Page 69 of Just for December

‘I like this!’ Duke says to her, leaning into her ear because at some point the music has gotten louder and some people have started dancing.

‘This bar?’ Katerina shouts back.

‘This everything!’ he says, and they’re interrupted by the barperson asking what they want, and Duke yells, ‘How do you say water in German, dude?’

The guy looks at him.

‘We’re speaking in English, dude.’

Duke bursts out laughing. ‘Oh, yes, we are!’ he cries, and it makes Katerina laugh too, although she doesn’t seem half as drunk as Duke is. How is that possible? She’s tiny, and she’s matched him tequila for tequila. ‘A water please, my man,’ Duke adds, asking Katerina: ‘You want anything?’ She shakes her head. All night, she’s been laughing at his jokes and telling funny stories and asking him about himself like she might actually care. It’s a nice escape. He doesn’tlike-likeher, but it’s nice to be blowing off steam with somebody cool. She’s good company. She asks a lot of questions, listens really well too. He’s probably given her half his life story without meaning to. It’s all pouring out tonight.

‘Hey, man!’ a guy in a hoodie says then – an American, judging from his accent. ‘Hey,’ he repeats, and Duke looks at him, glassy-eyed. ‘Are you Duke Carlisle?’ The stranger tugs on his friend’s sleeve and says, ‘Look! Duke Freaking Carlisle is here!’

Duke holds up a hand and shakes it, and mutters, ‘Nah. I get that all the time though.’

The American insists, though. ‘Hey, can I get a photo, please? My girlfriend will freak out! She loves you.’

‘Sorry, not right now.’ Duke can feel the anger rising in his chest. He just wants to dance, for crying out loud, and enjoy this moment, and now here’s some tourist thinking he can just whip out his phone and point and shoot a private, off-duty moment? He’s sick of it – sick of everyone feeling like they deserve a piece of him to use as they please.

The tourist holds up his phone in selfie mode and puts his head close to Duke’s.

‘I saidno,’ Duke says, pushing the American away from him. He doesn’t mean to do it so hard, but the tourist stumbles and looks at him with shock and hurt. Duke regrets it instantly. This isn’t about this guy in the bar, it’s about everything else. The guy is just bearing the brunt. Duke takes a breath, readying himself to apologise. But then the guy squares up to him.

‘You don’t have to be a douche about it. It’s just a photo.’

The man reaches out a hand, then, like he’s going to push Duke back, and Duke can’t explain it, but even with drinks in his system something tells him to get the first punch in, otherwise he’s gonna get got.

The tourist fights back, throwing his weight back in Duke’s direction, and then Duke is on the floor, and the other dude is on the floor, and they’re not throwing punches, exactly, they’re more scuffling, grabbing at each other’s hair and groaning a lot. And before Duke really knows what’s happening, the tourist gets leverage and manages to throw one almighty punch that lands square in his jaw, and just as suddenly as it all started his mates pull him away and Duke is sat there, already feeling the blood trickle. He looks up for somebody to help him – for anyone to help him – and yetthey’re all just staring. Some people have pulled out their phones, videoing what’s happening.

Duke looks from face to face to face, searching for someone familiar, someone to pull him up, and that’s when he sees her. But instead of helping him, instead of checking he’s all right, Katerina is photographing the whole bloody thing too.

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Duke

‘Not to sound unkind,’ Malcolm, one of the producers says to Duke when he lays eyes on him back at the hotel. ‘But that face could cost me a lot of money if the swelling hasn’t gone down by morning. Let’s go to the on-site medic, buddy.’

Getting half-pummelled certainly went a long way to sobering Duke up, but he’s not fully there yet.

‘I just need some sleep, okay?’ he says, and Malcolm raises his eyebrows. ‘Maybe some ice. I’m in trouble, aren’t I?’ Duke asks, but Malcolm doesn’t answer, simply sets his mouth into a muted line and hands Duke an ice pack the concierge has procured.

Duke is definitely in trouble.

‘Duke!’ Evie cries, leaping up as she spots him across the lobby. ‘Jesus, what happened? Are you okay?’ She turns to the producer. ‘What happened to him? Oh my God.’

Her voice is loud, panicked, and Duke is embarrassed.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. Isn’t it the middle of the night?

‘One of my late-night walks,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t sleep. Now seriously, what happened?’

‘A stupid thing,’ he says, not wanting to admit the truth: he got too drunk and took his increasingly frustrated feelings out on a guy who didn’t, at the end of the day, deserve it. He’s furious with himself. But he feels lonely, too. He keeps thinking about Katerina taking his photo when he was down on the floor that way, how not-sorry she seemed about it. Why would she do that? She disappeared right after, so he couldn’t even call her out on it. He’d found his own way back to the hotel. He has the niggling feeling that he was set up or fell for a trick somehow, that Katerina invited him out with the exact notion of gaining information on him. It’s an awful thing to consider, but he’s sure he isn’t wrong.

‘Let me look at you,’ Evie says, reaching out for the ice pack. Duke pulls away.

‘It’s fine,’ he says.

Malcolm pulls a face and says, ‘Imagine if that nose is broken. We’ve got mere days left. So what, for the last scenes of the shoot he’s going to look like the Mummy, all bandaged up?’

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