‘Will it include you?’ Michael moves his lips to within millimetres of my ear.
‘Tonight it will,’ I say.
‘Will you dance with me?’ He offers me his hand, but I don’t take it.
‘Is Riss here? After what happened I think I need to see her. I’m worried I upset her.’
‘I’ll take you to her.’ Michael pulls my chair out for me, and offers me his arm when I stand.
Taking it, I let him escort me through the crowd; somehow he’s able to find a pathway through without having to stop, wait or even slow down.
Riss and Henry are leaning on a balcony around the dance floor, watching the band, Riss’s shoulders responding to the groove of the music. Halted in my tracks, I watch her perfect profile, backlit with the ever-changing colours of the floor. She stands there, chin lifted, hair tossed her over her shoulder, as if, for tonight at least, the world and everything in it belongs to her.
‘Come on,’ Michael whispers in my ear, his fingers interlocking with mine. ‘Come say hi to her. Show her how good you look in the dress she made for you.’
He leads me over to where Riss is and lets go of my hand, propelling me forwards a couple of steps.
‘Riss,’ I say her name, and she turns her head towards me, her face lighting up with a smile when she sees her handiwork.
‘Spin!’ she commands, and I obey, laughing to see how delighted she is with the movement of the skirt she designed.
‘It suits you. Do you love it?’ she asks me, her arm around my waist.
‘I really love it,’ I tell her, although I think what I mean is that I really love that she is still so open, so friendly, after how I upset her. ‘Look, I’m sorry about before. I shouldn’t have said those things; they were stupid and thoughtless. It’s just that I have some bad experiences, and I just … All I want really is for you to be happy.’
‘I get that,’ she says. ‘What I don’t get is why? Why do you want me to me happy, when we barely know each other? Why is it so important to you? Stephanie thinks you got a crush on me. She says you look at me like you’re in love with me.’
‘In love with you … ? No, it’s not like that!’ I laugh, then she laughs. ‘Could we talk, somewhere quieter?’
Riss looks longingly at the dance floor and then nods, jerking her head in the direction of the door. Following her at a slight delay, I see her as everyone around does. Flinging her arms around a couple, tossing her head back as she laughs. I see the wide sway of her hips, confident, certain. The way she inclines her head at a guy checking her out, giving him the smallest of smiles, keeping his attention tethered by a gossamer-fine thread until she snaps it, and he is reluctantly released.
Outside the air is warm, scented with a sea of combatting perfume and cigarette smoke. Riss swats away catcalls with a toss of her head, as we bisect a group of guys smoking. She leads me a little away from grappling couples, and groups of boys and girls all looking for the right person to do exactly that with.
The street is almost as busy as the club, a parade of tail lights, engines on, seats occupied, windows steamy. The purr and hiccup of engines low in the background and radios turned up loud. Out here, though, at least we can hear each other speak.
Riss must have found what seems like a good enough spot to her for talking, and looks me up and down, waiting.
‘I realise it must seem weird to you,’ I begin, exactly as I feel – hesitant, scared. ‘I just turn up one night at your house, and then you keep seeing me around and I said that stuff I said before in the park …’
‘I don’t think you are weird, that’s the weird thing.’ Riss takes a pack of cigarettes from her small evening bag, pausing to light one. ‘It’s like, when I met you I knew you. My other girlfriends, I’ve known them all my life and I never felt that before. Like you and me have already been friends for a long time. I don’t get why.’
She lifts her chin to blow smoke into the air in a long and practised plume.
‘Maybe it’s because …’ How am I going to begin this? ‘You remind me of me.’
Riss doesn’t speak, she only watches, waits.
‘You reminded me of who I wanted to be when I was younger. I wanted to be like you are now. And … I just want you to take care of yourself, protect yourself. Things happen, bad things that change everything, and that’s why I think it’s so important to just grab happiness when it comes along, just take it and grab it and don’t look back, don’t ask for permission to live your life, don’t assume that just because someone is older and wiser than you, they know better.’
‘Someone like you, you mean?’ She smiles. ‘What is it about Father Thomas you don’t like, really?’
‘I just don’t see how you can let a man who has such a clear set of rules, and an agenda that has nothing to do with what you want from life, help you make such important choices. He’s not going to tell you go and marry Henry, to move away from your family, is he? It’s his job to talk you out of it.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Riss says. ‘I know him, and I don’t think he’s like that.’
‘People change,’ I tell her. ‘Sometimes in an instant. You think you know what’s going to happen, you think you have the future all mapped out and then something happens. Something bad knocks you off your feet and, before you know it, everything you thought you knew about yourself is gone. All I’m saying is sometimes it good to do something unexpected.’
‘To, like, trick life into not getting the chance to fuck with you?’ Riss frowns and laughs at the same time as she drops the stub of her cigarette to the floor and stubs it out under the toe of her shoe.
‘Will you do me a favour?’ I ask her. ‘Will you just not talk to him alone? There’s a social at the church on the thirteenth, right? Why don’t you talk to him there?’
‘You’re crazy.’ Riss shakes her head. ‘But if it makes you feel better, why not?’
That’s it, isn’t it? That should be it, any minute now I should be fading away into stardust. Except I don’t; instead I just stand here looking at my hands, waiting for them to vanish.
‘Are you high on something?’ Riss wrinkles her nose as she looks at me.
I shake my head.
‘Good,’ Riss says, catching my wrist and tugging me after her. ‘Because we are done with talking – it’s time to go dancing.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The floor is full of dancers, the heat coming off of their bodies unifying with the relentless heat of the balmy night. There is no room for dance-floor Casanovas here, no choreographed moves, just a mass of hips and shoulders moving to the music, skin grazes skin, hips coincide, lips collide.
Unlike Pea, I was never a dancer, preferring always to stand on the sidelines or in dark corners, swaying from side to side. And yet, somehow, among this crowd of people, it doesn’t seem like a choice to dance; it’s more of an impulse, a reflex.
And once I start, I can’t stop. For a little while I’m dancing with Riss, her smile flashing under the lights, her hair forming miraculous arcs as she tosses her head, and then the tide changes and she’s caught in an invisible current, moved away in a series of spins and turns.
Elation charges through me; I feel triumphant, incredible. I’ve done enough, I’m sure I have, to change her path, and what’s more I’m still here, here in this moment and, because I don’t how long for, I fling myself into it with more gusto and joy than I’ve ever done anything.
I’m a dancer now, and that’s all I am, filled with the grinding, skin-on-skin rhythms of disco. I am layer upon layer of sound and instruments; drum, guitars, voices all combine, speaking through my body. It doesn’t matter that I’m dancing with strangers, we laugh and turn and move all at odds with each other, and yet somehow in perfect synch.
Time has become a meaningless notion, and not only am I not sure how long I’ve been on the floor, I do
n’t care. All I know is that the soles of my feet are burning, my hair and skin are slicked with sweat.
Gradually I become aware of someone close behind me, and I don’t have to look to know it’s Michael. His hands connect with my waist, moving down to my hips, and I move myself against him, feeling the pounding of his heart between my shoulder blades.
A new tracks spins onto the floor.
‘Follow me,’ Michael whispers into my ear; his hips sway, matching the beat, spinning. I look at his feet, and try to match what he is doing, concentrating so hard that I am always one fraction of a second behind the beat. I shake my head.
‘I was doing better before you showed up!’ I laugh, and he pulls me very close, close enough to make me catch my breath.
‘Just feel the music. Just let it be in you.’ I feel his breath on my neck. He takes a step back and spins me several times before letting go of me, and I don’t know how I keep on my feet but I do. A small space forms around him as he dances, and I love him all the more because he is not a perfect dancer. Untidy, chaotic, the shapes he makes in the air are sort of ugly, but he is smiling and his smile is beautiful.
So when he reaches for my hand I close my eyes and dance with him, next to him, letting the music into my muscles, my arms, my shoulders, my fingertips. Dancing until I can feel the smile spreading across my face. The sweat pours down my back and my throat is parched, but still I dance. Until Michael touches my wrist and I open my eyes to find him there, grinning at me.
‘You got me beat,’ he grins. ‘I need some air, you coming?’
Nodding, I follow him outside, feeling each delicious moment of anticipation peel away, knowing that the moment when I am finally able to kiss him is now.
Michael leads me away from the bright pool of light that surrounds the club and into the soft, inky dark that is waiting, just a little way down the street.
‘I think there was fresh air right outside the club,’ I tease him, as we turn down a side street and are all at once completely alone.
‘I like this air better,’ he says, moving a little closer to me. ‘It’s only got you in it.’
He pulls me closer to him until I can taste the sweetness of his breath.
‘Michael …’ I try to think of a way to explain what I want to say, instead of what I want to feel, because the two things are so entirely different. ‘I need you to know that when I leave it isn’t because I don’t want to be here, don’t want to be with you. I’ve wanted to be with you more than any man I’ve ever met.’
He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, and panic rushes my chest. What if all of this was just my fantasy after all, and nothing to him?
‘Obviously I don’t mean that this means anything,’ I mutter turning my face away from him. Ever so slowly he places his forefinger under my chin and draws my gaze to meet his.
‘No one has ever said anything like that to me before.’ When he speaks I am moved by the force of emotion in his voice. ‘And being here with you, it does mean something; it means everything to me, Luna. I never even kissed you, but I know I never want to let you go.’
For one delirious moment I wonder what it would be like to lose myself in this world with him, to just stay here, forever in this moment, no more time, no more years ticking by, just this one moment.
‘Come for a walk with me?’ He offers his hand and I take it, leaning my shoulder into his. How strange that here – on this cusp of this new day that I don’t belong in, with a man that I never should have met – is the first time, in such a long time, that I have felt truly safe.
‘Where are we going now? There’s nothing out here is there … ?’
‘Just around the corner, away from everyone, away from the noise. This building came down a couple of months ago and that means that we can see …’
‘The moon.’ I gasp as I see the waning crescent that hangs so perfectly in the air. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’
‘Right?’ Michael smiles, wrapping his arms around me. ‘I like to look at the moon when it’s like this, when it’s almost completely dark, because somehow it seems more alien, more real. Because you can feel it, can’t you, turning in the night.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You can.’
‘Luna.’ Michael’s hands tighten around me as we stare up at the alien world, hanging in the suburban sky. ‘I want to kiss you so much.’
The moon keeps looking down on us, its gaze constant and unchanging, and I keep perfectly still. ‘The thing is, I have done since the first moment I saw you. Even as I was saying goodbye to you, I got this strange feeling in my gut, this need to see you. This hope to see you. When I found you in the bookstore on Third Avenue, I felt … I felt like I’d wished you into existence.’
I let out a breath, closing my eyes so I can really feel this moment, this feeling, and capture it, just like a photograph.
‘Jesus, say something will you?’ He half laughs, half pleads.
‘Oh God, I feel the same, I do,’ I tell him, words spinning around in my head, speeding past like a carousel that seems to make it impossible to find the right one. ‘And I want you, I want you so badly, but I don’t know if it’s real, I don’t think we can do this.’
‘We can.’ Michael’s hands travel down the bare skin of my back, grazing over the silk and georgette as he spans first my waist, my hips and buttocks, pulling me closer to him in tantalising fractions. I lean towards his kiss, hungry for it, needing it.
‘This feels real, doesn’t it?’ he whispers. ‘This feels right.’
I don’t need to answer.
Long, sweet moments pass in the dark, our bodies connected by our lips, shoulders, hips and hands. His heart races against my breast, my hands find their way under his shirt, and we kiss like there has been no yesterday and as if tomorrow is a lifetime away. Nothing more, nothing less than two bodies connected by their lips; it’s almost chaste, almost innocent, and the most desire I have ever felt.
It’s only that when we break apart finally, breathless and uncertain of our feet, that I see there are tears on Michael’s cheeks, glittering in the moonlight.
‘What is it?’ I ask him gently, wiping them away with the ball of my thumb.
‘I don’t know why,’ he says, turning his face away from me. ‘But I feel like the moment I have you, I’m going to lose you. It scares me.’
‘Don’t be scared of me,’ I say, touching his cheek. ‘I just wish that I could find a way to tell you …’ I trail off, finding myself unable to say the words out loud. I want to have existed for Michael, I want to be lodged right in the heart of his memory forever; every time he looks at a waning moon, I want him to think of me. ‘I do have to leave soon, and I won’t see you again, but please, please don’t forget me, or even if you do, whenever there is a moon just like this one, just remember what a moment like this feels like, and then you’ll be remembering me too.’
‘I’ll never forget you.’
‘You may not have a choice.’
I kiss him harder, fiercer than before. We lose our footing on the sidewalk, and stumble against a wall, hands racing over and under, entwining and pressing ourselves into one being.
What I want more than anything is for him to know me, to really know the extraordinary thing that has brought me into these minutes with him.
As the thought occurs it begins to happen, against my will and relentless.
It feels as if the sun has forced its way out again for one more glorious moment as heat and light sears through me. I am bursting into flame, burning in seconds into embers and ashes. Universes shift around me and Michael is gone.
A sob tears out of my throat and I taste blood.
I am standing in a well-lit street. An MPV speeds past, the base turned up loud. Michael is gone. No, I am gone. I vanished in his arms.
When I touch my face I realise my nose is bleeding. I wipe it away the best I can with the back of my hand. I close my eyes, trying to sense him, somewhere through this thin veil of time that separates us
, hoping to somehow hear him calling my name, to feel his movement in the air. But there is nothing, except the night, and the fear of tomorrow and the taste of blood on my lips.
Even if he doesn’t believe it, at least now he will know the truth.
12 JULY
‘But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.’
—Andrew Marvell
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Dawn is threatening to break as I climb the steps to Mrs Finkle’s place, exhausted and confused, past plaster Mary. I pause for a moment to take her in – her faded, benign expression of resignation, her palms opened outwards, facing towards heaven, in a gesture of what? Acceptance, supplication? Maternal tenderness? Maternal hopelessness? I hardly know what I am doing as I push her off the windowsill, watching as she hits the stones beneath with a dull thud. Her body splits in two and her head rolls off, gazing skyward at last.
I’m numb from my head to my feet, so battered and bruised by this transition, and so full of longing for the man whose arms I was ripped out of, that I think my poor mortal brain simply can’t process anymore.
‘Been painting the town red?’ Mrs Finkle makes me start as I close her front door.
‘Something like that,’ I say, wearily.
‘You feeling OK?’ she asks me. ‘You look like a stiff breeze would knock you flat.’
‘Honestly, I hardly know.’
‘Want some coffee? I’m always up this early these days, be nice to share it with someone for a minute or two.’ Guiltily, I remember how I assassinated the Virgin Mary. Perhaps after coffee I’ll have worked up the courage to confess and find out how to replace her.
The Summer of Impossible Things Page 22
