Page 71 of One-Hit Wonder

“Really. And what was it like?”

“Fucking nightmare.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yeah. At first. The one thing I hadn’t found out about the place before I went was how expensive it is. A flat like mine, you know, piddling little shoebox, ten miles from the center, was like about £250 a week. So I had to get a job, pretty sharpish, and the only thing I could find was door-work. You know, working as a bouncer, which wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. Those Japanese businessmen—Jesus, can they drink. And they got so drunk. Made us lot look like teetotalers. Picking fights. Puking up. Falling over. But still—it was clean—and there were no drugs to speak of. And the women were—God, you know, just beautiful…”

“Oh,” said Ana, immediately putting Flint into the same category of old and ugly men who went to Thailand and the Philippines to buy young, beautiful wives, and feeling vaguely and inexplicably disappointed in him.

“To look at, obviously. I didn’t touch. Not at all. They’re so vulnerable, those women. And so small. You felt like you’d break them. And anyway—I like a woman with a bit more—oomph.”

Ana smiled.

“So I took a course and started teaching English during the day and doing the door-work in the evenings.”

“What else did you do?”

“Ate sushi. Drank green tea. Went to the gym. Learned kendo.”

“Oh yes? How far did you get?”

“Black belt.”

“No!”

“Uh-huh. It’s the fittest I’ve ever been. I was in amazing shape, and it was like the smack and the booze had been washed out of my system months before, in my bedroom in London, but being in Tokyo cleansed my soul. Shit—that sounds really wanky, doesn’t it?”

Ana shook her head. “No it doesn’t. Not at all.”

He looked pleased that he hadn’t sounded wanky. “So—after ten months I decided to leave. It was such a weird place, Tokyo—they’re all bloody mad over there. I knew I was better when I could see how fucked-up their society was, when I could see it objectively. And I was missing home, missing my mum, missing London. Missing the dirt, actually. Ironically. But I’ve found that when you’re clean inside, the dirt outside is just sort of… comforting. Do you know what I mean?”

“I’m not sure that I do, actually.”

“No. I don’t suppose you would.”

“So what did you do when you got home?”

“Well, I’d really enjoyed the teaching and I thought about doing that again, English, to foreign students. But I didn’t have the right qualifications over here. So I got a job with this limousine company. As a driver.”

“Why that job?”

“I dunno, really. I’ve never thought about it, particularly. It just seemed like a nice job. You know—the isolation, the nice motor, the smart uniform. I felt like I was damaged goods, and it just seemed to fit me, as a job. It seemed to be the right sort of job for a reformed character. It made me feel like Robert de Niro actually,” he grinned, “especially when I was driving around at night, through the city. It can be a very romantic job sometimes, you know.

“Bee used to say it was the best feeling in the whole world, being driven around the streets of London in the back of my car, music playing, not having to speak, not having to do anything. Just sitting there watching the world go by, thinking her own thoughts. She used to say that London always seemed like a film when she was in my car, like a beautiful dream, and all the people on the streets looked like actors—it was like having a layer of insulation between her idea of what life should feel like and what it actually felt like. There were never any disappointments in the back of my car, that’s what she always used to say…”

He fell silent for a moment and fiddled with a beer mat.

“D’you miss her?”

“Every second of every day.” His voice stayed steady but Ana noticed a film of tears spring to his eyes. He cleared his throat and took an abrupt sip of his lager.

“Tell me about when you first met her. Tell me what she was like.”

Flint craned his neck again to view the clock in the bar. “How are we doing on that half hour?” he said jokingly.

“Plenty of time,” said Ana. “We’ve only done half of it.”

“Well—according to Bee, the first time we met was when I collected her from the airport after she’d been in Germany. But I think that was another driver. She had a terrible memory, that woman. The first real memory I’ve got of Bee, though, was this day when I had to take her to the dentist. That woman, I tell you, that woman was just obsessed with her fucking teeth. It was unreal. I swear to God half her fortune ended up in the pockets of posh dentists on Harley Street. She said she had toothache, so I drove her over there and two hours later she comes out and she’s all wobbly and all over the place. The dentist had only taken her fucking wisdom teeth out while she was sitting in the chair.” He winced. “Her face was all puffed up down this side and she could hardly talk and there was all this drool”—he demonstrated it with fingers on his chin—“pouring down her chin. So there’s this tiny little woman wearing a black leather trench coat and black shiny boots, with her boobs hanging out of this tight corset thing, with her face all fat and swollen with drool all over her chin. And then she started crying, too, so there was mascara running all down her face, and she’s going,” he adopted a mincy accent, “ ‘Oh Flint, I hurt, Flint, I hurt so much I want to die,’ just on and on and on and on, like a scratched record. So eventually I stopped the car and I turned around and I said, ‘What the bloody hell do you want me to do about it?’ And she sits there looking all shocked like I’ve just slapped her, or something—all hurt and injured. And then she pulls herself up, like this, trying to make herself look tall, and she says, ‘I’ll tell you what you can do about it, Flint. You can take me into that bar over there and buy me eight thousand fucking margaritas and stay with me until I’ve drunk them all. OK?’