Free Drowned Sprat and Other Stories by Stephanie Johnson Page A

she took a step closer she had an intensely predatory expression in her big hooded eyes.
    ‘I kept pressing the button like mad, but nothing was happening. She started excavating her tiny evening bag again and lining up on the edge of the hand-basin all manner of creams, perfumes, lipsticks and eye shadows, and a packet of blue Holiday. At the time I didn’t think about it, but later on, since then, I’ve marvelled that it could hold so much and realised that that should have been my first clue. Instead, I was calling forRobert. I just called out once or twice, maybe three times, but there was no grille like in the old toilets, no gappy door. The Monopoly house was entirely sealed and soundproofed, and my voice ricocheted around the little room.
    ‘“Who’s Robert?” the tranny asked me, giving a bottle of nail polish a vigorous shake.
    ‘“My husband.” I remember the words were whispered.
    ‘“He still want to fuck you?” she asked, taking a firm hold of one of my hands, the other still engaged in pushing at the wall. She was very strong — I couldn’t pull it away.
    ‘“Leave that button alone. You’ll wear it out, lovie. Does he?”
    ‘I leaned my forehead against the cool wall and immediately recoiled. It was damp, fetid with mutating microbes adhesive enough to cling to smooth plastic.
    ‘“Does he still want to fuck you?” she asked again, squeezing my hand rather painfully as she brushed on some colour. It was bright cerise. When she realised I wasn’t going to answer her no matter how hard she pulverised my knuckles, she said, “Course he doesn’t. But then you don’t want to fuck him any more either. Sex isn’t everything, is it?”
    ‘“Of course not,” I answered her then. It was finally dawning on me that I had to talk my way out of this situation and that my previous panicked state had been due to my desperate need to pee. Now that I could think clearly I must not continue to panic. I relaxed my body, let her take the other hand, brush at the nails.
    ‘“Love it myself,” she went on. “Always been my downfall.”
    ‘I focused on the fact that she knew how to open the door. It was obvious she did, because she didn’t care that it wouldn’t open now. All I had to do was to get her to tell me how to get out. And if that didn’t work, surely, in a few minutes, Robert would come and open it from the other side. He would wake up and realise I’dbeen gone for longer than it took to … but then again, he knew I’d had my little problem again recently, so he might leave me straining away for as long as half an hour before he came looking for me.
    ‘Christ, what could she do to me in half an hour? I remember thinking. She could kill me!’
    ‘Have a drink of water,’ I tell her, pouring some out. ‘Take a deep breath.’
    Coral does both, and gets the hiccups. She gets up to walk around, rubbing her stomach.
    Gastric personality type? I note.
    At the window she pauses, the autumn light falling across her lined and anxious face.
    ‘Usually I stop the story there,’ she says. ‘Afterwards, when I told my women friends, I stopped it there, said that the door opened miraculously and I made a lucky escape. But it’s not true—’ A giant hiccup cuts her off and she makes a gesture of exasperation.
    ‘It’s all right,’ I tell her. ‘When you’re ready. Take your time.’
    A few minutes pass before the hiccups slow enough for her to resume.
    ‘I began by asking her how long she’d been stopped at the rest area. She said she’d been there a long time, she’d lost track. I tried to examine her pupils to see if she was stoned, but I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I’ve never had anything to do with drugs, though I know they affect your internal clock, your sense of time passing. The whites of her eyes were yellow, that’s all I observed.
    ‘While my nail polish dried she smoked a cigarette, which half suffocated me in the closed atmosphere, and selected