Nirvana Bites Read online

  Debi Alper lives in south London. This is her first novel.

  Nirvana Bites

  Debi Alper

  Dzanc Books

  5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd

  Ann Arbor, MI 48103

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 2003 by Debi Alper

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2014 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-941531-01-3

  eBook Cover Designed by Awarding Book Covers

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  To my mum and dad –

  for being so different to Jenny’s parents.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without the following people, Nirvana Bites would never have come into being. I would like to acknowledge and thank: my partner, Greg Kat, for all the late night plot-hatching sessions, his patience and unwavering belief in me. Hope it’s nasty enough for you! Angie Lee, for the e-mail sessions and confidence boosting. The East Dulwich Writers’ Group, for the initial motivation followed by the stream of (always-constructive) criticism. The posse at Lasa – especially Cliff Ashcroft, Kath Walsh and Darren Murrain – for their support and encouragement. The Shangri La Housing Co-op, for providing the inspiration and the setting – though categorically not the characters! Mark Rusher, from Weidenfeld and Nicolson, for recognising the potential. Alice Chasey, my editor, for making the collaborative process so smooth. All the other members of my family and friends for their positive visualisation. And finally, my children, Joe and Jacob, for going to bed eventually and giving me the space in which to write.

  1

  THE SILENCE WAS thick as suet. Not even a clock ticked in the featureless reception room. I glanced at the watch of the floppy-haired man in the grey suit to my left. We’d been there for over an hour. The blonde woman to my right, power-dressed in navy pinstripe and American footballer’s shoulder pads, started to drum her manicured fingernails on the papers on her lap. Heads snapped in her direction and she clamped her other hand on top to still the impatient impulse.

  At the far end of the room there was a door marked STANLEY HIGHSHORE. It opened, and a harassed-looking woman in her mid-thirties stepped into the room.

  ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting. We have a – er – situation here…beyond our control. ‘I’m unable at this stage to tell you how much longer you will have to wait. If you would prefer to leave now, we will contact you later to arrange another interview date.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Yes. Sorry. Thank you,’ she muttered, and scuttled back through the door, pulling it closed behind her.

  Several people shuffled to their feet, murmuring things under their breath that I couldn’t catch but I suspected were along the lines of ‘Oh shite. Another build-up to Nowheresville.’

  That left four of us – the hard core. I was willing to bet that the other three were thinking it might be a set-up to see how we’d react under pressure, and they were damn sure they weren’t going to crack. No one was about to initiate any conversation.

  As for me, a JCB couldn’t have prised me from the black-leather tubular-steel contraption I was sitting on. It wasn’t that I was desperate for the job, though ‘BBC documentary researcher’ did have a nice ring to it; or even that I had nothing better to do – though that was not entirely untrue. The real truth is that I was only there to get the dole off my back, on the strength of a CV that was 98 per cent fiction. Isn’t everybody’s? But that woman had seemed panicky rather than stressed, and I never could resist a whiff of drama.

  The minutes dragged sluggishly onwards. Just when I had decided that this was more boring than interesting and I couldn’t possibly be so sad as to carry on sitting there, the door opened again and Ms Very Nervous reappeared. She seemed surprised to see us still there, and not particularly pleased.

  ‘Look. ‘I’m really sorry, but there’s no way the interviews are going to take place today. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave now. We’ll be in touch.’

  She was still jittery, but now exasperation blended with the nerves. Whatever she was having to deal with, she didn’t need a bunch of stubborn desperadoes sitting sullen and mute in the reception room to add to her stress. She swivelled and returned to the inner sanctum.

  We unpeeled ourselves from the black leather and made for the door. But I had a plan. I was first to reach the exit when one of the men cleared his throat: ‘Excuse me. You’ve dropped your keys under your chair.’

  ‘Oh, silly me,’ I simpered, and held the door open as they filed through. I ambled over to my chair, picking up the keys and giving Applicants One, Two and Three time to get to the end of the corridor and into the lift.

  Then I went straight to the inner door and yanked it open. That was as far as my plan went. I was winging it – my usual approach to life and one which my mother never tired of telling me would be my undoing. Ms Very Nervous was over by the floor-to-ceiling window, biting at a fingernail. There was a suited BBC executive type perched on the massive rosewood desk, his collar and tie askew. A black guy, smart but casual in black jeans and shirt, was sitting on a bowl-shaped chair with his head in his hands.

  Two things struck me about the fourth person in the room. The first was that I recognised him, though not by his face, which I’d never seen before. The other was that he was stark naked and up a ladder. The media world knew him as Stanley Highshore, top-ranking BBC executive producer and spouse of Tory MP Catherine Highshore. I knew him from another world. A world in which he was known as Stapled Stan. I’d better explain.

  I used to work in an S&M bar called the Torture Palace. You know how it is with bar staff. Well, it’s no different in a bar filled with people who were leather-clad, pierced, studded, masked and tattooed. I knew all the regulars on the Scene and enjoyed a reputation as a good listener, a good laugh and a bit of a fixer. Stapled Stan was a regular, and no more outrageous than most. The fact that he had a very straight alter ego was also not unusual.

  I stepped further into the room. Stan was not only starkers up a ladder. His penis, stapled several times along its not insignificant length, was held taut by a chain looped through the staples. At the end was a large brass padlock. The other end of the chain rose above Stan’s head and was hooked over the corner of a picture frame, from which a photo of Stan grinned out, shaking hands with the Queen Mother.

  The thought of the gorefest that would result if Stan jumped from the ladder would certainly account for the expressions of horror on the faces of the others, now also registering shock at my unexpected eruption into the scene.

  Before they had a chance to compose themselves, I breezed into the room and straight to the foot of the ladder.

  ‘Oh come off it, Stan. You and I both know you’re not going to jump. You’re doing the classic submissive thing of exerting passive power. Now come off that fucking ladder and let’s talk.’

  I didn’t think the others could have looked more shocked than they already did, but somehow my little outburst achieved that. Stan, however, looked long and hard at me before giving a lopsided grin and saying, ‘Hi, Jen.’

  He reached up and unhooked the chain from the frame. A little shudder went through the room. Then he looked pointedly at the others.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but Mr Highshore and I have some things to sort out. As you can see. I think it would be better if you left.’

  ‘Now wait a moment,’ expostu
lated the Suit. ‘You can’t just walk in here and expect…’

  ‘Please, Tony…’ whined a voice from somewhere near the ceiling.

  We all looked up, but it seemed Stan wasn’t willing to say any more.

  There was a pause while each of them weighed up the situation. A mixture of emotions played across their faces. I could see ‘Who the fuck does she think she is?’ in there, as well as relief that the edge had been taken off the horror. But relief won the day. Ultimately, they were only too happy to let someone else take responsibility. They were all way out of their depth.

  The Suit couldn’t quite manage to leave without one last attempt to assert himself. ‘Who exactly are you?’ he enquired loftily, as though he had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis.

  ‘I’m a personal friend of Mr Highshore, and I’m also the person who can help to sort out this mess,’ I replied sweetly.

  The black guy addressed a point somewhere to the left of Stan’s shoulder. ‘Is that OK with you, Stanley?’ he asked. I swear I could see his fingers crossed behind his back.

  Stan nodded gloomily.

  They filed to the door. The woman hesitated at the last moment. ‘If you need me, Mr Highshore, you know where I am,’ she breathed, her voice catching.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Stan came down from his perch and started putting on his clothes, which were neatly folded on a dark swivel chair.

  ‘Susie Marchant folded them,’ he said, shaking his head in amazement. ‘There I was, up a fucking ladder, about to rip my cock to shreds, and she folded my clothes for me. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Stan,’ I said. ‘We really do have to talk.’

  2

  THE MAN OPPOSITE me was wearing an exquisitely cut pale grey linen suit that shrieked ‘executive’, with a charcoal-coloured open-necked shirt underneath. His skin looked dry and cobwebby – almost the same shade of grey as his suit. The shadows under his eyes and the deep fatigue lines etched round his mouth echoed the dark shirt. With his floppy hair greying at the temples, he looked like he was cast in monochrome – as though all the living colour had been drained out of him.

  Stan had gravitated through force of habit to the throne-like chair behind the desk, where he sat with shoulders slumped. He picked up a silver cigarette case from a corner of the desk and with trembling fingers extracted a cigarette and cradled it in his smooth-skinned palm. He looked at it for a moment, as though surprised to see it there, before placing it between his lips and raising a Zippo lighter of the kind favoured by dope smokers, who need a steady flame to toast their hash.

  The Zippo flared into life with its usual flame-thrower intensity and the room instantly filled with even more greyness. I reached across the desk and took a cigarette for myself. I only smoke cigarettes in extreme circumstances. The next hour or so had all the hallmarks of a serious nicotine need.

  Shit! Stan really was trying to commit suicide. The cigarettes were Gauloises, which are to Silk Cut what Turkish coffee is to a cup of milky instant. The first drag felt like the top of my skull had been sheared off and my brain shot out in a reverse bungee jump to the full extent of my spinal cord. I stubbed the cigarette out in disgust, just as Stan was lighting another from the butt of his first.

  ‘So, Stan, what’s it all about then?’ I coughed. ‘Is it blackmail?’

  He looked up at me for the first time since we had sat down and locked his eyes on mine. His mouth twisted in a mirthless smile.

  ‘Sort of. Banal, isn’t it? Except for two things. I’ve no idea who they are and they haven’t asked me for anything.’

  ‘They?’ I prompted.

  ‘They. He. She. It… I’ve no idea, Jen.’ He shrugged helplessly.

  I waited for him to continue, but he was clearly having difficulty ordering his thoughts.

  ‘So how’s it manifested?’ I asked, peering at him through the dense fog.

  ‘Oh, it started with what I would imagine is fairly standard fare for blackmailers: nuisance phone calls, orders delivered from shops in my name, that sort of thing.’

  The Zippo roared into life once more as he paused to light yet another Gauloise.

  ‘Then someone spread a load of stickers and cards with my phone number all round the Scene. It was on the Web too. Offering my services,’ he said with a grim laugh.

  He drew hungrily on the cigarette.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘So you presumably changed your phone number and e-mail address. What next?’

  ‘Break-ins,’ he replied woodenly. ‘Except there was no evidence of forced entry, and the alarm was always on.’

  ‘Did they take stuff? Vandalise?’

  Again his mouth twisted in that sideways grimace and he shook his head. Our eyes locked again, but his were filled with horror. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jiggling up and down the V of his shirt.

  ‘Stan,’ I insisted, ‘I know this is hard, but if you don’t tell me, I can’t help.’

  Hard? It would be easier to get blood from a pebble, but now I’d got myself into this, I felt I had to persevere.

  When he spoke, it was so softly I had to lean forward to catch his words.

  ‘I had an aquarium,’ he murmured. ‘Massive great thing, stretching across half the living-room wall. Fifteen different kinds of tropical fish. All chosen for their compatibility as well as their beauty.’ His eyes glazed momentarily, then his body jerked with a convulsive shudder. ‘Last Monday, I came home and found them all floating. The fucking bastard had stapled them. Every single one.’

  Sometimes, usually at the most inappropriate moments, I experience an overwhelming urge to giggle. This was such a moment. I clenched my jaw and swallowed hard.

  ‘Were they stapled together or individually?’ I eventually managed to ask, and then had to go straight back to grinding my teeth.

  Stan looked at me through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Individually,’ he muttered in sepulchral tones, daring me to be less than horrified, but I was back in control.

  ‘Did you call the police?’ I enquired.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jen,’ he said reproachfully.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Nuff said,’ I replied. ‘So what was next?’

  ‘More fucking staples. Everywhere. Every day. In my bed, my shoes, buried in the butter, floating in the milk. One day all my mail arrived smothered in staples. I didn’t know what to do. I was at my wits’ end.’

  He ended on a shrill note of panic. I thought he might be about to burst into tears.

  ‘Well, that’s understandable,’ I sympathised. ‘Has your wife picked up on any of this?’

  Catherine Highshore was a Tory MP for a safe seat in Surrey, where she lived most of the time in a detached ivy-covered so-called cottage, while Stan lived in the Docklands penthouse. They had met at school and married young – before Stan had discovered his sexual inclinations. Stan had told me once that his marriage was now essentially one of convenience, and his wife was aware of his proclivity for having sharp bits of metal stuck in his manhood. Well, she would have been, wouldn’t she? A marriage would have to be so convenient it was pre-cooked and shrink-wrapped for her not to notice something like that. He had told me, without identifying her of course, that she was prepared to tolerate his lifestyle so long as he was meticulous in preventing any breath of scandal. Otherwise, she had warned darkly, she would subject him to pain so far beyond pleasure it would be from a different galaxy.

  So how, you are probably wondering, could Stan be appearing regularly on the S&M scene and remain discreet? The fact is, I had never met anyone who had seen Stapled Stan’s face. He had always been clad from head to foot in black leather, including a full face mask. The only bit of Stan I had ever seen in the flesh, so to speak, was his penis, which protruded from a slit in the leather. Maybe you’re thinking, Hang on. If she never saw his face, how did she recognise him when she came into the room? Well, you may recall that I described Stan’s member as ‘not insignificant’. The truth is, he was hung
like a stallion. And with his trademark heavy-duty staples standing proud, with earring-type backs clipped where they emerged the other side, his was a shlong once seen, never forgotten.

  ‘I’ve only seen Catherine twice in the last three months,’ Stan replied gloomily. ‘Each time for lunch at the House between sittings. To discuss business – the boys’ education, investments, property, that sort of thing. Staples didn’t come into it.’

  ‘OK. So what tipped you over the edge today?’

  Stan sighed so deeply I was scared he’d hyperventilate. Then with a sudden explosion of anger he yelled:

  ‘I wasn’t even on this fucking interview panel. They were just using my office, ‘cos they can’t use the production suite. I only came in to get my laptop so I could work from home. And then – this.’

  With a dramatic flourish he yanked open the top drawer of his desk. I stood and leaned over so I could see inside. The drawer was filled to the brim with staples. In a small dip in the centre nestled a Perspex frame edged with gold tinsel decorated with tiny red paper roses. From the frame itself Stanley and Catherine Highshore smiled out, clad in evening dress at some charity function. I recognised the photo as having been clipped from a copy of Hello magazine that I’d flicked through on a recent trip to the dentist.

  ‘I just flipped,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know what was going through my head. Maybe I was just trying to wrench back a semblance of control over my own life. I used the ladder to reach the top bookshelf. I ripped my clothes off… Well, you know the rest,’ he said ruefully.

  His story told, Stan slumped in the chair and lit another Gauloise.

  ‘Right. This is what we do,’ I said energetically, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. ‘Is there any way at all you can stop the other three talking?’

  ‘Shit. I don’t know. I think I might be able to persuade Susie Marchant. But the other two?… I really don’t know.’

  ‘Well, you have to try. Because if you can’t, there’s not a lot we can do to stop the shit hitting the fan. Go and see them now. Tell them you’re having a breakdown or doing some research or something. Then go home. Don’t open the door, and screen all your calls. Give me your card so I can contact you. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.’