YOU’RE NOT ON THE LIST: A TRAGEDY
(A Bonus Chapter from The Summer Job)
‘Is James meeting us here?’ I ask Roxy, keeping my voice as low as possible so Anis and Brett, who are in the line just in front of us, don’t hear me. It’s freezing. I shiver and pull down the mini skirt Roxy has lent me, which is so obscenely short that it feels like my bum is being served – on ice – to the whole of Glasgow.
‘He’d better. How else will we get back to Loch Dorn?’ she says, and I feel another pang of disappointment that he isn’t here yet. James. Lovely James. I want him to come and see me looking all fetching, and slightly slutty, out of my work clothes but no, he had stuff to do tonight.
We reach the front of the queue and I hear those five little words that every serious party girl has come up against at some point in time.
‘You’re not on the list.’
‘But,’ I look at him, perplexed, ‘you don’t even know my name?’
The bouncer isn’t even listening but rather has turned his back on us and is talking to a very pretty girl in the coat room.
Anis scoffs, glaring at me and folding her arms like she’d rather be anywhere else while Brett shrinks into his brushed cotton shirt, his handsome face crimson. Roxy lets out an audible squeal – utterly distraught – but Bill, the bar manager at Loch Dorn and the closest thing we have to a boss right now, looks relieved.
‘I’d really rather go back to that little wine bar,’ Bill is muttering, tugging his shirt over his belly, ‘but I suppose we should head home then?’
‘Why didn’t we just go back to the Ox and Castle?’ Brett complains in a whisper.
‘I don’t even like clubs,’ Anis says, looking profoundly bored.
‘I wanted to dance!’ says Roxy, her lip jutting out.
Oh god. It was hard enough getting this motley crew on a night out together but finding a venue to suit all was almost impossible. We just wanted a nightcap.
‘Good grief,’ I say, tutting at my downcast quartet of co-workers. ‘Have you never blagged your way into an event? Nobody say a word except me, okay?’
I push my way to the front, but the bouncer squares up as soon as he sees me. I’m sure he knows a blagger when he sees one, and I’ve had more than enough tequila to take this six-pack on. He’s ready. I’m ready.
‘Hi,’ I say, smiling as naturally as I could, ‘we’ve come a long way to be here tonight . . .’
‘I’m afraid you’re not on the list. And you need to move,’ he says in that bored monotone bouncers reserve for the very stupid or the very drunk.[MV3] I sense the impatience of the people in the queue behind us when someone shouts, ‘Fuck off out of the way, ya tosser!’
‘Listen, can I level with you?’ I ask, motioning for him to step aside and out of ear shot of the others.
The bouncer nods, ‘You’ve got one minute.’
‘These guys here – they’re a band. Not the old one, he’s management obviously, but I’m their press agent from London. My name is Birdy, by the way, nice to meet you.’
He shakes my hand automatically, then pulls back.
‘What’s the bands name?’
‘I really shouldn’t say,’ I lean forward whispering, ‘They want privacy. But they are enormous on YouTube. Sixteen million hits on their last single.’
‘Sixteen million hits?’ His tone tells me he is unconvinced.
‘They’re Norwegian.’
‘Norwegian,’ he repeats, flatly.
‘From Norway. Folktronica.‘
‘Folktronica. Right.’
‘Right,’ I say, nodding furiously.
‘And they really wanted to come here tonight – why?’
‘The tall guy there – Rudolf . . .’
‘German.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Rudolf is a German name,’ he says, now smiling at me, but I am not deterred.
‘They came to . . .’ I crane my neck to look for any evidence of what is on in the club tonight, and spot a poster on the glass window. ‘To celebrate the, ah, 50th wedding anniversary of Nigel and Gladys McClelland?’ I smile with all my teeth, knowing the jig is most certainly up.
‘That’s tomorrow,’ he says.
‘Well, what’s the bloody list for then?’ I snap.
‘There isn’t one.’[MV4]
‘Oh, so we’re just undesirable?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
With nothing to lose, I turn to straight-up begging.
‘Please? Pleeeeeeease? We just want a nightcap. Our ride is going to be here in forty-five minutes.’ I clasp my hands together in prayer, ‘Pleeeeease.’
The bouncer, shaking his head and rolling his eyes suddenly softens.
‘Okay, for God’s sake have some dignity. I’ll let them in,’ he says, leaning back against the brick wall, and folding his arms. ‘With one condition.’
‘Anything.’
‘Not you.’
‘But why?’ I say, rolling my eyes.
‘That’s my condition.’
I look down at my watch. James would be here in less than an hour. My friends could go in and have that nightcap. Roxy could have the dance that she desperately wants. All I had to do was wait here. It wasn’t that much of a sacrifice.
‘Fine.’ I say, sighing.
‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ he says, grinning.
He waves through a squealing Roxy, a non-plussed Anis, broody Brett and a completely agitated Bill. They’re met by a woman in a gold lame dress who ushers them inside.
‘VIP,’ he says, then turns and smirks my way.
‘I’ll be in later!’ I shout as my so-called-friends barely look back and disappear into the darkness of the entrance hall.
‘You clearly don’t believe me, do you?’ I say to the bouncer, as I lean back against the wall.
‘Not at all,’ he replies, ‘it wasn’t as creative as you think. You should have gone for something more unique. A Nobel prize novelist and her entourage. Or a Latvian diplomat. A band was very pedestrian.’
I am very put out.
‘I can get into almost anything, you know.’ I say to the bouncer, grinning as I lean back against the wall, folding my arms. ‘Those guys in there, they think I’m a sommelier and I’m really not. I’m just bum from Plymouth.’
‘Who’s just a bum from Plymouth?’ I hear his voice before I see him, and swing around to see James standing there, smiling at me. He’s early. ‘Did you get kicked out?’
‘I wasn’t allowed in,’ I say, side-eyeing the bouncer.
‘Badge of honor in this place I’d say,’ says James, who leans forward to fist-bump the bouncer. ‘Hey Davey.’
‘She with you?’ Davey the bouncer asks.
‘She’s working with us up at the hotel,’ he replies.
‘What is she? A fake press agent for a Norwegian folktronica band or a fake sommelier from Plymouth?’
I look at James, then back to the Bouncer, and then back to James, laughing as loudly as I can get away with, without seeming unhinged. James, puzzled a moment, laughs too.
‘What on earth have a missed?’ he says as he slips his coat off and hands it to me. I happily slide it around my shoulders and wonder, for the hundredth time, if I can just tell him the truth about who I really am. ‘Wanna wait in the car? I have fried chicken.’
I gasp. ‘Fried chicken?’
‘What?’ he replies, showing me the way across the road to the minivan. ‘Chefs sometimes eat fried chicken, you know.’ I nod, tired, and suddenly very aware that I’m drunk and ready for bed.
‘And sometimes sommeliers drink too much tequila,’ I reply, failing to suppress a burp.
‘I thought you were a Norwegian band’s press agent?’ he says, eyebrow raised.
‘I don’t know what I am, James,’ I say, wearily leaning back against the car as he fiddles with the key. ‘I think I’m just hell trash from the south coast winging my way through life hoping I never get found out for the fraud I am.’
It was the most honest I’d ever been with him.
‘If you’re a fraud,’ he says, rubbing his chin, ‘then I’m pret-ty happy to get scammed.’
I gulp.
If only you knew.