A Heart in Two Cities

by Angela Peach

  “Nei,” Freya said, glancing at me.

  I blew out air. I could have been a successful artist, living in America with women falling at my feet. Or I could be battering my body off the padded walls of an enclosed cell. What is the difference?

  I wanted to reach out my hands — to Nikki — and take over the life I was meant to lead, to have fame and money at my fingertips, where love would welcome me and build me a home. I could rest my head without panic.

  The grass is always greener on the other side.

  “She’s got a private detective chasing an old girlfriend that she hasn’t seen for years,” Ethel went on.

  I looked to Freya and saw her unwavering smile falter. I realised then that inside of her, she too hid a broken heart. I could have moved towards her then, but my feet were cemented to where I stood. Fear is the heaviest weight of all.

  Freya.

  Helena.

  Love. Fear. Death. The perfect circle of life.

  “…Five hundred pounds, Freya, for nothing. Can you talk some sense into her?”

  I came back to the sadness of this life I was leading and found my antagonistic tongue. “Thanks for the money. Thanks for the food. There’s the door.”

  Ethel, my mum, wagged her finger at me. “I don’t agree with this, Nick. It will all end in tears.”

  “Jesus,” I sighed. I noticed that the sun was shining through the material of the dress Freya was wearing, a loose sky-blue temptation. I almost felt my fingers run up her thighs, over her hips to her tummy until they could cup her…I wanted to throw her roughly to my floor, put myself between her legs to rip off her pants and push my face into her. I licked my lips at the tickle of her on my chin and felt her wet my lips as I opened her with my tongue, my hands grabbing her buttocks, pushing her into me. I’d lick her, my rhythm growing until she flexed her hips again and again, her moans filling my ears and, as she was about to come, my fingers would slide inside her, feeling the tensing and her ecstasy…

  “Nick!”

  I saw Freya, standing before me, innocent and ready to be loved. I closed my eyes and saw Helena. Helena tossing her hair over her shoulder, Helena running her eyes over me, Helena reaching out to kiss me, Helena saying, “Don’t ever give up on me.”

  I won’t ever give up, my Helena.

  “NICK!”

  “Mum! What?”

  “Do you ever listen?” she said, looking sympathetically towards Freya. “Let me know what Mr Chan says.”

  I nodded and she left. I still had a throb in my underwear that made me unable to speak.

  “I want you to paint me,” Freya said, wandering towards my canvas, covered and hidden.

  “I’ll only paint you nude,” I told her.

  “I’m not ashamed of my body,” she said. “I’m Norwegian, not English.”

  “I’m not English, either,” I clipped back. “I’m Scottish.”

  She smiled, then turned and walked to my wall of windows, throwing her dress to the floor and stepping out as she made her way over.

  “Mum,” I wanted to say, “There’s a naked Norwegian in my living-room.” An ice-hot, sexy, naked Norwegian who is filling my mind with clouds, my heart with doubts and my body with desires. It won’t do but I don’t know how to fight. You can’t defeat love with love.

  “Are you going to start now, Nick?” Freya asked.

  I smiled, fizzing inside at the crisp curves of her hips and thighs, of her breasts and the shadow on her navel. “I am. Turn a fraction to my right.”

  She turned. “How fine is this?”

  “It’s gallus,” I said.

  “Ha, I don’t know that word, Nikki,” she laughed.

  I felt the vein bulge at my temple. “Don’t call me Nikki!”

  It took me to a time in my past, a memory surfaced that I had tried to bury, like so many other things.

  Helena and I were alone in her parents home, the music was loud and we had drunk our fair share of the wine cellar. I never felt happier than when I had her to myself, when I could hold her body close to mine, sweating with her heat. I was swaying to Roxy Music’s ‘Slave to Love’, pulling her so close I could feel her breath on my lips and my excitement was growing. I swayed left and right, my hips finding their best sexy rhythm against her as I stared into her brown eyes, dark and full of promise.

  Or so I had thought then.

  I whispered into her ear, trying to be seductive. “Let’s take this to your bedroom.”

  She panted because she was aching for what I would do to her, knowing full well the extent of my devotion and my dedication to her pleasure. The only thing I desired was her ecstasy and feeling it under my fingertips. It was the only thing in my miserable life that gave me a glimpse of happiness.

  It was a childhood I spent hating school and hating people, I hated everything but Helena. I hid under the blanket of her protection but my…my oddness…kept me separate. I could not allow myself to get close to anyone, not when one day was never where the next ought to be and my life switched before me like changing sands.

  Helena was my only constant.

  Whenever I woke up, she was in my mind and sometimes, I could lay the palm of my hand on her brow and imagine the mechanics of her mind. I’d try to let them seep into mine, to keep me normal, to keep me tethered to this life, a second in a life where I felt loved. Where I had a life that was mine and no-one else’s. Where falling asleep and closing my eyes didn’t mean succumbing to another self, where daydreams might actually be real if I had the courage it would take for that.

  What would it take? I couldn’t answer that.

  Just then, Helena plunged her tongue into my mouth and I responded, feeding her pants with my fingers, playing braille in the way I knew she loved to be read.

  “Oh, baby,” she breathed into my neck.

  I thrust myself in, loving her pleasure.

  “Oh, baby. Oh, Nikki.”

  I froze.

  I am not Nikki.

  I am not fucking Nikki.

  I whipped my hand from Helena’s pants, still glistening with her passion, and I slid my fingers around her neck, pressing her against the wall, feeling the muscles in her neck arch against my pressure.

  “I’m not fucking Nikki!” I told her.

  “You’re hurting me,” she choked.

  I pushed her harder against the wall, seeing her face turn redder as her hands tugged at mine. How could she call me Nikki? Didn’t she know me? I could never be Nikki.

  I have my secret and Nikki has hers and we are as different as night and day. Night brings dark, black, quiet and the fear that the day before was a waste. I live in the night and all my days before are a waste.

  I don’t and never want to be Nikki. I pressed my fingers tighter around Helena’s throat, feeling betrayed by her throwaway comment.

  I am Nick! Me. Nick. I have a heart so soft I want to take buttercups and stare at the yellow glow they make under Helena’s chin. I would take that buttercup and trample it underfoot because it reminded me of the love gone wrong.

  It’s not me, it’s not me, it’s not fucking me.

  I AM ME!

  I push my hands harder, gritting my teeth, saying “I’m me, not fucking Nikki. Helena, I’m Nick.”

  *** *** ***

  It took a moment for the fear and the pain to fade away into distant memory but it left me with horror running up my arms to tickle my neck. I could have killed Helena for a slip of the tongue and where would that have left me and my love? Can a heart beat on when it has nothing left to love?

  What fills an empty heart? Love. There is nothing else.

  I looked at Freya and my hand found its way to the canvas, as it always does. My eyes and my hand connected and I lost myself in the colours and contours, in the shadows and the brightness. In the beauty that stood before me.

  In the midnight blue of beauty.

  I once saw the moon shine in a window, into eyes which were of the ocean and the glare made them midnight b
lue. In the blue of midnight stands me, Nick. I used to be a woman who had colour in everything I did and now I am just midnight blue.

  But midnight blue is still better than black.

  So, I took my brush and I let it light up my canvas with the sparkle that was Freya’s delight. It took me moments in my head to see the beauty and to do it justice. I tried and I squinted and I saw her gorgeous appeal but what I felt was not curves and shadows of light, it was a softness in her eyes and the ache I could feel inside of her, the one that reached out to me.

  My mind touched hers.

  I moved to Freya and I put my hand on her throat.

  “People think you are so angry,” she said. “But you are just sad.”

  My hand slid up her neck to her cheek.

  “There’s a truth inside of you that you can’t bear to face. But you’ll have to face it one day. Don’t vaere trist.”

  I could help myself no longer and I jutted my chin until her lips were touching mine, and I whispered, “I’ve seen love. I’ve followed before and I’ll follow again.”

  Her mouth opened and we found a rhythm inside each other and my simple heart broke in two.

  There was a moment when Helena held me and I did nothing to resist and then that moment came when Freya put her stamp on me and that was what it took for me to lose myself. I heard the shuffle on my music centre bring up the next song, ‘Slave to Love’ and I shuddered with the fear in my heart.

  I am so scared to be wrong. I am so scared to love someone who does not deserve me but I am more scared to love someone who does. Because what if I love Freya and let her in to my heart and she overtakes me, fuelling every flame inside me? Then I die.

  I don’t care, I don’t care. I would rather be dead than live without love.

  I threw my brush to the floor and I took her naked body in my arms, overwhelmed by desire. It’s been years since I looked at a woman with a passion that wasn’t faked. I’ve thrown a veil around my heart to keep me from feeling and Freya had pulled it off, opening me up to longing.

  I long to feel once more. It has taken a glacier to thaw me and bring me heat. I lay naked beside Freya on my floor, a few hours later, having covered us with the quilt off my bed. She lay smiling quietly at me and I smiled back, a real smile, not one of my forced grimaces. It’s been a long time since I’ve known contentedness.

  “You are beautiful,” I whispered. I meant her soul.

  “Vakker,” she said.

  “Vakker,” I agreed, not knowing what her word meant but liking how it rolled off her tongue which made me kiss her again.

  “Oh, your lidenskap finds me,” she sighed.

  But I had more to find than Freya’s passion and finally, I forced us up to get dressed, throwing a sheet over my unfinished painting.

  “You’ll have to come back,” I said. “I’ve only just begun.”

  She twirled in her dress. “I will always be back.”

  I walked to my kitchen area to make a cup of tea and saw the envelope of cash that Ethel had left. I inhaled, remembering why it was there, turning it over in my hands.

  I jumped, at the surprise of Freya’s arms snaking round me, to hold me tight around my tummy. I wasn’t used to being held and the wave of emotion this brought on rose from my stomach to form a lump in my throat. I swallowed down that feeling, cleared my throat and said, “I have to go out.”

  “I am going to be with you,” Freya said.

  “I know that,” I answered, maybe too harshly.

  “I mean I am going to be with you when you go looking for old lovers.”

  She made me sound desperate. I mean, I was but I didn’t need Scandinavian reminders. I shook her arms off. “You’re not coming.”

  She turned me and met my eyes with hers and beyond the ice was steel. “I will be beside you now,” she said, stamping her right foot.

  An hour later, we sat waiting for Mr Chan to call me into his office. He employed a faded blonde, whose youthful looks were well behind her, to man his reception in an effort to appear respectable but, below this veneer, he was just a ‘hunt the cunt’ like so many others.

  “What are you going to get from here?” Freya asked, while we sat leafing through magazines without looking at the pages.

  “I’m going to get Helena’s new address and then I’m going to visit her. There are words inside me that need to find their way to her ears before I can rest a single second.”

  “Drommer,” she scoffed.

  I shuffled in my chair, knowing she was being uncomplimentary but before I could retort, Mr Chan’s door opened and his sleazy smile welcomed us in.

  I felt the old armour grow around me as I walked forward into battle. I never thought love would be a battle and I was right; it’s not a battle, it’s a war that never ends. As I walked in, I felt Freya’s hand clasp hold of mine and I was heart-warmed by the thought she wanted to stand strong beside me.

  It’s easy to be strong when you don’t know what you are standing against or who you are standing with.

  “So, you have money?” Mr Chan said, sitting back down behind his desk, rubbing his hands over his oily hair.

  I threw the envelope of cash in front of him, which he opened and counted meticulously. Satisfied, he unlocked a drawer, stashed the money and locked it back up. “So, you want address, yes?”

  “Aye,” I managed through gritted teeth. I could not pretend to like the man but he had done his job and that demanded my manners. Ethel would have been so proud of me.

  “I find,” he said, getting up and heading to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

  Freya had not let go of my hand.

  The seconds ticked on and my hand grew warm. In the dark office, a single ray shone in, highlighting the dust fixed in the air, specks of animation that were frozen for a milli-second in time.

  “Here,” he said, giving me an A4 page with three small typed lines. I withdrew my hand from Freya’s and folded it, standing up to tuck it into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Come on,” I said to Freya, heading for the door.

  “No thank you?” Mr Chan wailed after me.

  “Cheers, Jackie,” I said, holding open the door for Freya.

  He lowered his brows. “Name no Jackie!”

  “Fuck you,” I laughed, slamming his door shut behind me.

  I had Helena’s address resting against my right buttock. I had Freya’s breasts a fingertip away. If I closed my eyes and squinted I might be able, by a long stretch, to see a gateway to happiness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I spent most of the morning in my studio trying to think of a valid excuse to go back over to the new neighbours, and unable to think of one that didn't sound too flimsy. I assumed mom was spending just as much time watching them, because she now appeared to be camping out by the window.

  As I idly studied my work in progress on the canvas before me, I wondered if Amanda practiced her free love with women. I wondered if Amanda would be interested in showing me a little bit of free love. I wondered if she was the kind of woman who let her pubic hair grow wild and free, or if she waxed? From my own deductions based on what I knew of her, I was willing to bet she let it grow free, but kept it tidy. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to validate my theory.

  Just before noon, I decided I wasn't going to get anything productive done and headed inside for an update from mom, and some lunch.

  “Any activity to report, soldier?” I hissed, after creeping up on her position, but she didn't even flinch.

  “Papa bear left this morning with three of the youngsters, another two went for a jog an hour ago and haven't returned yet, and Momma bear hasn't emerged yet,” she muttered conspiratorially.

  “Momma and Papa bear? Seriously?”

  She ignored me and picked up a blanket she was making (with the same amount of enthusiasm as I'd put into my canvas this morning. It worried me that I could see where I got it from so clearly.)

  I decided to leave her to
it and went to fix myself a grilled cheese sandwich for my lunch, noting how empty the refrigerator was at the same time. When was the last time either of us had gone out for groceries? Sighing as I waited for the pan to warm up, I knew I wouldn't be getting any more work done today as I took care of the necessities around the house. It was kind of ironic in a way — here, I took care of mom, gave her money to get by and looked after the bills and stuff, whereas Nick sponged off her mother and expected to have everything done for her. Perhaps if she got off her butt and did something with her life she might be able to cope with life as well as deal with her anger issues. She just made me so frustrated.

  I was shaken from my thoughts by mom hurtling out to the kitchen, a frantic look on her face.

  “Over here! She's coming over here!” she squealed, waving her hands and reminding me of Wallace from ‘Wallace and Gromit’ with her exaggerated mannerisms and wide eyes. I stifled a laugh.

  “Who?” My heart skipped as the information sank in and I became deadly serious. “Not Momma bear?”

  “Yes! What did you...”

  Mom was interrupted by a polite knocking on the front door. Her jaw dropped open in wonderful comic style. We both stared at the door for a few seconds, unsure who should go answer it. After a quick visual sweep of myself, I trotted excitedly to the door, closely followed by mom gripping my elbow. I shook her free before taking a deep breath, adopting a casual stance and opening the door.

  “Oh, hi Amanda, how nice to see you.”

  “Hey Nikki, I hope you don't mind my coming over like this, but I need to go into town and I have no idea where I'm going.” She laughed easily and my heart laughed with her. “Ness needs me to pick her up from the ice rink and I didn't want to leave her standing waiting for me, so I just wondered if you were free for part of that sightseeing tour you promised?”

  Oh happy, happy, joy joy!

  “Uh, yeah of course...”

  “If you're busy...”

  “Nope, I'm all yours! Let me just get my stuff and I'll meet you at your car in a couple of minutes,” I gushed, trying not to sound too eager or desperate. Inside I felt like an excitable puppy straining against the leash, tongue hanging wildly out to one side as I panted hopelessly for her. As long as I restrained myself from trying to hump her leg, I should be A-O-K!