There on the platform, with fifteen other people, Tony pulled down first his tracksuit bottoms and then his clean white briefs. The Cherub stood still and exposed, his bovine thighs and brown pubic hair on display. His stare was as blank and disconnected as a sleepwalker’s.
The people on the platform looked disconnected as well. A greying man in a tan checked jacket glanced sideways and began to edge closer, eyes flickering. A woman searched her purse with immense concentration.
Then Tony sat down on the platform, and rolled onto his back, sticking the perfect bottom into the air, like an animal about to be spayed.
Oh, Jesus, thought Michael. So much for innocence. Bitterness and rage were countered by another thought: Tony must be in trouble.
Michael walked towards him. He saw the chords of muscle on the inside leg, and the head of the reasonably sized uncircumcised cock. Michael looked and then was sorry for looking. Tony gazed up at him, eyes unfocussed, dim with a half-formed question.
‘Fancy a portion?’ the Cherub asked.
Drugs, Michael decided. He doesn’t normally do drugs, so he’s gone and got what he thought was E only it was speed, plaster of Paris and battery acid.
‘Tony. What are you doing on the ground?’ Michael felt the eyes of the other people on the platform. His ears burned. He wanted them to know his intentions were honourable. The Cherub blinked, his head haloed by the grey and white patterns of the platform paving.
‘Stand up, come on.’
Michael didn’t want to touch him in public. Tony rolled to his feet. He stood without adjusting his clothes, facing the woman with the handbag. She looked like she might pull it down over her head.
Pull your trousers up! thought Michael, and immediately, the Cherub bent down and nipped both layers of clothing back into place.
‘Did you take anything? Do you remember what it was?’
The mouth hung open, the lips fatter when they were not smiling. Tony’s brows clenched, trying to find an answer. ‘I didn’t take anything.’
‘Are you sure? Try to think. What was it called?’
Tony nodded his head solemnly, yes. ‘Diclofenac,’ he said. ‘For my knee.’
Michael was a biologist. Diclofenac was a powerful anti-inflammation drug. Did it have side effects?
‘Have you taken it before?’
Tony nodded yes again, like a child.
The wind blew. Like a friend showing up, the train rumbled out of the tunnel. ‘This is my train,’ said Michael, trying to keep the tone conversational. ‘Where are you going, Tony?’
The Cherub replied as if the answer were obvious. ‘With you.’
It wouldn’t be right to leave him. Michael looked up at the handbag lady and she looked away hastily. The greying man looked miffed that Michael had got there first. Michael pushed his way onto the train as others were getting off, and Tony followed him. Michael clenched the handrail almost as hard as he was clenching his teeth, and looked around him.
Two teenage Indian boys were talking about cars or computers in a jargon he didn’t understand. A woman turned over a page of her crinkly newspaper as if toasting its other side, and sniffed delicately. None of them had seen the banquet of Cherub laid out on the platform. Very suddenly, normality closed over them. The doors rolled shut. The noise of the train provided an excuse not to talk, as if it were embarrassed for them.
Tony simply stared, the flesh on his face slack, like old Hush Puppy shoes. There was definitely something wrong with him; he squinted up at the advertising, looking as if ads for Blistex were beyond his mental age. As the train approached Goodge Street, Michael wondered what on earth to do.
‘Look, Tony. I get off here. Will you be OK?’
Tony nodded yes. The train stopped and the doors opened. Michael got off. Tony followed him.
‘Do you want to see a doctor?’
Tony shook his head, no. Michael could think of nothing else to do, so he headed for the WAY OUT sign and the lift. Tony started to whistle, in a kind of deranged echoing drawl.
I don’t like this, Michael thought. He said airily, ‘So. Do you live around here, Tony?’
‘I live in Theydon Bois.’ Theydon Bois was at the end of the Central Line. This was the Northern.
‘So,’ Michael ventured. ‘You’re meeting someone?’ A coldness gathered around his heart.
‘No,’ said the Cherub in the same numb, faraway voice.
‘So where are you going?’ Why, Michael thought, does the underground always smell of asbestos and urine?
‘I don’t know. I don’t even have a ticket.’
They had reached the lifts. The windows in the metal doors looked like empty eye sockets. This was getting weird. ‘Look,’ Michael asked him, ‘if there’s something wrong, I’m not sure I can help you. Do have a phone with you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Tony patted his tracksuit pockets.
Michael began to be afraid. This guy can bench-press 130 kilos. The elevator arrived filling the two windows with light as if they were eyes that had opened. The doors beeped and gaped but Michael did not get in.
‘You don’t want to go this way,’ said Michael. ‘You want to go back that direction.’
‘What I want doesn’t count,’ said Tony.
My God, thought Michael. He hasn’t blinked, not once.
Stand clear of the doors please said a cool, controlling voice. Michael decided it was best to get upstairs where there were people. He got in, Tony followed, and the doors trundled shut. They were alone.
Tony slipped his fingers under the spandex waistband, and pulled down both trousers and underwear, businesslike, as if finishing a warm-up.
Stop! thought Michael. Tony stopped. ‘Pull them up!’ said Michael. Tony did. The Cherub looked back at him, scowling slightly as if he couldn’t quite hear what was being said.
Jesus, thought Michael, this is what you get for fancying some guy at the gym: you chat away, you’re nice to him, and suddenly you’ve got a psychopath following you home. There was sweat on Michael’s upper lip. The lift did a little bounce and stopped, mimicking the sick sensation in Michael’s stomach.
The doors opened and Michael swept through them, fumbling to pull his season ticket out of his jacket pocket. He strode to the barriers, slipping his card into the slot like a kiss, nipped it free and pushed his way out and away. He could feel Tony’s eyes on his back as he escaped.
Michael thought and then stopped: you know he’s in trouble. It might be an insulin reaction, something like that. You can’t just leave him. He turned around. Tony was standing dazed behind the ticket barriers. What if he’s too ill to even know his way home? Michael sighed and walked back.
‘Is this something that happens to you sometimes? Are you diabetic, are you on any kind of medication?’ Michael was thinking schizophrenia. The ticket barriers were hunched between them like a line of American football players.
‘No,’ said Tony, as if from the bottom of a well.
‘Well look, the Central Line is back that way,’ Michael said. ‘Go back down and change at Tottenham Court Road.’ Michael glanced sideways; the guard was listening.
The guard was a young, handsome, burly man whom Michael had once halfway fancied, except for his unpleasant sneer. The guard was looking the other way, but his ears were pricked.
Tony said, mildly surprised. ‘Don’t you want to fuck me?’
Michael