Nine Perfect Strangers

Finally, Ben gave up. He left Carmel and the older men, Napoleon and Tony, to their useless endeavours and went and sat up against a wall with Jessica, who sat chewing on her false fingernails. She looked at him and smiled tentatively. Her lips were dry and chapped. They had kissed forever last night, in front of people. Sometimes Masha had been there, sitting right next to them, and they just kept right on kissing, like two horny teenagers on public transport.

But it had felt different from being a horny teenager because there was no end goal. He wasn’t doing the kissing just to get to the sex. The kissing was the point. Ben felt like he could have done it forever. It wasn’t like sloppy drunken kissing, it was hyperreal, like every part of his body had been involved. He couldn’t pretend he’d hated his first experience of drugs. It had been incredible. Was this what his sister destroyed her life for?

Would Ben steal in order to experience that again?

He thought about it. No. He still didn’t want to do it again, thank God. So he wasn’t an addict from that one time he tried drugs.

His mother had been telling him that ever since he was ten years old, her face haggard with worry over his sister. ‘It only takes once, Ben, only once, and your life is ruined.’ He heard it over and over, like a bedtime story. The story was about how the beautiful princess, his sister, got taken away by the evil monster of drugs. ‘You must never ever, never ever, never ever,’ his mother would say, holding his arm so tight it hurt and looking at him with such terrified intensity he always wanted to look away, but he had to maintain eye contact because if he looked away she would start the never ever, never ever, never ever chant again.

He didn’t need his mother to tell him that drugs ruined your life. The evidence was right there in front of his eyes. He was only ten when it started, and Lucy was five years older, but he still remembered the old Lucy, the first Lucy, the real Lucy who got taken away. The real Lucy played soccer and she was really good. She sat at the dinner table and ate her dinner and said stuff that made sense and laughed when something was funny, not for hours at a time at nothing, and if she lost her temper it was normal anger, not the anger that turned her eyes red and mean, like a demon’s eyes. She didn’t steal, she didn’t break things and she didn’t bring home skinny, rat-faced boys with matching red demon eyes. He didn’t need to be told never ever, never ever. He knew what the monster did.

Ben’s poor mother would have a panic attack if she heard he’d been given drugs.

‘It’s okay, Ben,’ said Jessica quietly, as if she’d read his mind. ‘You’re not an addict now.’

‘I know that.’ He put his hand over hers and wondered if maybe the couples counselling had worked. Although, if so, why didn’t he feel more elated? Maybe it was the crash after the high. That’s what got people addicted. The highs were so great, and the lows were so shit in comparison that you’d risk doing anything to get back to the high.

He and Jessica had talked. He remembered that. They’d talked about so much. About everything. Maybe more than they’d ever talked in their entire relationship. They talked about the money. He remembered he’d told her he didn’t like the way she’d changed her face and her body. It was strange, because that had seemed like such a big deal before, like the biggest deal ever, and now it seemed like absolutely nothing. Why had it mattered so much? So he didn’t like her puffy new lips. Why was that the end of the world?

And the car. She’d been the one who scratched the car. That didn’t seem to matter much either now. It was like those smoothies had sucked all the air out of their arguments, and now they were all wrinkled and deflated and kind of embarrassing. Like they’d both been making a whole lot of fuss about nothing.

There was something else they’d talked about too. Something he thought might have been more significant. He’d remember it in a moment.

Jessica pulled out her shirt and sniffed her cleavage. ‘I stink. I’m going to try and have a sponge bath at the bathroom sink.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘I need to wash my face,’ said Jessica. She ran a hand over her cheek.

‘Okay,’ said Ben. He glanced at her. ‘Not a single person in this room will care if you’re not wearing make-up.’

‘There will be a single person who cares,’ said Jessica, as she got to her feet. ‘Me. I care.’ But she didn’t seem angry.

He wat

ched her walk towards the bathrooms.

Are we fixed? Do we have the right tools now?

He wanted a Bacon & Egg McMuffin. He wanted to be at work with the guys listening to FM radio, making cars beautiful again. He was going back to work when they got home. He didn’t care if they didn’t need the money; he needed the work.

How much longer would they be left down here? He had to see sky. Even when he was working, he never spent a full day without going outside to eat his lunch.

He remembered a TV show he’d seen about a guy in jail who might have been wrongfully convicted and how he told his mother that he hadn’t seen the moon in seven years. Ben experienced a full body chill when he heard that. That poor, poor schmuck.

‘Hey. Mind if I sit here?’

It was Zoe, the girl who was here with her parents.

She sat down next to him.

When he’d seen her over the last few days he’d wondered why someone of her age, who was obviously fit and sporty, would choose to come to a place like this. Now he knew.

‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he said.

She glanced at him. ‘Thank you.’ She pulled on her ponytail. ‘I’m sorry about your sister.’

‘How do you know about my sister?’ asked Ben.