Black Chalk

‘After being upbraided by Dorian you feel a great sense of injustice. You were only trying to help him win. You will stride up to him in the bar and tell him as much. You will then produce a leather glove from your back pocket with which you will strike him while challenging him to “a fist duel”.’ Although the essential idea had been Chad’s, both the leather glove and the phrase ‘fist duel’ were Jack’s garnishes.

‘I mean, it’s stupid for a start,’ said Mark, his voice only a few degrees from shouting. ‘Since when did students believe in fighting? No one at Pitt fights. No one’s going to buy this, it’s just ludicrous.’

‘Then it shouldn’t be so hard,’ said Chad. ‘Everyone will presume it’s just a crazy kind of joke. Everyone already assumes you’re a crazy kind of person. Did you see last week’s Pendulum?’

‘And what if he says yes?’ Mark turned and stared at Chad, his eyes like flint.

Chad acted confused. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you just told us no one at Pitt believes in fighting. So why would Dorian say yes?’

And then Jolyon spoke, his voice still measured and low. ‘If he says yes it’s up to you, Mark. You can go through with it or you can back down. Your choice.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Jolyon, I didn’t fucking ask you.’ Mark took a long breath and then tried to restore the cold sense of certainty to his voice. ‘I’ll do it on back quad or in the Churchill. Just not in front of everyone in the bar.’

‘What?’ said Chad. ‘Mark, do you even begin to get the point of this game?’

‘Sorry, Mark,’ said Dee, nonchalantly adjusting the feather in her hatband. ‘You have to do it just how the card says.’

‘Fine,’ said Mark. ‘Then like I told you, I’m using my veto.’

Jolyon spoke less gently now, still calm but with loose threads appearing at the edges of his voice. ‘There’s no veto,’ he said. ‘Come on, Mark, you have to know you’re in the wrong here. You’re easily intelligent enough to know that.’

Mark screwed up his face in disbelief at Jolyon. He turned quickly and snatched the slip of paper from Dee, rolled it up between his fingertips and fed himself the ball of paper as if the consequence were a peeled grape being lowered suggestively onto the tip of his tongue. He swallowed with an exaggerated gulp. ‘How’s that for intelligent, you arrogant cunt?’

Middle let out a long sigh and Chad turned to see him shaking his head, staring at a spot on the floor between his feet.

All gentleness departed from Jolyon. ‘Me arrogant?’ he said. ‘It’s not me who thinks I’m so special the rules don’t apply to them.’

‘Fuck you, Jolyon.’

Emilia tried to soothe Jolyon with a touch but he brushed her roughly from his arm. ‘No, not fuck me, Mark. Because I’m not the one who’s fucked. I’m not the one who’s talking about avoiding a consequence. So I’m not the one who’s going to forfeit his deposit.’

‘Oh, here we go, Jolyon the rule master. Just who the fuck do you think you are?’

Jolyon’s eyes were like metal balls drawn back in a slingshot. ‘Who am I? I’m the one who plays this game properly, that’s who I am, Mark. I’m the one who pays attention to which cards have been played and doesn’t make stupid mistakes that earn them two consequences in a single round. And I’m just one of many people playing the Game a whole lot better than you, that’s who I am. Which means the only real question here is who are you, Mark? And the only answer I can think of is this – you’re the stupid one, Mark, that’s who the fuck you are.’

‘What did you just say to me?’

‘I said. You. Are. The stupid one. And you are. You must be a bit dim. Why else do you think you’ve had more consequences than anyone else? It’s not unlucky cards and bad rolls. It’s because you’re just a bit thick, Mark.’

Since the earliest days of their making friends they had all, except for Emilia, freely and liberally insulted one another. Anything was permissible, desirable even. Each night they would eat and then they would drink and then they would argue. And no one would flinch. Or Emilia might flinch just a little. And while Chad enjoyed the verbal roughhousing, he felt more comfortable tussling in his language of fricks and shoots. But all insults were acceptable, debating points that were forgotten by the next drink. And obscenities were not terms with which they could hurt or offend one another, such words meant almost nothing beyond ‘I strongly disagree’. But never, not once, had any of them around that coffee table used such a word to describe another. Never had any of them called another stupid.