Bright Fires Burn Fastest Read online

  He fell.

  Whether it was the fact his body had changed so much but his heart hadn’t they couldn’t tell. Those that attended the wake suggested it was just his time. It comes to us all, his was then. Gloria, his cousin, invited all her friends, an invite is an invite after all no matter how bleak. She claimed he had been long suffering from an illness that only David himself knew the roots of. David Michael Jones died that night. Truth of it being he died not because he didn’t fit in but because he tried to.

  *

  April awoke somewhere between late afternoon and evening. She had achieved nothing. All these hopes, all these dreams were fast disappearing. Not a month before she had dreamed of another city, another life. She needed to change, but nothing would break old habits, they die hard for a reason.

  Hunger hit her, it had been over twenty-four hours since she had eaten. The night with Lucas had ended as expected, filled with alcohol and some mild cocaine use. She hadn’t fucked him though. Either they were too drunk, too tired or too used to the fact they hadn’t yet she couldn’t be sure. One thing was sure though, the painting was nothing like she had ever seen. No words came to her that didn’t sound crass; spellbinding, mesmerising, illuminating. It was raw emotion.

  Lying under a duvet without a cover on she stretched out ensuring she only had a hangover and no further damage had been done. Relief was replaced by a pounding in her head.

  She made it to the sink and drank two pints of water, wretched one straight back up and replaced it immediately with another. The obvious search for cigarettes commenced which resulted in her finding one in her jean pocket. Inhaling made her feel worse but she did. In the fridge all that remained was some left over cous cous of indeterminable age and half a pack of celery, hardly gourmet.

  Then she remembered her date. Well date meaning she was escorting a new client to a cocktail evening and afters at another faceless party. The first guy had failed after the second date, he had been too keen. They agreed to keep in touch. He gave a friend of his her number, she still needed money and he was willing to pay £2,000 for one evening. She checked the time, she was going to be late.

  “Sam?”

  “Whose this”.

  “Its April, I got your number off our mutual contact.”

  “What’s your number?”

  April was confused, reeled off the number, and the line went dead. She re-lit the cigarette, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and quickly turned away.

  Her phone buzzed on the glass coffee table.

  “Hello?”

  “Its Sam. Why the fuck did you call me on my landline?”

  April went blank.

  “Huh?” Sam repeated.

  “Sorry, it’s the number I was given.”

  “Its my bloody office number. I have a secretary, she could easily have answered.”

  “Sorry”, April repeated.

  “Its fine. Not your fault. Look, how can I help?”

  “Its just I might be a bit late. It’s what, five now? There by six thirty. I had a late night last night.”

  “That’s fine. Meet in the same place”.

  “Yeah, and you know my rates?”

  “Course”, and the line went dead again.

  April needed to motivate. She got up, took what little of her clothes she was wearing off and looked in the mirror.

  Wrapped in a towel she got a pint glass, the only clean one, filled it with ice and Jim Beam. She drank it slowly savoring the taste but more so the fact that soon she would be drunk again, or at least tipsy.

  She donned lace underwear for no one but herself, she was very much an escort not a hooker. Her night changed for the better when she located her bankcard in her jacket pocket which she thought was lost.

  The fresh air seemed to cure her, and the fact it was snowing. White flakes dropped onto the shoulders of her jacket. Her throat was swelled up and she had to concentrate on swallowing without gagging.

  Rounding the corner she lit a cigarette. She knew damn well she would never finish it by the time she met Sam but this was the first of what would be many attempts to show him she was in control. Besides, with his manner on the phone he deserved to wait.

  He didn’t disappoint. Tall, handsome and clearly fucking loaded judging by his manner.

  “I’m Sam, you must be April,” he said, not as a question.

  “Pleasure”.

  “Indeed it is. He was right, you are beautiful.”

  April smiled and let him bend forward and kiss her on the cheeks. She guessed he was about thirty-five, and probably married. His eyes wandered but were controlled, they didn’t gawp. In all honesty this was a surprise, April was wearing a dress with the slit riding up to almost the top of her thigh. She had Googled escorts and what they wear, this was the uniform.

  “So, we go inside?”

  “Sure”, April answered letting the smoke curl up her face before she flicked away her cigarette.

  He took her arm and led her up the steps. April concentrated, this was business.

  *

  Sarah got out of the taxi and took in the street, old and new buildings towering over her. Lifetimes of history above her but this would be her defining moment. She needed one building only. Paying the cab driver she turned into the falling snow and her eyes squinted. The black of London surrounded her, a city she now knew, and a city she loved. Maybe it was the people or the fact you could be anyone, everyone or nothing. Like all great transient places you could make it, or disappear.

  She looked on at the building ahead of her where he would be. Was she actually about to do this? She could ruin everything.

  *

  April let herself be entertained by the man she was escorting who was becoming more attractive.

  Try as she might she couldn’t help herself enjoying the way he treated her. He struck up that perfect balance between being charming and polite but with the undertone that yes, he was a man and yes, he would have her if he chose to.

  “So, enough of chit chat”, Sam said eventually after enough questions to make it more like a job interview.

  April let her seventh, possibly eighth glass of champagne into her gullet and merely looked up at him with her eyes. Eyes that had softened.

  “Girl like you. No doubt you have heard it. But why? I mean most escorts are not exactly the natural beauty, more the forced one.”

  “Honestly?”

  Sam just smiled. He looked like an American football player. Rugged but brought up well.

  “I got bored of bullshit conversations. Man meets girl in bar, he wants to fuck her. With the best will in the world people with good conversation are meant to be your friends, not your lovers. I have watched it happen hundreds of times. If I were a guy why would I ever buy a girl a drink unless I wanted to fuck her? With what I do now, I know what I could do at the end of the night. I know that most of the time the people that call me and take me out, such as yourself, do want to fuck me already before they have even met me. Why? I don’t know. Wife isn’t satisfying you anymore. Maybe you have a high-pressured job and don’t have the time to meet women. Maybe you are just all the same. The tighter the bond the bigger the break.”

  Sam looked at April. Really looked at her. She was right, men were liars, his name wasn’t even Sam.

  April downed another champagne. “I mean, lets be honest. Why get an escort? Why not go and get a hooker? It’s the fact that it isn’t a sure thing. Yes I will flirt, yes I will wear clothes that show me off to you and whoever you want to impress so dearly. What I wont do from the off though is fuck you. You’re a man though so its not so much about the result as it is about the chase. You don’t know if I will say yes but you would rather have that option. That fuck when the escort says yes because she actually wants to is worth more than a hundred hookers who have to say yes.”

  Sam said nothing but put his hand on April’s. Silence followed. Sam had been given an insight into clarity, into someone tuned in.

  Apr
il whisked another glass of champagne off a passing tray and looked at Sam. He was unmoving and unnerved.

  “So now you want to know the answer”, April said.

  Sam looked up at her.

  “Because”, she continued, “No matter what I have just said you still want to know if I am the one that’s going to say yes.”

  Sam took a pull on his drink. “Yes”. He only ever needed to say yes.

  *

  Sarah walked into the room which was awash with people now beyond tipsy. Everywhere she looked she saw faces but not the one she was looking for.

  Music blared out and she could taste bile in her mouth with the sickness in her stomach. She was terrified. Being right would be one thing. Heartbreaking yes, but what if she was wrong? It would be over and it would be her fault.

  Through the crowd she pressed. The truth being always just beyond her reach. She thought it was him, but it wasn’t. That muscular back, the cut jaw line. How could so many people in one place look so similar.

  Moving onwards to the bar she looked left and right and ordered a white wine with nothing else to do, a Pouilly Fume, her pallet had gotten so much better.

  *

  April was surprised at how quickly she had decided to do this. On the way to the bathrooms she had thought twice, too quickly and too fleetingly that this was a bad decision, something unnerved her. Sam though was persistent with his hands.

  Once there he bundled her into a cubicle and began licking and kissing her face. She had been right, the challenge to do it provided the best possible incentive to fuck. April’s hand felt the pounding erection through Sam’s trousers. He sighed like it was his last breath.

  April let him kiss her, he kissed like a man. His stubble grazed her cheek and his tongue repeatedly made her want to gag so far down his throat it was. He was more desperate than any of them.

  April assumed it would be either from behind she was fucked or with her on top but he grasped her thighs and pulled her up and onto him against the wall of the cubicle.

  Sam’s hand went to her face and covered her mouth. At first she thought it merely to stifle the noise, until she couldn’t breathe. He let go but quickly drew a backhand slap across her face. It was too late, the decision had become action.

  *

  Sarah was close to giving up, perhaps it hadn’t been him she had followed from the office. But it was, she knew it was him.

  Two men next to her who had been looking at her, well, mainly her breasts for the past two minutes began to talk louder, the cheap cava was beginning to tell.

  “Fuck me, you see that girl? Man what I would give for a piece of that.”

  “Yeah, you see the guy though? Looked like a fucking wrestler, big motherfucker. And rich.”

  Both of them laughed. Sarah’s ears pricked up.

  “Where she go?”

  “Don’t know, probably to fuck somewhere. Bogs I guess.”

  Sarah let the glass sit on the bar and walked towards the bathrooms. It had to be.

  *

  Sam’s hands around April’s neck were white with strain as he squeezed. The back of his hands bled where April was scratching at him. She was trying to get to his eyes but his elbows stopped her.

  His head tilted back for a split second and he smashed his face into hers on the bridge of her nose making her see stars. She felt hot blood run into her mouth.

  April’s head lolled from side to side and all she was aware of was Sam’s fingers ramming into her hurting. He drew his nails down her thighs all the while squeezing tighter.

  ‘This is it”, Sam said as he forced himself into April, his hand still clamped around her neck. He thrust against her making them both smash against the cheap cubicle wall.

  “Arrrr”, he screamed in her ear. His thumb had pierced the skin on her neck as he continued to crack his pelvis against hers.

  April began to lose focus, she felt like she wasn’t there. The black was coming. This was it. With his other hand he pulled on her nipple until she felt it go numb. He jabbed her with his fist twice in the solar plexus taking what little air that was in her out. He carried on punching her body and legs.

  Both were so far gone and with the crunching of skin on skin they didn’t hear the door to the bathrooms open.

  Underneath the cubicle door Sarah only saw the feet of the one she was stalking, hunting. She heard stifled crying like a trapped animal and a guttural groaning.

  Pushing open the unlocked door she saw.

  Dicky Denton turned and let his hand off April’s neck, bleeding badly down onto her dress. She slumped to the floor wilting into a heap. Sarah took in the mass of blood on the floor and the red marks all over April where she had been punched, kicked and raped.

  Dicky looked into the eyes of Sarah and they looked back.

  “What the fuck?” Sarah could only say.

  Dicky tried to speak but no noise came out, only a lasting breath. He pulled up his trousers and walked over April without even looking at her.

  Sarah tried to put a hand up to stop him but he slammed it aside, put his other hand round her face and sent her spinning across the floor.

  “Yes”, Dicky said, he only ever needed to say yes.

  Sarah looked back at the scene in the cubicle. The girl was barely breathing and she wouldn’t stop bleeding. She called an ambulance.

  *

  Lucas awoke to the buzzing of his phone somewhere between a fantastic dream and a terrible nightmare.

  “Hello?” Lucas answered.

  “Hi there. Look, I am sorry to call. My name is Sarah. Your friend April is in serious trouble. She has been attacked.”

  Lucas was bolt upright within a moment. His muse. His mentor. His mirage was hurt.

  “What…”

  “Look”, Sarah continued, “She isn’t too bad, shaken up. She just keeps saying she wants to see you. Is that ok?”

  “Of course, of course” Lucas spluttered.

  “Good, were outside”.

  *

  April woke up and Lucas was sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her.

  Looking up, April saw the painting. It was half the face of a man, half the face of a woman. Right then, at that very moment, she had never seen anything more beautiful. It truly was his masterpiece. It looked like her. It looked like him. She sighed to let him know she was awake.

  “April”, was all he said. He turned, and looked at her with such longing. She hugged him.

  “What do we do now?” April said into his shoulder.

  This was not the man she had been brought up to love, but she did. Lucas was the kind of person who would want to die on Christmas day just so he would be remembered even more. But at least he wanted to be remembered, he would pursue immortality no matter the means.

  There would be trouble, there would be euphoria.

  “What do we do?” April repeated feeling tears forming in those eyes.

  “We leave”, Lucas said quietly.

  April let herself wonder of what that might mean. What of home? What of London? What of them?

  “Where?”

  Lucas took a deep breath and sighed into her ear. “We go to New York”.

  Part 2 – New York

  Chapter 1

  A damp biting wind whipped down 5th Avenue causing his long Gucci coat tails to ride up. The small band of shirt briefly exposed to the New York chill was instantly uncomfortable. Tom swung his Lacoste moleskin bag around to the back of his broad shoulders.

  In one hand he carried a macchiato between thumb and forefinger. Polythene did nothing to keep it warm, it would be cold by the time he arrived. The morning coffee wasn’t for appearance on the way to Wall Street, coffee was an essential part of the routine.

  In his other hand he occasionally sucked on a cigarette despite knowing that doing so in leather gloves would stain them. Damn, Tom was glad he had moved to New York from California, you couldn’t even smoke on the fucking street there any more. They did cost $13.50 a
pack here but price wasn’t a problem for an ingrained habit, nor was much else a cash related problem in fact.

  High up above, the scrapers left the world in constant darkness right up until early March. It was still late January, a long way from summer skies and girls wearing skirts without tights. There was always the chance you might get a flash up one of their milken thighs on the subway.

  Not that Tom took the subway like others in the city, meaning religiously. He did, but only on Fridays or Saturdays if he was going to Brooklyn. Subways were for tourists, tramps and poorer people, not to mention the constant grainy bleating over the tannoys.

  Monday to Friday he chose to walk from his apartment on Crosby and Spring down to Tribeca, the financial capital of the world. Although somewhat unusual for someone of his profession to live there he liked it. I mean jesus, he was suited and booted all week working almost sixteen hours a day. Why in fuck would he then want to spend his weekends in a scenario even more oppressive than the office? A place like the streets of the Upper West Side. Families there competed like who had more kids, who had bigger dogs right down to who had the latest Church’s brogues imported from Jermyn Street in London.

  His habitat was compounded as Tom didn’t have a family, neither did he have any inclination of starting one soon. He was loaded, he liked a good time, and he was twenty-seven years old.

  The walk from Soho to Tribeca took a good half an hour, maybe forty minutes if it was a Friday and the obligatory Brinkley’s session had reared its head the night before. During that time he could collect his thoughts, smoke at least two cigarettes and plan his day ahead.

  This very morning in the whipping wind that was sure to bring snow, he was under pressure. It was Thursday and he hadn’t slept more than three hours a night for a fortnight. Sadly this wasn’t down to some East Villager humming him, it was the pressure.