Page 60 of Copper Script
Pause.Then Aaron said, “I don’t think so.”
“Right.”That was a bucket of icy water.“Right.Of course.Entirely up to you.Just out of interest, what was the fucking point of this, then?”
“Point of what?”Aaron asked, and it was such an obvious bit of stalling that Joel’s temper exploded.
“Come off it.You didn’t invite me to dinner because you wanted company, still less walk up this way when you live in Lisson Grove.”
“You have no idea how much I wanted company.”
“Right, of course.So naturally you called me, a man with whom you have had frequent interesting conversations.”
“Yes,” Aaron said.“I enjoy talking to you, and I owed you dinner, so—”
“The funny thing is, I read your hand and saw a painfully honest man,” Joel said.“And yet on this subject, you lie like stink.”
Aaron gave the harsh exhale of exasperation.“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Well, ‘Last time was wonderful, shall we do it again?’would be nice, and ‘I’m too much a coward to ask for what I want’ would be truthful, and ‘I’d rather be celibate forever than fuck you again’ would at least put an end to this farrago.I’d just like you to make up your mind what you want and stick to it, that’s all, because this pissing around is—”Painful, he wanted to say.Gutting.Leaving me lonelier than just being alone would.“Fucking annoying.”
“It’s not about what I want, because what I want and what I can have are extremely different things,” Aaron’s voice rasped.“It would be too great a risk for us both.”
“Then why did you summon me for this evening in the first place?”
“I told you!Why is that so hard to believe?Don’t you think you have any other worth in life than—than—”
“Fucking?Yes, I do.I’ve got plenty of worth.I’m dripping in worth, me in my shitty flat with my made-up job and my missing hand, because at leastIhave the guts to know what I want and try for it, and that’s more than you do, Detective Sergeant!”
“Christ, don’t start that again.And why the devil are you so offended?”Aaron demanded, in one of those voices that combined shouting and whispering to strangulated effect.“Why is it such an affront to have someone seek you out for your company, not your—services?”
“Services?Fuck you!”
“You know what I mean.”
“You might find out what you mean yourself, if you had the balls to say it,” Joel informed him.He felt rather sick, and it wasn’t the overeating.
Hedidn’tthink he was only worth fucking.He had plenty of friends, and a job of sorts, and a whole life he’d built all by himself in a world that kept taking things away from him.If he didn’t have healthy self-esteem, he at least had enough front that nobody else could tell the difference.
That wasn’t the problem.The problem was his response to Aaron’s hand, and how much he wanted the policeman to look at him with those dark eyes lit by desire, and that when Aaron’s telegram had arrived, he’d stupidly, irrationallyhoped, because all his hard-won experience of life, all his common sense, hadn’t been enough to stop him believing deep down that this, between them, was something special.
So he’d offered, and Aaron had turned him down flat, and now he felt like a self-deluding fool, begging for crumbs,again.He should have known it was all going to end in tears; everything did, but he had thought they might have fun on the way.
“Fuck you,” he said again, since it summarised his thoughts so neatly.“We’re not friends, I don’t know the rules to the game you’re playing, and I’m tired of it.”
“Joel!”Aaron said.“Will you just listen?”
“To what?”
Aaron grabbed his arm.Joel wrenched it away.“Look, I’m sorry.I just wanted to see you, and that was selfish of me.And yes, I wish to God I could have more than just a meal with you, but I can’t.And that’s not because of you in any way.”
Why is it, then?Joel wanted to ask, but that way madness lay.He was not going to lay himself open to another rejection.He was going to extricate himself from this hot-and-cold nonsense with a man he barely knew, and stay well out of whatever trouble Aaron was in.He had money to earn.
“Whatever,” he said.“It’s been fun, lovely meal, but I’m freezing so I’m going to keep walking.Don’t come with me.”
“Goodbye,” Aaron said quietly, and the soft finality of that stayed with Joel as he stamped furiously away, cursing himself, and men who didn’t know what they wanted, and whatever was squatting on Aaron’s shoulders, and himself again.Mooning like this over a man he’d fucked once: ridiculous.It would make a funny story in a few weeks’ time.
He marched up Gray’s Inn Road.The south end was lawyer territory; as you went further north towards King’s Cross the area became dangerous in different ways.He kept an eye out as he walked, alert for lone men doing nothing much, or the occasional flare of light that was huddled smokers, waiting in doorways for whatever it was they waited for.Victims, companions, the morning, or maybe just an end to the persistent, pervasive winter drizzle.In their dreams.
Joel’s footsteps echoed flatly on the wet pavements.Gray’s Inn Road could feel very long on a rainy night.Cold, too.His hand was bare because getting a glove on one-handed involved holding it with his teeth and he hadn’t wanted to do that in front of Aaron.He couldn’t be bothered to stop and go through the palaver now, but he wished he had done it earlier because his fingers were icy.Good thing he didn’t have two hands, or he’d be freezing.
