Bodies on the Dance Floor
Nathan sees him across the bar, nestled in the booth.
His first thought is that Barclay should be dead.
Spangles is busy tonight, the dance floor bouncing to Sean Paul and Missy G, the bar thronged with sequins and stiletto heels and white shirts that glow like aliens under the ultraviolet light.
He only glimpses through the crowd, but he knows it’s Barclay.
He’d recognize that ridiculous haircut anywhere.
He makes a snap decision not to go over.
They were never friends. There’s a pleasure to be derived from seeing a familiar face, but Peter Barclay was never one of their circle.
What was it they used to call him? He can’t remember, but that’s no great surprise—he’s so off his face that he barely recalls his own name.
For an office night out, tonight has gone off the rails surprisingly quickly.
He blames Donovan and the smiley pills they shared in the bleach-and-piss stink of a toilet stall.
Barcladyboy. That was it. Simpson came up with it, the memory causing a smile to creep across his face. All his mincing and the stupid hair. They did laugh.
He’s still grinning as he turns to walk back to the dance floor and finds Barclay standing next to him, summoned by memory. Nathan’s drink sloshes, coating his hand with a waft of alcohol fumes. He should thump the queer for that, he thinks, but he doesn’t. Now isn’t the time or place.
“I thought that was you,” Barclay says, his face pale under the club lights. Was that eyeliner he was wearing? “I saw you across the bar, and I said to myself, ‘That’s Nathan Priestley, so it is.’ You’re looking well. Big night, is it?”
Nathan does his best to smile, waves the half-empty glass. He has to shout to be heard above the thud-thud-thud of the bass. “You could say. Office party. Got a bit out of hand.” He waits, but Barclay just stands there, like he’s expecting more. Finally he asks, “And you?”
“I’ve been here a while,” Barclay says, “just taking in the scene, you know? But Nathan Priestley, as I live and breathe…you’ll join me, right? For old times? I’ve got a table…”
Before Nathan knows what’s happening, Barclay has him by the elbow, and he’s leading—no, dragging him across the bar to the corner booth.
He wants to say that he’s busy, that he should get back to his colleagues.
That he’s surprised to see Barclay here, in the flesh, given the rumor circulating last summer that he’d offed himself, a massive overdose of painkillers and prescription antidepressants in a Holiday Inn in Slough.
But he says none of that. Instead, he stumbles after Barclay, the flashing lights echoing the pounding in his head, the seed of tomorrow’s hangover.
The seclusion of the booth envelops them like a caul.
* * *
He doesn’t know how long they’ve sat here.
The night up to this point has all blurred into one: the office party, the pub, the after party, now here, with Barclay, clutching a sticky drink in a padded booth.
He might have been here for hours. His phone is in his pocket, but he doesn’t get it out to check the time in case the outside world should impose on this bubble.
“So have you seen any of the others lately?” Barclay has been doing most of the talking, Nathan’s brain mired in a drug-induced haze. “Davison? Simpson? Charlie Lake? They were the gang you used to roll with, weren’t they?”
He wants to point out that no one says “roll with” anymore, but his tongue is slow and thick.
He shrugs, shouts, “No,” above the hurricane from the dance floor.
It’s not entirely true—he ran into Davison a few weeks ago, he’s working for one of the high street banks—but it’s easier than trying to explain.
Barclay is leaning closer than he’d like, his breath hot in his ear.
He can smell his sweat, the stale fug of alcohol, and something sweet beneath it all, like rotten fruit.
“Doesn’t matter,” Barclay says, waving his hand about in front of his face like he’s chasing off a fly. “I’ll catch up with them soon enough.” At least that’s what Nathan thinks he says. “You’re here, anyway.”
The hand settles on the table, the fingers resting on top of Nathan’s own.
They’re surprisingly cold, but he finds he’s unable to pull his hand away from beneath them, as if Barclay is somehow pinning him to the tabletop.
He wonders if he might be having some kind of seizure.
Whatever it was that Donovan gave him is still fizzing through his brain like a firework.
“Let’s just sit here for a while, shall we,” Barclay says, his lips brushing Nathan’s ear. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
* * *
They’re playing the same Sean Paul song again. Its rhythm beats against Nathan’s skull like a tattoo, and he almost convinces himself that they’ve stuck it on an endless loop and no one has even noticed. He’s sure he must be mistaken. These songs all sound the same when the volume’s high enough.
Barclay’s fingers are still on top of his. They don’t feel so cold now, although he can’t tell whether that’s because they’ve warmed up or his own have chilled. The feel of another man’s hand repulses him but he’s stuck in place.
This isn’t the first time Barclay’s hand has touched his.
They were in seventh grade together, when they first came to Brookmere, and they hung out a few times before Nathan fell in with a different crowd.
He remembers sitting on the beige carpet of Barclay’s bedroom, a Monopoly board laid out between them.
Barclay reaching out to move the boot and finding his hand instead, just for a moment, his fingers brushing gently, tentatively across the skin.
They had been warmer then. They’d both known what it meant, but it was never mentioned.
He’d met Simpson a few weeks later and that had become his social circle.
The rugby lads—the quartet of him, Simpson, Davison and Charlie—stealing beer from their dads’ stashes, hounding the girls on the bus home until they gave them their numbers.
That had been an entirely different world to the bedroom and the Monopoly board.
He’d never told them about him and Barclay, their stillborn friendship.
When Davison started mocking him at break one day—mincing as he walked, one hand pulled up to his chest, the other flapping like that ridiculous hairdo from his forehead—he’d laughed along with the others, joined in with the mimicry and the names.
If any of them noticed that he held back as they sashayed up the corridor together, they didn’t mention it.
He’d like to think he did it out of kindness, but he knows he was afraid they’d see something in him, some weakness that would mark him out as their next target—or, worse, as Barclay’s friend. Nate and Barclay sitting in a tree.
The bar lights are strobing and Nathan thinks he might be sick. His head is giddy with the booze and the pills, the thumping bass, the stink of Barclay beside him. If anyone from the office sees him now, or if word gets back to Simpson, somehow, through the gossip network…
“It’s okay,” Barclay says, his fingers sliding into Nathan’s palm, his hand gripping tight. “Everything is different now.”
* * *
He thinks he’s been here a week, maybe more. Time has ceased to mean anything. The music still thuds against his ears, the lights still flash and dance, sending rainbow waves across the floor. In one hand he holds his unfinished drink. In the other, Barclay’s fingers.
In all that time, he hasn’t seen a single person from the office.
There are still bodies at the bar, but at some point they have lost all trace of identity.
Faces featureless and bland, mannequins whirled around and around without end.
The roar of their voices has become one with the music.
He thinks he is holding his breath, until he realizes that he isn’t breathing at all.
When he looks at Barclay’s face, he sees the colored lights play across it, animating it with shadows, but otherwise it looks pale and still, a waxen image of the boy he once knew. The eyes are unlit, black holes drilled into his face. Those five fingers, so cold.
He sees everything and nothing. The music never ends.