Boy Parts

by Eliza Clark

  ‘Hey, I’m Eddie,’ he says.

  ‘I got you that shirt,’ says Flo. She looks at me like I’ve slapped her.

  ‘This is Flo,’ I say. I watch her, watching him. I see her clock the bruises on his neck. She side-eyes me.

  ‘Hi. It’s a cool shirt,’ says Eddie from Tesco, cheerfully. ‘Really neat.’ Flo hums, and he smiles, turning on his heel and going back to the kitchen. Flo points at her neck, and mouths what the fuck at me. I mouth fuck off at her, then bitch. She raises her eyebrows, and sits on my sofa.

  Is he washing up? she mouths, making a scrubbing motion with her hands. I shrug. Oh my God, then she mimes a whip. I scowl. Sorry.

  Don’t be a cunt, I mouth, and stomp into the kitchen. The checkout boy is in there, putting pots away. I tell him I can put them back, not to worry about it, to go. He asks me if everything is okay, and I say it’s fine. Honest. Me and Flo just had a bit of a falling out, and we’re trying to patch things up. He apologises – is it okay if he keeps my T-shirt for the moment? He’ll wash it and bring it back on Friday. He asks me if I want to go for lunch first.

  ‘Sure, whatever.’

  Satisfied, he rushes ahead of me, puts on his trainers, and picks up his backpack.

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Flo!’ he says.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ I say. ‘See you next week, then.’

  ‘Maybe before then?’ I shrug. I’m slouching, so he stretches to kiss me. He aims for my lips, and lands on my jaw because I jerk my face away. He laughs, and tries again, and I sidestep over to the front door and open it.

  ‘I put the flowers in some water for you.’

  ‘Cool. Bye.’

  ‘Okay. Um. Bye bye!’ He steps outside, opening his mouth to say something, but the door’s already shut before he can get it out.

  ‘I’m not interested in your opinion,’ I say, immediately. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘He seems nice. I’m glad you’re happy together,’ says Flo. ‘I’m getting choked up just thinking about it.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I snarl. ‘Like you get to blank me for weeks then come in here and get judgey. Seriously, fuck off. I’m like… I’m actually foaming with you. Actually foaming.’

  Then she cries.

  I shout at her, she cries, she pleads, then we kiss and make up. Not literally. We both agree Flo has been very unfair, and Michael is due a bollocking. Maybe a dumping. She just wants the two of us to get along. I’m trying – and she knows I try. She knows, but he’s so jealous.

  ‘He seems super controlling.’

  ‘Um… Like… It’s… It is genuinely coming from a place of concern,’ she says, her nose stuffy. ‘He knows I’m here. He’s not happy about it, but he isn’t like you can’t see her, or anything. It’s difficult. I don’t like being stuck between the two of you.’

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ I say. ‘It’s him.’

  ‘I know,’ says Flo. ‘I don’t want to talk about him anymore. I just want you to know…’ Her voice breaks. ‘I love you, and I’m sorry.’ She sniffs. ‘Can I have a hug?’

  So I hug her. I’m feeling very generous today. She wipes her eyes, and then tells me to dish about my weird choke sex.

  I hate it when Flo talks about sex. Basic feminist internet discourse has made her think she’s sex positive, comfortable discussing the minutiae of her sex life and other people’s sex lives. She isn’t. I know she isn’t, because I’ve fucked her, so I don’t know why she even pretends with me.

  There was a time when I was still with Frank – Flo had invited herself along to drinks in Soho with us. I told her I needed to nip into a sex shop to pick up a new vibrator, because the motor had gone on mine the previous evening. She flinched when I said vibrator, and I told her she could wait outside, or go, but she insisted on coming along. ‘Maybe I want to get something,’ she’d said, with the same forced, casual tone she’d used to say weird choke sex a moment ago.

  We walked into the first one we saw, and she kept looking at us and going, well this is just fine, isn’t it? And going as far as to inform me that she was in her element here, really and that sex shops were feminist spaces, in a lot of ways. I remember pointing to the wall of pornographic DVDs behind her, flanked by a mannequin with enormous plastic breasts and a cheap wig, modelling a strap-on and a neon pink bra with nipple cut-outs – what about that stuff, Flo; is that feminist?

  She thought for a moment, and concluded that the strap-on was feminist but the mannequin and a vast swathe of the pornographic DVDs probably weren’t. If some of the porn had been made by a woman it would be feminist, but the majority of it probably hadn’t been. However, if we were to buy some porn, it would be a queer and feminist act of disruption.

  I’d never seen Frank look so unimpressed. I couldn’t even laugh at Flo, I was so embarrassed.

  She looks up at me, with the same eyes – crinkled at the corners now, but still desperately seeking my approval.

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ I shrug. ‘It’s just… Like. It was his idea. And I’m… cool, with that, if he wants to do that sort of stuff. And we have… things in common. I mean, he really understands my work, and he’s a great model. We’ll see, I suppose. It’s… nice, so far.’ She’s crying again. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m just so happy for you,’ she sobs.

  Eddie from Tesco asks if he can come over after his shift the same night Dennis is due round. I get a bit of a cheap thrill telling him I’ve got a model coming round. I can almost feel the jolt in his stomach through the screen. I can see his cheeks going red. I imagine him sat behind his till, tears prickling the back of his eyes, blaming phantom allergies when a customer asks him if he’s alright.

  Have fun! he says, and I ignore it. I watch an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras and a documentary about the Wests while I wait for Dennis. He rings my doorbell just as the police are digging up the patio. I let him into the house, leaving the documentary on. I offer him a coffee, and he says yes, so I make him one. A little begrudgingly, but I always try to be a bit more normal with new models, you know? If you’re nice, it loosens them up a bit.

  Coffee in hand, he starts telling me about himself. I keep one ear on the telly while he talks about his middle management job. He has a good jawline, which is softening a little with age. He hasn’t shaved, and he’s still wearing his shirt and tie from work. He’s handsome, but his nose has been broken, maybe twice, and he has a chunk of scar tissue splitting his left eyebrow in half. One of his teeth is a little chipped, and his earlobe is ripped too, forked like a tongue. I interrupt him.

  ‘How’d you rip your ear?’ I ask.

  ‘Fighting,’ he says. ‘Had an earring, some Mackem cunt yanked it out on a derby day.’ His accent thickens when he says Mackem cunt. He’s rougher than I’d originally assumed. He shuffles on the sofa, and the white fabric of his shirt pulls tight around his arms – I can see a web of black tattoos through the cotton.

  I don’t know how the fuck he gets onto his wife and kids from that, but he does. While I pick up my camera and twiddle idly with the settings, he delivers a snarling monologue about his ex, how she took the kids down to her mam’s in Plymouth to make it as hard as possible for him to see them. There’s a faded N-U-F-C across the knuckles on his left hand, and a tan-line where his wedding ring used to be.

  ‘Sounds shite,’ I say.

  I switch lenses and I take his photo while he talks (and talks). I turn the flash on, and he just keeps talking. Honestly, if I’d known he was going to be this much hard work, I’d have had a bump or something.

  He asks if he’s boring me.

  ‘I’m on a tight schedule today.’ I’m not. ‘But it’s great to get some background on you. Shall we head to the studio?’ I beckon, he follows.

  He asks again – is he boring me?

  I give him a mint. Coffee breath ruins the vibe.

  He wants to know if he’s fucking boring me, spitting around the mint, which he still took, despite now looking as if he’d like to sk
in me.

  I sneer. He goes off.

  Blah blah blah, jumped up bitch, something about how I think I’m better than him even though he pulls in x-amount of money a year, like I’m supposed to be impressed by his bank balance, which I imagine is exaggerated because I did meet him on a bus. That’s what I tell him. He doesn’t like that.

  He slams me against the wall. I feel my head hit the brick. He is so angry that he drools.

  ‘This is such a massive overreaction,’ I say. My camera is slung around my neck, the lens pressing into his belly. I tell him to chill out.

  ‘Fucking chill out,’ he hisses. I duck out of his grasp; I lunge. I bash him over the head with my camera.

  If we were playing rock, paper, scissors, but it’s camera, toxic masculinity, skull – camera wins. Not a dent in the equipment, but a significant dent in Dennis, who crumples and lies gurgling in a rapidly growing puddle of his own blood. I snap a photo. I snap a few. He glitters like glass.

  Glass. Glass in his cheek, glass in his eye. I must have broken the lens. I click a new one on. I sit on his stomach. I take more photos, and with each flash, his skin seems to get smoother, darker. His hair a little longer.

  When I pull the shard of glass from his eye, it shifts from a cold blue to a warm brown, and stays that way when I put the glass back. I can’t feel him breathing anymore, and I… I don’t know. I feel sick. I jump, because I hear a bell, but I don’t know where it came from.

  It’s fine. It’s fine, because I’ve done this before. I go onto automatic pilot. I dump my camera, and climb off him, rushing to the kitchen for the cleaver (because you can’t quite get through bone with a knife) and rubber gloves, and bin bags.

  But when I get back, he’s sat up, and there’s no glass, and his eyes are blue again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Don’t call the police. No ambulance, no 999.’

  I tell him to hang on, doing a bit of juggling with the cleaver, the bin bags, chucking them in the cupboard under my stairs while he says something about his kids and his wife’s lawyer, and a police caution for domestic battery.

  Christ, I need to start running fucking background checks.

  ‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ I say. And he goes what? He rubs his head, his eyes are unfocused, and his speech is slurred. I crouch down next to him. No glass. ‘You need to go to A&E. I’ll get you an Uber,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, no Uber, no one… What if he rings the police? They’ve all got fuckin’ CCTV.’

  And I tell him an Uber driver’s not going to ring the fucking police, but he’s not having any of it. He says he’ll just get the bus home, but I don’t think he realises how hurt he is. When he touches his head, his fingers come back bloody. He looks at the blood, and his droopy, unfocused eyes roll back in his head. He flops to the ground again. I slap his face (no glass) and try pulling his ankles. I can move him – he’s heavy as fuck, but I can just about move him. My shoulder makes a popping sound, like a plastic bottle being twisted. I hiss.

  Now he’s unconscious, I agree with him: it looks too shady for Uber and a lot of them do have those little dash-cams, but I’m not ringing an ambulance. Fuck that.

  Who do I know who has a car?

  Flo doesn’t have one anymore. Eddie from Tesco is at work, and I honestly wouldn’t be caught dead driving that thing. Mam and Dad would ask questions, and they live too far away.

  I order an Uber, just for me. I text Will.

  Coming over its an emergency.

  Okay?

  It’s a four-minute journey, and I spend the whole time jiggling my leg, chewing my lip. I stand on Will’s doorstep ringing the bell. His car is there, a deep scratch still decorating the door.

  He answers. He cut his hair off.

  ‘I need to borrow your car,’ I say.

  ‘What the fuck,’ he says. ‘What the actual fuck? Why?’ And then. ‘Don’t you have a driving ban?’

  ‘My nana is ill, she lives in…’ I shrug. ‘Berwick? And I need to get up there right now.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You can’t just… I swear to God I remember you telling me you got caught drunk driving. I remember, ’cause you had that fucking BMW, and your dad made you give it back!’

  ‘Will,’ I say. I put my hands on his shoulders, my fingernails biting into his skin. ‘My nana is ill. And do you know how she got ill? Some cunt gave her loads of ketamine, and tried to rape her. And now she’s at death’s door. From what my mam has told me, this scumbag couldn’t get it up. But he still tried to rape her. And just because she was on ket doesn’t mean she can’t remember that someone tried to stick his flaccid little cock into her, okay? And wouldn’t it be an absolute fucking shitter for him if she posted his picture to her Instagram page, with a warning to women everywhere to avoid this attempted rapist. I’d be shitting myself if I was him, because my nana has a lot of followers on Instagram.’ My breath is ragged. His face is red. ‘So just… give me your fucking keys.’

  He gives me his fucking keys. I jingle them in his face and tell him I’ll be back. He slams the door in my face. I drive back to mine. Will’s car smells of weed and sweat. His gym bag is on the back seat.

  Dennis is still breathing, still on my garage floor. His eyes are flickering open and shut. I open the garage door, and drag him out, my shoulder popping again when I do. He leaves a patchy trail of blood behind him, like a huge, wounded slug. When the sunlight hits him, he stirs again. I ask if he can move on his own, and he sits up. Unable to stand, he crawls to the car, and we manage to get him into the passenger’s seat. I buckle him up.

  It’s quick, getting him to A&E. We get caught by a couple of red lights, and I keep asking him to grunt if he’s alive. He does, and I keep seeing glass in the corner of my eye.

  ‘You’re my dad,’ I tell him, ‘and you fell off a ladder changing a light bulb in my house, okay?’

  ‘Dad,’ he says. ‘Ladder. Light bulb. No police.’

  ‘No. No police.’

  He thanks me.

  And while there’s a temptation to just push him out of the car and fuck off when we get to A&E, I go in with him properly. I tell the people at the front desk the story – Dad, ladder, light bulb – and tell them I need to go, like now, to pick up my baby from the childminder. They don’t seem suspicious, and bundle Dennis into a wheelchair, and I fucking leg it. I get in the car, and I just drive. I drive till I can’t see the city anymore.

  I switch on the car stereo, which is this old, shitty thing. It has a CD player, and no aux cord, so I listen to what I assume is a Best of Johnny Cash, and try to level out my breathing. I try to laugh, pass it off to myself like it’s a joke. Like this is just classic Irina. But I can’t. It’s not funny. I remember the plastic surgeon – how there was no glass in his face either. And Will, how much of that I imagined, dreamt. I could take the fact he lent me his car as proof, you know? That it did happen, that I wasn’t just filling in the gaps.

  Jesus, I don’t know.

  I keep coming back to the glass. I keep coming back to my boy with glass in his face – in his eye – lying on my kitchen floor. His thin face, his wet, black hair, his cloudy, dark eyes. Bloody and bruised, the colour drained from his olive skin. He looked green.

  I keep driving. I drive somewhere I fucking swear I’ve driven before. Somewhere green, somewhere with a little gravel car park, and no CCTV. I get out of the car, and I walk into the green, the sea of trees. I walk for a long time, till I find a dead old tree, with a hollow like a huge, yawning mouth. And I dig. I dig with my fingers.

  I should find a skull – and I do. A little cat skull. And a cat skeleton, and a tattered collar with a bell, and tag that says ‘Fritz’ on one side, and a London address on the other, the address of the place I shared with Flo.

  I bury the skeleton again, pocket the collar, get back in the car and scream. I smash my hands against the dashboard until my filthy knuckles split.

  Either I buried it somewhere else, or there was n
othing to bury in the first place. But if there was nothing to bury, then why do I remember it? Why do I remember having pictures?

  I burned the bad ones, but I think I saved one of the good ones. Just one of his face. And if I can find it, and…

  It’s getting dark. I switch the stereo back on and drive back to Newcastle. It takes me a couple of hours. I go back to mine first. I wash my hands, and change my clothes, and fix my makeup, because I look as pale as a corpse, and I have eyeliner and lipstick all over my face. My hair is wild. I remember looking like this after a night out, once, and Flo telling me I looked like a sexy clown. I snort, and then I laugh, and then I cackle, and smack my head against the mirror. The glass is cold on my forehead, solid. When I pull back, I am still there. I take my makeup off, and I feel cleansed. Calm.

  I have a quick few mouthfuls of vodka before I get back in the car.

  Henson answers when I ring the bell. He smiles at me, and Will shouts after him, ‘Is that her?’

  ‘Aye,’ he calls back. I throw the keys over Henson’s shoulder, and they land, with a clatter, in the hallway.

  ‘Thanks,’ I shout. Will says nothing. Henson steps out of the house and closes the door behind him. He asks if my nana is okay. I blink. ‘She’s dead.’ What a strange question, I think. And Henson looks very upset, and I remember how I got Will’s car in the first place. ‘Oh. I made that up, today. She died, like, ages ago. I just needed a car,’ I say. ‘It’s a really long story, and I just… It’s like private, but it was an emergency, and… You know what he’s like.’ I shrug, and smile at him, trying to be casual, flirty.

  Henson crinkles his eyebrows, then raises them, and finally settles on looking confused and annoyed.

  ‘Why would you lie about that?’ he asks. Fuck’s sake. I try to make myself cry.

  ‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’ I say. My eyes are dry, but it’s dark and the voice is good.

  ‘Oh. Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,’ he says. I turn around.