family was still staring at him. Perhaps they were waiting for someone to come and pick them up. Or for this guy, the father, to finish his shift. Perhaps they spent every day like that watching the guy work. It was really too ghastly to be imagined, and Tracy was proud of himself for going in. And it would be rude to turn and leave now. “I’ll have a Jack Daniels please, on ice.”

  The bartender said, as he reached for the bottle, “You want to make it a double? Three bucks more. Happy hour.”

  Tracy shrugged. “Why not.”

  This was a little silly at this hour, before dinner on a weekday, but this was his neighbourhood now. It was interesting to discover it.

  As he sipped his large glass of whiskey, he saw through the murky window the gypsy girl he often saw outside the Hasty Mart, on a payphone (why were there still payphones? what was the advantage of a payphone?), because perhaps she bought her phone cards in the Hasty Mart and was calling the Czech Republic or Romania, who was not beautiful but who had such a lush little body she would, he knew, attract a great audience if anyone were to ever photograph it, her body, and it was something he thought she would not or should not be averse to considering, since it would be an easy thing for her to do and a small amount of money for him—what, exactly? maybe a hundred bucks a session, which would only take an hour or so, a hundred bucks an hour he could say—would probably be a lot to her.

  The streetcar didn’t come and the girl stood very patiently, just shifting her weight every few minutes from one leg to the other. If it had been Tracy waiting there he would have been pacing and cursing and making calls and debating the expense of a cab. But perhaps she had to get to a job cleaning buildings in the most distant suburb, the streetcar was just going to take her to the subway which would go to the end of the line and then another bus, and a cab was out of the question.

  If he had a car he would offer her a lift. Of course he wouldn’t, but maybe after another one of these dizzying vatfuls of whiskey he might be able to speak to her at least. He smiled to himself for even thinking of speaking to her.

  “Nother one, boss?” said the kid.

  Tracy made a show of looking at his watch but he was already nodding.

  He supposed that it would be dangerous to get involved with a gypsy girl, in any way, as the men were quite possessive and violent. So it wouldn’t be sex he was after, he would make that clear, if he did try to approach her; it would be a business proposition, a straightforward one.

  She must have been furious and frustrated—it must have been ten minutes he had been watching her—but she didn’t show it, didn’t look at a watch or step into the street to stare down to its tunnel-like end.

  By the time he had finished his second double and paid for it she was still waiting there, along with a half-dozen others, all equally patient.

  He stepped into the cool light and his heart began to race with incipient cowardice. He stood on the sidewalk with them all and pretended to be waiting for the streetcar. He breathed evenly.

  He kept looking at the girl, and she did turn once and meet his eye. He smiled, and she did not smile back but nor did she frown; she stared at him for a second neutrally as if curious or at least evaluating.

  He breathed. He would actually have to do this, and he could now, since the Blue Bird Bar—the street tilted a little bit every time he swivelled his head around. He was going to do something he had never done before and speak to her, just as he had never gone into a bar like that before, or, actually, been so wasted at five o’clock on a Tuesday.

  And just as he realized this he saw, at the shimmering end of the street, the staring headlight of the streetcar, so it would be there in three minutes and she would be gone. He took a step towards her and smiled, nodded, and said, “Excuse me, hi. Sorry.”

  She took a st
ep back.

  “Sorry to bother you, my name’s Tracy, I’m a photographer. I have a card here.” He opened his wallet as if to look for a card. He riffled through it, frowning, as if he had a bunch there he just couldn’t find, and he said, “I just wanted to ask you if you’ve done any modelling, and if you had an agent I could—”

  She made a snorting sound, and her face was really something like snarl. She stepped back and held out a flat palm to him as if to fend him off. There was a grinding roar as the streetcar pulled up, and she marched towards it on her heels, shaking her head. The doors snapped open, and he held up his hands apologetically, like a soccer player denying a foul. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  As he walked towards home he tried to laugh about it. At least he had learned there was no talking to them. At least in person. But that didn’t mean it was a completely dumb idea; it was all about the approach. You could, for example, put an ad on the internet, on one of those classified ad sites, and you could offer money and you’d have a ton of response.

  If this was something Morgan wouldn’t be interested in, and of course she wouldn’t be, the whole thing would stress her out no matter how lucrative it was, it wouldn’t be at all difficult to keep it separate from her. He could do it himself. He could have a separate cellphone that he would only have on during the day when she was at work, and it could be hidden the rest of the time. He’d need a private mailbox.

  As he walked down his street he felt a lightness as he remembered the basement apartment was empty and there would be no screaming or confrontation, either with the black girls or with Morgan about them. You could paint that space clean white and hang a paper backdrop and get just a couple of lights. It was so small it would be easy to light. You’d only need space for one model at a time anyway.

  He was even looking forward to passing Francis Doyle, out as usual in front of his steps, this time in a sweatshirt that looked as if someone had cleaned a soya sauce spill with it, and shorts, really, why shorts, just to show his veined legs and the grey socks?

  “Good morning,” yelled Francis Doyle.

  “Good morning Francis,” said Tracy, and then, quickly, “I have a question for you, Francis.”

  Francis Doyle’s mouth was open. He nodded.

  “Here’s my question for you. You ready? My question is this: if a parsley farmer gets sued, can they garnish his wages?”

  Francis Doyle stared at him. He adjusted his spectacles.

  “Ha,” said Tracy. “You have a good one.” And he passed without further impedance.

  Morgan was already home, early for once; she was on the computer but didn’t seem too stressed; it wasn’t even work she was doing, just chatting. She had a can of iced tea, which was an indulgence for her and a sign perhaps that she was feeling exuberant or at least in a good mood. The day was so warm she had the windows open. It was a pleasant place, their house.

  He came behind her and kissed her on the back of the neck, and she turned to him with a little surprised smile.

  “Hey,” he said, “those paint factory lofts are finally on sale. I just walked past the office. There’s a desk and a secretary. They’ve got models and mockups and everything. They look gorgeous. They’ve got those huge high factory ceilings, all that.”

  “Huh,” she said. “We should go by and look. They probably have a model suite.”

  “Sure,” he said. “For fun. I wouldn’t want to live in a glass box. I love our little house.” He stroked her shoulders, pulled her little ponytail out from under her collar. “But it’s good for us. Really good for us.”

  “Huh.” She turned back to her screen and he rubbed his knuckles in the back of her neck. She pushed back into his fingers, nuzzled his wrist a little with her chin.

  “You know what else?” he said. “United Sulphates is finally completely closed. It’s all over. I walked all around the plant and the parking lots. There’s no trucks, nothing. And the buildings are empty. There aren’t even the barrels in the yard any more. So that’s a prime area for lofts. It’s just a matter of time. You’ll see the signs going up. They’ll probably use the existing buildings.”

  “Sure,” she said, “great, you could live in a chemical factory. Great for kids.”

  “People will. They will. You watch. Listen, once these things are all built our value is just going to shoot up. You know it is.” Tracy looked past her head out the window at their little yard, and then over their fence at the garbage bins of the apartment block behind them. They were all overflowing, and some green bags had been piled around them. No one would collect those; they didn’t take green bags any more. They would just sit there then, for a few months, until they had been dismantled by raccoons and squirrels and the sticky paper plates and sacks of diapers were just dispersed at the base of their fence.

  But beyond that was the flowing main street with its hungry gypsy girls. Or whoever. He didn’t even have to be limited to the neighbourhood, now that he had thought of advertising online. His audience was the whole sweaty internet. He would have to get a business name.

  “You watch,” he said, pulling at his wife’s earlobes. “You wait. Once these things are built there’s going to be a French immersion school right across the street.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “Rub my neck again.”

  “Right across the fucking street.” He kneaded her shoulders. “And a wine importer where the Hasty Mart is. You watch. Snobberton’s or something.”

  She laughed.

  “Before you know it. We’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and Uvas Gomez is going to be a fucking design lab, with the Mies chairs and the Philippe Starck fucking eggcups.”

  “Oh yeah. The coffee tables made of Lego, no, made of CD covers. And the brushed steel toasters. For six hundred bucks.”

  “It’s going to be called Silo. Or Casement.”

  “Encasement. Encasement Design Kitchen.”

  “Mailbox. Mailbox Collective.”

  They were laughing, and she was pushing her shoulders back against his hand like a cat. He stared at the blue recycling bins. You’d need a company name, yes, and an anonymous mailbox. There was a place you could rent them just across the tracks, by the commuter train stop. An ad on the internet. It was easy: anyone could put an ad on the internet. It was actually quite easy, now he had figured it out.

  TXTS

  At first he thought it was from Angelika. No one else would text him but Claude, and Claude had already sent him three messages that evening reminding him of insanely dull yet stressful tasks that were in no way urgent (“did u contact claire m re liqor lic 4 watch event sept 7?”) But Claude certainly wouldn’t write “how r u? will I c u tonite? X,” which had just appeared on his screen.

  There was a fractional pleasure, or at least a rush of blood to the diaphragm, on seeing it and anticipating Angelika’s number attached to it, but he knew even before he scrolled up that it couldn’t be from her. Indeed, the number was unfamiliar. He went through his address book, there at the bar, his thumbs blue over the screen, just to make sure, but the sequence was not part of his numerical universe; it might as well have been random numbers from space, like those signals you can pick up on short wave. He was the recipient of an erroneous flirtation. Or possibly nefarious spam, a robot hook jigging for live phone numbers in the wide sea of swirling digits.

  Leo was hopeless at texting anyway; he resented it as the activity of junior people who had to spend their lives running around setting up meetings and deliveries like secretaries, jabbing their thumbs at plastic cases as switchboard operators used to plug and unplug jacks. He would turn his stupid thing off if he didn’t think that Angelika might, for some reason, though it was unlikely, call. And ever since Claude’s promotions manager had been away (Turks and Caicos or somewhere else she couldn’t afford on what Claude paid her; Leo suspected a guy, a man, a lover), Claude had been simply dumping all the marketing work on Leo, casually instructing him to have five hundred flyers printed up or t
o pick five—no, ten—young entrepreneurs we could create an award for. Leo was a copywriter, a creative; it was a waste of his talent to spend his days, and now evenings, on the phone with the kind of twenty-seven-year-old woman who doled out freebies from beer companies and car rental firms. There were teams, armies, fleets of twenty-seven-year-old women across the city whose job it was to talk to each other about such things. And they knew how to text.

  They were doing it now, all around him; there was white-yellow hair cascading all over the bar as the women frowned over their little glowing squares, or surreptitiously glanced at them at their waists as their consorts went on talking about cottages or highways. There were transmitters of various kinds lying on the marble, among the martini glasses and sticky flutes, black and silver, with little lights flashing, sometimes writhing in impatience. With his palms on the stone, he could sometimes feel the surreptitious vibrations coming right through it. It was this kind of bar. People wore ties in here, and they understood if you had to talk on the phone during your date. People here were busy people.

  Leo’s own date was apparently busy too, so busy that she had been unable to come. Or to phone or text him to tell him why.

  He checked his stupid screen; nothing new. He read the wrong-number text again. how r u? will I c u tonite? X. He didn’t delete it for some reason; it was nice to have such a message in one’s phone. It was reassuring to know that such messages were being sent among people.

  He gestured for another green martini.

  There was a beep and then a flash: another one from Claude: did u get answer re spa coupons?

  Leo deleted this one. It did not occur to Claude that Leo might be on a date at eight on a Friday evening, or rather this possibility did not strike Claude as a relevant fact, because Claude himself was likely on a date and texting angrily away as some leggy thing in a silk blouse pretended to read the bar menu. Claude did this. He would ask you a question and as you formulated a careful response he would pick up his phone and frown. And then, without saying anything, he would dial a number. Then he would hold up one finger. It could be interpreted as an apologetic gesture.