Boy Parts

by Eliza Clark

Genres: Literary Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Boy Parts has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Release date: May 9, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 304

Sample

Dean/Daniel

I’m sick in my mouth on the bus into work. I swallow it down; the sandwich I ate at the bus stop is still identifiable by texture and flavour.

When the bus pulls over, I wobble on my heels. I imagine going over on my ankle, the bone snapping and breaking the skin. I imagine taking a photo in A&E and sending it to Ryan; yikes, guess I can’t come in! But I can’t make myself fall over. It’s like trying to keep your head under shallow water; you just can’t.

‘You alright there, petal?’ asks the bus driver.

‘Just about,’ I say.

I get to the bar half an hour late. We were supposed to open at twelve. Ryan won’t be here till one, at least. I press my forehead against the cool glass of the door, repeatedly miss the lock with the key, and leave behind a smear of pale foundation.

I do the bare minimum to open, and carefully sip water till Ryan gets in. He whines at me for getting makeup on the door (again) and for failing to take the chairs down from the tables on the mezzanine. He calls it the mez. My head throbs. He asks me what time I got in (four a.m. – I say two) and if I’m hungover (‘no’), then leaves me alone at the bar while he fannies on in the office.

I chop fruit in peace for an hour; I kill six lemons and flay a pineapple. I leave the limes, the taste of my last shot of tequila is still sour on the back of my tongue.

I hear them before I see them. Men in suits, marching down the street, twelve of them. They burst in, shouting, red-faced, thoroughly impressed with themselves, and I’m stuck mixing Old Fashioneds for half an hour.

They complain I’m taking too long. I offer them a Manhattan as a quicker alternative, and the leader of the pack scoffs. His designer tie is loose, and he flicks open the top button of a monogrammed shirt; an enormous watch cuffs his thick wrist. Great pains have been taken to appear visibly wealthy. Probably ‘Aal fur coat and nee knickers’, as my mam would say.

‘A bit girly for us, darling.’

‘It’s basically the same as an Old Fashioned, it’s just a bit quicker to make,’ I say, each hand twirling a bar spoon through two glasses. His eyes are fixed on my tits, so he doesn’t catch me sneering.

‘They’re pink, aren’t they? Aren’t those pink?’

‘No, it’s bourbon-based.’ I think he’s getting it mixed up with a Cosmopolitan; he doesn’t want it, regardless.

They ascend to the mezzanine and complain loudly about how long they waited. They don’t tip. Of course they fucking don’t.

I’m praying it’s just going to be the one round, but they buy two bottles of Auchentoshan and I am in hell. It is an effort not to stand with my head in my hands, or sit down on the floor, or vomit into the bucket of ice they make me bring them. I try putting a Merzbow album on over the sound system to chase them out. It’s funny for about three tracks, but they just think the speakers are broken, and the noise makes my headache worse.

The leader separates from the pack. He comes downstairs and leans against the bar. I wait for him to buy another bottle, but he just starts talking to me. Talking, and talking, and talking. His slicked-back hair is thinning, and a strand of it keeps flopping in front of his eyes – he slaps it back into place as if he’s killing a fly.

‘I’m a partner, you see,’ says the suit. Received pronunciation – he can’t be local. A Home Counties transplant. A coloniser. He probably lives with all the footballers up in Northumberland and brags to his city-boy friends about how his Darras Hall mansion only cost him a million, how he lives next to Martin Dúbravka, and how, really, quality of life is just so much better up here, as long as you keep away from the rough bits.

‘My time is very expensive,’ he says.

‘So is mine,’ I say. He misinterprets this, and slaps a twenty-pound note on the bar, his meaty hands spanking the granite surface like it’s his secretary’s arse.

A woman has appeared behind him. She’s skinny, middle-aged and alone. Her fake tan is a nut brown, her dye-job is much too dark, and her teeth are stained. She’s shaking. I take her for an alkie.

‘Excuse me,’ she says. The suit ignores her – maybe he doesn’t hear her.

‘There you go, then, a nice little tip for you.’ Demeaning, but I pocket the money. ‘So, you’re mine for the day now, are you?’

‘Maybe the next five minutes.’ Another twenty on the bar, in my pocket. ‘I’m just going to serve this lady,’ I say.

‘How much to get you to sack this off and come home with me?’

‘It’s too early for this,’ I say. His expression has darkened in the time it took for my eyes to roll.

‘Excuse me.’ The alkie is barking now, but the suit blocks her out with his bulk.

He leans over and grabs my wrist, his belly pressing against the bar top. He snorts, his tiny, piggy eyes narrowed and bloodshot from an afternoon’s drinking.

‘You’re shaking,’ he says. Charming that he thinks the shaking is down to him and not the result of what I had presumed to be a visible hangover. He tightens his grip; I watch my skin turn white beneath his fingertips. The room is spinning. He’ll regret this when I vomit on him. It’s a shame I can’t make myself sick without sticking my fingers down my throat – it’d be a perfect way to get out of this without moving. I could scream, of course, but my voice is raw with the residue of last night’s cigarette smoking. ‘Are you frightened?’ he slurs. He is drunker than I initially suspected.

‘Let go of me.’ He doesn’t. I can’t reach the fruit knives. There is a line of pint glasses in front of me, and I grab one with my free hand. ‘I’m going to count to three,’ I tell him.

The alkie pounds the bar.

‘How old do you think my son is?’ she asks. The suit lets go, dropping my wrist like my skin has burnt him.

‘Gary, what the fuck?’ Another suit descends the stairs, wobbly and embarrassed, in a cream summertime suit. He’s the same age, but better kept, though still red with too many tumblers of scotch and too many holidays without an SPF. ‘Sweetheart,’ he begins. The woman interrupts him. She isn’t an alkie, I suppose, just a rough mam.

‘How old do you think my son is?’ She thrusts her phone into my face. My website is up on the screen. She is showing me a black-and-white photo: a boy kneeling, his tongue between my index and middle finger, my ring finger digging into his cheek.

Ah.

‘He’s twenty. He signed a consent form and brought ID. I can show you.’

‘Bollocks,’ she says. ‘What a load of bollocks. Hew.’ She taps Gary on the shoulder. Cream suit asks what this is all about – Rough Mam ignores. ‘How old does this lad look to you? Does he look twenty? Does he fucking look twenty to you?’

Gary looks at the mam, looks at me, looks at the photo.

‘I think we should leave,’ says Cream Suit. ‘Chaps,’ he calls. ‘Chaps, it’s time to go.’

But Gary is still thinking. Gary is still looking at the photo.

‘He had ID,’ I say. I pull out my phone and retrieve a scanned copy of his passport. I show it to Gary first. ‘See. Twenty. Now go,’ I say.

Rough Mam wants the men to stay. Rough Mam wants a witness. But they’re gone in a puff of expensive aftershave, the smell so potent it makes my head spin. Rough Mam wants to see the ID.

‘That’s my older boy. That’s Dean, you stupid bitch, that’s my older boy’s passport. Daniel is sixteen. I’ll call the fucking police if you don’t take that down.’

I’d scouted him on the bus and suspected he may have been in sixth form. He’d been wearing a suit. He must go to one of those colleges with an officewear dress code, but you couldn’t expect me to know that just from looking at him. I’ve seen blokes in their thirties who look twelve. That’s why I ask for ID. That’s why I keep records.

Plus, no court could possibly convict me. The similarity between the brothers is so remarkable that only a mother could really split hairs over that passport photo. I can’t imagine a jury taking against me either: people always conflate beauty with goodness. I’m more Mae West than Rose. I can just cry a bit, talk like I’m daft, tease my hair up like a televangelist: the higher the hair, the closer to God, you know?

‘Well Daniel lied to me and brought false ID. And I took these on a school day, so maybe keep a closer eye on him?’ I boot the backend of my website in front of her (which takes ages on mobile) and delete the single photo of him from my main portfolio. ‘Gone.’

‘I want to see a manager.’

‘Hello.’ I gesture to myself.

‘I want to see your manager, then.’

‘It’s just me in.’

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well then.’ She just stands there and glares at me. I come out from behind the bar, with the intention of opening the door for her, then she hits me. Like, hard.

She runs out of the bar, and I make a half-hearted attempt to chase her but I’m in a stiletto pump. As quick as I am in boots or platforms, I haven’t got a chance of catching her in these.

I spit after her. I’m fairly impressed with the distance, but it doesn’t hit her. She disappears around the corner.

I clomp back into the bar, out of breath, feeling sick as a dog. My face aches.

‘Are you okay?’ asks Ryan. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Maybe it’s the sight of him that tips me over the edge. He’s one of these short men that compensates by being extremely muscular. He’s got this big thick neck, and this teeny tiny pea head; thinning hair, bleached teeth, weak chin. Grotesque. If I open my mouth, I’ll vomit. I run to the disabled bathroom, and I smack my head on the toilet seat as I fall to my knees. The sandwich I have already regurgitated once today works its way back up my gullet, escaping in full this time. It lands in the water with a splat, like a slice of bread hitting soup from a height. Carbs are rarity for me, and, upon reflection, I should not be surprised that my body has rejected this floury Tesco baguette like a mismatched organ.

‘I just caught it on the CCTV,’ Ryan says, entering the bathroom and closing the door behind him. ‘You said you weren’t hungover,’ he says, betrayed, like he didn’t sell me coke about twelve hours ago.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Just got a fright. Did you see her hit me?’ I ask. I retch. He did see. He wants to know why. ‘What do you mean why? You saw her, she was just a mad alkie. I was talking to one of the suits, I wasn’t serving her, she lost her shit.’ I spit. I stick my mouth under the tap, and rinse. My body quakes, my skin flushes, and sweat oozes from every pore. I feel my hastily applied foundation begin to slide off my face, my cheeks streaked with mascara. There is vomit dripping from my nostrils, and I’m fairly sure that’s bile leaking from my eyes. ‘Give me some gum.’

He tosses me a little packet of bubble-mint – barely better than vomit.

‘You know, if someone who’s actually disabled comes in—’

‘Fuck off,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, Ryan. I’m not going to the customer toilets. I was literally just assaulted.’

Ryan wants us to piss with the customers, like animals. Ryan always thinks someone with a limp or a chair or IBS is about to barge into the bar, with the entirety of Scope’s advocacy board behind them.

‘I’m not ringing the police,’ he says. ‘FYI.’

‘Fine, whatever,’ I say. ‘You’re sending me home though, aren’t you?’

‘No. We’re short today,’ says Ryan. ‘I’m not sending you home for a hangover. How hard could she have gotten you? She looked skinny as fuck.’

‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘She was wearing rings. And I’m not fucking hungover. Text someone. The new girl, with the pink hair. Carrie.’

‘Cassie,’ he says. ‘And no, it’s her day off.’

‘She won’t fuck you for this, you know,’ I say. ‘And you might want to knock that craic on the head. She looks pretty woke.’ I make air quotes, and sneer. ‘Time’s up, Ryan.’

I nod towards the ‘Shout Up!’ poster we have on the door of the toilet; the one that labels us a sexual-harassment-free zone. Ryan looks outraged. Ryan thinks it doesn’t count as harassment if you’re good looking, and Ryan thinks he’s good looking. Before he can argue, before he can remind me he went on the Shout Up! training day and everything, Ergi appears behind him. I didn’t know he was in today. He’s never in. We’re one of three trendy city centre bars he owns, and I think he often forgets about us.

‘What’s going on?’ he says, throwing an accusatory look at Ryan.

‘Nowt!’ says Ryan. I burst into tears. It’s easy for me to cry when I’m tired, when I’m poorly, when my eyes are already streaming.

‘Some mad woman hit me, look.’ I point to the red mark on my cheek. ‘And I got such an awful fright I was sick. And Ryan won’t let me go home.’

‘Why won’t you let her go home, man?’ he asks. His accent is strange: a mishmash of Albanian and broad Geordie-isms. ‘Call your new lass – pink hair. Carrie?’

‘It’s her day off, and Irina is out of sick leave.’

‘She just got fucking hit, man,’ says Ergi. ‘Are you okay? Why’d she hit you?’

‘I didn’t serve her quick enough. A man was grabbing me. It’s all on CCTV. It was awful.’

‘I’ll get you a taxi. I’ll sort it out, don’t worry,’ he says. He asks for my postcode, and orders an Uber for me. He says he’s going to check the CCTV and write an incident report, and that Ryan is to get me a glass of water and some tissues.

Ryan glares at me. When Ergi leaves, I stop crying.

‘It’s fucked up how you can turn that on and off,’ Ryan says, handing me the water, the napkins.

‘It’s fucked up that you sell coke,’ I say. ‘That’s all wrapped up in child slavery and shit.’

‘Is it now?’

‘Google it.’

He walks me out, seething, assuring me he knows I’m hungover. He tells me he’s going to tell Ergi. I tell him I’ll dob him in for dealing; people in glass houses and all that.

Then the taxi is here, and I’m out.

While I’m in the Uber, I get a flurry of apologetic texts from Ryan. I’m sorry I was being weird, just sat and watched the footage properly, hope you’re okay, please don’t tell on me, etc., etc. I respond with some emojis. Pizza, shrug, smiley, facepalm, sunshine. Interpret these glyphs how you will, Ryan.

It doesn’t take long to get back to mine. Flo is still here. She’s wearing my pyjamas and hoovering. She beams when I get in, her teeth stained with coffee, her choppy bob in disarray.

‘I didn’t expect you back so soon!’ she says. ‘What’s with your face? Oh my God, have you been crying?’ I grunt, and kick off my shoes, landing on my sofa with a thud. I bury my face in my hands. The bubble-mint gum has gone sour. I recount the story to Flo, who gasps and OMGs as required, like a panto audience.

‘You could literally sue,’ she says. I left out the bit with the boy, the photographs. I say I can’t be arsed. ‘You know, if you get attacked at work, you’re meant to get six weeks off. Paid, and everything,’ Flo says.

‘No shit?’ I say. ‘Well, that’s a silver lining. Get my pyjamas and a makeup wipe.’ Flo does.

‘I’ve cleaned the kitchen,’ she calls from upstairs. ‘And I’ve scraped all the coke off your coffee table. I managed to salvage at least a bump, so I put it in a baggy for you.’

She delivers my only pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old jumper – reserved for the most desperate of hangovers. I change in front of her, dropping my clothes on the floor of my otherwise immaculate living room.

‘Cool,’ I say. I can almost guarantee she’ll be beating herself up about this on her ‘private’ blog later. Private, because it’s just for her and two hundred of her closest internet friends. It took me about five minutes to find it.

‘It was just minging in here, and I thought I might as well tidy while you’re at work.’

I groan as I wipe off my makeup, my skin stinging as I scrub.

‘That’s better,’ says Flo. She plucks the dirty wipe from my hand, and holds it up, examining the impression of my face wrought in foundation, mascara and brow-cake. ‘Ah, look at that. Like the Turin Shroud, that is.’ Her phone is ringing; the right pocket of my pyjama bottoms is lit up. She picks it up and cancels it. ‘It’s just Michael. I’ve told him I’m at yours. He’s probably just wanting to know about dinner. He’s so fussy sometimes! Like, chill out Michael!’ Then she turns her phone off, which is really a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. ‘Do you want some ice for your cheek?’

I do. I get her to bring my hangover kit, and two glasses of water. The kit is a Tupperware box full of over-the-counter painkillers. Flo brings it to me, then the water. Boots own-brand effervescent paracetamol and codeine (with caffeine) in the first glass of water, Dioralyte in the second. I drink the Dioralyte while the painkillers dissolve. I wash down two antihistamines (they’re an anti-emetic, and a life-changing addition to the hangover remedy), two 342mg ibuprofen lysine (the good stuff, the period stuff) and an Imodium. By the time I’ve swallowed the paracetamol and codeine, I feel almost human again. Flo presents me with a handful of ice wrapped in a tea towel, which I press to my cheek.

‘Do you want me to nip to Tesco? I could get us some hangover wine? And better food? I went into your fridge. All you have is a big bag of ice and some salad.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ I say. She toddles off to the shop, still in my pyjamas.

The remaining bile in my stomach curdles at the thought of putting more wine into it. I take a second Imodium.

I sit with my laptop and scroll through the pictures from Dean’s shoot. Daniel’s shoot. Whatever his name was. He was very cute and very excited that I approached him on the bus in front of his friends, very excited to get my card and very excited when he emailed me twenty minutes later asking when he could come to my studio.

He came in his underwear during the shoot and thought I didn’t notice. Honestly, I did have an inkling he wasn’t twenty, but he consented, you know? He signed his forms, and he gave me a very convincing passport.

The photos are cool. Kind of grungy. Black-and-white, but he still looks flushed. The freckles on his nose and his shoulders pop. I already sent some preview shots to a few private buyers – the few big spenders who like large-scale prints and originals. No one has responded, so far, but I figured he was going to be a hard sell. He’s not the best-looking lad, bless him – a big nose, and a lot of pitting on his cheeks. I think he has character, but I’m a broad church.

I’ll hold off on deleting them, for a bit. I probably should, but what’s his mam going to do now she’s clocked me on CCTV?

Flo is back, announcing her return in a sing-song voice, accompanied by the telltale rustle of bags-for-life. The ice in the tea towel has melted, and I fling it into the kitchen. My hand is numb with the cold, and I wedge it between my warm thighs.

‘I got you some carbohydrates and tins and stuff while I was there.’ She walks past me (shoes on my carpet), picks up the wet tea towel as she goes, and starts putting the shopping away. Carbs. I curl my lip.

‘Gluten is the literal devil,’ I tell her. She never listens to me about food and she’d still be skinny if she did. She posts on her blog about my disordered eating. How it bothers her, how she’s always trying to feed me bread. ‘And take your shoes off.’

She apologises. She tells me about a new boy at the Tesco. The same handful of staff have worked there the entire time I’ve lived here, so he stuck out to her. She tells me he’s really cute, but she has such bland taste in men. She likes the men she thinks she’s supposed to like. Her boyfriend has a big beard and an undercut, because when they got together that was the in thing. The boyfriend she had when we first met was this NME-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe. She liked Harry Styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name.

‘I swear to God, he’s adorable,’ she says. ‘He looks like the main guy from Mr. Robot, the one you fancy.’

‘Rami Malek.’ I roll my eyes. Flo thinks every short, ambiguously-brown man looks like Rami Malek.

‘I promise he’s cute. You’ll know him as soon as you see him. Trust me.’ She brings me a glass of wine and sets down bread and hummus that she must know only she will eat. She picks up my ankles, sits down next to me, and places my feet in her lap. ‘Do you want to watch a film?’ she asks. I nod. I hand her my laptop, and she compliments my photographs before going to my downloads folder. If she notices anything amiss, if she thinks the model looks young, she doesn’t say anything. She flicks through the films I have on my laptop and googles a few.

‘Oh!’ she says, pointing at the screen. She turns to me with her bottom lip jutting out. ‘Fritz the Cat! Oh my God!’

She’s pointing at the file for the film Fritz the Cat, but she means our Fritz. ...