A Lovely and Terrible Thing

by Chris Womersley

  Trouble was, I thought the whole thing was kind of funny and every time I tried to assure the girl that her head wasn’t actually bleeding, I giggled – which only made her even more distressed. She kept rubbing her head and inspecting her hand for signs of blood. This was a bad little cycle to get into and soon she was sobbing uncontrollably and saying that she knew we were going to kidnap her and make her perform sordid sex acts. I felt sorry for her, I really did. Once after dropping acid I went to the Taxi Club at Taylor Square, which was full of gangsters and outlandishly dressed prostitutes. There was a large fish tank there and for hours I watched a massive, lipsticked groper that proved, only after some pretty intense inspection, to be a very obese transvestite leering at me from the other side of the tank. This was revelatory, like everything is when you’re in that state (the world as metaphor or gateway, et cetera), and then there was a fight between some girls and their johns – broken bottles, blood, the whorl of police lights on the stairwell, the whole fucking catastrophe. I don’t know how I got home but I couldn’t leave the house for days and the sound of a fish tank’s pump still gave me the heebie-jeebies. Which is a roundabout way of saying that acid is not for the faint-hearted, no.

  Anyway. I had taken over the record player and was keeping everyone on their toes – swapping The The with Brian Eno, for example. A bit of New Order, that sort of thing. And it was all going pretty well, notwithstanding the girl who thought her head was bleeding. A couple of people had wandered off to one of the bedrooms to stare at a quilt or something, but things were basically under control. Then the girl started saying she wanted to leave. Well, we couldn’t let her go anywhere by herself, of course, but we didn’t want to actually restrain her either – that would only freak her out even more. We fed her a jar of vitamin C tablets to try to bring her down, but that didn’t seem to work, so I decided to go over to Dirty Dave’s house and get some smack. Besides, it was pay day and it would be nice, so nice, to have something to take the edge off later, right?

  I couldn’t possibly leave the girl with the others, so somehow I persuaded her to come with me to Dirty Dave’s, which was a few streets away. It was cold, and the night and its roofs and roads trembled at their edges like ivy in a breeze and I was reminded of something I saw in a movie or was it real life I couldn’t quite recall, but it filled me with nervous joy. Dave answered the door in his undies and as soon as he saw me he knew what I wanted. It was late after all and, in any case, junkies are like countries – they have interests, not friends; a late-night visit could only mean one thing.

  Dirty Dave was the kind of middle-aged loser who hung around in trendy pubs hoping that one of the young, beautiful women would be impressed enough by war stories from the old days to throw him a drunken fuck. He was bearded and shambling and a low-level sleaze, but he usually knew where to get hold of some good heroin. That. What?

  He made the girl welcome and fussed about, making tea in his grubby, fluoro-lit kitchen while I explained as best I could, as best I knew, what had been happening. He even managed to rustle up some biscuits. The girl just sat there, touching the side of her head now and then and inspecting her fingertips for non-existent traces of her blood. She seemed slightly better for the short walk and I wondered whether the whole smack thing was really necessary but, of course, things had been set in motion and Dave had already made the call, leaving me alone with her – the girl, I mean.

  The girl had in the meantime become creaturely, I guess you would say, and she paused to lick her narrow snout and run her inner wrist all across her face. She inspected her hands. Chipped red nail polish, very white fingers. She sort of growled in her throat, then stopped and shook her head. ‘My mouth feels funny. Oh. Yes. That’s right.’ She paused, as if thinking deeply. ‘My sister died, you know. Last year.’ And she made a pistol of her forefinger and thumb, put it to her temple and puffed air softly through her lips. And then she began to weep, oh God, and there I was sitting next to her under the flickering fluoro and I never knew what to do in these situations. Basically, I was inept at being a decent human. Some people had a gift for consolation but I had no real idea and while I was wondering what on earth to do she thankfully pulled herself together. The fur on her cheeks glistened with damp tears and.

  I ate a biscuit, reached out for one and placed it in my mouth, but it felt and tasted like dirt. The metal rim of the table glowed darkly, like a road at night seen from on high – there were cars with their lights, humming voices, signs, mansions. I thought, for long seconds, that I was god I was god your god yes rising above it all.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ the girl said, startled, glancing around so much like the little wolf she resembled.

  I paused, was returned to myself. Nothing. ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s my boyfriend?’ she whined.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Oh no. Really? When?’

  Of course I had no clue. It might have been centuries ago, the dark ages, already tomorrow for all I knew. Then she leaned in towards me, all twitchy, and raised one admonitory finger like a thin and wickless candle. Shook her head and licked her lips once more. Her tongue a snake squirming in her mouth.

  Next thing I know Dave is back with night air glittering all over him and he’s got a spoon out and a fistful of fits and he’s saying, laughing, You guys haven’t moved hardly an inch and who’s going to do the girl I’ll do it I don’t mind.

  ‘What’s it feel like?’ the girl asked anxiously.

  What could I tell her? That it was a bit of everything, all at once: sorrow, hunger, satisfaction, pleasure, need, beauty and terror. The most melancholy of all drugs. ‘It’s a bit like sleep,’ was the best I could come up with.

  ‘Oh, but much better than that,’ Dave chided as he brandished a loaded syringe and rolled up his sleeve. ‘It’s more like death. In any case, it will fix any broken heart.’

  And he was right – about death and broken hearts. The dig and prick, the ribbon of blood unfurling in the little chamber. There’s much glory in that if you know where to look.

  I was living behind an old shop on Brunswick Street. Its backyard was overgrown and full of broken things, bits of cars and furniture. Later, after dawn, I stood there gazing up at the lightening sky, at the hot-air balloons drifting high overhead, with rain on my cheeks like glass, like blood, like the warmest of all tears, and a horrible chill passed through all my bones.

  I came back to myself on the carpet in Dave’s hallway. Dust and rectangular cities, the smell of ancient braziers. I heard voices from the front of the house. Then I remembered the girl and sat up. The bedroom. Shit. The girl was alone with Dave. That wasn’t good.

  When I finally made my way up the listing hall, they were on the floor of the bedroom, munching on slices of apple and chatting like a pair of kids. On the carpet between them was a square game-board with odd writing and squiggly symbols on it. I lingered in the doorway, eavesdropping.

  ‘But how will you know it’s her?’ Dave was asking the girl.

  ‘I’ll ask her about all the things I gave her. The ring. And all the little notes . . .’

  Dave noticed me and nodded jerkily in greeting.

  ‘What are you guys doing?’ I asked.

  The girl swivelled around. She grinned and her teeth gleamed in her wide mouth. She seemed transformed. ‘Ah. There you are. Great. We need another person to do this properly. We’re going to try to contact my sister.’

  By this time my eyes had adjusted to the low light and I could see that the board on the floor was one of those ouija boards, for communicating with the dead, and Dave was murmuring, Are you sure you want to know what you think you want to know?

  The girl waved his question away and signalled for me to join them. ‘Come,’ she whispered. ‘Sit next to me. Don’t be afraid.’

  But I was, of course. Afraid, I mean. I always was.

  Thankfully, nothing ha
ppened with the stupid ouija board. We sat in the gloom with our fingers balanced on an upturned glass and asked questions of the dead and waited, but there was no response. It was spooky and I was relieved when we decided to abandon it and go for a walk.

  We wound up at Edinburgh Gardens, where it was dark and soft. Dave slumped on the crappy grass, exhausted from his short walk, then I guess he slunk off somewhere because I didn’t see him again. It began to drizzle so I took shelter in the cabin of the decommissioned steam train that had been relocated there for kids to play on.

  After a while I became aware of the girl sitting beside me, of the human warmth of her human thigh resting against my own. She seemed to have a coat I didn’t recall her wearing before, but perhaps she had found it somewhere, or I had forgotten it? Blue suede, worn to a sheen at the shoulder. A drift of perfume that seemed a reminder of something foreign. Blossoms, fields, sunny days.

  I fumbled through my pockets for my cigarettes. I shook one out for myself and one for the girl and cupped my hands around a burning match until both were lit.

  ‘I can feel the life in you,’ she said as she sat back. ‘The blood running through your veins. All contained in there. Do you ever think about that? About all the blood inside you? The veins and nerves and organs and cells.’ She placed a palm to my chest. ‘And that heart. In there behind that skin and all those bones. To think that, one day, perhaps quite suddenly, it will beat no more. Do you ever think about that?’

  Most truths are awful, but this is perhaps the worst and greatest of them and I wished she hadn’t spoken. After a moment she withdrew her hand. I missed it terribly. The world shimmered. I stared at the back of my hand, made a fist, unclenched, made a fist again. Veins and nerves and bones and cells, moving about unseen. We smoked in silence for a time, inhaling and exhaling like little machines. I sensed the presence of many people all around us. A woman, a dog, an old man in rags. Somewhere, a baby cried. I understood at once that they were the dead, going about their business. So many, of every age. I was strangely reassured by them, this glimpse of our shared fate. It made me feel less alone. So much I understood, there was so much to know. And then they were gone. I felt emboldened, gifted, filled with light. To be so alive and so very aware of death. Miraculous! Such pleasure, would I ever know one greater?

  Ah, the acid. How much had I actually taken?

  ‘What would you want to know, anyway?’ I managed to ask after a while. ‘If you could get a message to your sister? You know, with that ouija board?’

  The girl ignored my question for a long time. She held out one hand. Rain pooled and glimmered like mercury in her palm. ‘I don’t want to know anything anymore,’ she murmured at last. ‘But I do miss this. The feel of rain, I mean. Sitting with handsome boys late at night. The possibilities. All of this is lost to me now.’ She laughed sadly and rested her head on my shoulder. ‘And I miss my sister, of course. Although she’ll come to me eventually. Everyone does.’

  A bird hooted nearby. The girl started and glanced towards it, and with her face turned to the streetlight, I saw that, yes, in fact, there was a greasy darkness at her temple. She clucked her tongue and wiped her head and, this time, when she inspected her hand, her fingers gleamed with blood.

  ‘Jesus. You are bleeding,’ I said idiotically.

  ‘You cannot do what I have done without losing blood,’ she said, perhaps quoting a poem or something – although, to be fair, everything had begun to pulse with mysterious meanings.

  I noticed her as if for the first time; she was really quite beautiful. I thought, quite suddenly, that I’d like to sleep with her. Should I hold her hand or something? Put an arm around her? I could probably kiss her; there was nothing to stop me. But I’d always been pretty pathetic. Fuck. Did I say that out loud?

  But then, reading my greedy thoughts, she asked, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  Did I? Yes, more or less, although I was avoiding her at the moment. Only the day before, or it might have been the day before that, she had gone for an abortion at a clinic somewhere and, although I had given her money for the procedure, I hadn’t gone with her – as I should have – because I was frightened of emotional things and most careless with people’s hearts, my own included. But apparently it all went okay, which is to say the child would now not be born.

  Anyway, I nodded. ‘Yes. Sort of.’

  She snorted. ‘Men always say that.’

  I sensed the girl looking at me strangely, perhaps unsure of what I was talking about – if I had been talking at all – but I was overcome, in any case bashful at the best of times, so I simply stared straight ahead at the trees dripping with water, at the lights of some distant, passing car.

  ‘Do you love her?’

  A shocking question. My friends didn’t talk that way, never spoke of love or affection. The prevailing wisdom in the music we listened to or the books we read was that love was for the foolish, that it was dangerous and painful, perhaps even a disease that one might contract. But the girl waited and I was forced to mull it over. Did I love my girlfriend without knowing it? What did it feel like, anyway? Of course I felt things like pity, affection, lust, impatience or sorrow: a hand of cards that perhaps added up to something, depending on what the others at the table held. But love? That was like swallowing a lake.

  The girl cleared her throat and seemed, mercifully, to lose interest in her question. ‘When we were little, my sister and I used to dream different parts of the same dream,’ she said after a while. ‘I dreamed the head while she dreamed the body; I dreamed the river and she dreamed the bank; I the trees, she the leaves; I the rain, she the puddle; I the knife, she the wound. We assembled them in the morning before our parents woke up, like a puzzle. We used to tell each other everything. Her name was Sarah but my father called us Phobos and Deimos. The twin moons of Mars, apparently. Panic and dread, although we were never sure who was who. I was panic, most likely. But now I feel that I’ve abandoned her.’

  ‘Should we go to the hospital or something? You know, about your head?’

  ‘No. It’s always like this now.’ She gestured tiredly towards the horizon, where night was handing itself over to the pale summer dawn. ‘But I think you should go back, before it’s too late. Do you know the way?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because coming here is the easy bit, you know. Getting back is hard.’

  She rummaged around in her coat pocket and held out a handful of items: scraps of paper, mostly, but also a few coins and a ring. ‘Here. Take this ring. It might help you.’

  I did as she asked. It was a woman’s gold ring set with a small, reddish stone. It didn’t look terribly valuable but I might still be able to pawn it at Sullivan’s on Smith Street.

  She considered the other items in her palm before returning them to her pocket. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Whose name?’

  ‘Your girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh. Her name is Jane.’

  ‘Ah. You know, I see everything now. Everyone’s life and their death. All that has happened, laid out on all sides like a massive garden. This is why we’re right to be fearful of death. The world collapses, grows infinitely larger. It’s all too much to bear.’

  She sighed. Silence. Then, answering a question I hadn’t even asked, she said, ‘Later, you will remember all this and you’ll stare at the sky overhead and rain will fall on your cheeks like glass, like blood, like the warmest of all tears. You’ll live for a long time yet, but you’ll never really be a good man. These very nights and days, the ones you’re living right now, will hang heavily around your neck.’

  And, with that, she drew her coat around her, jumped down from the train cabin and loped away on all fours between the trees. It grew very quiet and I felt inexplicably marooned. The world and all it contained – its people, the cars, the houses and oceans and air – had drained away.

&nb
sp; Sometime later, I found myself back at the house in Cecil Street, where the girl was sitting by herself on a milk crate in the tiny backyard. But wait – hadn’t she gone home? Whatever. We chatted, but she didn’t know where Dirty Dave or anyone else was. Why would she? I made coffee and handed her a cup. The old Greek neighbour muttered to herself over the fence. I hoped we hadn’t made too much noise last night. My mouth felt truly horrible, wet and sticky, an open sore.

  ‘How’s your head?’

  The girl touched her long hair. ‘I think it’s stopped, thank God.’

  She looked quite good, actually; drugs suited some people, others not so much. I, on the other hand, felt woozy, as if I alone had carried the darkness all through the night.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look so good.’

  I had a dose of hepatitis and looked quite yellow sometimes, but I didn’t tell the girl anything about it; it was a very grubby-sounding disease and it put people off. Taking drugs, of course, only made it worse; sometimes I pretty much glowed. And so I just shrugged and rested in the sun beside the fence.

  ‘I’m sorry about your sister,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Your sister. Sarah?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m Sarah. My sister is Josephine. Was Josephine, I mean. People used to get us mixed up all the time when we were kids. Our father called us Phobos and Deimos. They’re the twin moons of Mars . . .’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘But she’s dead now.’

  ‘You told me that, too.’