S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  So I’m where, now? Oh yes. At the door. At the door, yes, and my knuckles are raised and eager to make the connection. And then I go chilly … I don’t mean I suddenly felt anything like windy (because I suppose I was that all along). No, it was just like a draught – a quick and icy, well … chill, it was a chill, that had come from nowhere and wrapped me up. What if – what if I’m about to be a walk-on in entirely the wrong … a different film? Hey? I mean – it’s got to be addressed, this: dignity is at stake here, you know – and mine is as frail as a spat-upon tissue. So what if I’m all kitted out as the marshal in a Western, and I barge on through these swing saloon doors and find myself, I don’t know – on the set of Brief Encounter (hissing steam and big regret)? What I’m meaning is … oh look, it’s not as if I thought that behind that door there would not be just some sweet and maybe coked-up and toothy American chick hellbent on, Jesus – whatever fun I can possibly give her – but instead some bloody-lipped pick-wielding maniac: no. It’s not windy, I was feeling – but maybe: stupid, it could have been. Yeh – it could, it could: it could easily have been that. That would explain the chill factor earlier – I always feel cold whenever (quite often) I stand on the threshold of doing or saying or just being something stupid, and horribly well aware that there can, by my own warped reasoning, be no turning back. In a word … what if she hadn’t meant it, hm? What if she’d just said it? Or what if she had, OK, meant it – meant it, anyway, to some or other degree at the time she said it, but now, well, the moment has passed? Or what if yes, she meant it – but had almost instantly completely forgotten having said a single word? So that not only was she not, now, expecting me but was not even on the other side of this cabin door at all, but was off and frisky elsewhere, with someone else entirely? And the worst, the worst … what if she had said it to me, as she did, with the eye-flashing cockiness of one so young and cool, but was all the while and deep inside her – laughing her head off at this old and dumb and half-cut Englishman who really did seem to believe that I could actually view him as anything but the, like, most saddo and gross-out joke? Well yes. What then? So suddenly chilled is what I was feeling. And then I knocked the knock. And this was the first thing Suki said to me as she (immediately) opened the door:

  ‘You’re late. David, you’re late. I wondered if you’d come.’

  Yeah well, thought David – sorry: I’ve been standing outside here for quite a while, just squeezing in a very quick coronary. You know what, though – she looks, I don’t know (can’t be, can she?) really pleased to see me! So OK, then: step over the little doorstep thing, that’s the first, uh – step, and let’s just see what happens next. (God, though – she looks so young, Suki – reminds me in a way of … but no, let’s maybe not go down that route, hey? Jesus. I wonder why I’m here.)

  ‘I didn’t think you’d, like – really want a cocktail, so I got none. Come sit with me, David.’

  And David did that – quite meekly, and despite the chasm of decades between them, for all the world as if here was the kick-off to an interview for some or other very menial position (and would he get it or would he not?). And then to his quite winded and considerable relief, Suki put up a hand and got this out quite quickly:

  ‘David – before you say anything – ’

  Because there was nothing, absolutely, he honestly felt he could have – not just then.

  ‘– I gotta, like, come clean? Kay? Just so’s there’s no kinda misunderstanding, here. What I’m real into, yeh is – experimentation?’

  David nodded. Uh-huh. What, I wonder, can this mean? We’re about to start downing a selection of chemicals, are we? (Because with these kids, you never do really know.)

  ‘See – I’m young, right? And I guess I’m like real eager to know all kindsa stuff. I’m used to guys hitting on me all the time, OK? And this trip, sure – one or two guys, fine: neat. But I wanna know all of it, David. Like today? I got it on with a girl … does that shock you?’

  ‘No …’ said David slowly. ‘Doesn’t shock me.’ (Bloody pain I missed it, though.)

  ‘And now, David – hey, c’mere. Let’s, like, lie down here, huh? Now, David – I know you’re attracted to me, right?’

  ‘Um. Right.’

  ‘OK. That’s cool. But it’s gotta be totally the way I want it. Kay?’

  And half of David, now, was very much inclined to leave, if you want the truth (this was becoming, he felt, faintly ridiculous: he had been cast as a summoned gadget, complete with fitted plug). But as he was repeatedly nicked by the flying flash from her deep blue eyes and set to imagining the limbs and the warmth of them beneath that whatever it was thing she was more or less wearing – just a huge T-shirt is all it looked like – well then, sweet child, I am thinking it can be any which way you say but loose (because however you cut it, tight is always favourite). He lay beside her on just the part of the bed she had kept on patting.

  ‘Put your arm around me, David. See – what I’m gonna do now – you listening? Yeah? What I’m gonna do is kinda curl myself up, OK? Into a ball? And you, David, you cherish me. OK? All you gotta do is cherish me. That’s what I want.’

  So his arm was around her shoulders, and Suki was making like a hedgehog at the threatening approach of rude humanity, and David was doing his level best (give the man his due) to summon up any recall at all that would ease him down this particular avenue: Now let me see – cherishing, yes – give me anything you’ve got on how I should cherish, will you, because there’s a touch of hurry up on this one, and frankly I’m just a bit rusty.

  The radiating heat of her body was getting through to him now, though; that, and the sweet cold smell of her hair which coated his chin, even as he blew at it. One of her hands, now, had reached up for the side of his face, and the cool insistence of her fingers – he felt them probing the stubble just under his jaw – rasping it up one way, smoothing it down the other. David wondered whether sliding his own hand down and gently cupping, prior to getting a damn good hold of, one and then both of her really very jutting if tidy young breasts might strictly fall under the banner of cherishing – but either way, now the idea had taken some sort of root, it lost no time in spreading all through him like a molten compulsion and so it just had to be tried – and I’m doing that now, tentative and very gingerly, and it seems OK (think I heard a small and very childlike exhalation) so I think it’s all right to be a bit more insistent on that front – and yes, sure enough, he felt her hand now, softly on his thigh, and moving so slightly. Her voice came out muffled from wherever deep down it was snuggled, but the words were Stroke, Stroke – it’s cool when we stroke one another, David. Caress me, yes? Make me be cute and feel like I’m cherished …

  And a bolt went right through him. This was like at school, in the sixth form: there were girls in the sixth form, but we were always watched – they were always watching like hawks. You had to find darkish and only ever semi-secret places: the back row in the lecture hall, the damp and faintly fetid changing room while fools were playing sport – the library, in the alcove, during bogus and cobbled-up late-night study jags. And in these places, one’s mad and frightened hands would roam – true exploration, for each and every find was a real discovery. My fingers wormed their way in and out and around, and hot breaths were felt and knocked out of me. The pressure of other hands on parts of me deadened by familiarity, and now so hot they could be alight – and I was scared by how fantastically engorged. Such mutuality would make us both throb: so much of our longing desperate to merge, but squirming instead with a wanton urgency as clothes were tugged at with panted-out impatience and our very soul and guts were kneaded and urged on pitilessly into such quivering and throat-stopping convulsions of something too overwhelming and so like big pain that pleasure would have to wait until it could linger at the moment of startled subsidence. The final sigh hung around, like perfume.

  And always, when David gave himself up to thoughts of the purest sex, he thought of that: the kick of snatch
ed-at twilight touches. He didn’t now know that Suki was gasping until the bouts of his own had passed away. And as he shuddered impossibly and an aching delight made him tense and then fabulously useless, Suki had moaned so low and yet thrillingly, as if from deep sleep … Oh Daddy, darling: just cherish me, won’t you! And a bolt went right through me: shut my eyes and held her so tight, so tight – and still she clung and scrambled for me to hug her even closer. Later, we fed one another lobster and champagne. I drifted into sleep. And this, then, is our bedtime story.

  *

  And now, as I wind up another and quite alternative fable, I smile at Dwight and take a smug and manly, quite proud swig of Bourbon. And Dwight is alight – just take one look at him. The deep and fleshier parts of his face and bulging throat – usually crimson and dryish – are now quite purple with a could-be healthy (doubt it) sheen. His lips are wet, too: might be Bourbon, might be drool – most likely a late-night bar blend of both of those, with maybe spittle too.

  ‘Hot damn!’ he let loose, after a suitably awed and respectful silence had risen like a cloud, and gently floated back to earth. ‘You done mounted that hot little pussy how many times, you dang mustang?’

  David shrugged. ‘Told you. Lost count. Let’s have another one – yes, Dwight? Before the wives are upon us.’

  But Dwight still wallowed in the ooze of his daze.

  ‘Hot damn…! Hot damn …!’ And then he was thoughtful: ‘Hey – square with me now, Dave. You mind one time you said this little chick might be persuaded to, uh – put out elsewhere? This hold good?’

  And that made David think. And what he thought was:

  ‘No. I don’t think so, now – no, Dwight. Sorry.’

  And Dwight was eyeing him.

  ‘You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you David? I mean – we’re buddies, right?’

  ‘Oh yeh – course, Dwight: course. I just … well, now I, um – know her a little bit better, yes? I just don’t think she’s that kind of girl. That’s all.’

  Dwight grunted. ‘Sure sounded like that kinda girl … What’s her name, anyways? This horny little cat.’

  ‘Her name? oh yeah – you’ll love her name, Dwight. It’s so damn sexy! She’s called … oh Christ, Dwight – I think that’s –!’

  ‘What? What’s bugging you? What is it, Dave?’

  And David’s eyes were narrowed into dread as he surveyed the distance. Slowly, the muscles in his face eased back into no more than their customary orange alert.

  ‘It’s OK … sorry, Dwight: it’s OK. I just thought I saw Nicole, there, that’s all. Wasn’t her – someone else. Not really quite ready for her, not yet. You get that, do you? With Charlene?’

  ‘Jeez. All the fuckin’ time. Mostly can’t stand the sighta her, you want the plain truth here, David.’

  David nodded. ‘So why do we stay with them? Mm? I mean – it’s surely not the sex any more. Is it …?’

  ‘Kidding me. Don’t knows I’d even find it iffin I was looking.’

  ‘Yeh. It’s a bit like that with me.’

  And Dwight is saying some other damn stuff, now, but I honestly can’t be listening to that because I’m suddenly all full of these things that I’ve maybe been stamping down hard on for years and years and years. Could be why I’m so bloody stressed out. And that doctor of mine – he keeps on asking me, silly old sod, what can be causing all this … what? Hyper-something, he says. Try not to bring your work home with you, he goes. Right, I say. Which is why for over a year I never left the office till way after ten, sometimes later. Then I was so strung out I lay awake all night, just cringing away from the morning. Ah yes, he said when I told him that: you have built up a sleep debt, you see. And like any other debt (and this was hardly a brilliant route to be taking, was it? Reminding me of all my other bloody debts: Christ, if he’d taken my blood pressure at the time, the fucking machine would’ve blown into pieces) … yes, like any other debt, he was going, it has to be serviced: try to pay off a little every night. Yes, I said: yes fine, I’ll do that. I reckon we’ll be all square in about a hundred and thirty years time – call you then, will I? Let you know how I’m getting on?

  No no – the way I reckon it (and suddenly, as I say, it’s all over me, this) the reason I am the way I am is because I’m just so fucking miserable. Simple as that. I mean, look – Nicole: she despises me, doesn’t she? It’s as clear as day. And so does Rollo. Once I told him – Look, Rollo, I said: it’s no good always sneering. I’m your father – I’m supposed to be a role model for you, here. Yeh? he goes: yeh? Well if you’re a role model, Dad, then this is one play I just don’t want a part in. Mm – very nice, isn’t it? Your one and only son. Marianne? Well yes – she’s my own little girl, and she loves me, I know she does … but it’s uphill work for her, isn’t it? Poor kid. I mean – I don’t give her much to go on, do I? She’s always in a position of having to defend me against Rollo and her mother and often, well – I’m just so indefensible. So what I mean is – get out: why not? I mean – who’s going to suffer? No one. And who will gain, with me out of the way? Well – everybody, conceivably. But failing everybody – me. Yeh me. And that’s got to be important too, hasn’t it? It’s not just other people? And OK – say I go: where do I go? Hm? Well yes – up till now, there has only been one alternative: Trish. And the trouble with Trish is, she wants me so badly – I sometimes think she’d go to any lengths, Trish – and of course that frightens me to death, doesn’t it? The thought – just the thought, it suffocates me utterly. Sex, of course (whatever she says), is good. Well sex, of course – is all, let’s face it. She loves it, lately, when she, you know – suckles me: she likes that a lot. (Bloody hell. I don’t quite know what’s happened to sex, just lately: seems like we’re all back to playing at Mummys and Daddys …)

  ‘You know what someone told me one time, Dave?’

  And David was back in the bar, with Dwight. Took advantage of these few waking moments to get in another order for drink.

  ‘What’s that, Dwight?’

  ‘Guy says to me – whatever he got, a man ain’t finished till he got a woman right by him for ever and ever. And you know what I told him?’

  ‘What did you tell him, Dwight?’

  Dwight wagged his head, and raised up soulful eyes to David.

  ‘I told him you’re right, mister. When he got a woman right by him for ever and ever – it’s then he’s fuckin’ finished.’

  David widened his mouth into silent mirth, as his shoulders jogged along with the thing. But now I’m thinking this: one word Suki used has stayed with me since. She asked me at some point – not long before I left, she said to me Hey, David – how are you rinsing it? Well – didn’t know what she was talking about, naturally enough, so I just stumbled out lamely some sort of idiocy or other … but it’s just that word, you know? Rinsing. Isn’t it fresh? Why don’t I just pull out all the tangles and matting and slunge away all of the deep-down grime and stand there clean and new and dripping and rinsed? New York City. I am, right now, not much more than a couple of days away. New York is famous for new beginnings, isn’t it? They ask no questions there – and anyone can be anybody. And Suki, you know – she lives in New York. She was telling me. And Dwight – didn’t he say? How many seasons ago? That he could maybe help me out? Well why don’t I, then? Because look – Dwight’s my buddy – and back in London, I don’t really have any of those (just a few people I work against and fall over with). So I could be in the most exciting city in the world with not just Dwight but … is this too crazy? Suki. (No come on – don’t laugh. Maybe I could get really good at cherishing her – and who knows? Could be she even comes to not too much mind about that side of things?) Which somehow put into his head the word ‘suckling’ again. And then he thought of breasts. And so he whistled this up:

  ‘You know what, Dwight? You know why it is I think I like breasts so much?’

  Dwight chortled. ‘On accounta they’re there?’

  ‘Wel
l yes – yes, there is that side of it, mm. But mainly, I’m just thinking – could it be this? Because I was bottle-fed.’

  Dwight blinked into David’s impassive face.

  ‘As a baby,’ he clarified.

  And then he looked down and deep into the dark and tawny swirls of his latest jigger of Jack.

  ‘Well,’ he concluded, half suppressing a quasi-rueful bit drunk snort, ‘still am, I suppose, in one way. Really.’

  *

  Nicole was still just staring down at the green baize roulette table, her face set as if by plaster into this new and seemingly unbendable expression; it was as if a good many of the bones there had been hurriedly set upon by a band of brigands and efficiently broken and then with coolness even more hastily reset into this stark and alien configuration: her cheeks were hoisting her lips well clear of her teeth, and it seemed as if her eyelids would never close again. It appeared as if Nicole had been strung out to dry on a clothes line, and was suspended tautly and maybe forever between the twin poles of horror and fascination. You see, what it was … was that she simply could not understand it – but nor could she cease attempting to crack this; a repulsion was heading her off, but still she ducked it and cunningly wormed her way back in: she could not let it alone.