Ben laughed.“Yeah, they have—fortunately.I pick up some look-alike work sometimes.I opened a new branch of Tesco last week.Got three hundred quid.Unbelievable.”
“Wow.I heard he’s, like, gone into rehab, you know…?”He mimed chopping and snorting.
Nikolas ignored him and glanced at Ben.“My tea is too weak.I’m going to speak to the staff.”Ben gave James a nod, slipped away and went over to the doctor, touching his arm lightly, drawing him off for a private moment and distracting him.Nikolas slid quietly out of the room and went in search of the kitchens.
Two men in dark grey, slightly shiny suits, standing at the end of the passage, stopped him before he could even work out which way to head.Although he could have taken them both without breaking stride, they were so incongruous to the setting, to what he’d endured for the previous hour, he was dumbfounded and did a better impression of a slightly anxious gay florist than he’d managed to do so far.“Err…I wanted some stronger tea?”
One of the men gestured back to the room.“I believe you’re wanted in there, sir.”The other plucked the teacup from Nikolas’s hand.“We’ll have this taken to the kitchen and relay your request for you.Sir.”
Nikolas turned and went back down the corridor.He saw a bathroom and ducked in.He wasn’t the only one in there.Samuel was washing his hands, staring at himself in the mirror.“He called me a little bitch this morning!Do I look like a little bitch to you?”
Nikolas considered him for a moment.“Yes.”He went to take a piss.
* * *
When he got back to the room, he discovered a large piece of paper on his chair and some crayons.He swallowed deeply, picked them up and sat.When Ben joined him, he leant close and whispered, “Do you feel threatened?”
Ben glanced around.“No.Why?”
“Hmm.That’s what I would have said.Then why do we need two armed guards?”
Ben glanced at the door.“Seriously?That’s a good question.”
“And I have a better one for you.Have you ever come acrossarmedguards armed with airsoft pistols?”
Ben looked intrigued.“Air—You’re kidding.”
“They would appear authentic enough to anyone who didn’t know, but I’m at a loss to explain why they would want to fire small plastic pellets at us.I suddenly feel more motivated to stay, no?”
Before Ben could answer, the doctor gathered their attention back to him.
“Right, gentlemen.Now the real work begins.We’re all here for very different reasons, which you’ve just outlined for us.Thank you for being so frank.I know it’s not easy to come out in front of strangers and talk about personal issues.You should be proud of yourselves.Mark Twain once declared, ‘I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life.The problem is I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.’Well, I think you’ve all just proved him wrong.Youdoknow what you want.I want us now to build on those aspirations.You all have a piece of paper, yes?I want you to visualise yourself—where you are now in your own life.Happy?Unhappy?Seeking?Trapped?All the things you shared with us.Draw something that represents how you feel now on the left hand side of your paper.Then, on the right, draw where you want to be in, say, a year’s time.
“When you finish this course, I hope we’ll have enabled you to draw thevehiclethat’s going to take you from one to the other.Is everyone clear what they have to do?”
If anyone heard the groan from the scarred, blond florist, no one mentioned it.It was very quiet, if heartfelt.Nikolas doodled for a while, waiting to see what Ben would draw so he could copy it, but Ben turned away and covered his drawing with his arm.What?Was he six?Nikolas contemplated his doodles for a while.One resembled a cigarette.Or was it a penis?He sighed and turned his paper over.Where was Nigel now?He grinned evilly and began to scribble dark, menacing-looking trees.Taiga trees.Faces loomed out of them like Edvard Munch’s poor screaming guy, only scarier (they resembled Jonas Terry the last time Nikolas had seen him).He added a few flowers to make it more in character, but these were a little trampled and wilted.It was good.He coloured the petals in red to represent blood splatters.Excellent.Hispièce de résistancethough was his end-state drawing.It was a work of art—a nest, all fluffy and cosy and feathery.Downey.In it were two little stick men surrounded by tinier stick kiddies crawling like rugrats around them.This drawing had flowers, too, but they were happy, gay little flowers decorating the nest.Very neatly, he coloured one stick man’s eyes brown and one’s blue.Then he gave both yellow hair.He sat back and looked around and realised everyone was watching him, waiting politely for him to finish.He laid down his crayons and smiled weakly.He glanced over at Ben’s drawing.He’d drawn a man in prison on the left hand side and on the right a man with wings, soaring up into the sky.
They had to pin their pictures up around the walls.
James, Nikolas noted, had drawn a tall, white-blond man with blue eyes and a neck tattoo of an N in his end-state picture.Which seemed odd to him as the man had professed he was on the course to prove he wasn’t gay.Samuel had a similar figure in his end state, and another figure—Nikolas made a wild stab and assumed this was Noah—scribbled out entirely in black and lying prone on the ground.There might possibly have been a knife in his back.The threesome had become a foursome in their final picture, and it was no surprise to Nikolas by this time that the fourth character had blue eyes and blond hair.And was tall with a diamond stud.
John confessed he liked Nikolas’s nest.Which was a compliment Nikolas had never been given before.
It was dinnertime.
Nikolas made a small gesture at Ben and they went up to Doctor Atwell.“Where can we go to smoke?”
Fergus frowned as if he’d been asked where they could go to eat shit but waved towards a set of patio doors.“Please don’t drop butts.”
I’m a florist.I’m a florist.
Ben followed Nikolas dutifully through the doors to the patio.Once they hit the fresh air, they both expelled explosive breaths of tension and then, at the other’s expression, snorted with laughter.
Nikolas suddenly felt the most overwhelming need to kiss Ben.It was worse than the first weekend he’d invited Ben to his house at Barton Combe, when all he’d been able to think about was taking Ben Rider—what he would feel like parted and penetrated, how he would sound, the smell of his skin warmed through friction.
There was a walled garden around the patio and this had an arch, which appeared to lead to a driveway and some garages.He began to walk swiftly, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes.
The garages were converted from the original stable block, and one was empty with the door up.They went inside to the relative gloom at the back, and before Ben could comment on anything, cigarettes or the course, Nikolas seized him.He tasted just as good as he’d been picturing: desire.But then Ben always tasted of desire.He always wanted sex.Nikolas had a momentary flash, picturing their real relationship if he had to draw it.It surprised him.It was all intensely bright colours and sharp shapes that fit together like a complex geometric pattern.He fumbled at the button of Ben’s jeans.Ben stilled his hands.“We haven’t got time.”
