Jack
***
Jessica lay upon the bed, a blue stripe shirt covering her delicately proportioned figure. She was in that moment when dreams became broken by morning sunlight. Hanging in the balance between her peaceful sleep and a whitewashed room. The reluctancy to break away from freedom of the night, into the blast of reggae and reek of rotten fruit from the market down below. Billowing smoke from cars delivering stroppy kids at the gates and driving their Suit owners to the steps of their attentive banks.
It was a man incessantly knocking on the door that had done it. She could tell it was a man, the hand was too heavy. She rose from the bed which she was sprawled. She may as well answer it. He didn't intend to stop knocking and piss off any time soon. He'd been banging on the blasted thing for ten minutes.
She turned as she got up, and reached beneath the bed. Her bare legs were cold. No sheets on the bed. Dead man walking. She dragged on a pair of black ribbed tights and pulled a black mohair jumper over her open neck. It was loose on her shoulders. Two sizes too big. Very Nancy Spungen, she thought.
As she reached for the latch on the door she turned to look at the room. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, all in one, bleached box. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. It didn't work. Mugs lay in the sink, unwashed. Clothes splattered the floor. Student residence, obviously. It'll do.
"What do you want?" Jessica asked, hazily.
"Oh, so you are alive then? I've been knocking on your bloody door for the past twenty minutes"
"Ten"
"S'cuse me?"
"Ten. You've only been knocking for ten minutes"
"Oh, well thanks for the opening the door Sweetheart. Heaven forbid you can take your pretty little head of the pillow.” He said, sarcastically.
"S'alright. But I'm not your Sweetheart, Sweetheart." Jessica, rasping.
"Take that tone with me and I'll put a bullet through yer skull. Here's your stuff."
The man opened a brown satchel, slung round he shoulder. He threw another, smaller, bag on the coffee table. A package. A white powder was visible through its gauzy plastic skin.
"How much?" Jessica asked, calm.
"We said on the phone...It's been arranged."
"So it has." And she flung down a bundle of notes along side with the package, folded neat and held together with an elastic band.
The man sat on the bed, widthways, his head on the wall. He was about thirty-six. Handsome , slightly worn in the face. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He’d grown a bit of a beard. It suited him, mind. He had thick curly hair that sort of piled on his head. He reminded Jessica of one of those ‘salty sea-dog’ types. Easily described as a face with an expression of blank paper. Every hardship he ever lived shows in a line or crease in his face.
The mood changed with one, swift action. The air no longer hung heavy. The room seemed brighter. The sun shone through the whiteness of the sky and the haze of the smoky surroundings.
Jess went to the kitchen cupboard, picking up a pack of cigarettes on the table on the way.
“Here”. She spoke softly in her rasp as she tossed the pack over to the bed. The man didn’t catch them.
“Think fast” Jessica said light heartedly with a grin slowly creeping over her face.
“ Yeah thanks” He joked.
“Du wanna cup of tea? Coffee, whatever…”
“What, out of your grotty cups? No thanks I’d rather be alive when I go to get outta bed in the morning”
She put the kettle on its base and flicked the switch. The blue light came on.
A lighter sat on a shelf above the kettle and she picked it up. Walked over to the bed. The man still slumped on the bed. He’d taken a cigarette from the packet and was twisting it between his fingers. As Jessica went to lay on the bed, again, widthways, she felt something different between the two of them that she sometimes did, when she was around Jack. She removed the jumper and threw it away from her, leaning against the wall. It was plastered with images. Polaroid’s and photo booth pictures. Film posters of James Dean and ‘Streetcar named Desire’. Music posters of a psychedelic Jimi Hendrix and leathered Clash in Ireland. A picture of Sid Vicious in the top right of the room in the Chelsea Hotel. A brown leather strap knotted his bicep.
Jack took the lighter from Jessica’s hand and swapped the packet for it. He flicked the lighter.
***
Passing back the lighter, Jessica moved to the front of the bed and leaned forward. Her blonde hair swung forward over her face. It was boxy, very layered and very strait, but long, just below shoulder length. An it wasn’t that nasty blonde either. Ashy. Naturally highlighted. Jack thought she looked like a blonde Alison Mosshart. Her elbows on her knees, the cigarette packet between her groin. One hand held the lighter, the other, her cigarette. Once it was lit she threw the lighter to the bed, her left hand to her face to support it, her right arching backwards, occasionally going to the lips. A soft glow hit her cheek. She lent back and picked up a pillow from the corner of her bed and lay it over her knees, resting her arms on it. The silence between the two grew uncomfortable.
There had been this awkwardness between the two of them for a while. Before, Jack would come in, act as he usually did, defensive and quiet. I suppose it was natural. You Don’t know what you might find when you do this job. The people you deal with are, shall we say, not always the most welcoming. Just dropping one lot off can be a problem. You go to someone’s place to do a deal with them, but they’ve some band of hooligans wielding guns in the front room waiting for you to come walking in. Next thing you know BANG!, you’ve been done over and you’ve got a bullet in your head and someone’s boot in your mouth. But when the deals been done and everything’s been handed over, it was just two mates. Jack would make a joke and Jessica would laugh. They’d talk about a new band they saw last week, or the gossip they’d heard from the pub. It really was just a catch up kinda thing. But now. Well everything just seemed to stay a bit stifled. Jack would relax more, yeah, and he’d still joke around, but it just seemed like one of those jokes where actually, you do mean it. Sounded a bit cocky. Maybe something happened at another deal and now he just couldn’t relax so much. Or maybe things had just got a lot worse.
***
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