He hissed very lightly through his teeth as if in anger or great despair, I couldn’t tell, that was the difficulty of the telephone, but really either reaction was fine with me. Prank caller, he said to the woman on his end of the phone, then hung up. I rang back but nobody answered.
I called Doctor A next, of course. It was quite late so I used his personal phone number, emergencies only. He didn’t ask where I was or how I was.
Calla, he said. It’s very late.
I need to hear you say something to me, something grounding, I said.
Are you in an emergency? he said.
I don’t know—not yet, maybe, I said. But I might be in one soon.
That’s a little manipulative, don’t you think? he said.
I hate that word, I said.
Only when it’s applied to you, he said. I’m afraid I can’t help you tonight. I maybe can’t help you ever again. Sleep well, Calla.
Wasted opportunity. I felt glad I hadn’t finished the letter after all. My fingers pressed at random on the keypad. A woman answered. I could hear her smoking.
Hello? she asked. Hello, hello, hello?
Is anyone out there? I asked. I just want to speak to someone.
What are you looking for? she asked.
Anything, all of it, I said. Are you lonely?
She laughed sharply and hung up.
I rang R again but there was no answer. So I threw the telephone against the wall but it did not break, it was an old instrument made of sterner stuff. There was not even a mark left on the plaster.
11
There was no bath so I sat inside the shower and wept. The small soap was the colour of cheese, the size of a large coin. I pressed it between my palms. I dug my nails into it.
The first hotel I had ever seen in my life was a hotel on my journey into the city. I had sat down gingerly on top of clean sheets at the far end of a large bed. My legs were ripped up from all the brambles that year. You can take a shower and lock the door if you want, the man who had found me walking on the side of the road had said.
The man was youngish, tall and handsome, otherwise I would not have got into the car. I was comforted by the fact that he looked like he could be a minor film star, and the memory of the white-ticket girl in her own car, the tinted windows, the emissary taking her somewhere. Perhaps this was the car for me, the car I had always been supposed to take but had somehow missed, all part of the test. In the car I had noticed his hands, the way they wouldn’t stop moving on the steering wheel. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I was going to be murdered. Both possibilities refracted out. He had given me a stick of mauve chewing gum and a cigarette and allowed me to pick the station on the radio.
I had stepped out of that first hotel shower and slipped my locket back on while I was still wet. I put on the clean bathrobe from the back of the door. The waterproof coat that I had stolen from a service station weeks ago was in the other room, draped on a chair. Miniature comb. Toothpicks. Cotton buds. I brushed my teeth for a long time.
The man had been sitting on the bed when I got out, leaning back against all the pillows and watching the television. He had unbuttoned the collar of his white shirt and hung up his black suede jacket in the wardrobe. My turn, he said, smiling a small smile. He went into the bathroom and shut the door but did not lock it. I moved through the channels on the television. I looked at the room service menu.
You’re tall for your age, he said when he came back in, wet-haired, towel around his waist. I averted my eyes. It wasn’t like I had never imagined a scenario similar, but in my fantasies there had been standing under the moon beforehand, with the stars pointed out to me. Perhaps, also, a rose in a long white box. Here, there were no stars. There was a flower découpage on the wall. An old map of the area, the lake picked out in aquamarine.
He walked towards me and asked if he could look at the locket. I said yes. He knelt in front of me, opened it, saw the blue, closed it again. He brushed a lock of wet hair from my cheek. Are you hungry? he asked and I nodded; I was starving. He picked up the phone and ordered two cheeseburgers. They came to the door of the hotel room smoothly, within minutes. Stay back, he said to me before he answered the door, still just in the towel. We ate the food on the floor. White wine spritzer for me, beer for him.
Would I mind lying on the bed, he asked me after, almost apologetically. He unwrapped the robe. I experimented with kissing him whenever his mouth was near mine, too jerkily, like a bird trying to eat. Then I looked away from him and towards the flocked ceiling instead, embarrassed by myself, embarrassed for him. I’ll drive you where you need to go, he said afterwards, and he did, in the morning, after I had slept in that first hotel bed. The first time my body had got me somewhere. I felt a tiredness so total that I woke only when the man touched my locket in the morning—gently, but still I felt it.
In the car we did not talk. We had both showered again and his hair was still damp, parted neatly. In the shower I had folded over and touched my toes, had hung there and let gravity work on me until I felt I would fall. He was not a minor film star, after all. I tried to decide whether I could be in love with him. He gave me a crisp note, a big one. Be safe, he said, before driving off. We were in a town near the city. After he left I bought a litre of orange juice and a new dress, stood outside in a patch of sunlight and chugged half the juice right down in one go. In the bathroom of a café I changed into the dress, peach cotton, and then I went out and sat down and asked for a cup of coffee and the paper.
It was in that dress that I walked into the city. He told me I couldn’t enter in someone else’s car. It had to be on foot. I have sisters, he had said. I could still smell the hotel smell on me. The small shampoo, doll-like in my wet hand that morning as I soaped my hair once, twice. You can take them all, he had said to me, and when we walked past the reception my heart had kicked, I thought they would see I was a thief, the miniature body lotions and conditioners in my rucksack knocking against each other, but nobody stopped me.
All the worse things that I knew I would do in the future stretched out ahead of me, and in a way they were possibilities that possessed their own depraved charm. They showed me I was capable. I didn’t feel sad or ashamed or used. In my own way, in a way that would become familiar to me soon enough, I felt good.
12
I left the telephone where it was, showered, put on the dark red lipstick and walked out of my room, to the lift. The carpet was thick and soft against my bare feet, peachy-brown. No time to put my shoes on. No time to wait for the lift; I walked down the stairwell. Flickering cold light. The bar in the hotel was mostly empty. I ordered a whisky and sat at a table in the corner, curling my bare feet under myself. I flipped a coaster back and forth, a tic learned from R. The coaster advertised iron-enriched beer. I tore it, a little, just because I could. My teeth felt too big for my mouth, and hard. I was the only woman. Pick a man, any man, I said to myself. Do it. I stared at a short man with dark hair sitting up at the bar on a stool. The bar was mint green and fake marble, the seats vinyl. I did not think he looked like an emissary, but then, who could tell. I had been wrong about so many things and I would keep being wrong. He kept turning to look at me and eventually came over.
Where are your shoes? he asked. I smiled.
I ate them, I said.
The man motioned to the barman, who nodded and took two glasses down from a shelf. I watched him as he poured things. He was making martinis. He brought them over on a round copper tray. Paper-thin lemon. The glasses were very cold. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
What brings you here? the man asked.
Everything, I said, taking a sip. Bad mother, bad mother.
You’re not very forthcoming. You don’t talk very much, he said. You’re not giving me anything to work with.
Well, I don’t have that much to say, I said.
&n
bsp; Maybe you’re the kind of person who only speaks when they have something to tell, he said. Or maybe you’re into other things, rather than talking.
I think you might be right, I said. About the other things.
Don’t you want to know about me? he asked.
No, not really, I said, and he laughed. The laugh seemed charmed by my rudeness, not angry. I took another mouthful of my drink. Somewhere in the background a woman was singing to an orchestra. The music came out of a speaker above our table. I looked up from under my eyelashes, I let him see the clean line of my throat.
But what happened to your shoes, really? he said.
I’ll let you in on a secret, I said, leaning in. I’ve never worn a pair of shoes in my life. I’ve always just walked around in my bare feet. My skin is unnaturally strong. I’ve never needed them.
So you’re a medical miracle? he said.
That’s right, I said. At my birth the doctor proclaimed it an unprecedented event. He carried me around the hospital personally so that everyone could see me.
Can I see these magical feet? he asked.
I swung them into his soft-trousered lap. Certainly, I said. Knock yourself out.
The barman watched us from where he stood, as if keeping tabs.
My story held up—they did indeed seem like the feet of somebody who had never worn shoes. My toes were jewelled with calluses, red and swollen, though at least they weren’t bleeding any more. I could see now that two of my smaller toenails had dropped off, the way I had experienced previously after six months of running in too-small trainers without caring. The man caressed them anyway, as if there were nothing wrong. It made me feel sick to see him touching me like that, holding those ugly pieces of me with such reverence. It made me feel murderous, like I could crush him like an insect and he would thank me for it. I pulled my feet away but then leaned over to kiss him instead.
Come to my room, he said. We walked out of the bar together. I was shaking. The lift, as it turned out, was broken, so we walked. In the dark stairwell he pressed me up against the badly painted wall. The sound of the lift trying and failing to move came through. Everything smelled of bleach. I batted his hands away from my locket and they moved instead to my jeans. I tensed as they skimmed over my stomach, my waist.
Lie down on the floor, I told him.
Here? he asked, panting.
Yes, here, I said. Lie down and close your eyes and pretend to be dead.
He lay down on the carpet and closed his eyes. I straddled him and undid his belt buckle. The thin skin of his eyelids twitched. Underneath the stubble his skin was red, the veins and blood were alive. His lips twitched in a smile.
You’re not pretending hard enough, I said.
I wanted to be powerful, I wanted the violence under my skin to come back and tell me what to do, to direct me. I wanted to fuck and to be fucked until I was outside of my own head, I wanted a barrel of alcohol, I wanted mind-altering drugs, I wanted to slit his throat—but it was all gone into another world.
I got off him. He sat up and laughed, not maliciously. He took me to his room. It was better than mine. We have to turn off all the lights, I said. I was going to go through with it. Turn off the lights, I said again, and finally he did.
On the bed I cried, silently, because he couldn’t see me. Because nothing was going to make me feel better, nothing was going to be enough. I cried for the absence of women I had seen on the road, for having to do this alone. I cried because R didn’t want to have the baby with me and because Doctor A was my enemy and he wasn’t going to save or fix me.
Please don’t cry, the man said, gently. Not with your beautiful feet. Your miracle body.
I knelt in the dark and waited. Palms on satin. Which angle would the man come from, what would he do to me first, what did he want me to do. My brain floated out like a balloon. Stay present, I told myself, connection is connection. His hand was soft on the small of my back. His hands were not unkind. We were two lost bodies speaking the same, or a similar, language. Still, I wanted another martini. I wanted a dozen people in the room, watching and participating. I wasn’t sure if I would come but I did, almost instantly, despite the shame, or maybe because of it. I thought about Doctor A as it happened, about the clinical disgust he would feel if he could see me now. I started to cry again and didn’t care if the man saw or felt.
I’m going, I said, crawling off the edge of the bed and on to the floor. I felt around for my clothes and pulled them on.
Don’t go, don’t go, he said, turning on the lights. We’ve just got started.
No, I said, pushing past him, we’re done, thank you for the drink.
He held on to my arm and took a long blink, gathering patience. When he opened his eyes they were hard. I’ve had enough of your bullshit, he said. I’ve been good to you and I don’t deserve to be treated like this.
He raised his hand and hit me in the face full on, without hesitating, a weak punch. The pain kaleidoscoped me out of myself and then back in, but I’d felt worse and I told him so—I looked him in the eye and said, That didn’t even hurt, the blood trickling hot on my top lip, gathering then releasing into my mouth. It tasted good—nourishing, reassuring, like my own unwashed scent in the mornings. All at once my focus was sharp. I didn’t care enough about myself but I cared about the baby. I opened the door and started running.
Where are you going? I heard him shout. He sounded bereft. Come back, come back!
I leapt, I flew through the air, I found the stairs, I found my floor, I did not stop, I opened my door in one go and slammed it behind me. I sat on the floor and listened to the sound of him roaming around like a bull.
Where are you? he was bellowing. Where did you go?
Even I didn’t really know.
Is it out of your system now? I asked myself, crawling away from the door on my hands and knees. Are you done?
Only white in the space between my thoughts. A split of light in the darkness, under the door. It felt good to be low to the ground.
He moved further away but I could still hear him. Someone must shut him up, I thought, very carefully not thinking about what would happen if no one did, and eventually there was silence. Maybe I was a slut, maybe I had lured him under false pretences, but that was acceptable, that was not unforgivable the way that being pregnant was. I was bleeding a little, inside my mouth. I let pink saliva spool down on to the carpet, and then on to the sheets. I didn’t take the red lipstick off and the blood got everywhere, all over the nice expensive-feeling bedspread, like I had ripped something apart.
13
It was coming into dawn and I knew I had to go. Time was spiralling away from me. As I walked down the corridors of the hotel I sensed the leering faces of people behind the doors, people taking a break from their own degradations to peer through the peepholes and watch my steps.
I hesitated at the base of the stairs, reluctant to go past the reception desk in case the man was there, though nobody was around so early. Instead I ducked through back corridors until I came to a fire door and pushed my way into crisp air, a slight sweet rotting smell from hotel bins piled high. A fox worrying at a plastic bag ran away. I climbed over a low fence into somebody’s garden, and then another, until I reached the road again. The morning was clear and bright and I tried to take joy in it, whatever good feeling I could manage, but it didn’t work. My lip hurt and tasted of metal. My body wanted R’s arms around it. The smell of his neck. It was all muscle memory, sentimentality for something that had never really existed. I reminded myself of that, though the truth stung.
The next bus was empty except for an old woman and another man, this one much younger, slouching at the back. I kept away from them both but of course the man moved to find me, like before, swaying as he came down the aisle of the bus. I was burning up. Adrenaline zipped at the surface of my skin.
Hello, what’s your name? he asked. He smiled widely and beautifully. One of his canine teeth was missing.
I don’t have a name, I said, this time.
What happened to your face? he asked.
I touched my split lip. It’s always been like this, I said.
He smiled beatifically and rummaged in a hessian tote bag. He handed me a square of violet paper. Not a blue ticket. I held it in the palm of my hand.
I can’t eat this, I said.
I’ve had three already, he said to me, which explained his woozy pupils, his wet face. It’s the only way to travel by bus, he said, and laughed like a hyena. He was younger than I had first thought, late teens perhaps. With his gapped mouth he looked like a child overgrown, three feet taller than he should be.
Tell me what you see, I asked him.
He pointed at the lurid bus seat in front of him. The roots are coming out, he said. The flowers are all in the meadow and they are reaching to the sky. Dancing around as happy as you like.
He shuffled to the window and pressed his face to the glass. And look, he said. Outside there is the universe, and all the other cars are flying. They’re like birds above us.
When he pulled his face away he left a gentle smear on the glass from his sweating cheek.
I looked out of the window on my side. I wanted to see what he could see, it sounded better than my world, but I was not going to take the tab—even I knew that a mother would not do that. A white-ticket would have already got off the bus.
Your head is a sunflower, he said. It’s okay, he reassured me. You can still be alive. It suits you.
He stretched out his legs and stared at his feet for a while. He was wearing filthy, red-toed white trainers. I watched his face move through fear and acceptance and back to the beautiful smile, before he turned to me again.
Blue Ticket Page 10
