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yeah, I appreciate the artistry.’
    Logan sneered. ‘Artistry?’
    She looked at him a moment before replying, as if weighing him up. ‘You don’t think it’s an art?’
    ‘Fuck, no!’ He spat the words with such venom that he stumbled forward and Purna had to reach out with both hands to steady him.
    ‘Hey, you OK?’ she said. ‘You don’t look too good.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just … hot. I’ve been up at the front. Thought I’d get a drink. You want one?’
    ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’
    She turned away, as if dismissing him. Logan felt that red mist prickling at the edges of his vision again.
    ‘Why do you do that?’ he snapped.
    She glanced at him, puzzled. ‘Do what?’
    ‘Turn away like … like I’m a piece of shit on your shoe?’ He knew that analogy didn’t quite make sense, but he felt as though he’d made his point.
    She looked exasperated rather than defensive. ‘I don’t. It’s your imagination.’
    ‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘You think you’re so fucking superior to everyone.’
    ‘I really don’t.’
    ‘Yeah you do. You’re doing it now. Treating me like I’m some … some bum pestering you for a dollar.’
    ‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘I think you should go and lie down.’
    ‘Yeah? Well, why don’t you come and lie down with me?’ He reached out to grab her wrist.
    Before his hand could make contact, Purna somehow managed to step both to one side and closer to him. Her right knee came up swiftly, crushing his balls. Despite the dulling effects of alcohol, the pain was so unbelievable that for a moment Logan felt sure he’d been ripped in two. As he doubled over, she grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind his back. He howled in agony.
    She leaned in close to him and murmured in his ear. ‘I really think you should take my advice, Logan. Go back to your room, drink lots of water, then sleep it off. You’ll thank me in the morning.’
    He tried to twist out of her grip, but that only caused fresh pain to shoot up his arm. Pain so acute that he felt on the verge of passing out. ‘Let go of me,’ he wailed.
    ‘Only if you promise to do as I say.’
    Black sparks were dancing in front of his eyes now and the sweat on his body was turning clammy.
    ‘Promise me,’ she repeated.
    Thoroughly humiliated, his balls and arm hurting almost beyond endurance, Logan gasped, ‘I promise.’
    Immediately he felt his arm released. He staggered forward and fell on his knees.
    All the shit he had been through over the past few years suddenly seemed to rush in on him, to coalesce in that moment. He felt utterly wretched, more wretched even than he had felt alone in his hospital bed with his busted-up knee, the painkillers wearing off, and the knowledge that an innocent girl was dead because of him.
    Without looking back, he began to crawl away. He felt like a maggot, something to be reviled and crushed. It was only when a wave of nausea rushed through him that he felt compelled to rise to his feet. He spotted a sign for the restrooms and staggered towards it, the hand that Purna had twisted behind his back hanging limply, the other cupping his throbbing balls.
    He passed beneath an arch into a short corridor, where a pair of doors faced each other on opposite walls. Choosing the left one at random, he all but fell against it. It opened and he stumbled into the rest room, vomit already boiling up through his oesophagus. The pain and the alcohol and the need to puke had diminished his senses, the music now no more than a mushy throb in his ears, his eyesight narrowing to tunnel vision. Ahead of him he spotted a sink, the silvery gleam of a mirror above it. Somehow he forced his feet into a rickety, lopsided run. He had barely gripped the edge of the sink when his head lurched forward and what felt like gallons of stinking liquid ejected itself from his system.
    The liquid burned as it rose up through his stomach and throat. The fumes from the regurgitated alcohol were