Our Stop(66)

‘Nearly there!’ said Rashida, as they inched to the entrance after almost forty-five minutes.

‘Are we ready?’ said Sam, and the two couples and Daniel gathered by the final door through to where they’d spend their evening.

‘Ready,’ said Daniel, bringing up the rear.

They pushed through the door into the tented area of the park, so grand that it took their collective breaths away.

‘This way, dear friends, and with but haste,’ a woman in a black wig and tassel bra said. ‘Let us but meet my uncle, who will tell you everything.’

Daniel loved it. At the Blade Runner event, they’d made it rain from the ceiling of an airport hangar and before the movie all the characters had hung from the ceiling upside down, doing a fight sequence. Stuff like this was why he loved London. Big-scale, massive, stupidly impressive events on a random weekday night. And yeah, it cost a hundred quid a ticket, but goddamn, there was a Ferris wheel – a Ferris wheel inside!! – and an old stage shaped just like the one in the film.

Now everyone had taken off their coats it was easier to see who was who: the Montagues all got shipped off to the other side of the space, dressed in blue, and Daniel and his mates were in florals of black and red, for Capulets – Daniel himself was in a black leather waistcoat with nothing underneath, and black jeans.

‘Fuck me,’ Jeremy said. ‘All right, Iron Man?’

Daniel looked down at himself.

‘No wonder you were cold!’ said Sabrina. ‘You’re half-naked!’

Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘To be honest, if I had guns like that, I’d have them on show too,’ he said. ‘You’ve been working out, bro!’

Daniel felt himself blush. Admittedly, it was a bit of an extrovert outfit, but he was embarrassed that all his friends were looking at him.

‘I mean,’ he said shyly, ‘I’ve been at the gym a bit.’ Rashida put an arm around him to save him from the others, saying, ‘You look great, babe. Come on.’

They were led into another room, where everyone had to put on a mask they had brought along before being allowed inside a full-scale replica of the masked ball from the movie – right down to the aquarium where Leonardo DiCaprio met Claire Danes, peering at each other through ten inches of salted water and several slender yellow fish. Daniel loitered by it, wondering what it would be like to see the love of his life through the water, on the other side. He believed love would come. One day. Eventually.

The group spent a few hours meandering around the sites, bearing witness to a rap battle between houses, and a choreographed fight break out near the stage, where later a gospel choir would stand in a semicircle and sing ‘Everybody’s Free’ and not even Jeremy would crack a joke, they’d all just stand in impressed awe.

‘Shall we go and find a spot for the film?’ one of them said, eventually, and the group agreed they’d better go and figure out where to sit, since the screening would start soon.

‘Okay, you guys get set up here,’ Daniel said, after they’d picked their spot, ‘and I’ll go get snacks? What does everyone want?’

‘Look at those posh buggers,’ Jeremy said, not registering Daniel had said anything, but instead nodding his head over to the VIP area. ‘Posh bastards with their bean bags and blankets.’

Daniel turned to where he was looking and took in the atmosphere: he didn’t mind that he wasn’t VIP, over in the roped-off area. He knew those tickets were almost double what he’d paid. There was room for everybody, and there was a camaraderie in the air.

For a moment he watched a couple very obviously on a date smooth out their blanket and take off their shoes. The guy looked weirdly familiar to Daniel. He was tall, and very smiley, with bright red hair. Daniel watched as the man presented his date with a giant pair of woolly socks, and the girl tipped her head back, laughing. The man whispered something in her ear, putting his arm around her shoulder to do so, and the action took Daniel right back to the morning after he was supposed to have met with Nadia, when she was on the train with her boyfriend. The guy had the same ease with his body, the same comfortableness with intimacy and physical touch. And then the penny dropped: it was him! That was the boyfriend! The image of him listing off their weekend plans into Nadia’s neck as he sat with a hand on her leg was seared in Daniel’s mind. He was sure this was the same guy. Totally positive. The two of them arranged their snacks and drinks to the left and right of themselves and then snuggled down underneath a second blanket, wearing their socks, chatting together as if there was nobody else around.

‘Couple of lovebirds over there, huh?’ said Sabrina.

Daniel came to. ‘Huh? Oh. Yeah. Actually, I think I know him.’

‘Are you going to go say hello?’ Sabrina asked.

Daniel shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t know him that well,’ he said. Daniel didn’t actually know him at all. But. If he was right – and he was pretty convinced he was – if that was Nadia’s boyfriend, then he certainly wasn’t with Nadia. So, had they broken up? Daniel wasn’t sure if that mattered. The only thing he had promised himself – and Romeo – was that if he saw her, he’d speak to her. But he hadn’t seen her. She hadn’t been on his train, or on the platform, or bustling through the crowds of other commuters. It was like she’d vanished. He hadn’t thought about her for a few weeks, actually. He had even stopped reading the paper, because all he did was flick straight to the Missed Connections section, half hoping she’d written to him. She never had, of course, because why would she? His brain started to spiral, the way it had before: had it even been her writing back? What had he been thinking with all that nonsense? It was mortifying. He must have just been a bit brain-addled after his dad, clinging on to the weirdest things.