The Enemy of My Enemy

Jad has already bought his pint. The tunnel vision of his priorities seeing him through the transaction before anything else can occur. The intent of downtime delivered upon from the off. Seeing her is a shotgun blast from the past and he isn’t wearing any protection. The incursion she presents is far from welcome. She may as well be sitting on his knee in the confessional.

Stubborn to a tee, he takes his place at a small table and savours his pint whilst constructing a pretence of disinterest. This habit of a lifetime is made difficult by her presence. As though she will catch him in the lie of it were she to look over at him.

But she is not looking at anyone in the bar. Choosing instead to show interest in that spot towards the horizon where solitude lies. Not a thousand yard stare exactly. That distance requires far too much effort.

Jad is looking at her though. More than looking. He puts her under the microscope. Can’t help himself. The sun glasses and baseball cap a uniform for the damned. He’s seen that attire so often it should be wallpaper. But not on her. Never on her. Those items are out of place just as she is out of place in the snug of the Red Lion.

He smiles at the seemingly casual misogyny of his assessment. Despite their differences she has always interested him. She does not fit here because she is too good for the place. An exotic animal delivered to a pet shop by mistake.

And yet here she is in his den. More at home than he ever has been. Her fingers tremble ever so slightly as she reaches for her gin and tonic. The tremor gone before it can take a hold in the reality between them. Whispers of a vulnerability that signals strength and danger. Jad doesn’t believe in auras. Not quite anyway, but a rare few people produce a bubble that insulates them from the usual noise people make. Something tells the hoi polio to give those rarities a wide birth. No one will approach her table and make a nuisance of themselves.

The exception to that rule is Jad.

“Tracy,” he says as he stands at her table, “looks like you could do with a refill.” He nods at the barman and the man gets busy pouring Jad another pint. Attending to the gin and tonic as the pint settles.

Tracy hasn’t said a word. She watches Jad retrieve the drinks from the bar and place them on the table. He’s removed the straw from her drink. Leaving it poking up from the glass would be an afront to the both of them, “you have a tab here or do you have a special understanding with the owners?”

Jad smiles. There’s a hint of warmth to the smile. The potential answers to her question are mostly spiky. He scrolls through them and by the time he’s considered a retort the moment is passed. He uses silence effectively, but often it’s that he thinks better of what he was going to say. Inadvertently following his dear mama’s advice not to speak if he had nothing good to say. Back when she used to share this advice, her words were redundant, he’d resort to a slap or punch in the playground. Since then he’d learnt that life was a playground and people’s behaviour suffered when they thought no one was watching.

He sits and inhales a third of his pint. Full pints offend his sensibilities. A job not yet begun. He’s a man of action. Drinking is no exception to this. Nor does drink interfere with his work. Despite what some may think, “what brings you to this part of town?”

Behind her sunglasses she eyes him. Then she sighs and takes a gulp of her drink, “I didn’t come looking for you,” she says.

He grins now, “same old Tracy,” he glances at his pint. Realises he’s got a thirst on. Understands that thirst for what it is. He’s uncomfortable around her. Her being here has changed the dynamic between them. He can’t help but look at her as he anticipates her response. And now his eyes are upon her, the examination is fleeting but nonetheless thorough.

“You should see the other guy,” she tells him.

“Is he still breathing?” there is an edge to Jad’s quip. Tracy is not someone it would be wise to cross. Even through the dark lenses he can see her eyes and something passes between them. Her breath catches for a split second and the knowledge of what has occurred is made obvious.

“You know me too well,” Tracy tells him.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jad replies.

“What would you say then?” she asks him.

He drinks before he replies, “you’re a series of working assumptions.” He’s nodding at his assessment.

“You’ve been working on those assumptions since Jesus was in the manger,” she chuckles and winces. Quickly hides behind the goldfish bowl that contains her medicine of choice. Dropping the brim of her cap for good measure.

“Now, now. I’m not quite so old as I look,” he retorts, “have you had that looked at?” he points at her right side.

“What?” she’s scowls at her own sloppy defensiveness.

“I know bruised ribs when I see them,” he tells her, “they might be cracked or worse. Punctured lungs are no joke.”

She nods, “Occupational hazard. I’m no stranger to a bruise or three.”

He raises his eyebrows, “different story altogether when they’re on someone else.”

She places both hands on the table as though she’s about to stand. Remains seated. Bracing herself before speaking, “I resent what you are inferring.”

Jad raises his own hands in surrender, “no inference intended. I’ve been in a few scrapes myself. When the adrenaline and alcohol wear off, the damage can be far more than it first appeared to be.” He glimpses the ghosts of the walking wounded. Some people are slow to cotton on to the finality of their own end. The survival instinct makes an appearance whether its wanted or not.

She nods and he sees she’s still simmering. Has a good idea why. She’s a tough cookie. In Jad’s experience that sort of tough is nurture all the way. A blacksmith’s forge of a childhood. Hammer and fire.

He leans forward conspiratorially, “looks like we’ve both got a thirst on. I know my place. At least some of the time I do. I’m in the chair today.” He raises a hand to silence whatever she’s about to say, “not an act of charity. No obligation. I’m off the clock and so are you.”

This time he’s up at the bar and ordering. Giving her a little time to decompress and climb out of the boxing ring. When he returns to the table he’s carrying three glasses.

“Where’s mine?” she asks as she eyes the whisky.

“I got you two doubles,” he tells her as he slides the G&T towards her.

“Trying to get me drunk?” it’s a rhetorical question. They both know it. Theirs is a control that cannot be so easily manipulated.

He raises his glass. Doesn’t wait for her to reciprocate. He’s drinking before she can. Removing the choice and with it the scope for misunderstand or offence.

“Where are your kids?” he asks her.

The silence that follows confirms the suspicions he’s held since he clocked her here.

“Are they safe?” he says firmly.

“Of course they are,” she hisses.

Now he uses the silence.

She shifts in her seat. Looks at her drink. Thinks better of it and sighs, “they’re at me Mum’s.”

He nods, “good.”

They share the silence now. Jad knows Tracy’s Mum. Wouldn’t leave a cactus in her care. Still, she’s a better option than whoever did this. More so since the grandmother met Gazzer. A match made in Temu Heaven, but somehow they seem to work. The man is an idiot and perhaps that’s why it works. He doesn’t ask questions and he’s happy with his lot. Jad suspects he’s the one looking after Tracy’s kids. Tracy’s Mum may see Gazzer as more than free hired help, but she keeps him busy all the same.

“Is this the first time?” Jad asks her. He’s lowered his voice even though there’s no one nearby to hear them. It’s the middle of the afternoon and the pub lulls into quiet for a spell. The lunchtime drinkers are back at work. The post work drinkers are day dreaming about their descent to their favourite boozer to take the edge of yet another working day. And so the conveyor belt turns.

She draws in a deep breath and he can see she the pain she is in. It goes beyond the physical, “it’s the last time,” she says with an edge of menace. She takes off her baseball cap and slips it into her oversized handbag.

Jad takes a moment. This is the grey territory that he has made it his business to occupy. Her words are almost an admission of wrongdoing. He shakes them this way and that to sort the wheat from the chaff. Then he takes a look at the remains. Discerning both meaning and outcome. His role is to apply the law. And although he’s been through enough campaigns to have gained some wisdom, he has yet to let go of a notion of justice. Does whoever did this deserve what’s coming to them? His answer is to ask that question of his own jury. The parents, aunts and uncles from a time now forgotten. He had many aunts and uncles when he was growing up. Back then they were handing out those roles like the free newspapers. Neighbours. Workmates. The ladies at the hairdressers. Blokes at the working men’s club. This is the group he asks the question of, and they come back with a resounding conviction. Any man who raises a hand to a woman deserves all he gets.

She stands, gives him an appraising look before saying, “my round. I don’t want you thinking of me as some sort of walkover.”

He waits for her to return with their drinks. Notes that she’s matched his last round. Goodnight Vienna, he thinks to himself. The point of coherence and rationality has been passed. It will be for the armchair historians to say exactly where that point was as they rake over the grey coals and ashes of another misspent night.

“That’s some admission,” he tells her as he raises his pint.

She glares at him in response.

He’s glad of the shielding of her sunglasses, “acceptance takes guts,” he tells her.

She leans forward, “I’ll never accept anything like this!” The words are spat out like bullets.

Jad raises his hands in surrender. An act of submission after the fact, “I wouldn’t expect you to.” Now it is his turn to lean in, “something like this hurts. Bruises heal. Betrayal is a whole other story.”

Her shoulders drop and the fight goes out of her. There is a camaraderie here. Communion of the wronged and the fallen. Lions in no-man’s-land attempting to make sense of the donkeys all about them.

“You pick em, don’t you?” Jad is grinning as he lowers his pint glass.

Her body tenses. Teeth gritted. Ready for a fight that never comes.

Instead a punchline that beats the punch, “awful game on Saturday.”

“Tosser!” she winces as she chuckles.

“I’m famed for my bedside manner,” he retorts.

“I doubt that,” she’s drinking her G&T now and somehow an invitation has been made and accepted. Such is the way, once a point of no return has been passed.

The short walk between the pub and Jad’s place is unremarkable in its passing. Both parties will wonder how it was they got to this state of affairs. Time has a clandestine deal with teleportation in such circumstances. Any blame of the drink is a blatant lie but blame will be applied all the same.

Jad experiences fleeting doubt at the door. There are thoughts of alternative outcomes, but none will land. He ushers her in and offers her a drink.

“No more for me,” she says, “I think I’ve had enough.”

“I meant tea,” he replies.

“I’ll just have a glass of water,” she motions upwards, “and take it up to bed with me.”

He nods and walks into the kitchen. Pours himself a glass of water. Downs it and leaves his empty glass by the sink. No point in him carrying it upstairs only to return it here untouched. The Time and Motion people would be impressed by this flash of efficiency.

Coming out of the kitchen he keeps hold of her glass, “I’ll show you up,” he says.

She accepts the offer. Raising her right arm to wave him from the room.

He feels her following him up the stairs, what are you doing Jad. What the hell are you doing?

There’s only one bedroom. The supposedly spare room is storage for a previous life that Jad hasn’t gotten around to unpacking. Too many ghosts with lists of recriminations he already knows off by heart.

“Only room I’m afraid,” he tells her as he sets down the glass on the bedside table on the far side of the room.

“Smooth,” she says.

As she begins to undress he leaves the room. Takes his time cleaning his teeth. Considers the sofa. A dismissed consideration that he will revisit any number of times after the fact.

Returning to the bedroom he smiles at the landgrab she has made. Rejecting the obvious side of the bed where he placed her glass of water. The glass has been transported to his bedside table and she is curled up where he sleeps.

Grumbling silently, he struggles to rid himself of his socks. Once down to his boxers he looks about him before opening a drawer and throwing on a t-shirt. Only then is he ready to climb carefully into bed. Getting in on this side is alien to him. Stranger than being in an entirely foreign bed in a room he has no familiarity with.

He lays there and stares at the ceiling. Meditating as the twists and turns of his life jostle his thoughts. After a few minutes he switches off the bedside lamp and plunges the room into darkness.

This is Tracy’s cue to turn over and slip an arm around him. He wants to protest. Raises his arm to lift hers from him, but the sound of her moans as her injuries pain her disarm him. His impotent hand drops to the mattress as her head rests upon his chest.

The sound of her sleeping breaths speak to him of a loneliness he has held at bay for an age. He’s a sentry guarding the gate to his heart. And yet she lulls him to a sleep that he told himself was never for him.

The following. Morning, Jad awakens to a world that has slipped upon its axis. Of Tracy there is no sign. The indentation on the mattress is his from a thousand restless night times.

As he makes himself coffee he consoles himself with the fact that nothing happened between them. He grizzles as he realises that everything happened between them. The something in the nothing will grate against him like a grain of sand. A pearl in the making. Him a swine with no appreciation of the finer things in life.

That night as his mind fights rest, as is its habit, he will hear her gentle sobs and wonder whether they are a flight of fancy or a siren call that led him to yet another place where angels fear to tread.

As he replays their encounter he glances at the programme. They both play two characters. She the damsel in distress and the crime boss. Jad the flat-footed copper and the romantic idiot.

“Didn’t think I still had it in me,” he whispers to the empty room, and he allows himself a wry smile, “you’re not as cynical as you make out, son!”

All the while he worries away at her motives as he assesses the level of crime he perpetrated the night before. Asks himself how badly she could use him for his complicity. Is he an alibi or conveniently to blame for the retribution due to the man who abused her trust? Has she already paid the pain of her betrayal forward or is she adding interest to the payment that must be made?

They should hand out crystal balls on the first day of the job, he thinks to himself as he wonders how drastically their rules of engagement have shifted.

Then he smiles at the familiar patterns that are overlaid with more intrigue and meaning than he is used to. This a feast for the starving man.

As the city writhes in darkness, Jad is just one of many lovers contemplating the nature of their trysts and where they may be headed. The future is a fickle and merciless mistress and Jad is equal to her. He understands the rules of the game and which of those rules can be finessed in order to survive until the final whistle blows.