Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  It was certainly not that Arianne provided an answer to this; but she did provide an alternative anxiety. A compelling, all-consuming anxiety. She sat with the ash dangling off her cigarette, occasionally seasoning the carpet, looking distracted or bored or depressed, and Luke watched her, ransacking his heart and soul and body for ways to amuse her.

  He had still not returned Lucy's calls. Sex with Arianne conquered his guilt every time. Sex with her conquered guilt and fear and ambition and inadequacy. He lost them all with his hands on her hips, his head pressed back into the pillow.

  'Look, I'll have to get my stuff from Dan's place,' she said, at around three a.m. that Monday morning. 'You can drive me over tomorrow. OK?' She laid her head on his chest and sighed. 'And then the day after won't belong to anyone else at all.'

  He stared out of the window, at the bare branches against the sky, and he smiled. The day after wouldn't belong to anyone else at all...

  How could he disappoint her romanticism? He saw he would need to take the week off work. He had taken no holidays that year. He hadn't dared to, because, unlike the creatives, his job at the agency was secured by physical dependability rather than ethereal talent. Unflattering as it was, he knew he simply had to be there.

  But life seemed so unbearably short! Twenty-eight years wasted already. He rolled towards Arianne with his eyes closed. She wrapped her legs round him and, after an astonishingly deft movement of her bottom and hips, she had swallowed him up.

  Every time—literally every time—he felt as though he had burst garden doors open on to glorious summer. And she was so long-limbed and so—elastic! She dragged her nails up the back of his thighs, her tongue licked the inside of his elbows, his earlobes, his armpits, the palms of his hands, his nipples, his lips. She was a searchlight of eroticism and his senses were caught in it like boys after lights-out.

  At first he was stricken with fear and nervous hilarity. These responses were all that held him back from a hot, golden, long-legged, jasmine-scented future. They belonged to his past, to Lucy whispering, 'Is that not very nice, darling? Oh, sorry, why didn't you say? I'll do it a bit harder then, shall I?' He cast them off. This proved to be a mutually gratifying decision.

  Invariably, having wrung the last out of both of them, Arianne would drop down hot and shivering against him, her face turned away, her hair covering her eyes. For a short time, his existence was irrelevant to her and he blinked behind the lovely blonde haze and enjoyed the feel of her heart thudding against his. She was everywhere and she contained everything—at least all that was of any interest in the world to him. Arianne was her own weather system with a million volatile seasons and the world outside it was just so ... slow and so quiet.

  That evening they drove over to Dan's flat. Luke waited in the car while she unlocked the door. She ran up the stairs under a bare lightbulb, past builders' equipment and cans of paint. The door swung shut.

  It had become clear to him gradually that breaking up with Dan meant Arianne had nowhere to live. He was overwhelmed by this—and also powerfully attracted by it. She had no money: her family gave her none because her father drifted in and out of contact according to whether or not he had a girlfriend, and her mother was too involved in her own love affairs and legal proceedings to show any concern for her daughter. They were selfish in the way that only people who were once very rich can be. They had lost all their inherited money in a series of investments risky enough to appeal only to those convinced by the benevolent sparkling of their own chandeliers that they had a divine right to wealth. As a consequence, they had become fiercely vigilant, always suspecting that they had not received their fair share, whether it was of money or respect or roast potatoes. Mr and Mrs Tate had divorced, but they were subsequently united more fiercely than ever, not in love but in joint litigation. And from the age of eight, in place of a more rounded moral education, Arianne was raised on bitter sermons about the dishonesty of the world in general and of stockbrokers in particular.

  This had distorted her values somewhat and occasionally she found herself twiddling her hair and wondering, aware that it made no bloody sense, whether it mattered if you were happy as long as you were rich. Then she would burst into tears.

  In spite of her charisma, Arianne was actually quite unpopular. She had no female friends because she inspired envy in other women, who felt their complacent relationships rocked when she danced into the room. And she made all her male friends untrustworthy. When she rejected their advances—with a combination of tact and searing guilt apparent on her face—they punished her with demonstrations of power. As soon as she said she didn't think about them in 'that way' she knew what was coming. She gritted her teeth.

  And in due course they left her alone at restaurants, waiting for them. They texted blunt cancellations to her dinner parties, then arrived, looking stormily resentful, at the last minute. They were only too glad to put her on hold for another call. They made sure she missed the start of plays, films, concerts to which they had generously bought her tickets. They told her how fabulous small brunette women were. She waited outside a lot—she smoked cigarettes to appear occupied, she blew on her hands to stay warm. And when finally they turned up, she made no protest because she understood that, on some level, this was justice: payback for the blonde hair, the crazy legs and their disproportionate power.

  The way Luke saw it, to all intents and purposes, Arianne was an orphan. She simply lived with whichever boyfriend she was seeing at the time, knowing that when love or lust was replaced by possessiveness and jealousy, it would be time to find new accommodation. He felt a pain in his heart for her, an actual pain in his heart. Thank God she had found him now. Thank God she could put all that behind her.

  He glanced up and saw her in the lit window, talking to Dan. They had hoped he would be out, either at work or 'training' at the gym where he went twice a day. What did the idiot think he was 'training'/or? Luke watched the cliched performance of argument: hands held out imploringly, palm upwards, faces covered, heads shaking. Then he looked away and lit a cigarette.

  He did not want to think about Dan's feelings. He wanted to remember him as a stock character—a fool in a club, mouthing off, a person in whom Arianne could never have instilled any serious expectations. This had more to do with his guilt about Lucy than it did with any sympathy he felt for Dan. If he pretended he and Arianne had met with no attachments at all, he did not have to think about Lucy—or to return her calls. Just then he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket and could not believe the ugly coincidence. Sweat broke out on his back, but when he took the phone out he saw he had imagined it was ringing.

  Reprieved, he wondered again if it mattered anyway. In the huge long history of the world, what did it matter if he was a bastard to Lucy? After all, no one knew because they had few mutual friends—and, anyway, no one was keeping score.

  Ten minutes later, Arianne was limping across the road towards him, holding a large sports bag and a box. Oddly, her hair was wet.

  'He threw a bottle of water over me,' she explained. 'It was instead of punching.'

  'Jesus Christ.'

  'What?'

  'It just hadn't occurred to me he might hit you.'

  She put her things on the back seat. In the box he saw there was a hairdryer and a few framed photographs, a jewellery box, a fluffy rabbit with a chewed-looking red ribbon round its neck. Again ... oh, the pain in his heart.

  'Well, I'm lucky because he hardly got me at all. Only a bit on my ribs,' she said. She lifted her sweatshirt and showed the red mark where Dan's huge hand had slapped out at her. She had no bra on, he noticed. She said, 'Look, give me a cigarette, will you? Calm my nerves.'

  Luke found that he was shaking now—incomprehensibly, since it was all over. 'I can't believe he hit you. That bastard ...' he said. He thought about the big hands, which, not so long ago, had been licensed to riot and scrabble all over her. He dropped the cigarettes on to the floor of the car and banged his head a
s he leant down for them.

  'Oh, God. Don't get into all that, Luke. He'd kill you—in about two and a half seconds.'

  He handed her a cigarette with his eyes fixed on the road, jaw clenched. He was offended. He was not that much smaller than Dan—he had let his pectorals go a little, it was true, but he still had good biceps. Dan was simply a beast of a man and probably schizophrenic with steroid abuse. And to think that she had once actually wanted that gorilla's hands on her, in her, she had let him come inside her—and even now he thought he could leave his pawprint across her ribs!

  They said nothing for a few moments as he worked himself into a frenzy of pain and then she leant across, put her hand down his trousers and said softly, 'Come on, let's go back to your place and do what we're good at.'

  Arianne knew how to restore male ego, just as she knew how to destroy it.

  As a final gesture of love and support before Arianne was sent out into the filthy world to scratch and fight for her life, her parents had promised to pay her drama-school fees. Neither of them had actually sent the cheque yet, because there was debate as to whether this was a paternal or maternal responsibility, but Arianne was genuinely talented and the principal allowed her to attend in the meantime.

  She called her teacher to explain why she had not come in. Their relationship sounded peculiar to Luke, but he reassured himself that he knew nothing about drama school and, anyway, he was thrilled by the idea of having access to multicoloured, eccentric characters. Vibrant, artistic people—for dinner parties! He had not had anyone worth flame-grilling lamb for anyway. Now he foresaw a candlelit future in which people came to the golden couple for exquisite dinners. At the end of the evening guests would reluctantly accept their coats and return to colder, darker lives, all too painfully aware that they were neither Luke nor Arianne.

  'Hi, Jon darling,' Arianne said, twisting the phone cord.'I can't make it into class this week because I was nearly killed in a horrific car crash.' Luke watched her take a drag on her cigarette, a sip of coffee while she listened to the histrionic response. 'I know, I know,' she said. 'I'm in a lot of pain. So much pain, Jon.' Lilting sympathy followed. Then she said, 'And I saw God in a dream.'

  Her voice became a musical instrument when she wanted it to. It sang out from the depths of her diaphragm and thrilled the ear. She was an actress and would one day be famous! Luke sighed at the thought of how she would stand centre-stage, receiving bouquets—and then she would run wholeheartedly to him.

  It was true that she was in a lot of pain. It had increased very suddenly. She could not put her weight on the foot at all now—except momentarily, as she walked. In fact, when they had arrived at the outer door of the flat with her things, Luke noticed the terrible limp as if for the first time. He couldn't believe his self-absorption. He suggested he carry her up the stairs to the door. She laughed—it would be ridiculous, she was Jar too heavy, she said. But she agreed none the less. And then she lay back heavily in his arms, like a woman being carried unconscious from a burning building. He took her up to the door with a devastating sense of occasion. Then he ran back down for her bag and her box, and for her heart-, lung- and gut-rending fluffy bunny.

  Imperceptibly this became their habit. Soon he carried her up and down the stairs. Sometimes he lifted her into bed. And when he went back to work the week after, she called down to him as he was opening the outer door and said she needed a few things from the shop. He was already late after she had wanted to make love elaborately while, from the bedside table, his alarm clock nagged and chased them. There was a chemist across the road. He looked at his watch. 'I'll go quickly,' he said. 'Tell me what you need.'

  'Oh, no, look—forget it. I'll cope.' She leant down to rub her poor bad foot. 'They're things I have to choose, Luke. You know, girl's stuff. Cream and things. You don't know what to get.'

  He checked his watch again and then smiled with a sigh, dropping his briefcase on the floor. She giggled as he ran back up the stairs for her, two steps at a time, his arms outstretched like a sportsday daddy.

  That afternoon, he got an email from Lucy.

  From: Lucy, Whittome

  Sent: Monday, April 18th, 2002 13:00:46

  To: Luke, Langford

  Subject: Hello!

  Dear Luke,

  It's been funny not hearing from you. I hope everything's OK. I know you had your big presentation to prepare for on the 17th, so I suppose that's been taking up all your time. Of course, I understand.

  I'm really well. The cold has gone—finally!!! No awful cough to drive you mad any more, you'll be glad to hear. I went home last weekend and Mum and Daddy send their love. Mum gave me three more jars of her jam for you. Your favourite—raspberry. Hope to hear from you—maybe today? I love you. I hope everything's OK. Lxxx

  PS I'm sorry if I was in a bad mood after the cinema last week. I know you were just working and that you did your best to get there on time and you were right it was only a film. I'm just silly sometimes.

  He covered his face. Of course it had not been 'only a film'. It was her hopes and dreams that he was going to ask her to marry him and she had sat alone with them in a cinema on a Friday evening while he emailed and delayed at work. He had been late out of lack of love for her. Why put it any other way? It amounted to the statement 'You are not good enough for me'.

  Things are far simpler than we like to say, he thought. But we always show it.

  Then he wrote back, having decided it would be best to do it immediately. His fingers hit the keys hard:

  From: Luke, Langford
  Sent: Monday, April 18th, 2002 13:25:01

  To: Lucy, Whittome
  Subject: Re: Hello!

  Dear Lucy,

  Yes—things have been frantic at work. I'll give you a call tomorrow. Glad you're feeling better.

  He paused, then wrote: Luce, maybe we could try and meet up. I think we need to talk and regretted it, imagining the shock she would get, reading this at work. He knew her—she boasted to her friends about him. They filled in astrological love-match surveys over their lunch. He thought of the novel under his sink:

  'Well, that's lucky, isn't it?' Gus said. 'Because I've got a plane ticket here. You see, I thought you might like to come with me.'

  That was the ending she dreamt of.

  His finger pressed delete until the shock disappeared. Instead, he said he would call when things were 'calmer' and put Much love, Lx. Maybe she would get the point from the number of kisses, because they always put three.

  Was this a way to break up with your girlfriend? By scaling down enthusiasm, by editing out kisses? He hated himself.

  The truth was, though, he was as broken up from Lucy as he could be. He genuinely found it hard to remember what she looked like. He couldn't reconstruct his sense of her at all—not her smell or the feel of her skin or the sound of her voice. She was part of a muted existence in which nothing had really stood out.

  For a moment, his callousness appalled him, the way he had just packaged up his heart and moved on. But it was, at the very least, reassuring to know that he would never, ever behave like this again. Not now that he had met Arianne.

  In fact, could it not be said, after all, that good had come out of it? he asked himself cautiously. Terrible things happened, yes—and in this case they had happened to Lucy—but you just had to put the past behind you and see that this was the way of the world. Lucy must learn to accept this just like everyone else. He knew this was what he would do in her position and he suspected that it would make him stronger and wiser and so on. All of a sudden he found himself smiling with hope for all three of them—for himself and Arianne, and for Lucy, wherever she was.

  That afternoon, Arianne photo-messaged him a picture of her bare legs on the tangled sheets of his bed. Purple nail varnish on her toes. At the edge of the picture, he could see a bar of chocolate, a packet of cigarettes, a
magazine. This was her existence. He was missing it. He felt a pang of longing so acute it was like being kicked in the stomach by a horse.

  He checked his watch and wondered if he could get more time off, if he could say he was still in pain—somewhere. It would be hard to seem convincing, given he had not planned in advance for this by wincing or limping or massaging his neck. As he sat there thinking, a text arrived:'My fingers just aren't as good. Hope you got the picture...?'

  She was life and the office was mere illusion.

  It was only three o'clock. He picked up his jacket and his coat and left, thinking he might not be missed for a few hours since there were no presentations. He promised himself he would come back: he would work the whole evening.

  Of course, he didn't go back. His secretary, or 'assistant', because it was a non-hierarchical firm, called at six and asked if she should maybe switch off his computer. Thinking it best to give away no sense that he knew he had behaved strangely, he just said, 'Thanks, Jenny. That'll be great. See you tomorrow, then.' He could hear Arianne running them a bath. The steam crept under the bathroom door like smoke as he jogged towards it.

  Walking around with Arianne (she held his arm and limped—they had an unspoken agreement it was only stairs she couldn't manage) was an uncomfortable experience. He had thought he would feel proud and virile, but he was shocked by the ugly behaviour she inspired. She got old-fashioned wolf-whistles from wolves. She got blaring car horns—and his head spun frantically in search of their origin as if he were looking for a sniper. Men in pairs actually named parts of her anatomy to each other as they walked past: they groaned, 'Legs', or 'Tits', and pointed in animal appreciation.