Graham Storrs

A light appeared, right in the middle of the crowd. It was a bright light, but not a flash. It grew, paused and died in the course of a couple of seconds, like a door opening onto a bright room and then closing again. But, of course, there was no door, just a few fig-trees in concrete pots, the crowded plaza, and a small hubbub as people turned, smiling, to see what was going on. I supposed they thought they were about to be entertained. This was a party, after all.

I peered into the dimly-lit space. Being up a couple of steps, near the drinks and buffet tables, I had a good view over the heads of the murmuring people. I saw a tall man in a bright T-shirt and calf-length shorts. In fact, he wasn’t just a tall man, he was a giant! He must have been well over two metres tall and towered above most of the other men around him. It looked as if a basketball player had somehow materialised among the smartly dressed guests. People were still smiling at him expectantly, waiting for the show to start. He smiled back at them as he examined their faces.

He began to turn slowly and it was clear from where I stood that he was looking for someone. Having scanned those close to him, he was now widening his search. Silence spread over the assembly as everyone turned to look at the newcomer. He seemed oblivious for a while, but then it dawned on him that he was the centre of attention. He looked down at his clothes and then around at theirs and smiled again. ‘My word,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘The reports said this was a party.’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the General Manager touch the Sales Manager on the shoulder and exchange words. This was a Seltzer Corporation marketing event after all, and gatecrashers were definitely not welcome. The two of them began working their way through the crowd towards the stranger. Even as they were excuse-meing themselves along, the stranger’s search finally ended.

With me.

As soon as our eyes met, he became absolutely still. I could see that he recognised me – or thought he did. Yet, even though he had expected to find me, he still seemed astonished to see me. His mouth actually dropped open.

After a few seconds of this, his awestruck scrutiny began to grow embarrassing. I shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

I was about to turn away when the GM reached him at last. The crowd of Seltzer customers, holding drinks and paper plates, went quiet again so they could hear what was said.

‘I’m sorry but I think you might be at the wrong event,’ the GM said. His tone was calm and suave. He loved performing in public.

The tall guy didn’t take his eyes off mine. ‘No, er, mate, these are the correct coordinates.’ Despite his token effort to sound like a local, his accent was a peculiar one, a little old-fashioned, a little too formal.

The GM turned to see what the interloper was staring at and saw me. I shrugged helplessly back at his frown. ‘Perhaps I could see your invitation?’ The big guy had clearly annoyed him by refusing to look at him.

The gatecrasher, still ignoring him, and much to my chagrin, simply stepped past my boss and began striding towards me. The crowd parted before him. I saw the GM turn purple with a sudden flush of anger, then he hissed some sotto voce orders to the Sales Manager and sent the poor man scurrying along in Tall Guy’s wake.

The GM glared after them, remembering to spare a brief scowl for me as I stood, like a rabbit in the headlights, with the weird stranger bearing down on me.

Our interloper walked right up to me, ending up so close that I had to bend my neck back to look into his face. He seemed young – early twenties – a couple of years younger than me. His fair hair was artfully dishevelled and his skin was smooth and healthy. For all that he was so tall, he was well built, wide shouldered and deep chested, slim and narrow-hipped, like a professional swimmer. His features had a slightly Asian cast which was at odds with his height and hair colour and his striking, multi-coloured irises.

‘Vincent T. Demarco,’ he announced, in a tone that said he could hardly believe it was really me.

‘Yes?’

He held out a large, shapely hand and I automatically raised my own and shook it.

‘Vince?’ The Sales Manager came up beside us, looking insubstantial beside the tall stranger. ‘Do you know this person?’

I dragged my gaze away from those weird eyes. ‘Er, no. But he seems to know me.’ Glancing past him, I could see that we were still the centre of attention.

The Sales Manager looked up at the stranger and then back at me. When he spoke, his tone was pointed. ‘Why don’t you take this gentleman somewhere and have a quiet chat? We don’t really want any distractions tonight, do we?’

It took me a couple of seconds to realise that I had been handed the job of dealing with the matter. I swallowed the protest that this was nothing to do with me and nodded. ‘Right. No problem.’

I turned to the stranger with a smile. ‘OK, if you’d step this way…’

The marketing event was being conducted out of doors in a large plaza by the river. There were hedges in artificial stone planters to mark the boundary where our exclusive domain ended and the world of ordinary people began. I ushered the big guy away from the buffet and past the boundary shrubs into the relative darkness of the boardwalk. He seemed happy to follow me. It was like being adopted by an adoring Great Dane. So I led him away from the staring eyes and we walked along the river in silence for a couple of minutes.

‘This is truly an honour, sir,’ my oversized puppy announced, breaking the silence.

We stopped. ‘Who are you?’

He smiled at me. ‘That is… complicated.’

‘What was that trick you did with the light when you turned up?’

‘Sorry. It was supposed to be a party. One really cannot trust Ming’s data. I have always said so and now I have the proof.’ He seemed quite pleased about it and seemed ready to elaborate, but I stopped him with another question.

‘How do you know me?’

This pulled him up short. ‘Everyone knows you,’ he said simply. Then he seemed to remember himself. He stepped up to me. Too close, again. ‘My apologies, sir. This must all seem rather strange. I merely desired to meet you. To make contact. I need to establish a presence here, a pretext by which I may grow to know you better. I was decidedly out of place at your social gathering. What would be the best way to be welcome here?’

I thought he was joking – in a weird, off-beat kind of way. The comic effect was bolstered by the fact that he sounded as if he’d learned English by reading old novels.

‘Welcome?’ I said. ‘With that lot? Just get filthy rich and say you might buy stuff from them. They’ll be your new best friends!’

He thought about it. ‘In a capitalist epoch such as this, I could operate a business enterprise. What would you recommend?’

I laughed. It seemed the only possible response. ‘Try the Web. Either you get rich quick or you bomb and have another go. It’s so cheap, you can keep bombing and not end up broke.’

‘The Web?’ he asked, as if he’d never heard of it, and I began to wonder how I’d been drawn into this ridiculous conversation. ‘Never mind. I will consult a period specialist when I return.’ He suddenly seemed very pleased. ‘I think your idea has merit. The times are right for such a venture.’

‘There’s a tide in the affairs of men,’ I quoted, distractedly. I had just realised he had said something about finding a pretext to get to know me better. What the hell did that mean?

‘What?’ He looked baffled, as if I had suddenly started speaking Greek. He fixed me even more intently with his multi-coloured eyes and leaned in closer. It was a little unnerving and I began to wonder if I was safe out here, alone by the river with this nutcase. He was pretty damned big.

‘You know,’ I said weakly.

He seemed to be pondering what I had said with a disturbing intensity. ‘A tide?’

‘Yes. You know. In the affairs of men.’ Suddenly, I felt quite silly. He was sending me up. Nevertheless, I put on a quoting voice and tried to remember the rest of it. ‘Which taken at the flood, can, you know, give you a bit of a leg up.’

He considered this in silence while time stood still around us. ‘Brilliant!’ he declared, at last. ‘I will remember that. Is it original?’

More joking. ‘A paraphrase. Shakespeare said it first, I think, but I like my version better. Look,’ I was serious now. This was all getting too weird and was going nowhere. ‘Who are you and how do you know me?’

Abruptly, he stepped away. ‘I really must be going now. This was just an initial contact, as I said. It has been a very great honour to meet you, sir. I will treasure this occasion all my life. Farewell. We shall meet again.’

The sudden change of tone took me by surprise and by the time I had spluttered, ‘Wait a minute!’ he was striding off along the boardwalk, away from the party, towards the Botanical Gardens.

-oOo-

I went back to the party and grabbed a drink, downed it in one and grabbed another. The Sales Manager found me quickly and I told him what had happened.

‘Some kind of weirdo,’ I concluded with a shrug.

‘He seemed to know you, though.’

‘I know. It was creepy.’ I finished my drink and picked up another. Getting blitzed seemed like a good idea.

‘You might want to think about calling the police. He might be some kind of stalker or something. You sure you don’t know him?’ He looked at me suspiciously, as if I was hiding a secret life in which I met creepy tall guys for nefarious purposes.

After he’d gone, I hung around the drinks table and held court while loads more people came over and asked me who the tall guy was and what it was all about. They all went away unsatisfied.

By the time Gracie Shapiro turned up, I was completely pissed and, no doubt, grinning like a loon. I leered at her appreciatively. She really did have a fantastic body, I realised. A great arse. Tall and slim. And the long sheath dress she wore clung seductively to her curves as she reached across and took a drink from one of the waiters. The fact that she was at least forty, one of our major customers, and my mate, Macca, referred to her as ‘the bunny boiler’, seemed totally irrelevant just then.

She saw me looking at her and smiled at me.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hello.’

She came and stood next to me and I went straight into drunken chat-up mode. ‘I’ve been watching you all night,’ I lied. Well, I would have been, if I’d thought of it. In fact, I’d been watching one of the waitresses mostly but what the hell? ‘You’re a very sexy woman.’

She looked at me for a long time with a small, speculative smile on her face. ‘Not the usual sales talk. Seltzer must be sending you on more advanced courses these days.’

‘My name’s Vince,’ I said, holding out a hand.

‘I know.’ She smiled, shaking my hand. ‘Vincent T. Demarco. Everybody here knows your name. You’re famous. An autograph hunter was it?’

I waved a hand, airily, thwacking one of the waiters as they passed. ‘Oh, you know, one has to humour the little people.’

She stared into my eyes, smiling all the while. I tried to hold her gaze but my eyes kept sliding away. She said, ‘So you think I’m beautiful, do you?’

‘Ravishing,’ I assured her, stepping closer.

She hesitated just a moment longer. I was so close I could see nothing else but her, and my head was spinning with desire – or with booze, anyway. At the point where I was about to lose all control and kiss her, she said, ‘Why don’t we go somewhere quiet and talk about this?’

Somewhere quiet turned out to be her unit in Spring Hill. By then it was pretty clear that my role was not ‘suave seducer’ but ‘inexperienced drunken idiot’. For the next hour or so, I did what I was told and tried not to embarrass myself as she led me through an erotic gymnastics routine which involved odd pieces of equipment and toured the apartment’s four rooms at least twice.

I woke up in her bed, naked and confused, with Gracie nowhere in sight and sunlight flooding the room. I checked the other bedroom and the kitchen then got dressed and sat on a thickly-padded chair on the balcony, staring at blue sky and the tops of buildings. Slowly, it dawned on me that this was Gracie’s way of being discrete about getting rid of me. I got to my feet, took a last look around and left.