The Laughterhouse

CHAPTER SEVEN

Caleb follows the taxi into town. If the girl is going to a club or a bar, there are going to be a lot of people around. That’s not going to work well. They pass a line of bars, where people who are students and plumbers and lawyers by day double as assholes by night. The music coming from the clubs and the other cars on the street is nothing like he used to hear before he went away.

The taxi slows up when it gets to Manchester Street, coming to a stop at every intersection, timing the red lights perfectly. Then it stops at a green light halfway down the street outside a stereo shop. It pulls over, and Caleb goes through the intersection and pulls over too. He watches the woman in the rearview mirror handing money over to the driver and then waiting for change. When she climbs out she takes a cell phone from her pocket and makes a call. Her short skirt doesn’t seem as short in comparison to some of the other girls on the street, the hookers on the street corners that walk past on her way to. .

She stops walking. She stands on the spot, turning slowly, and then the cell phone is back in her handbag and is replaced by a cigarette, which she lights up. One of the hookers comes over to her and they start chatting. Caleb doesn’t get what’s going on. He knows how it looks-it looks like she’s standing on the corner waiting to fuck the next person willing to pay for it-but that can’t be. Only thing he can think of is she’s trying to help these girls. Ariel and her friend start chatting, and they’re both shivering because it’s so fucking cold and neither of them are wearing jackets. They’re smoking and laughing. On the corner opposite a car slows up and a girl over there approaches it and leans into the passenger window. A few seconds later she climbs in and the car disappears.

Another car pulls over to the same corner. It does a U-turn and stops next to Ariel and her friend. Both girls flick their cigarettes into the gutter, and it’s Ariel who approaches the car. He can see it all happening and it makes him feel sick. He can’t hear what she’s saying because the weather and the distance kills any chance of that. He waits for her to walk away, only she doesn’t, instead she opens the passenger door, throws a smile and a shrug at her friend, and climbs in. The car doesn’t move for half a minute as business is discussed, then it pulls away from the curb, goes through the intersection and past him, then hangs a right at the next corner.

He starts the car and follows.

The trip is a short one. The numbers on his odometer don’t even get warmed up. Half a block to the east and the car pulls into an alleyway. The lights switch off and nobody climbs out. The alleyway is so dark there is no room for any shadows, and the car and the people inside it are lost. He parks opposite and tightens his grip on the steering wheel and breathes hard and fast and his head spins and his hands-especially his right one-begin to ache. He lowers his forehead onto the steering wheel. He wants to head-butt it to make himself hurt. He takes deep breaths to try and calm the urge to vomit. The inside of the windshield starts to fog up. He wipes at it with his sleeve. He opens his mouth and closes it around the top of the steering wheel and bites into it. He wants to scream.

He picks up the knife. Sure, there are people around, not many-another hooker half a block back, a few people driving past, another couple walking the street-but he could probably walk right over to that car and spill a lot of blood before anybody called the police.

He puts the knife back down. It’d be stupid. He can’t afford to get arrested when he’s not even halfway done. There are teeth marks in the steering wheel. He stares out the windshield at a huge billboard overlooking the car. It’s for a travel agency, there are pictures of islands and water and people laughing and it’s the life he wants. He focuses on the billboard, staring at all the things he can never have. It only makes him angrier.

The car starts to back out of the alleyway and stops. The passenger door opens and the interior light comes on and Ariel climbs out. She closes the door without looking back and heads back toward the intersection. The car’s headlights flick on and it goes the opposite way. Ariel reaches into her handbag and comes out with another cigarette, fiddling around with a lighter as she walks. He can still see the car she climbed out of, it’s parked up at a set of lights.

He follows it.

He can’t help it. He looks at his watch. It’s ten-forty. This is going to throw him off schedule, but he still has all night. He should just carry on with the plan and come back and see Ariel later on tonight, try and time it for when she’s finished work.

It’s what he should do.

Only he doesn’t.

The scenery changes. They leave town and enter the suburbs. Some are nicer than others. He grits his teeth as he drives. They drive for ten minutes, finally pulling into a suburb full of middle-class homes, the streets empty, streetlights cutting circles of light into the darkness. The car slows. It pulls into a driveway. The automatic door begins to open. This is the kind of neighborhood you can’t hang around in for too long in a beaten-up car with a knife in your hand and not have somebody call the police.

Best make it quick.

He brings the car to a stop and brings the knife out from under the seat.