The Button: Part 4 – The Meet Cute
He was making love. Having love made to him on a garage floor. By a man—the same man who had been looking down on him. And it excited him.
Every subsequent push of the button jettisoned a fresh tranche from Isabella.
A new wave, cresting and breaking towards us and John. Isabella was not shy. She mashed the button in her flat with Dean watching on in a stupor.
John was sat on the toilet, head in hands. Just him and his thoughts. Belts and bannisters. Hoses and car exhausts. It would be better for everyone if he just wasn’t here. Even that was weaponised against him. It was selfish; it was for him.
It would have gone that way too if not for Isabella’s growing addiction to the button. There is nothing quite like a mystery to command attention. Nothing quite like a nemesis to focus the fury. A darkened bathroom. A man sobbing. The toilet was a welcome receiver to her transmission. A conduit, if you will.
Isabella had shared a similar low in a similar position not long before. Her tiles were nicer, less body hair, a better ply of toilet paper. But beyond the frills, something connected these two, threaded between them. If it wasn’t a bond, then more an alignment. A syncing of devices and a thinning of walls. We were undressed, parcelled and ready to deliver suppose you could say.
Freshly deshelled like a tortoise sucked out, the thoughts weren’t aimless this time. They had a destination, had a signal to follow. We screamed and shouted as loud as we could. Come to us, find us, John is our beautiful new neighbourhood. It didn’t take long. We welcomed them home; we shepherded them in.
Full of fresh confusion and horror, John felt the nebulous thoughts morph, sharpen, crystallise. He saw a flat. A bedroom. A cupboard. A man standing there. Then the world revolved. John was cold, hugging his elbows in a carpark. It lurched again. He gasped. A tingle ran through him. He was making love. Having love made to him on a garage floor. By a man—the same man who had been looking down on him. And it excited him. He could smell his body odour mixing with cheap aftershave. He knew the fragrance, Jake wore it. It made him sick. Then the man’s tongue was in his mouth, he tasted toothpaste and stale coffee. Despite this, a blanket of arousal draped every inch of John’s body. Warmth flooded upward. For the first time since taking the tablets, he was erect. Stiff. It scared him. He wasn’t like that, he knew.
Then the images pulled back. The foreground widened. Some developed into a bird’s-eye view. He wasn’t himself. He was someone else. He was a girl. A woman.
Then the name.
Isabella.
There was a film that Jake and Annie loved when they were children. We think it’s a story about toys. The owner of the cowboy man carves his initials into his feet, it’s barbaric. He tags him as his own. They spend a lot of the film simply shoegazing, wondering how they get back to their owner. It seems as if Isabella did something similar with us. We were tagged, no, branded. And now John was looking, staring at his feet.
How do I give these back?
Can we get home?
John wasn’t a touch typist, more a one finger prodder. He thought the tip of his index finger might crumple as he jabbed it at Janet’s laptop after he finished on the loo. After smashing enter, he stared in disbelief at the screen. He knew that carpark. Part of his job at the garage was picking up fleet cars from corporate digs. One of the contracts he managed was for Lumora Labs. The woman from his thoughts had been in that carpark. Isabella had wanted something. Something desperately.
‘I’m going out. Don’t know when I’ll be back.’
He was out the door before anyone could say anything. This was middle of the afternoon on an overcast Wednesday. He made it across town and to Lumora in eight minutes. Without much of a plan, more a hunch and a hope, John punched the buzzer at the barrier.
‘Good afternoon, welcome to Lumora Labs, are you a visitor?’
A man had come to visit a company.
‘Yes.’
‘Okay sir and who are you here to visit?’
He closed his eyes. The thoughts were jumbled again.
‘Isabella?’
A pause.
‘Izzie. Yes, no problem. Park up in bay two one eight and we’ll let you in at the guest door.’
John did as he was told. With every inch closer to the building his heart thudded harder and he could feel sweat drip from his armpits down his flank. He spoke to himself, under his breath. More barked. For the flicker of images, the sensations were overwhelming. The garage floor was cold on his bare buttocks; Dean was warm and continued to penetrate him.
‘That’s not me.’
He had to remind himself. It was her. It was always her.
‘Sorry sir, what was that?’
The receptionist was all smiles and teeth sat at her sleek metal desk. Her head was all John could see as he approached the little tablet that had replaced the visitors’ book.
‘That’s me. The fiat in two one eight. I’m—’
He stopped.
He didn’t want to meet Isabella. Not yet. He didn’t need to. What would he even say. I believe these are yours. And then what. Headbutt her. Drill into his skull and try to scoop them out. No. He needed to be clever.
We told him to be clever.
‘I do the cars. MOTs. For the Lumora fleet and Isabella’s is due in. Can you tell me which one is hers please?’
The receptionist’s smile didn’t flinch; her words came out like perfume. ‘Yes, sure, it’s the GLA in bay forty six. Would you like me to let Izzie know you’re here?’
‘No, not yet. I need to do some paperwork back in my car first. No point having her freeze her bits off.’
‘Quite.’
John turned on his heels before he could be asked anything else. At bay forty-six sat a brand-new gleaming Mercedes, tyres coal black with spotless mudflaps. He made a note of her numberplate. He checked his phone. Time left in the day. Enough to disappear and still look normal. He went home, ate a ham sandwich without tasting it and sat long enough to pass for calm.
Around five he drove back out to the lab and found a layby off the roundabout. He switched off the engine and kept an eye on the exit barrier. Half an hour later, the GLA ending KSF trundled its way out. It was darker now, so the beams were on but no doubt it was the same car. He couldn’t get a good glimpse of the driver, but no matter, he had been her, he didn’t need to see her. He waited until she merged into traffic on the roundabout and then like he was back in his dad’s car, shifted the gearstick and rolled forward, following her.
They stopped at one of the cruise ship like developments of flats that sailed the Stevenage skyline. A line of cars as long as the trainline parked bumper to bumper opposite the pavement. It was a horrible evening, rain splashed in indiscriminate puddles and between the glare of car lamps and streetlights, John would be forgiven for calling the whole thing off. The GLA indicated right and turned into the underground parking area. John didn’t want to lose sight of her, he made a split-second decision and pulled in real tight, as close as he could get without bumping her. The metal gates swung open, slow and ponderous, and as the GLA rolled down the ramp, John let his car do the same. With nowhere to park down below, John let his car coast a little. The GLA turned right and swung itself neatly into a reserved bay. John found a pillar and nudged his car up to it, dimmed the headlights and waited.
Izzie got out and stretched. A long limbering reach for the sky. He didn’t think much of her. Her carpark smelt of shit, for one. He didn’t want to shag her, didn’t want to be her friend, or hear her sob story. He just wanted answers. She was about five feet nine and looked like a woman. That’s it. Brown hair, flat shoes, work clothes and she drove a mildly nice car. Good for her. Now what the fuck was her deal and why did John know how she felt during sex.
‘Oh.’
She had started to cry, definite tears. Collapsing into her hands on the roof of her car, she was bereft. There was no one around, this wasn’t a performance, it was truth. The carpark hummed with the amber glow of safety lights. He thought he might be about to get out, go to her and just directly deal with this. We told him to wait. A moment later, she hitched up, wiping her face with long hard drags of her hands. Then she bent and disappeared into her car, coming back with a small bag. Izzie checked over both shoulders and then pulled out a small object. John sat, puzzled, by the fifty pence piece sized red button that protruded thickly from the matte black casing.
He thought it the remote for the gate. He had his head turned back towards it, expecting to see it open or close or do something when she pushed it. Instead, he felt a force so sudden his head flew back into the headrest and he started to cry. If he had been driving, he would have crashed, no two ways about it. He couldn’t catch his breath and all at once he decided he was going to leave his family and never come back for fear of how he might break their hearts if he stayed.
He forced his eyes back to Izzie and she was smiling. It made him wring the steering wheel as if it owed him money. She was breathing exultantly. She was smiling and lolling her head side to side as if she sweetest music was playing. John’s ears pinged and popped with unadulterated rage.
His eyes couldn’t focus; it was like a migraine but one that came with proper images. Once as a kid his father had gotten him into the projection room at the cinema. He had inadvertently caught a blast straight to the face, dazzled and shining for minutes after. This was like that, but with added nastiness. Terry, her boss, was a lecherous pig. Dean shouldn’t have touched it. And you’ve really fucked this up Isabella.
Two words were consistent with each image in this batch.
The button.
He watched Izzie stroll towards the elevator that went up to the flats. She could leave; he couldn’t. The thoughts needed to be squashed, stamped down like a bin that wouldn’t close. Once he had done that, once the rage was contained under a thin veil of mental cling film, he started the car and went home.
But now he knew what he needed to make him better.
We knew what we needed to go home.
’Part Six - The End’ - in two weeks
(The Penultimate PART!!!! remember we’re doing unreliable narrator lol)