The Pink Cage

by Derbhile Dromey

  I was entranced by the sounds he created, longed to emulate him. Jazz was reluctant at first, but I persisted. He pointed out the different components of the decks and sound desk, but my eyes failed to follow the trajectory of his finger. As far as I was concerned, he was pointing into oblivion.

  “Have you got that?” he asked when he was finished.

  “Yes of course I have.”

  I injected scorn into my voice.

  “Right so. Push up the fader for the left-hand decks.”

  I stared at the buttons, picked one. Nothing happened. I stared at the clumps of soil covering the wooden slats on the floor, a hot lump rising in my chest. As I reached out for another attempt, Jazz’s hand covered mine. He guided it towards the correct fader. Then he placed it on the other buttons and told me their names. His grip was firm. As he leaned over me, I breathed in his smell.

  “We can try a mix if you want,” he said.

  “Oh. Right. Cool.”

  My stomach fizzed. Jazz loaded up two of our favourites, Chime by Orbital and Charley by The Prodigy. We did a trial run; Jazz showed me the buttons to use to slow down the Prodigy track and mesh it with Orbital.

  “I’ll tell you when to do it,” he said.

  I felt for the groove with my finger and eased the needle in, handling the record with the same delicacy as I handled Matthew’s samples. The beats filled the shed. My head was cocked to the side; my whole body was poised, waiting for the moment. Then I heard it, a subtle change in the beats that acted as a cue. I leapt forward, pressed the button and did a slow fade, following Jazz’s instructions to the letter. The two tunes began to meld. I moved down the other fader, letting Charley die out and Chime take over. Fierce joy surged through me, causing a grin to spread across my face.

  “You knew?” Jazz said. “I didn’t have to tell you.”

  “The beats matched. Like you said.”

  I was in a daze; beats swirled in my head. Jazz held his hand in the air, palm facing outward.

  “High five,” he said.

  I didn’t move, unsure of what he expected me to do.

  “Slap your hand on mine.”

  My hand stretched out in a slow arc. As it reached his waiting hand, my palm became magnetic, fused with his. Warm currents travelled from his skin to mine. His fingers were thick; the skin spilled over the edges of mine. But my fingers were long, so our hands were almost the same size. We stood for a moment, the heat of his hand radiating into mine. When he took his hand away, I wiped my own on my jeans, because it was moist.

  Jazz and Ora were living with us for about a month when Jazz’s father made an appearance. Not in person, but in the form of a letter. Matthew found it on the doorstep when we came back from our walk, an exotic cream envelope among the brown bills. There was a splodge of red at the top.

  “Hmm, Paris postmark. A missive from the snake oil salesman, no doubt.”

  “Who’s the snake-oil salesman?” I asked.

  “In this case, Geoffrey’s father.”

  “They don’t have snakes in Paris, do they?”

  “I’ll explain later, Astrid.”

  “But—”

  “I said later.”

  Matthew never evaded my questions.

  When we came into the kitchen, Ora and Jazz were eating breakfast. Ora said good morning, but Jazz didn’t say anything. He never talked in the mornings. Matthew thrust the letter at Ora. She slit the envelope open with her knife.

  “It’s from your father, Jazz,” I said, proud to be the bearer of interesting news. “Is he going to come for a visit?”

  “I should hope not,” said Matthew. “I couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences if he were to turn up here.”

  Jazz gave a furtive laugh, his hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking. Ora chewed her lip and Jazz stopped laughing.

  “What’s he want now?” he said in his stormcloud voice.

  He slathered two slices of bread with thick layers of butter and jam, folded up one of them and stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Goodness, it says he’s going to send extra money for you to have grinds,” Ora said, her voice bright and eager.

  Matthew snatched up the letter.

  “In view of Geoffrey’s poor academic performance during this past school year, my client has directed that extra funds be made available for grinds, so that he will be better equipped for his state exams next year.”

  He slapped the letter on the table.

  “What qualifies him to decide that?”

  “I think it’s very good of him,” said Ora. “At least he’s thinking about you, Geoff.”

  Jazz swallowed his last bite of toast with a loud gulp.

  “No he isn’t. He just wants a progress report. Like I’m one of his stocks.”

  His remark was directed at his plate.

  “Write to him and tell him we won’t be requiring it,” said Matthew.

  He began eating his porridge. His spoon clattered, attacking the bowl.

  “On second thoughts, that man from the Historical Society is a retired schoolmaster. He could be approached about giving Geoffrey grinds. What do you think, boy? That suit you?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Jazz always said okay. It was hard to know whether he meant it or not.

  The letter left a crackle in the air, the electric crackle that precedes a thunderstorm. Ora bustled from room to room, wiping, dusting, sweeping, a slave to perpetual motion. Her industry drove Matthew and I out of the house in search of samples. When we came back, I went in search of Jazz. It was easy to trace him to the DJ Shack; the beats were so loud that the building appeared to shake. I was about to join him when Matthew intercepted me.

  “I’d like you to help me archive the journals on my desk. The pile is in danger of creating a landslide.”

  “But I’m—”

  “There’s one article about the reproductive methods of bivalve molluscs that I’ve been meaning to discuss with you. I noted your interest in the topic when we were examining those specimens the other day.”

  Matthew kept me busy with various tasks all day. At some point, Jazz and Ora left the house. Later, they returned with bags of shopping. At dinner, Jazz once again gave his food his full concentration. We didn’t talk much; the crackle grew thicker.

  Sometime after going to bed, I got up to use the bathroom. On the way back, I heard voices from Jazz’s room, the sound of gunfire. The door was ajar. I crept in. Jazz didn’t turn around. He kept his eyes on the film he was watching. The images on the screen were reflected in his glasses. Since he wasn’t telling me to go away, I risked moving towards the bed. As my hand brushed against the blanket, I heard a crackling noise. My fingers made contact with a piece of paper. I held it close to my face. It was a sweet wrapper. I moved my hand along the bedspread and followed a trail of them.

  “Why are you eating all these sweets? You already had your dinner, you couldn’t be hungry.”

  “I can eat sweets if I want to,” he said, in a lacklustre attempt at defiance.

  He opened a packet of crisps and stuffed them into his mouth, so fast he almost inhaled them. I listened to his stolid munching, the rattle of the crisp bag. The screen on his television became very bright, bright enough to spot a sheet of paper on the bed beside him. It was cream, with a splodge of red on top.

  “Is that the letter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you keep it? I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “I don’t. It’s garbage.”

  He scrunched the letter into a ball and threw it on the floor. I picked it up and smoothed it out. The splodge of red turned out to be curly letters, spelling out an alien name. The paper was thick and smooth.

  “Does it say anything about him being a
snake oil salesman? That’s what Matthew said he was. Do you know what a snake oil salesman is? Matthew forgot to tell me.”

  Jazz didn’t answer, just kept staring at the television.

  “Well? Is he?”

  “No. He’s a stockbroker. Got a fancy job in Paris, making people rich. Means he can pay a solicitor to do his dirty work for him.”

  “Why doesn’t he write to you himself? He’s your father, isn’t he?”

  “No he isn’t. He’s dead as far as I’m concerned.”

  Jazz began to gather the crumbs and sweet papers into a bundle, making angry, sweeping movements. He leaned over to put them in the bin by his bed. Then he turned off the television and stared at the blank screen. I perched on the edge of the bed. Jazz moved over and I lay beside him, facing away from him. Through our pyjamas, our skin touched, creating a layer of static electricity.

  “But he’s not dead. He writes to you.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  Jazz released a gust of air.

  “I haven’t seen him since I was seven. Mum said he was going to live in Paris because he had a new job. And that was it. He had a new girlfriend too, but I didn’t know that. Found out after. That’s why he didn’t come home. He thinks we’re boring. We’re just like rubbish he wanted to get rid of.”

  I’d never heard Jazz say so many sentences at once. And I never knew his voice could be so loud. He was almost shouting.

  “Maybe you’ll visit him in Paris. Matthew says there are many interesting historical sites there.”

  Jazz gave another sigh. It filled the darkness.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a kid. And anyway, Matthew never left you.”

  “Yes he did.”

  I addressed my remarks to the pillow. Jazz made a loud sucking noise as he inhaled.

  “He didn’t mean to. It was because of my mother. She died, you see. When I was born.”

  “Yeah, I know. Mum said. I didn’t mean...”

  Jazz put his hand on my shoulder.

  “D’you miss her?”

  I thought of the picture in my dresser drawer, the Viking book whose meaning I now knew.

  He continued, “Mum used to try and act cheerful. But I could hear her crying through the wall. So it’s easier, you see.”

  I waited for Jazz to continue. When he didn’t, I decided to prompt him.

  “What’s easier?”

  “Pretending he’s dead.”

  A silence fell. It was a warm silence; the crackle was gone. We knew what to say to each other without having to say it. Jazz folded the letter in half and reached over to put it on his bedside locker.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Matthew left. Where did you go?”

  “I had to go to a school.”

  “You went to school!” said Jazz, incredulous.

  “Immaculate Heart School for Visually Impaired Girls.”

  I said the words very fast, to get rid of the taste in my mouth, the orange drink taste.

  “How long was he gone for?”

  “A long time. Forever.”

  “At least he came back.”

  His arm crept around my waist; his hand sought mine. It was damp and sticky from the sweets. I rubbed the soft flesh on the base of his thumb. We crawled under the blankets and his body curved into mine.

  Matthew was less available than before. Our everyday rituals, listening to Bach, playing chess, discussing items of interest in Matthew’s newspaper, fell by the wayside. Instead, he walked with Ora on the narrow country roads that surrounded our house, or went to her darkroom to look at her photographs and help her decide which ones were the best.

  Jazz and I no longer travelled in separate orbits. During the day, we were in the DJ Shack. In the evenings, we went to his bedroom, which now looked like his old room in Wicklow, with posters on the walls and comics on the shelves. His smell was stronger now that he was a permanent resident. And he never opened the curtains, so it was always twilight in there. We sat on the windowseat, where his radio perched. Jazz said it was the best vantage point for picking up radio stations. After much persistent tweaking, we were able to locate pirate dance radio stations from Wales. The signal was much clearer than in Wicklow. Sometimes we were able to pick up BBC Radio 1, which played a lot of dance music. We sat on either side of the radio with our eyes closed, wrapping ourselves in beats. The music sounded better when my eyes were closed, the beats were sharper, more concentrated. Sometimes we leaned over to adjust the sound at the same time and our fingers brushed against each other. The friction sent a jolt through me, the sort of jolt I felt when I touched something hot by accident.

  Other times, Jazz turned the lights out and put on his television. We topped and tailed each other; my head rested next to his feet. I pressed my face close to the television, trying to see between the lines that filled the screen. But the flickering images were hypnotic: they sent me into a fitful doze. Our bodies hovered close to each other, so close that my skin prickled. But they didn’t touch. There was a hum in the air. At first, I thought it came from the television, but when Jazz turned the television off, it was still there.

  Even after Jazz returned to school, we continued to seek each other out; the darkrooms became our world. Beats lined the walls of our world, which was populated by new numbered bands: SL2, Altern 8, Opus III.

  I worked hard to master my mixing technique. The groove where the needle went was invisible to me, but if I held the record a certain way, I was always able to locate the groove and insert the needle. Still, the process took more time than it was supposed to. I persevered, determined to emulate Jazz’s fluid movements and rich, deep sound.

  Even though I still spent a good portion of my days with Matthew, he drifted away from the centre of my world; he and Ora were dim figures on the fringes. When Jazz went back to school, I spent my evenings on the windowseat in his room, listening to his radio, breathing in faint traces of his scent.

  Jazz was now a master of the decks, but his fingers itched for more sophisticated equipment. By happy circumstance, his old DJ mentor Sam was willing to relinquish his vinyl decks. Ora told Jazz he could take a loan from her and pay her back. As Jazz’s state exams closed in, he spent as much time agonising over how to raise the funds as he did studying. In the end, it was Matthew who came up with the solution. He announced that a photographic subject of Ora’s, who owned an apple farm, was taking on summer labour. Jazz could pay Ora back with his wages.

  When the exams were over, Jazz and Ora went to Dublin and came back with the decks. He installed them on the folding table, relegating the other decks to a corner of the shed.

  “No more kiddie decks,” he said. “These are serious decks. Technics. They’re the best. All the nightclub DJs use them.”

  The new decks had a bigger mixer with more buttons, which made the sound easier to control. It took less time for Jazz to learn to operate them; they were more responsive to his touch. Soon, beats hammered off the roof of the shed with even greater intensity than before.

  The following Monday, Jazz started at the apple farm. Matthew drove him there every day and collected him afterwards. We woke him up when we came back from our walk and he sat pale and hunched over his cereal. He hated mornings. But he didn’t mind the job; his desire to pay back Ora’s loan made his fingers nimble. Calluses appeared on his hands, but he didn’t mind. He said all proper DJs had calluses. When he came home, he exuded sweaty contentment. He talked more than usual; names appeared in his conversation, of boys that he worked with. Soon, faces and bodies appeared in the house to match the names. Ora served Jazz’s friends huge slices of cake and sandwiches; the exertion made her face pink. I stayed at the windowseat, gazing at them over the top of my book. They filled a
ll the available space at the table with their banter and loud laughter. Sometimes they talked to me; they teased me the way the O’Brien boys once did, tickling me and ruffling my hair.

  But most afternoons, we cloistered ourselves in the DJ Shack, experimenting with the new decks, which offered far more possibilities than the old. We found all the places where one tune could undercut another. Jazz made scratching sounds on the records by running his fingers over it while they played.

  We still spent our evenings in Jazz’s bedroom, but they took a different form. When we reached out to change the station, our fingers connected. We held hands for a long time, then wiped them on our jeans. And when Jazz watched television, we didn’t top and tail each other anymore. Instead, we lay side by side, our bodies pressed together. We faced away from each other and we never spoke, in case we broke the spell. Messages pulsed through our skin. And we didn’t kiss, the way we did for New Year in Wicklow. Instead, we became explorers, tracing the maps of each other’s bodies with furtive strokes. Static electricity travelled all over my body, not just the places Jazz touched. Some of the places we found were soft and damp; others were harder, more substantial. Jazz made a strange sound when I touched him, somewhere between a grunt and a moan. When Jazz touched me, my skin shivered, but I didn’t make any sound.

  As the summer passed, my body began to behave in strange ways. The jeans Ora bought for me no longer fitted over my hips and my legs became too long for my body. Though I was all wire and sinew, buds began to sprout on my chest, which became visible through my clothes. When I touched them, I was filled with a hot stabbing sensation, a pleasurable sort of pain. Ora took me shopping for clothes which accommodated my new shape. Matthew took books off the shelves containing diagrams of the reproductive system. I read the labels which appeared beside the diagrams with my monocle: vulva, labia, uterus, satisfying Latin words. Matthew accompanied the diagrams with factual explanations about hormonal changes, the process of fertilisation, the menstrual cycle.