A Darkening Stain by Robert Wilson

and they’re not there either. Do you know where they are?’
    â€˜Why were you in their office?’
    â€˜Ambulance-chasing. Looking for work. I had some privileged information.’
    â€˜From your police friend?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ I said. ‘I thought the information might make his life less problematic and fatten my pocket at the same time.’
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜Only Marnier. Face to face.’
    â€˜He says he wants you to do something for him.’
    â€˜Then he’ll have to tell me himself. And if he wants me to pick something up from somebody or drop something off to somebody, at night, on a lonely road in the rain ... forget it. Not for any money. Go and tell him that, Jacques.’
    â€˜But...’
    â€˜I don’t want to hear any more. Tell Marnier to make direct contact or what I know stays with me and what he wants me to do, I won’t. Now buzz, busy bee, because I’m tired of this.’
    The phone rang. Jacques jumped. I tore it off the handset.
    â€˜Bruce Medway.’
    â€˜Jean-Luc Marnier.’
    â€˜We were just getting bored with each other, me and Jacques.’
    â€˜I could tell,’ he said, which made my neck bristle.
    I stood and looked through the windows and out on the balcony.
    â€˜Are you watching this?’
    â€˜Tell him to leave.’
    I buzzed Jacques off and he stalked out, keeping his face away from me.
    â€˜He’s shy, your friend. Are you coming up?’
    â€˜Doucement, doucement, nous sommes en Afrique.’
    I got round my side of the desk with my ear still connected and settled uncomfortably into the warmth left over by Jacques.
    â€˜Carole tells me you’re “
beau
”... Is that right?’ asked Marnier.
    â€˜I’ve just been talking to your friend about ugliness...’
    â€˜But are you “
beau
”?’
    â€˜That’s a strange question, Jean-Luc.’
    â€˜Not for me, it isn’t.’
    Something about the slant of those words reined me in, so I didn’t forget myself and crash in there and say that in the photo I’d seen of him he didn’t look too leprous.
    â€˜Well?’ he asked.
    â€˜I never made the May Queen but I’ve had my moments,’ I said. ‘I was just telling Jacques that ugliness doesn’t bother me too much. There’s a lot of it around in this world.’
    â€˜That’s unusual for someone pretty.
Normalement les beaux aiment seulement les autres beaux.’
    â€˜Who said that?’
    â€˜Me.’
    â€˜The truth is, Jean-Luc, I might have made the cut at the school dance when I was a youngster, but now I’m in that battle zone over forty, you know what it’s like, wrinkle and sag, wrinkle and sag.’
    â€˜Stay out of the sun. Drink water, my friend.’
    â€˜We’re not going to stay friends for long with that kind of advice.’
    He laughed. A crackle of static shiwed my right ear.
    â€˜Now, Africans, M. Medway, now they have skin. Beautiful skin. But maybe that’s the nature of beauty ... it’s always flawed. We wrinkle and sag and they’re ... well, they’re born black.’
    â€˜I’m sure they don’t see it that way.’
    â€˜You’d be surprised.’
    I could hear him coming up the stairs now. His feet sliding until they stubbed the next step, his breathing wheezing up badly even after five steps. The man out of condition on all those French filterless cigarettes he stained his hair with.
    â€˜Smoker’s lungs, Jean-Luc, maybe it’s time for you to give up before you belly up.’
    â€˜Look who’s got the advice now,’ he said, stopping on the stairs, the air roaring over the webs of phlegm in his lungs.
    â€˜I’ll shut up, Jean-Luc, let you get to the top of the stairs...’
    â€˜Without annoying me. If I get angry I can’t breathe.’
    â€˜I’ll remember that.’
    He got to the top of the