The Love of My Afterlife(19)
“Why do you want a selfie?” I narrow my eyes. “Is this some kind of trick?” I get a vision of him pasting my face onto a photo of a naked body and posting it all across the internet just to be an arsehole.
“It’s not for anything nefarious, I promise. It’ll be quick. Do you want my help or not?”
I do want his help. I need his help. “Fine. I am a bit sweaty, though.”
“What, you want to freshen up or something?”
“Um. Okay? I mean, I can do?”
“The bathroom is that way.” He thumbs behind him to a door that’s ajar.
Slightly befuddled, I shuffle into Cooper’s bathroom, which is as bare as his living room is busy. There’s no way I’m using his bar of soap, because god knows what he has washed with it. Instead I run some cool water into my cupped hands and splash it onto my face. I open the cupboard beneath the sink to see a set of fresh towels in an elegant charcoal colour, a small cream box with Real Feel Condoms printed on the side in a chic serif font, and an unopened bottle of Kiehl’s hand wash.
I grab a towel, pat my face dry, and head back out.
I point at my clean cheeks. “Sweat eliminated.”
Cooper doesn’t reply, just positions himself beside me so that we’re shoulder to shoulder. I shuffle uncomfortably.
He holds up his camera. “You have to smile,” he says.
I show all my teeth in response.
“A real smile, Delphie. Are you capable?”
“Are you?”
“It has to look genuine. I don’t know, think of your happy place.”
My happy place. I hear Jonah’s voice saying he felt like he’d met me before. I grin at the memory as Cooper takes a burst of pictures.
“You won’t put them on the internet, will you?” I ask, leaning over to try to get a look at the snaps.
“Why on earth would I?” he scoffs, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “These will be deleted by this evening, I can assure you. Now…” He eyes the clock on the wall. “I have around thirty minutes before I have to be somewhere else. How can I help you?”
10
I’ve never been to East London before, and I do not like it. I don’t know my way around the unfamiliar streets, and every person I see looks like they’re on their way to audition for some wanky indie band with a name like Radiator Conspiracy or Breakfast with Carl. There is, however, a huge chance that Jonah is here tonight, so I battle through the discomfort.
As suspected, Cooper was a whizz on the computer. To my surprise he had access to some sort of private police database, though he annoyingly refused to tell me how or why. He used the database to quickly generate a list of Jonah Ts under the age of thirty in London, and while a social media search showed that most of them were not my Jonah, there was one man who was a definite maybe. Jonah Thompson. His social media profiles were mostly private or lapsed, but the display image showed a man of the right age, with the same Burnt Umber hair. His face was obscured by sunglasses, so I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. We saw on Instagram that Jonah Thompson had been recently tagged in a photo at a weekly musical theatre night in East London—which happens to be tonight. And so it seemed the next logical step to show up here in the hopes that it’s a regular hangout of his. I mean, my Jonah didn’t exactly seem like the kind of man to attend a musical theatre piano bar, but he did say he was anticipating a magical summer in London, and maybe this is what he considers magical? Either way, at the thought of seeing him again, my heart starts to beat a little faster, a warm flush spreading across my neck and chest.
I spot a neon sign declaring itself The Orchestra Pit and head down some rusty-looking stairs to a basement.
I open the door and am hit with a wall of noise, synthetic vape smells, disco-ball lights, and tinkly music coming from an upright piano standing right in the centre of the room.
“Eek,” I mutter to myself. “What hellscape is this, and why would someone as wonderful as Jonah come here?”
I shuffle to the bar, grimacing as a group of women wearing feather boas shove past me, saying something disparaging about Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The man behind the bar is dressed in a T-shirt made entirely of red sequins.
“Uh, hi there.” I give an awkward little wave.
“Your hair! Very Sound of Music!” The man presses a hand to his chest in delight.
I pat my braids self-consciously. “I’ve not seen that one,” I say. “I don’t like musicals.”
The man laughs out loud as if I’m joking. When I don’t laugh back, his smile falters. “Shit. You’re definitely gonna need a drink then.”
I nod. “Agreed. A glass of white wine would be lovely. Pinot Grigio, please.”
“We have cocktails for half the price on our happy hour menu—they’re delicious. I know because I make them. They’re a lot cheaper than the wine. And a ton more potent.”
He hands me a paper menu, on which there is a list of complicated-looking drinks: the Liza, the Patti, the Barbra, the Idina, and the Bernadette.
I’ve never had a cocktail before. But half the price is half the price.
“Cool.” I run my finger down the list. “I’ll have a Liza.”
“Nice choice.” The man selects a fancy-looking glass like something out of a James Bond movie and gathers ingredients to prepare my cocktail. “You’re new here,” he says as he pours an obscene amount of vodka into a metal shaker. “And you hate musicals. So…why?”