“An important thing. Your son just learned a valuable life lesson.”
“And what lesson would that be exactly?” said Danny with an empty laugh. “Don’t grow up to be a massive failure like your dad?”
“I’m sure he already knew that,” said Krystal. “But now he also knows that all landlords are total wankers. That’s what they should be teaching kids in school, not that maths and science bollocks but practical, useful stuff, like, you know, how to get served at a crowded bar, and how to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, and how to rewire a plug, and how to identify a dodgy landlord. I wish somebody had taught me this stuff before I moved into my last place.”
“Had a lot of plugs that needed rewiring, did you?”
“No, but I had a creepy fucking landlord whose brain needed rewiring. He used to let himself into my flat and steal my underwear when I was at work. Always the expensive stuff too. He kept it all in a drawer by his bed.”
“How did you catch him?”
“One day he was working in the front garden, and when he crouched down to weed the flower bed, his shirt rode up and I saw he was wearing my crotchless knickers.”
Danny almost choked on the bottle of water he was drinking from. He wiped his mouth and looked at Krystal.
“What?” she said. “They were a gift.”
“Well, I wish that’s all Reg wanted,” said Danny. “He’s more than welcome to steal my undies.”
“You know, most people would probably think about moving if their landlord tried to cripple them,” said Krystal. “Just saying.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Danny.
“Course it ain’t simple. Moving’s a total pain in the arse, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t nearly as painful as being kneecapped.”
“I don’t mean like that. I mean… I don’t know, it’s difficult to explain.”
“Don’t mean it’s difficult to understand,” said Krystal, waiting for Danny to elaborate. He sighed and played with the bottle cap while he tried to find the right words.
“It’s just… me and Liz, we moved into that flat together. And, well, to me it’s still our home. I know she’s gone, but she’s also still there in that flat somehow. I know it, I can feel her. I found one of her hairs the other day. It was right there on the couch, like she’d literally just been sitting there the second before I walked into the living room. Crazy, right? She’s been gone for over a year, and then a piece of her appears out of nowhere. That’s why I can’t go. I know it probably sounds stupid, but I can’t just leave her like that.”
“It’s not stupid,” said Krystal. “I get it. But you’ve got to realize that she doesn’t live there anymore, Dan. She lives in here now,” she said, tapping Danny’s temple, “and here,” she said, patting his chest before wiping her hand on her shirt. “And she’ll be with you wherever you decide to go, especially if it’s somewhere that isn’t owned by a fucking psychopath.”
They sat in silence for a moment, their conversation hanging in the air like the disco ball above them.
“Well, it’s too late now anyway,” said Danny. “I can’t move out, even if I wanted to. Not until I pay Reg what I owe, and I can’t pay Reg unless I win this competition.”
“And you can’t win this competition unless you keep practicing, so on your feet, soldier, let’s get to it. There’s no way I’m letting Kevin beat you without a fight.”
“Kevin?”
“El Magnifico,” said Krystal, rolling her eyes. “Otherwise known as Ballsack McFuckface.”
“Seriously, how did somebody like you and somebody like him end up together?” said Danny, partly out of curiosity and partly to postpone having to dance for another few minutes.
Krystal shrugged. “I guess I was just going through one of those phases.”
“And what phase would that be?”
“The ‘I need to date an arsehole magician who refers to his willy as his wand and insists you scream abracadabra whenever you orgasm’ phase.”
Danny cringed. “Did you really have to say abracadabra?”
“No idea,” said Krystal. “He always finished before me.”
Danny shuddered.
“What? You asked.” She smiled and shook her head. “What can I say, I was young and stupid. He was looking for an assistant and it sounded like easy money. I wasn’t planning on falling for him or anything, I just needed the cash. I didn’t even find him attractive, but, well, things have a funny way of working out sometimes, don’t they? And by ‘funny’ I mean not fucking funny in the slightest. You know that whole sawing-a-person-in-half trick? Well, I was the person he was sawing in half, quite literally as it turned out.”
“You seem to have recovered pretty well,” said Danny, looking Krystal up and down.
She laughed. “Okay, fine, not ‘literally,’ but he definitely cut me in half emotionally. I put myself into that stupid box of his night after night, and you know what he was doing? He was going home and putting himself into Carla’s box night after fucking night.”
“Who’s Carla?”
“My sister.”
“Oh.”
“Oh is right,” said Krystal, smoldering so ferociously that Danny swore he could smell smoke. He tied and retied his shoelace while he waited for her to burn herself out.
“I didn’t know you have a sister,” he said.
“Had,” said Krystal. “I had a sister.”
“What happened to her?”
“She’s dead,” said Krystal.
Danny nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
“Dead to me, I mean,” said Krystal. “Stupid cow works in a warehouse in Bracknell.”
“I think I’d rather be dead, to be honest,” said Danny.
Krystal smiled and looked around the room. “We did a show here once actually, me and Kev, back in the early days.”
“Fanny’s doesn’t seem like the sort of venue for a magic show.”
“It was an ‘erotic’ magic show,” said Krystal. “That’s how Kevin sold it anyway. Got to hand it to him, he always knew how to market himself. There was nothing erotic about it, of course, it was the same old bollocks we always did, the only difference being that this time I had to strut around in my underwear, which wasn’t ideal, obviously, but it also wasn’t half as bad as having to squeeze into that sparkly latex shit that Kevin usually made me wear. Fuck me, that thing was hot. It was actually quite nice to be up onstage without sweating like Satan’s scrotum for once, so when Fanny offered me a job after the show—she said I could make five times more money working for her than I could working for, and I quote, ‘that pointy-hatted twat’—I was sort of tempted, but I turned her down because I happened to be in love with that pointy-hatted twat at the time. But then I found out about him and the bitch of whom we do not speak and I thought, fuck it, I’ll do a bit of dancing until something else comes along, and, well, here I am, five years later.”
“Why don’t you leave?”