Page 48 of Jazz

A cluster of terraces sat ahead, rows of crumbling brick and boarded-up windows. Baz’s street. I killed the headlight before we turned in, letting the dark swallow us.

The Yamaha idled low, a predator’s purr in the silence. I pulled it to a stop a few doors down from number forty-three. The mid-terrace house was almost asleep apart from the slight flickering of neon light through the curtains of the big bay window on the ground floor. Half the render on the outside of the house had fallen off, piles of it in a heap under the window.Paint peeled from the door, the number three upside down where the screw had fallen out of the top of the number.

Jazz didn’t move at first, still clinging on like she wasn’t sure the world would hold steady if she let go. Slowly, she loosened her grip, her breath trembling, half from cold, half from exhaustion as she spoke.

“Where are we?”

“Safe,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. Just a fragile truth. “For now.”

I killed the engine, the sudden silence a resounding slap across my face. My ears rang, vibrations still thrumming in my head. I sat there for a second, both hands gripping the bars, breathing like I’d just finished a fight I hadn’t trained for. Maybe I had.

I looked over my shoulder. Jazz had pushed the visor up. Her face was pale underneath it, eyes wide, pupils blown from the dark. She was shaking, but she was still upright. Still alive.

That was enough.

For now.

I swung my leg over the bike and stood, my knees unsteady under me. The world felt too still after all that motion. My chest still buzzed from the adrenaline, from the speed, from her pressed against me. I tilted my head up, scanning the street. Quiet. No lights, no movement. Just the hum of some distant traffic and the occasional bark of a dog.

The knock on the door sounded obscene in the sleepy street of neglected terraces. A curtain twitched inside, someone peeking out, trying to be discreet, but failing as his eyes metmine. He looked defeated, letting the curtain drop slowly and then after a long minute a chain rattled from behind the door.

“Baz,” I started, not giving him time to speak. “I need somewhere to lie low for a couple of days.”

Baz glanced at me and then at the woman standing with my bike on the road.

“I’ve no room,” he said quietly.

“You’ve a fucking two-up two-down mate. We’re not looking for a fucking mansion.”

He glanced at Jazz again.

“Don’t have a garage.”

“Yard’ll do.”

Eventually he nodded.

“Come round the back. I’ll open the gate.”

“Come on, Tiger,” I said quietly, sliding back onto the bike and waiting for her to climb on behind me. “Let’s get you inside before the world and my brothers catch up.”

*****

“You two can take the front bedroom. I mostly sleep down here anyway,” Baz said as we followed him through the house.

Inside was cosy in the way old habits were, not comforting, just familiar. The air was thick with stale smoke, damp plaster, and the sour-sweet tang of weed that had seeped into the wallpaper. It clung to everything. The curtains, the sofa, even the air itself. Rolled and smoked until the haze blurred the edges of his life. The wallpaper had once been cream but now wore a jaundiced tint, yellowed by years of cheap tobacco and evencheaper paint jobs. A dado rail split the wall halfway up, the bottom half a glossed maroon that had run in places. The carpet underfoot was threadbare, a faded swirl of beige and green pressed flat in the centre.

We followed him further into the bowels of the house stuck in the nineties. Probably the last time he had cared about it. A mismatched sofa sagged in the lounge and a clunky old CRT television sat on a pine unit, screen smeared with dirt and dust. The electric fire in the middle of the room flickered, more for show than heat, surrounded by a fake stone mantel.

Everywhere I looked, something was half-finished. A torn strip of wallpaper left dangling, a plug socket hanging loose by its wires, a crooked shelf clinging stubbornly to the wall. It was warm, though. Lived in. The kind of place the world forgot about and Baz with it. And for tonight, that was exactly what we needed.

Jazz staggered beside me, dragging tired legs. She looked drained. Defeated. The adrenaline surge quieting in both of us but with hers she looked completely washed out.

“You hungry, Jazz?” I asked, following Baz up the creaking staircase.

“Not really. A shower would be good though.”

“You got food in your cupboards, Baz?” I asked to his back. He had to have something in. There was no way he could smoke the way he did without constantly having the munchies. “Freezer he grunted. There’s pizza and chips.”