Free Three Button Trick and Other Stories by Nicola Barker

you?’
    â€˜Heinz, there’s no point …’
    â€˜But this isn’t about that. It is about your friend, Sydney’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜She keeps calling around and she also keeps writing to me. She phones me …’
    â€˜Sydney?’
    â€˜I just want you to talk to her. I simply want her to leave me in peace.’
    â€˜My God. How odd.’
    â€˜I miss you so much.’
    Carrie’s cheeks glowed an unnaturally bright colour as she said goodbye and then gently placed down the receiver.
    She waited until the last person had left the sauna. ‘Carrie,’ she said, ‘I’ve done something I think you should know about.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I had sex with Heinz.’ She’d expected Carrie to blush or blanch. One or the other.
    â€˜What happened?’
    â€˜Straight sex. Nothing fancy.’
    Carrie frowned, ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you, Sydney.’
    â€˜Why not? It’s true.’
    â€˜He’s impotent.’
    â€˜He isn’t. You slept with him.’
    â€˜I didn’t sleep with him.’
    â€˜You said you did.’
    â€˜He’s impotent.’
    â€˜So what …’
    â€˜He’s in love with me. He’ll do anything !’
    Sydney stared at Carrie, confounded. Carrie was round and soft and lily white. She seemed peculiarly full of herself.
    â€˜So let me get this straight …’ Sydney said, wanting details so badly.
    â€˜He just wants you to leave him in peace.’
    â€˜Does Jack know yet?’ Sydney asked, knowing she was routed and turning nasty.
    â€˜He doesn’t know.’
    Carrie appeared unperturbed. Sydney shrugged. ‘Better make sure he doesn’t find out, then.’
    Carrie only smiled.
    â€˜Jack made a move on me, when we met up recently,’ Sydney said. ‘He tried that old three button trick of his.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜So you don’t even know about that one yet?’ Sydney asked. ‘Oh, you’ll just love it. It’s so cheap.’ And she set about putting Carrie straight on that particular matter.
    He’d kept on nagging so in the end she’d been forced to give in to him. ‘It’s a terrible waste,’ he said, ‘to keep on leaving the seats empty.’
    Anyhow, Carrie was bored of sitting at home every night with nothing to do and no proper conversation. Sometimes he mentioned the name of a new actress. Sometimes he wasn’t too tactful and inadvertently made her feel her age.
    When Heinz finally entered the box, a little late, without his tie, pale-faced, dishevelled, Jack muttered, ‘Christ, I’d almost forgotten about him.’
    Carrie said nothing, but she hadn’t forgotten.
    Sydney was sitting on her bed and in front of her was a pile of scrap books. She opened the first one. Dry red wines from the Perth region. She touched the wine label and wondered about her mummy and her daddy. Her elbows were itchy. She reached for a tub of Vaseline. She dipped in her fingers.
    Heinz had had several options: to forget about her, to confront her and tell her what a bastard Jack was, to be a kind of bastard himself. He was old. If he’d learned anything along the line, he’d learned that the little things didn’t matter, at the end of the day, but the big things mattered, and sometimes you had to compromise yourself, however slightly, to try to maintain that bigger picture.
    In the interval they bumped into one another at the bar. Jack was several feet away ordering drinks. Heinz had given plenty of thought to this moment. He’d had several options available. He’d taken the cheapest. Arriving late, no tie, the business.
    â€˜You look terrible,’ she said, glancing over towards Jack, her lips barely moving. She stared at his shirt. ‘And your buttons,’ she added, ‘are done up all wrong.’
    He looked down at himself.