Lurid & Cute

by Adam Thirlwell

  ME

  How so?

  DOLORES

  Just look at it. Look with all your eyes!

  For in fact he does know, added Dolores, that tonight will be the night when his friend will try to kill these two men with a pistol, just as he knows the location where this stand-off will take place, at their usual corner, even if this again is not so likely since if such a stand-off was taking place you might well choose some more desolate location or at least an area which you knew better or where there was less expectation of ever being found. But instead here he is, making for the precise location and arriving at the precise time when this shoot-out is about to take place, not too early, not too late, when the guns are just being raised – because in such a situation there is no messiness but everything happens very slowly, as if waiting for the off-screen presence that is surely about to arrive.

  DOLORES

  You see?

  I couldn’t deny it. On the screen a car emerged and rammed the two potential killers so that they were crushed underneath its wheels. Then the man got out of the car and shot one of these corpses in the head, presumably to be sure, and this was filmed from a distance so that the spurt or splashback of blood was only graceful and not disgusting or upsetting. Of course, so much violence was now much closer to me, and it made me ashamed, if also very scared, if this was the world I now inhabited, but also I slightly wanted to tell Dolores this, to describe the entire scenario I had recently undergone. I had this idea which I knew to be wrong that in some way it might impress her, but instead I just kept watching. Very definitely, she was right. I had to admit it. This was all exactly like a dream: I mean it was completely impossible, this perfect timing, and yet now that I thought about the matter, I mean the general matter of television and other stories, I couldn’t think how often I really ever questioned it – I don’t mean in some insane way of ever thinking it was real because of course you never think it’s real when it’s on a screen and yet you do, though, allow it this whole meaning or plausibility and that, I think, is what is already crazy and irrational. Never, when it matters, does anyone miss an appointment or screw up or drop something or take the wrong turning or sit in traffic, and while I think this is not the most unusual statement it also seems to me to be something worthy of more attention. Like many small things it conceals its depths.

  — You think it’s true, I said, — of other things?

  — Well, here we are, she said.

  She had this manner of talking which sometimes seemed like teasing and sometimes seemed like it wasn’t and it wasn’t always easy to be able to tell the two apart. I liked this, very much. Suddenly I had a vision of myself and Dolores living together far away and everything was perfect. This is one illness of fiestas. They encourage these small vistas. What hilarity! Not content with two impossibilities, I liked to now imagine myself a third. I was the impresario of the impossible situation. So I just sat there, looking at her. Maybe that looked dumb but I didn’t care.

  — You’re looking good, she said.

  I was surprised by this, but then, appearances are deceptive. You can feel the exhaustion of a concubine in the sultan’s harem just by mini-vacuuming the car, so perhaps I could have been looking good without in any way realising this was true.

  before finally pleading with Romy

  Most things are much more like seeds or weeds than anyone ever thinks, a whole dandelion gossamer thing just drifting like filaments in the air. Or at least that’s something it’s possible to think when you are drinking at a party. People come and go, so that while you have been looking for Romy but talking to another girl in your own private fold of reality, suddenly that girl has gone and Romy is offering you another surf-lodge beer.

  — Talk to me, chief, said Romy.

  And with Romy too I wanted very much to tell her all the excitement that Hiro and I were inventing but this time for different reasons, not so much to impress her because once again I doubted Romy would be impressed by the overall crime scene, but I wanted to explain my new hepcat vibe. It seemed the only prologue to the wild things I wanted to say. But obviously I couldn’t, and for a moment I was therefore silent when I had most need to speak. This possibly happens very often. When the person to whom you desperately want to speak orders you to speak it can be paralysing and difficult, for suddenly the whole question of an opening becomes heavy and upsetting, like when at your analyst you arrive full of stories and are suddenly unable to begin. So that instead it was Romy who began to speak and I think that’s a mistake, to let the other person speak first when you have something enormous to say because it distracts you from your true purpose.

  ROMY

  You feel bad, I get this –

  ME

  Who, me?

  ROMY

  About us and –

  ME

  No but –

  ROMY

  I mean, it isn’t the first time.

  ME

  It’s not?

  ROMY

  I mean, that time you told me about, when that girl went down on you in where was it Africa?

  ME

  That wasn’t unfaithfulness. That was unfortunate.

  ROMY

  At least you’re not one of those people who shoot girls who go to school.

  ME

  Is true that is definitely worse.

  ROMY

  At least we’ve got some moral boundaries here.

  It was absolutely not the conversation I was expecting to have, like somehow I had just been deposited far away from my destination by the most inexperienced if well-meaning taxi in the world.

  ROMY

  Like, what are you wanting to say to me?

  ME

  I don’t know.

  ROMY

  So, then –

  To be shy is in particular a problem at moments of great importance. I was trying to find the right sentences and it was very difficult.

  ROMY

  You don’t need to leave Candy, you know this.

  She said it very gently, like you might hold a girl’s hair away from her face while she’s drunk too much on a night out and is vomiting on the street.

  ME

  No?

  ROMY

  What is wrong with you? You think that romance is a kid getting nervous when he hears the telephone ring in the house and wondering if it’s his girl. It doesn’t happen like that any more, kittykat.

  ME

  But what if I want to be with you?

  ROMY

  Then leave her, if you want to, and we can talk. Is not so complicated, no?

  ME

  You don’t want this?

  ROMY

  You’ve still got me, after all.

  ME

  I want you for myself, though.

  ROMY

  What are you? Seventeen?

  No, it was the equivalent of when the minicab or delivery guy is said to be speeding towards you, but when the fifteen minutes is up he is not there, and so you call the Chinese takeout or taxi firm, but then you are told he will be there in seven more minutes, after which time has elapsed and once more you call the sad communications executive and he is definitely on your road except he is not on your road, because you are out there on that road, analysing a lone scooter for evidence it could be a car, and your gong bao prawn or vegetable jalfrezi is in some other stratosphere where your house does not exist. You are now inside a whole new physics, clutching your defunct astrolabe. In such a scenario, it’s difficult not to feel just very desolate. That Romy was not wanting me to leave Candy, I understood, meant only one thing, that she did not want to leave Epstein – and while I knew this was the mature decision I could not also stop myself thinking that I loved her, that I needed her, that all the romance I could imagine in this world was centred for ever on her. It was not at this moment possible, although it would soon be possible, for me to think that in fact I had found some kind of escape in this rejection by Romy – the morning had not yet
occurred when, waking up beside Candy, I suddenly thought that in Candy’s face there was such tenderness and nobility that I understood what it would be like to leave her for ever, I suddenly saw in her face the face I had first known when she was young, and it was so tender and defenceless in those moments that I could not see how I could cope with such pain – even if really it would turn out that this thought in itself was not quite enough, for when in fact we did separate it was not at all like that, it turned out that I had not at all imagined all the complications, even when I thought I had, because the thing I had left out of the picture, also, was myself, I mean the desolation we both shared. For while I could imagine Candy throwing things out the window, hacking into my email, the true pain would be in dividing our possessions, her entering our house when I had been away for some months, to take away a bag of her clothes, or my unpacking a box and finding in it beautiful presents she had once given me. At this fiesta, however, none of this stored future was real. All that was real was my present cloud of desolation, where Romy did not love me.

  & then Candy silently observes a mute passage of communication

  But before I could concentrate myself in this total sadness, Candy came and took me away to some table with sangria and plates of fruit.

  — This guy, she said, pointing to a beatnik, — he seems to be saying that all the zoos should be opened and the animals let out.

  — That’s not totally what I’m saying, he said.

  — No? she said. — Because that seems to me an OK strategy.

  A sort of dance-move party began to happen, with the usual people standing on its edges, not dancing but trying to express through the very fact of not dancing their deep urge to dance – about as listless as the people standing at the edges of the coffee queue, who have placed their order, and now can do no more, and so they just stand there rechecking the same emails on their phone, waiting for the barista to call their name. I was looking at Dolores, who was looking into the eyes of some flaneur whose name was Benicio or Ahmet and that flaneur, I presumed, was the man she loved. But while I considered such things, Romy re-emerged. She had found herself an instrument that might have been a banjo – or if not banjo then distinctly similar.

  — You think I should play? I said.

  — Was just a thought, she said.

  — Why not? I said.

  — OK, said Candy.

  — Shoot, said Romy.

  But very soon after the moment when this banjo was very snug like a pet in my arms I knew I couldn’t really. My heart wasn’t in it. I had been neglecting my lessons on the Internet very much. But most of all I was looking at Epstein and Romy and the way they held each other, not that in any way I thought that Romy was trying to hurt me or be cruel but she couldn’t help it, and it was making me make bad mistakes in my fingering, if indeed this was a banjo, which I was beginning just slightly to doubt, but I did not want to say this in case I was wrong and would therefore lose status in the eyes of others. From the way they were talking, it was obvious that Epstein and Romy were whispering beautiful things to each other, small endearments and sexual promises, so that to be there with the banjo in my arms was like being in a state of siege. And although in such a state of siege it’s important to preserve a sense of hope, sometimes it’s difficult to do the things you know you’re meant to do. Definitely sadness was heavy in my heart. So that naturally when Dolores once again approached me I was glad to see her, and especially because she was looking at me with this brightness in her gaze that I found very welcome and opportune.

  — That’s cool, said Dolores.

  — You’re welcome, I said.

  She was saying it with this miniature smile in her eyes that was very appealing, no question.

  — You’re good, she said.

  — Well, I don’t know, I said.

  — He’s terrible, said Romy.

  — Oh, no I – said Dolores.

  — Really, said Romy. — It’s all noise.

  And something, definitely, was happening, but it was difficult to define precisely what. At the very least it was an interruption and as such was slightly violent, according to the usual social rules, like you have just burst into a serious seminar and stood there at the door while at the whiteboard pauses the professor with his smeared equations. That was how it felt, the overly fast way in which Romy interrupted – for sometimes an event is not even an event but the tempo at which it occurs. I was looking at Romy with an amused and anxious glare. While Dolores was in a sort of pause, as if the video of herself was buffering, not quite understanding why such sense of possession and anger was being directed to her by Romy, especially when Romy seemed very much involved with Epstein, whose butch tattooed forearms were entwined around Romy’s neck. I understood it was an opaque situation that required an explanation which was sadly impossible to give, and that was all I was really thinking, if not also a small glow of pride that Romy in this way was demonstrating such a sense of possession over me and wish for Dolores to leave our circle. Yet also I therefore did perhaps have some small anxiety that if it was visible to me, this possessiveness of Romy, and was visible to Dolores, too, then surely also it would be visible to Candy: and if it was, then what would Candy think? And it seemed obvious that the only things she could be thinking would be heartbroken and sad, so I tried very hard to avoid this possibility while not really looking at Romy, even though once again I understood that this very not looking could represent the problem in itself, but in that case where could I go at all? And while these thoughts were circulating, Dolores was looking just a little unsure, like not understanding why suddenly we were in some minstrel band and not telling her the tunes.

  — So, see you, she said to me, gently.

  — Yeah see you, I said, in the gentlest way possible too.

  We looked at each other. And in retrospect I wonder if that’s how deftly a horoscope can come true: it was just there in the background, like all the quiet clickings and swooshings of people’s phones and laptops when you’re sitting in business class – in one single mute passage of meaning. But then show me what passage of meaning isn’t total mute. I would like to see such meaning.

  which leads to a gentle but disturbing conversation

  But at this time I was only really aware of the ongoing noisy surface. Very much I wanted the atmosphere to calm, but what was happening was as usual jumpy. Have you seen jumpy? It is the opposite of the old phrase where a joint is jumping. The joint was tense. Whether or not from jealousy or just the wish to keep the level of provocation up, Romy gazed at Epstein in what could only be called awe, and simultaneously I knew that if I were to be an allegory for one of the ancient humours I could only have been the woebegone dishevelled figure of melancholy. Melancholy was my only option in world charades. For I have this constant problem with comparisons, I mean this problem that I am making them and I do not think that happiness is to be found in the making of comparisons. Not only did I have a simple problem of possession when I looked on like this at Romy but also I was very struck by what seemed her total devouring love for Epstein, and could not help comparing this to the more divided state of my marriage now to Candy. I knew this was unfair and that nothing is comparable, but still, that’s what I did. So that when Candy said she wanted to go home early, I was both happy to go with her, so as not to continue to watch such scenes of my distress, but at the same time in the haziest way possible I knew that I was angry or annoyed, that to leave Romy at this fiesta and with her happiness with Epstein left me very much dismayed and like I was as always missing out. I was missing out on the one true bright thing. We could also stay? I probably said, with my big eyes, or something. And then was nervously surprised, because Candy did in fact consent to stay, which I was not quite expecting. And immediately it made me suspicious, I mean suspicious of her suspicions, that if she was staying it was because she wanted to survey me, to watch my interactions with Romy and examine the surface for clues to a possible depth, whereas in fact just
possibly it was only Candy trying to show that yes she could stay out late even when she had to get up very early for metro journeys and meetings, and even that thought made me sad, for why should anyone change for anyone? But still, here she was, and there was no doubt that something was about to happen, I mean one last event to somehow prove that this indeed had been a fiesta to remember – because what’s a party if you do not question your existence?

  — You know what your problem is? said Candy. — Your problem is that you love me so so much you get confused.

  — I do? I said.

  — Uh-huh, she said.

  — Well, maybe, I said.

  In retrospect I understand that this response of mine was not enough, but it was the most I could admit to, because really at this moment I was not sure that I believed it, that I did love her, or love her enough, but also I liked her for saying it, very much – I think because I understood the pain that was making her try such a winsome tone, and yet still, that tone only made me hate her more. I say hate but of course I also adored her.

  — You, fuzzy bear, she continued, — are all dopey because you love me.

  — Yeah, I said.

  We had slightly moved apart from Epstein and Romy, perhaps with some inclination to find more alcohol and snacks, but I think also we were audible, and that’s never a situation I like although Candy seemed never to care: her lack of embarrassment in the social world extended in every direction, so she would happily cry in public or have major conversations on crowded metros whereas me I prefer the sequestered grove and wilderness mountains if my feelings are to be discussed.

  — They’re so happy, no?

  — Who that? I said.

  — Epstein, she said. — And Romy.

  — Sure, I said.

  I was trying to seem cool in case Romy was definitely listening, and presumably she was, after all, so I also offered something that was meant as a joke for possibly her ears only.