“So Richard was really into bikes, then?” I asked Julie.
“I’m sorry to cause trouble,” slurred Julie.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Do you and Richard still ride?”
“I sold my bike years ago,” she said. “I never rode it any more, wasn’t worth the hassle.”
“Does Richard still ride, then?”
“Sure, Lily, sure. You know he wouldn’t give that up.”
“I’m not Lily,” I said. I was wearing the tight black dress and her red stilettos, which were uncomfortable and made me stand very straight.
She was silent. With her tiny body resting against my shoulder, I went in search of her bedroom. Two doors escaped off the living room. One contained a futon, a collection of shoes – over a hundred pairs – and a small collection of children’s books: Lewis Carroll, The Famous Five, Eloise of the Plaza Hotel. The other bedroom had a quaint four-poster bed covered with colourful scarves. There were ballerina shoes hung on the wall and ballerina memorabilia placed neatly, on lace doilies, over every surface. There was a teddy bear bleeding stuffing from his ear on her bedside table, next to a copy of Aesop’s Fables, a cut-glass tumbler of water and a thermometer. I carefully flopped Julie down amongst the throw pillows and pink silk blankets on the bed, wondering if she’d always been that thin. She was beautiful, though, like an aging doll.
“Who are you?” Julie said. She stared at me and frowned.
“I’m not Lily,” I said. The arches of my feet ached in Lily’s stilettos.
“No,” she said. “No I guess you’re not,” she said. Julie’s bloodshot eyes fluttered closed.
“Did you have an affair with Richard?” I said.
“No,” said Julie. “He loved Lily. It’s such a pity they broke up, they made a great team.”
“What do you mean, broke up?” I said.
“Oh, you know. They got a divorce not long before she died. A month or two, maybe. Not too many people know that I guess. He told me though. He was my friend.”
“How come they broke up?” I said.
“Her affairs, his depression. Money trouble, too, I think. You’re so lovely, though,” Julie purred. “You’re divine. You two should make another go of it; see if you can make it work. He loves you so much.”
“I’m not Lily,” I said again.
“I know you’re not, I know you’re not,” she slurred.
I stepped out from the acidic smell of vodka sweat and restless sleep that was creeping up in Julie’s bedroom with every breath she exhaled. I wondered if what she’d said was true, or just the drugs messing with her head. I looked at the photo of Julie and Richard with their motorcycles, both looking young. I padded over to Julie’s living-room window and leant my hot forehead against the cold glass, then opened the window and breathed the smell of pine needles and night air.
The radio earlier had said that it topped a hundred in the valley that afternoon, but the evening was cool and still with a perfectly black sky shot over by a firefly orgy of street and billboard lights. If it was true they were divorced, I wondered if she’d left Richard for David, and I wondered what I felt about that. Who wrote the letters about umbrellas and love? Did Richard hurt Lily because of her affairs, or perhaps because of their money trouble? I felt very small and perturbed, and for a moment got my mind off Lily by letting myself think about the café. It would be 11:00 a.m. there, and Dad would be in a cloud of heat as chip-fat bubbles burst on the meniscus of grease and strips of potato browned in front of him, or he’d be getting bread out for sandwiches. He’d have hired some kid to take my weekend shifts. If it was a boy, it’ll take him a few weeks to notice that his acne is getting significantly worse and his skin reeks of bacon grease. Dad and the boy probably wouldn’t talk except to grunt over balancing the register at seven every evening, but Dad would give the boy more than his fair share of the tip jar. I tried to stop thinking, but my mind kept going – café, Daphne’s fingernails, Grandma’s swollen ankles, Lily’s love letters, Julie’s toes, then I thought of the little girl falling through the air and smashing on the floor. I opened my eyes with a jolt and tried to blink all my thoughts away, but couldn’t clear my head.
31
One night David and I compared scars, and continued the conversation we’d started in the car outside the Platinum Club a month and a bit ago. First I kissed the scar that split his right eyebrow and one on his cheek under his eye. They were just little indentations; slightly more textured than his skin, but not ice-coloured like my scars.
“Where’s this one from?” I asked, touching his cheek with the tip of my finger, my other hand resting across his torso.
“Bar fight,” he said, turning his head slightly to kiss the scar under my chin near my ear, which was shaped like Italy. “This one?” he asked, touching it.
“A savage game of Red Rover when I was ten,” I smiled.
“This one?” he said, and pointed to a curved Cheshire-cat-smile shape on my shoulder.
“I smashed a window by mistake once,” I said.
“Jesus,” he laughed.
“Yeah,” I blushed and kissed the soft space on David’s hand, between forefinger and thumb. He kissed the raised white globe under my right lip, where I bite down when I’m nervous. I showed him the scar on my bottom from when I was thrown in a skip and metal cut through my jeans, and the slice on my wrist from when I fell on a shard of metal during a scuffle at the football field. I even showed him the four-inch blue knife line inside my thigh, and he kissed it. Then I kissed the snake-shaped scar on his lower back, from falling off a balcony when he was wasted with Sam one night. One or two scars, like one on the side of his forehead, and one on his neck, looked fresher than the others. They’d healed, but they had that shiny, slightly raised look of freshly formed scars.
“What about your limp?” I said.
“The scars seem strange now,” he said to answer, touching his ankle, where there was a scar on his Achilles heel.
“Why?”
“I guess cos for the first time in my life I’m not drunk,” he said. “That’s why everything is so... empty, in my apartment. I got rid of everything that reminded me of alcohol. The scars remind me of alcohol. I think the ankle’s from... walking into a window, something dumb.”
“Do you miss her?” I asked.
“Who?” he said.
“Lily.”
He turned to look at me, but didn’t get angry. We were silent for a while. He touched his forehead.
“I think about her more than I’d like to,” he said. “But I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to have to think about her.”
“You must have loved her a lot,” I said.
“I said I don’t want to have to think about her,” he snapped, sitting up in bed and facing me. “I wish you wouldn’t bring her up. It’s so nice here with you. Then you have to mention some other woman.”
“Did she used to come with you on your drunken weekends, ever, outside LA?” I said to him.
“I’m not talking about this,” he said, and I thought for a moment that he was even going to hit me. My skin lifted, tingling, bracing itself, eager, but he deflated. His fist fell back onto the pillow, and he sunk back into the bed sheets.
“Sorry,” I said, and looked away from his sunken body. We were silent for a while, then he put his hand on mine. From his bed we could see a panorama of rooftops, washing lines and palm trees.
“Tell me a story,” David said.
“What sort?”
“Any. A story. Whatever you want. Tell me how you turned into a half-human, half-dove hybrid? Since you’re no mermaid.”
“My mother took off her dove costume and did it with my father at the back of a theatre,” I said. Then I thought for a moment. “No,” I said. “It happened when I was kidnapped by bandits.”
“Bandits?” he smiled.
“Bandits.”
“How were you kidnapped?” he asked.
“From a bar in the little village
we’re travelling through with... It’s stupidly hot and we’ve been arguing all day... ”
“You and I?”
“No. Not you and I. Just a boy,” I said.
“What are you and this boy arguing about?”
“Mostly about how he left the top off the toothpaste and now all our clothes smell minty.”
David smiled.
“One cut can unravel a jumper,” he said.
“We’re drinking Coca Cola in a local bar, which is empty apart from a crouched old man, a barman with skin like dehydrated beef, and a tiny television set showing Olympic reruns of 100-metre sprinters. All the doors and windows are open, but the air is heavy and giving me a headache. All the humidity from months of travelling has finally soaked through my skull. My brain is damp laundry, mildewed wood, or week-old bikini bottoms found screwed up in some forgotten crevice of a suitcase. I excuse myself, the boyfriend has one eye on the sports channel anyway... ”
“Bastard,” David added.
“And I step outside onto a little dirt courtyard behind the bar.”
“What country are you in?” David said.
I shrug.
“It’s a country in my imagination.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, outside the bar there’s a man smoking a cigarette. He glares at me and I look away, over at the tips of the trees reaching out into the jungle. The man offers me a cigarette, and I hesitate, but he seems nonchalant and I’d like to inhale something, so I take it. He lights it for me, and as I kiss the filter to my mouth there’s a look in his eye, an unpleasant look. It’s a split second, but I know from the look in his eyes that everything in my life is about to change. The smoke rolls down my throat, and it suddenly feels like I’ve swallowed a bag of marbles and can’t breathe. I turn away from him.”
“A poison cigarette?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Shhh,” I replied. “The next thing I know, I’m vomiting on myself and trying to stand up while three men help me out from the boot of an oversized car.”
“You’ve jumped in time.”
“I passed out. I don’t know where I am and I pass out again. When I wake up for the second time I’m on a small white bed in a small white room with no windows.”
“Who is the boyfriend?” David asked.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“If it’s not me, who is it?”
“He’s no one. He has blue eyes and a slightly frizzy, dusty brown ponytail. Even when we’re sitting in the bar, he’s already disappearing in my mind. I mean, I’m already forgetting who he is before we’ve even broken up, and he’s in my imagination. Do you know what I mean?”
“Your imagination is very detailed.”
“Are you jealous of a fictional character I just made up?”
“Perhaps you’ll meet him for ‘real’ one day, Mr Pony Tail. He sounds like an idiot, but perhaps one day you’ll meet him in a bar, or Whole Foods or something, and recognize him, recognize him as a future memory. Or he’ll recognize you.”
“Shall we kill him off right now? Just to make sure he doesn’t turn up in the vegetable section of Whole Foods and want to take my digits.”
“Sure.”
“Fine,” I smiled. “After I smoke the drugged cigarette and am folded into the boot of the car, a crazed jungle pirate with solid gold teeth robs the bar and guns down everyone inside it. It’s a completely unrelated and very unfortunate incident. The pirate kills the crouched old man, the barman and my fictional boyfriend, all for a small television and the equivalent of twelve dollars and fifty cents cash.”
“They assume you met the same fate, so nobody looks for you.”
“Nobody would look for me anyway.”
“Of course they would,” David said. “I would.”
“As an odd point of interest,” I replied, ignoring him, “although slightly off the subject, the pirate slept with his wife that night and they conceived a kid, who twenty years from now will end up winning a bronze Olympic medal in the 100 metres.”
“Huh. But back to the bandits.”
“I wake up in a dirty bed that smells a little bit like piss and mildew. My body is dirtier than it was when I passed out. There are ecosystems of jungle dirt in the frills of my belly button, and dried sweat clinging to the creases of skin at my armpits. My short blond hair is a helmet of grease and dirt, at the same time greasy and brittle to the touch. My skin is a shade darker than it was when I passed out.”
“You’re turning me on,” David said.
“The words ‘greasy and brittle’ turn you on?”
“No,” he laughed.
“Dirty?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a cliché,” I said.
“All men are clichés,” he said, and kissed me.
32
David and I walked back from one of his favoured 24-hour Thai restaurants. It was around midnight, and the air was still, smelling like pollution and burning. On a balcony somewhere above our heads there was a baby screaming, and in the distance a car engine revved. There was some music from a nearby door, and cars going by on the main road. “Euphonious,” I thought to myself. We turned onto David’s block, and immediately saw a skinny coyote outside David’s gate, its body half-flooded by a street lamp and half in darkness. The coyote was in the middle of an almighty yawn when he saw us. He froze in mid-movement with his strong back arched, one knobbly grey paw stretched out in front of its body. He held himself still for a minute, his whiskers quivering in the lamplight and his ears pricked back. His tail was chopped off halfway, so it was more like a stump, but that was the only clumsy thing about the creature. After a drawn-out moment he drew his chest upwards with an inaudible sigh and stepped backwards out of the lamplight. I thought of a ballet dancer stepping out of the spotlight, or a reluctantly retreating thief in a pantomime.
“We interrupted his yawning,” said David quietly, neither of us moving a muscle, and we heard bushes rustle as the coyote disappeared back into the undergrowth. The coyotes had been smoked out of the hills by the fires, and were stalking rubbish bins like common foxes.
“In order of preference,” said David, “orgasms, ice cream or yawns? What do you think?”
“It’s an impossible question,” I smiled at him, but then at that same moment I felt like someone was watching me. I turned away from David’s smile and, sure enough, at the end of the road I saw the thug-faced man with the gold nose stud and schoolboy haircut. I stepped forwards, and he was gone before I even blinked.
“Hey!” I shouted after the man. “Hey!”
“What’s wrong?” said David, shocked by the sudden outburst and looking around the empty streets. “Shh... ”
“Did you see that Mexican guy?”
“Who?” he said, following my finger pointing towards the end of the road.
“That guy who just turned the corner? It was the guy who stole my rucksack.”
“Really?” David said, not believing me.
“Yes,” I said. We both hurried to the end of the road, in the direction I thought he’d gone. Of course, we couldn’t see the man anywhere. We could see the United Methodist Church on the corner, which looked like a factory building. We could see smoke from fires in the hills and a bunch of men at the bus stop, but not the one who stole my rucksack. There were people I might have mistaken for him, but I didn’t say that to David. I bit my lip.
“Maybe I imagined it,” I said, looking around.
“Maybe it’s just that you’re a horrible racist and all people with different skin colours look identical to you?” he smiled.
“I’m not a racist,” I said. “I saw him.”
“Racist,” David nodded, kidding. We stared around us, and then suddenly David became serious. He glanced sideways at me, and I turned towards him. “Sometimes I think you don’t always tell me the truth,” he said. “You can be very secretive.”
“I’m not secretive,” I said, and when he faced me I put my arm
s up over his shoulders. I had to stand on tiptoe to inhale him, along with the smell of sap in the trees and late-night air.
“I was driving around the other day and I saw you go into that hostel you stayed at for a while. Why’d you still go there?”
“I have mates there,” I said, without skipping a beat. “I made friends with the manager while I was staying there. Her name’s Vanessa. Were you spying on me?”
“You’re not keeping her clothes there?” he said. “The suitcase?”
“I said I got rid of them, didn’t I?” my heart sped up.
“Yeah,” he said, and I bounced up to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. He bent down to kiss me properly.
Later that night, when neither of us could sleep, David said: “You never told me the rest of your story, after you woke up covered in dirt.”
It was the hottest night of the year, and the fires were spreading, causing the air to taste thick and feel close. We’d kicked off the sheets, and both our skins were sticky inside all the sludgy air. We had two fans going, clacking away in the silence. I thought for a moment, turning stories over in my head.
“So I’m covered in dirt,” I said, “and groggy from the drugs they gave me in the cigarette. I can smell something funny in the air, like blood and mud.”
“Ominous.”
“And I can hear clucking.”
“Clucking?” he laughed.
The Pink Hotel Page 17
