Golden Gloom - POOR - Part Nine

19

Barbara

It was awful. God awful.

I pushed my way in through the entrance of the club and was instantly consumed by the crowds and the interminably loud beat. I could hear nothing but the “music,” see nothing but silhouettes and strobe flashes of people half my age. And the expressions of the people I did see were full of vague surprise and understated loathing. I was old enough to be any one of their mothers, a fat and four-eyed dowdy middle-aged woman. And I felt it.

This body didn’t feel right anymore. It felt bloated and heavy, my breasts far too big. I felt embarrassed to have this hairstyle, these clothes, as though part of me was still a nineteen year old girl trapped in this engorged costume of a menopausal lady well past her prime. The glasses felt thick and bulky on my face and I hated the myopic view they gave me, the glare from the lights. I touched them and felt my round face at the same time, shuddering at it.

But no matter how unnatural it felt, how much I wanted to be young again, I knew that wasn’t right. I kept my mind on what I was doing there; I didn’t let it drift to what I was missing. I had to find Tommy. Charles. I had to find my husband. Before he was trapped forever in the body and mind of a teenage delinquent.

I made for the bar first. It was raised up slightly and would afford a broader panorama. I didn’t have time to do this slowly. The mental changes happened far too fast to risk it. Every second that passed was eroding at the intelligence and character of my dear Charles and leaving that hard-eyed troublemaker in his place.

I paused, picturing Charles as he was now, as Tommy, dwelling for too long on his hard muscular body, his dangerous charm. For those moments the strobe lighting dimmed slightly but I dismissed it. I had to find him now!

I got to the bar and scanned the room, getting increasingly desperate. He was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere!

Maybe he wasn’t even in the club anymore. Maybe he’d found some girl to copulate with and was gone to God only knew where. My body sagged. I couldn’t take this anymore. I just wanted to be with him. I didn’t care what he looked like or what his name was. I didn’t care if I changed anymore. I just couldn’t stand being alone!

The rhythm lowered in volume, a sphere of calm suddenly surrounding me as the flashing neon lights took on a golden caste.

Then I saw him! I saw Charles and started toward him, the volume crashing back in, the lights instantly restored to their former brightness.

“Charles! Charles! I’m here!”

He was with two girls on a sofa in one of the many alcoves, just talking to them, but he kept dropping in and out of sight now that I was on the lower level. I had never been a particularly tall woman and the younger generation all seemed like reedy giants compared to me; both the boys and girls. I pushed myself on through the crowd, resenting my glasses all the more as they steamed up. I took them off, swiping ineffectually with my sweaty fingers, hating how blurred my vision was, just wishing I could stop holding back and give in as Charles had.

But I wouldn’t. I vowed I wouldn’t. It wasn’t going to happen! I didn’t want to end up the illegitimate teenage daughter of the receptionist of a back-street car mechanic’s in Barton. I had been born into money and married into even more money. I didn’t want to give up that life and I knew that deep down, Charles didn’t either.

I broke out of the crowd on the other side of the dance floor and finally got a clear look at him. Then stopped dead.

He wasn’t chatting to the girls. He was snogging one of them, feeling her breasts and her bare legs, twisting his head with passion and energy as he Frenched her, gripping her in his lithe and muscular arms.

I couldn’t believe it. This was what I’d done. It was my fault. I’d run away and left him and now he’d lost himself to me. He had no idea who he was anymore.

He was a bastard. He’d betrayed me. He was with another woman. Another girl! Even younger than he was! He was snogging another girl! My fucking boyfriend, playing around when I turned my back for five seconds! Just like a bloke! Like every fucking bloke I’d ever met!

An intense heat of fury became pinpointed at the centre of my brow and my eyes narrowed, blood rushing to them and to my forehead. I was livid. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That fucking cunt, snogging some other fucking girl as though I didn’t fucking exist! We’d been seeing each other for the better part of a year on and off! And all that time I’d only been with a couple of other guys – nothing serious. Now we were on holiday together! I’d never fucking dream of sleeping around on him when we were on a romantic break like this!

He was a bastard! And the bird he was with was worse! She was a fat fucking cow who deserved everything she got!

“Tommy!” I screamed, fists tiny and white-knuckled on my hips. “Tommy! Get your bony ass off that fucking slag right now!”

They broke their kiss and Tommy looked round at me dopily as the slut he was with glared at me with a sullen pout.

“What the fuck is this Tommy? Eh? What the fuck do you think you’re doin?”

He shrugged, looking bashful at the earful he was getting. “I thought you’d fucked off.”

“Well I didn’t, did I? And that doesn’t give you the right to snog any fucking bird you want to anyway! Does it?!”

He shrugged. The fat cow and her slag friend kept glaring at me.

“Well what are you fucking lookin at, you fat fucking whores!?” I screeched. “Get the fuck outta here! Go on! Fuck off!” They shifted slightly, unsure what to do. “Fuck off! Fuck off! FUCK OFF!!!!!”

They scarpered as fast as they could and I watched them disappear in the crowd, arms folded crossly.

When I turned back to Tommy he was giving me his lopsided grin. “You’re so frikkin sexy when you’re defendin my honour.”

The rage in my chest faltered instantly, he looked so fucking horny, but I didn’t let it die away. “Easy for you to say when you’re about to shag a pair of dirty slappers!”

He held out his palm to me, still giving me that boyish smirk of his that always twisted me round his little finger. “You’re the only dirty slapper I need. Come on.”

“I’m angry,” I said.

“I know you are. And that makes me want to fuck you all the more.” He beckoned with his fingers. “Get over here.”

My resolve was wavering. A smile sputtered on my own lips.

“Come on,” said Tommy, spreading his arms. “My Tommy-gun wants to drill ya.”

I giggled. “Not in the fucking toilet. I ain’t doin that.”

“I was only kiddin about that,” he lied smoothly. “We can do it wherever you want... I saw a skip out the back.”

I laughed. “Shut up you dick! I want to do it in a bed.”

“Then let’s go,” he replied, getting up and taking my slim arms in his hands, brushing back my curly blond hair with his finger and running it down my cheek. “I’m sick of this shithole anyway. I’m gonna take you back to our room and shag you senseless. I’m gonna shag you so hard you won’t be able to even remember your own name.”

20

Charles

Lorraine and I left the nightclub and stopped in one of the shops up the street to buy a cheap bottle of whisky. I cracked it open and swigged some back. It really did taste as bad as the price tag suggested but even with what that fat old crazy woman had given me in the crapper I had to be careful. I needed every frickin penny cause there wasn’t nothing more in the bank. It was gonna take me years to pay back all my loans working at the garage, if I ever managed it.

I passed the bottle to Lorraine and she swigged it too, raising the bottle above her head then giggled when she caught my eye so that it ran out her grinning mouth and down her cheeks. She snorted and laughed all the more, wiping her lips with the back of her wrist.

“Let’s get back to the hotel,” she said. “I am so horny for you right now. I want to get me a feel of that dick o yours.”  

“Yeah. Let’s go back to the penthouse.” I started to walk until I realised she wasn’t following. When I stopped and looked back she was staring at me, the bottle down by her thigh.

“Penthouse?”

“Yeah.” I thumbed over my shoulder. “The pent—”

Jesus shit.

“Fuck me,” I murmured.

“Charles?”

We gawked at one another. “Barbara?”

“Shit Charles.” She touched her temple. “Shit. Shit. Shit! It keeps happening. We keep losing it.”

I nodded. “This ain’t right. I thought I could... I thought I could control it but I can’t. This is fucked up. Seriously fucked up.”

“I know. We’re getting too far gone. Even when we remember who we are we still talk like them. We still...”

“We still fucking think like them! Shit I need a fag.” I tapped one out of the packet in my back pocket then offered one to her.

“Ta.”

Once I’d lit hers I did my own, getting a good long draught of it then pushing it out rapidly, irritably, feeling the tension crackle between my shoulder blades. “Let’s get back up to the room then change back straight away. You cool with that?”

She nodded. Man, she was pissed as a coon, movements clumsy, her face with a dopey expression on it. It was cute, kind of, and frikkin ridiculous at the same time.  I should take a picture; slap it on Facebook. That’d fucking learn her for not putting out in the bog.

“Hurry up you stupid cow,” I said, dragging her along as she stumbled to keep up in her heels.

We walked over there and pushed through the glass doors into the luxurious interior of our hotel; headed for the lifts. I had the whisky bottle and was chucking it back. It didn’t taste quite so bad now we were a third of the way down it but the liquor was really starting to hit me. I was going to blow chunks real soon if I wasn’t careful. I sniggered. Imagine the receptionist’s face if I did that all over their expensive fucking carpet!

“Excuse me sir. Madam.” A Greek in a posh grey suit was rushing over from the reception desk. “Can I ask where you think you’re going?”

“To our fucking room you tosser,” I sneered. “What does it fucking look like?”

“Our room,” added Lorraine.

He reached us looking flustered and passive-aggressive. “May I see your key please?”

I looked to Lorraine. “You’ve got it ain’t you?”

“Yeah. Ang on.” She rooted through her little pink handbag and pulled out the key on its fob then stood there looking at it stupidly. “It says Brits Abroad,” she murmured.

“Gimme that!” I snatched it off her. It was a cheap-looking plastic tag with the words she’d said printed in half scratched lettering.

“I think there must be a misunderstanding,” said the man. “All our rooms have key-card locks. The... ‘Brits Abroad’ hotel is down the road to the right, in a side alley. I suspect that it is more in your... price range.”

I looked at his snooty fucking expression and then back at Lorraine. Her eyes were half closed and she was stroking her bare belly, looking queasier than I felt. The man was still looking down his nose at us.

“Fuck you,” I said. “And fuck this shit heap. We don’t fucking need it!”

“Of course sir.”

“Screw you, you fucking wanker!” I grabbed Lorraine’s wrist again, pulling her toward the exit. “I hope you fucking die and this whole bastard place burns down on your fucking grave!”
 

I got to the door but Lorraine pulled free. “Wait a minute,” she said to the bloke. “We was ere to see Barbara and Charles Hawthorne. They’re expectin us.”

The man didn’t bat an eye. “Hardly young lady. The Hawthornes didn’t check into the hotel today as planned. They rang from England to cancel the room.”