Michael’s laughter was constrained by fear, fear of being awkward or saying too much, and this constraint made it elegant. It was elegance that Bottles craved.
Both of them felt an irresistible tug of charm. Bottles suddenly put her arm through his.
‘You,’ Bottles announced, ‘are a Louise.’
Michael’s panic surfaced: how did she know? Had someone told her? If someone had told Bottles then maybe everybody knew.
She saw it and chuckled. ‘Don’t look so baffled,’ she said, and stroked the top of his brown and flawless hand. ‘Louise is a club. It’s run by the most wonderful Frenchwoman and she’s called Louise and so her club is too.’ She lapsed into fake American. ‘You wanna go?’
Michael beamed relief and friendship. ‘Absolutely, without fail, please.’ After all, he was the school’s official American, and Americans are never supposed to be afraid.
She got the message. He liked her. ‘Friday night OK with you?’
Michael offered, ‘Or Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday …’
‘Full social calendar, huh?’
‘I’m a hot date, but I can squeeze you in.’ Michael felt sophisticated, all of 22. ‘I’m generally pretty busy except for weekdays and weekends.’
‘Aw,’ she said and gave his hand a quick squeeze. ‘And you’re the nicest man in the year.’
At sixteen there is something irresistible about being called a man, especially by someone who has had some experience of them. And with whom, for some reason, you feel both safe and giddy at the same time.
So that Friday they went to the Club Louise in Soho.
Michael loved it. It was full of other daffy people, starting with Louise herself. She sat in a basement cubbyhole, greeting teenage visitors from Bromley as if they were French aristocrats. She took Bottle’s coat (long with a collar of black feathers that smelled of burnt sesame oil), and kissed her on both cheeks, and called her ‘ma chérie’ with a skeletal detachment.
Bottles looked a cool 25 let alone sixteen. She ordered champagne. A woman called Tami bubbled up to them, nipping someone else’s glass off a table en route. She held it up, empty, with a hungry grin. Tami wore black gloves with rings on the outside, something so chic it made Michael speechless with admiration.
Tami talked about American black music, how only American black music was worth listening to. Did he see Bowie at Wembley? Amazing, all done with just those brilliant white lights, everything black and white, and he just strolled out of this haze of light. ‘I got so excited, I nearly mussed my perm.’
Michael loved Station to Station. Drunk, emboldened by moral support, he went up to the DJ’s hidden booth and asked for his favourite track, ‘TVC15’. Instead of curling his lip in contempt as Michael expected, the DJ said, ‘Too right, mate.’
So up came ‘TVC15’, and Michael, out of sheer love, began to dance. This should have been terribly uncool. No one else was dancing.
But Michael was grinning like a monkey, and he had decided at the last minute to rent a tuxedo, onto which Bottles had pinned her earrings. Somehow that was just right. Suddenly, with an ungainly whoop, Bottles and most especially Tami joined him. That probably did it. An awful lot of people looking tough at tables were suddenly left behind as people started to dance.
Michael had trouble with conversation. He was always scared of running out of things to say. But dancing was inexhaustible, and he used dancing to communicate. He even did the terribly hippyish thing of linking arms, and got away with it. Station to Station kept coming back; people groaned and shouted when it was turned off, and Michael found himself in the centre of a circle of people who knew where the good time was.
The good time was him. Tami put all her rings on his fingers. They did a whip-round and bought another bottle of champagne, and Bottles, giggling, poured it over his head, like a ship being launched, knowing somehow that he wanted to stain those hired dressy clothes. At just the right moment she nipped him back to the table and stopped him drinking. She sat looking at him affectionately, introducing him to people. It was like having a mother who was truly cool.
The next day his real mother, bitter with disappointment and suspicion, said, ‘Did you take any drugs?’
‘No, Mom.’
‘Who were you with?’
‘A girl from school, Mom.’
‘You were drinking. You’re underage.’
His mother had a long pale face that had lost its prettiness quickly, lining in her thirties. Her hair was an unattractive orange pudding basin with its roots showing. Michael’s Mum looked worn, downtrodden, and utterly wrapped up in her own unhappiness. She looked like someone who had been deserted. She also looked like someone who was enduring it.
‘It’s not a good way to begin life, Michael, drinking in clubs.’
Reality was returning like a headache.
‘No, Mum.’
Her narrow face didn’t trust him, and didn’t trust itself. She didn’t know what to think. And gave her head a shake.
‘Your clothes are ruined. How can we turn them back into Moss Bros like that?’
‘They’re used to it, Mom. That’s why people hire gear.’
‘And they pay to have it cleaned and all. Do you have the money to pay for that or do you expect me to pay for it, Michael?’
Bottles gave him a call. ‘Hiya! How’s tricks?’
He didn’t know what tricks were. ‘Oh OK, but Mom’s on my case about the clothes.’
Bottles chuckled. ‘Fun costs, Michael. That’s how you know it’s been real fun and not TV.’
Michael thought of sports teams in California, and the coaches who all talked like General Patton. ‘No pain, no gain,’ he mimicked, calling them up.
‘No pain, no game,’ she corrected him. ‘So, are you man enough for another night out at Club Louise?’
Perhaps he wasn’t and that was the trouble. At the very least, he was scared that the magic wouldn’t work a second time. At the most, Michael was scared that she would make a pass at him. He was confused, confounded by sex. Her big breasts had allure, but Michael also knew already that his future did not lie with women. He just had a lot of trouble finally admitting that to himself.
It made him awkward. ‘Hi!’ he kept saying brightly, every time he saw her, and nothing else. He could think of nothing else to say. He sounded like a chipmunk and felt five years old.
Michael wanted his more normal friends to see how wise she was, so he trapped her into a lunch with them. The girls, particularly, were fashionable and elegant and calm and confident and virginal and enclosed within a social circle. One of them grew up to be a newsreader; another was now a big cheese at the British Museum. They eyed Bottles, who plainly had a rich future as a floozy. The future newsreader widened her eyes and stared fixedly at Michael and that meant: ‘What on earth are you doing with her and why have you brought her to our table?’
Ostentatiously, Bottles began to smoke in public in the school cafeteria. This was likely to get the whole table into trouble. The girls started to leave.
Bottles had no social circle, but promiscuously joked with anyone who would have her. Michael sat with her at these scattered tables surrounded by surly underachievers. His mouth ran away with him. He bragged to them about Club Louise. He knew it was a mistake, he could feel coolness slipping away, but he wanted everyone to know that they had gone to a club. So he repeated every last incident of their evening out, like it was some big deal, and Bottles ground out her