by Mat Johnson
‘I meant the flat. There’s so much room, isn’t there? You should really get some more furniture, right? Some carpets and such. Make a home. It could be really nice, once you get the proper things together. Then you could let a room out or something. It’s too big for one person.’ Fionna took the seat on the futon I offered to her. I turned on my clock radio hoping for something romantic; it was pathetic, that tinny, cheap, monotone sound. I slapped it off again and tried to smile.
‘Have you thought of painting any of the rooms something besides white?’ Fionna asked.
‘I like the white walls, actually. It makes me feel kind of free, for some reason. No stimuli. It’s like the color of silence. It’s an old place: a bit more than a hundred years, I think. You should see what they used to paint the place. In some rooms, I’ve actually chipped at the paint a bit, with a knife, all the way down to the wood, to see all the layers the walls were covered in before. You know this room was actually pink once,’ I said, motioning around. ‘And light blue, too.’ What the hell was that? I was making things up and I still sounded like an idiot.
Fionna looked around. Her leg hung out of her dress; you could see the light cut a perfect line down whatever angle of it was closest to you. Her toes, poking out the front of her sandals, were long and beige on the bottom, as if she’d been walking through sweet pancake batter. On one toe was a golden ring, a strip of solid metal seizing a strip of delicate skin. If I took her foot in my hand and pulled that ring off slowly, she would be more naked than the mere lack of clothes could ever provide.
‘Do you like it?’ Fionna asked. ‘It’s very expensive. I got it in the town of my father. In Nigeria. I could probably sell it here for enough for a car, if I wanted one.’ Keep talking. As long as we’re talking I won’t try to kiss you, and then things won’t go wrong. There won’t be that moment when you say ‘Please, no,’ and then that awkward time after I apologize when we’re both sitting here, trying to act out the scene that mirrors this perfect time before anything stupid was done.
‘I’ve always wanted to go to Africa. I actually got David to put some of my money aside, a bit each check, into a savings account, and that’s the big thing I was planning. Fly down into Egypt, go into Côte d’Ivoire, then go by land the rest of the way into West Africa. Do you go back there a lot?’
‘Sometimes. I go at Christmas sometimes, to see them. Christmas, there’s parties, things to do. Our house, where I was born, is very big, very old. You would like it. It was the magistrate’s, when it was still a colony. Tall ceilings, and so much wood. My whole family lives there. Maybe you could visit. We could have a good time there. I want to go to America someday.’
‘No, you don’t.’
Fionna fell asleep on the futon, halfway through an Alec Guinness flick on BBC 2. Awake, I stared at her, petrified that if I fell asleep I would succumb to flatulence, or wake up with a viscous pool of my warm drool coating us both. So I just kept looking, scared she would wake up and catch me and then it would really be over. This wasn’t like with Alex; it could not be as simple as reaching out to another sibling of solitude. Fionna was of another caste, the one stories were told about and pictures were taken of, so far above my own I was surprised she found me visible. I kept looking at her closed lids as the balls swam joyously beneath them. My ear resting on the mattress edge, listening to her breath.
Saturday, a lack of blinds combined with an eastern exposure meant that, as usual, I woke up at dawn blinded and sweating. Scared that she would awake and then leave me, I got dressed and went down to the supermarket to get some food, cook a breakfast so big that she couldn’t move.
At Sainsbury’s I resisted the urge to stand gawking at the incomprehensibly large selection of baked beans and pork products by jogging through the aisles, grabbing at staples. Back at my front door, I became sure Fionna had already vanished, that inside was a goodbye note with a smiley face but no phone number, but upstairs she was still lying there, pulling on her top sheet with the blind gluttony of the sleeping. Back down in the kitchen, I cooked in careful silence: shoes off, movements slow and studied, I even turned down the heat on the potatoes when the grease started popping too loud. When I finished, I could hear her above me. A repetitive, scratching sound. Probably clawing her way out the living room window. But when I climbed the steps, the sound was coming from the bathroom. Fionna was in the tub. Crouched down on her knees, working on something. Her back to me, I saw her bare legs. The right ankle was so bloated it seemed to belong to another, much larger person.
‘You don’t clean the bath very often, do you? How can you take a bath in this?’ Pushing all her weight into the brush in her hand, scratching at the stain I had confused for permanent.
‘I take showers,’ I offered, pointing at the hose that she’d disconnected from the nozzle.
‘Well, I prefer baths,’ Fionna said, and kept scrubbing. Taking away not just the dirt but the discoloration that hung beneath it. Elbow jerking frantically, purposeful, as if she never wanted to see it again.
Saturday night turned out to be Fionna’s club night. Iceni, below Piccadilly: all jungle, free cocktails for the best dancers, ladies free before eleven, men a tenner at the door. I’d managed to keep her around all day (you want some lunch, a nap, have you seen this video, wow it’s time for dinner) so I wasn’t about to lose her to my hatred of nightclubs. Once her ankle was wrapped, I carried her on my back down to the mini-cab, and then, in the West End, through the streets and into the club to a table full of waving, pointedly attractive women the same size as herself. ‘My American’ was how I was introduced, to which the response was ‘Oh, right!’ with smiles and ungripping handshakes.
Everywhere fags smoldering, fags burnt out, snubbed, fags crushed and left to die at the bottoms of dark bottles. Bright fags with wet lipstick stains perpetually kissing their butts. And for all of the hunting for unspent packs and elaborate lighting rituals (which usually commenced as soon as a new man stopped by to pay his respects to their grouping), I seemed to be the only one who was actually smoking, who was actually pulling the dark cloud into me and letting it spill back, warming my nostrils and shielding me from this room. It was the perfect evening because this was the perfect arena for me to go David-less out into the world: concealed under an unyielding blanket of sound, obscured by a calculated mix of darkness and random, off-color lights. Snug within the mist of tobacco, sips of my pint-cured bursts of self-consciousness. Saved by music so loud that it made my social deficiencies irrelevant. I was actually succeeding. Everyone seemed very pleased with my presence, introducing me to strangers for no apparent reason. The other ladies bent forward to me with occasional questions or comments. Somehow they’d been given the impression I was from New York, so I endorsed this misconception with several unprovable lies that we would both forget the next morning. Fionna held tightly on to my arm as if we were lovers. And then, just when her hand was getting warm, an intro to a song came on that made everybody at the table’s eyes inflate as they reached out to clasp one another’s hands.
In the seconds it took for the beat to kick in, Fi’s friends were gone, off to dancing. Foreplay was over. Fionna released my arm. Everyone was screaming on the floor, hands in the air, bouncing as it there was cash on the ceiling. I stood up to watch. Look at them, bumping, shaking, jerk, jounce. Fionna pulled herself up from her seat by grabbing my leg. Her head bobbed with them. On the floor, slightly below us, the crowd was spreading. These friends of hers could dance, and everyone in the room knew it. No partners: a flock of individuals, simultaneous soloists performing variations on the same work. The crowd grew still because watching them dance was more enjoyable than doing it themselves. I looked down at Fi to compliment them but her head had stopped nodding.
‘Lift me.’
Thank the Lord – time to leave. Riding this mood and with a little drink to blame any embarrassments on, I could make my move in the cab home. I grabbed Fi into my arms and started heading for the exit.
‘Where are you going?’
Fionna pointed to a wall. ‘Over there,’ she said, her finger pointing towards the dance floor, that place everyone else in the room was staring at. I walked. Someone brushing past with two drink-filled hands banged Fionna’s out-sticking foot and Fi screamed demonstratively, digging her nails into my arm as the guy cursed his spillage and kept going. ‘There. Over there.’ I was directed to a high table covered with flyers. ‘On top,’ I placed her rear at the table’s edge. ‘No, on top.’ I lifted her higher till she had put her good foot down and was standing upon it, where everyone could see her. Immediately, knee bent and bad ankle behind her, arms reaching out to the air for balance, Fionna started dancing. ‘Chris, come on, come up and dance with me. No, come on, climb up. Now.’
‘I can’t.’ I offered a grin as I yelled back to her. I really couldn’t.
‘Why?’ Because if I got up there they would boo or laugh or throw rocks at my head. Because I wasn’t made for the pedestal, I was unsuitable for display. No crowd would ever accept Chris Jones held up above them. Philly had already taught me that, and who knew me longer than it? Definitely not the graceful Fionna, who reached out to tug my hand while still doing her one-foot shuffle. I grasped hers just so she wouldn’t stumble.
‘I’ll dance with you down here, so if you fall I can catch you,’ I told her, and she accepted that evasion, released me of the obligation of humiliating myself.
Look at the way she moves and imagine what she could do with two feet beneath her. Reluctantly fulfilling my promise, I began bobbing awkwardly below her, forwarding racial harmony by dispelling stereotypes of black grace with every pathetic jerk. But then the crowd took even that responsibility away from me. All around me, bodies stilling as they took her in. Little woman up above them moving like there was nothing you could put on her that she couldn’t just shake off, radiating life so bright it might even burn your troubles too. Whatever made us alive, whatever it was that made us more than functionally bags of blood, she had it and she was showing it to the room. A sliver of God vibrating there before us. And I knew everyone could see her the way I did because they were all trying to get a better glimpse, pushing me out of the way to do so. Knowing instinctively that I shouldn’t even be there to witness this event, the crowd expelled me, shoved me shoulder by shoulder back to the dance floor, now emptied. Fionna kept going; I could make out from over their heads. I don’t know if she knew I wasn’t there anymore, but I knew she knew the crowd was. That they were yelling for more and she was feeding them.
I went back to the table we’d been sitting at, picked up a drink I was pretty sure was mine. The other seats were deserted, so I commandeered a dark pocket in the corner, against the wall. For the remaining hours, I sat and played shepherd to the jackets and lighters the dancers left behind. The club made snakebites and the waitress didn’t care how many I ordered, as long as she could keep the change from the tenner each time. So by the time the music ended and the only sound was my ears buzzing, I felt prepared for the solitary night bus home. But, as I struggled to get up again, there was Fionna, hopping back from the light to greet me, tugging on my hand once more.
‘Why you come back for me?’ I managed.
‘Because we need each other.’ Fionna giggled, hugging my waist tightly (or was she keeping a drunken man from falling down?). Propping me against a pillar and hopping back off again to call us a mini-cab out of there. Having the bouncer help me out to the car. Waking me up in Brixton by giving a pinch to my cheek and delivering the words ‘Christopher, we’re home.’
Sunday, my day-after embarrassment evaporated when Fionna walked into my bedroom, sheet wrapped around her, and said, ‘Chris, I have a bag of clothes already packed at my last bedsit that I’ve been meaning to retrieve. Maybe you could pick that up for me?’ Immediately, fueled by hope, I was on the tube to Hornchurch, riding all the way out to the East London address she’d given me. The trip took as long as my last flight to Amsterdam, regardless of how close it looked on the Underground map. Maybe, if it was a large bag, she might stay the whole week.
The landlord was a big woman and a cop, dressed in a uniform when I got there. Her jacket was off and I could see her bra hugging her fiercely underneath the white shirt, her back looking as if it needed to be scratched. Smiling, I said I was here to pick up a bag for Fionna.
‘Well, I’m sure you are, but first, let’s see the money. Mind you, I told her that from before.’ There was a cashpoint a mile back by the tube station, so it didn’t take me long to gather up the £180. When I got back the lady was standing at the door behind six suitcases, big enough to hide bodies and heavy enough to make me believe they did. I took a cab back to Brixton, paying the driver nearly forty quid for the ride. From the car I walked to my door with three cases in each hand, letting the handles try to break my bones as the weight hammered my legs with each step.
At my front door, the odors – fried onions, sausage, hot pepper, and olive oil – all coming from my property. Inside, I stood at the kitchen door, luggage still in hand, looking at the place settings Fi had laid out on my table. ‘Try this.’ Grinning, she came towards me, one hand holding a spoon and the other guarding underneath it. She was wearing one of my T-shirts as if it was a dress; she’d even found one of my ties was a good belt for the outfit. My hands still caught inside handles, Fionna put the spoon’s tip in my mouth and lifted it up so it could pour in. It was some kind of chili, I could taste the salt and the crushed tomatoes. When she pulled the spoon away, excess sauce dropped onto my bottom lip, sliding down to my chin. ‘Sorry,’ Fionna told me, and she reached forward and grabbed a dick that was already hard for her, pulling me down to her eye level. Slowly, with the end of her tongue, Fionna retraced the drip’s path along my chin up to my bottom lip. When she reached it, Fi surrounded mine with both of her own, catching me in her teeth and sucking my flesh clean again. Oh, to put my hands on her, to hold her to me as hard as she was now biting, but at my sides my swollen hands were now stuck in the luggage handles, which made things even more difficult when Fionna started pulling me down to the linoleum. Her teeth released, and I wasted precious time trying to maintain contact with those lips before I realized that she really wanted my face to drift away.
‘Talk to me,’ she demanded, and my words began pouring confessions of attraction, instant love and des—
‘No. Talk to me black,’ African woman said to me, and neither one of us thought she meant Swahili, Yoruba, or Twi. Black. And not the black I coveted, not the one I was walking to. The other one. That was her price, the cost of this fantasy. Lady, do you know what you ask of me? Do you know what this payment says about my desire? Take it. So I gave that to her: released the ownership of my tongue to the sound it had been meant for. Oh, and wasn’t that sound happy to be free again, eliminating prepositions and conjunctions with its loose grammar and curving my sentences into its drawl? Reveling in its parole and scheming for permanent freedom? Give ear to me, Fionna. Hear the voice of the life I want to smother. Listen to what the niggers on the corner have to say to you. Her fingers traced the moving lips that spoke to her until those same hands went to my neck and pushed my face lower, down to a place I wouldn’t assume clearance. Lips to lips once more. ‘Keep talking,’ Fionna demanded as my tongue took on additional duties.
My hands still stuck in suitcase handles, my arms outstretched above me like a gull in flight, I continued to rap my ghetto garble. As Fionna’s moaning grew, I spoke louder. Wet words wandered within her. Fionna’s fingers slipped to the back of my head and stayed there.
Days
Fionna moving into my life was an easy thing because the space was already there for her. My days became Fi’s hand lightly shaking my shoulder hours past dawn, my own name whispered along the slope of my ear from her tongue. I rose, dressed, cut through Brockwell Park and listened to my own feet moving, the clack of brown soles on a black asphalt path amid rolling mint hills, mums with arms and legs crossed
on benches smoking Silk Cuts and watching children in primary colored clothes hang from metal bars proportioned to their size. Joggers with pink faces and blank eyes and ears attached by wires to radios. Dogs with and without owners, chasing things that moved, sniffing the ground for objects to bite and chew and then let fall to the earth again where they could look at them. I stuck to the asphalt path, walked towards the lido, past the tennis then football courts, onto Brockwell Road and down to David’s.
At his door I pressed the bell. Once to wake him up. Another to get him to rise with purpose. With time came sounds from the window ten feet above my head, the snap of a metal latch and the creak of old hinges, and then I stepped back from the gate to watch him (squinting eyes, the snarl of a confused, belligerent animal, shirtless regardless of the weather, look at the belly on that one). When the glass was open, his keys would come down like a flightless metal butterfly and I caught them with two hands, reaching high and then letting my fists flow low with the momentum so they didn’t sting my palms.
Keys in my hand was the best part of the day because there it was, physically, in my hands: David’s world, heavy and jagged and multiplicitous, held together by a ring attached to a black plastic duck. Everything he had was contained within its weight and I stood on the street alone with it, unprotected, unguarded.
I would find the brown, round-head key, slide it in the door, then walk up the stairs to the kitchen where I heard him yell, ‘Make us a cuppa’ which meant pour the old water out of the electric kettle and add cold water for the new. Lay mustard on the white bread and cover that with cheddar and put it in the grill hung above the stove.
While water boiled and cheese melted and brown man spat and farted in the bathroom beyond, I read the newspaper that Margaret would place on the table after she left for work hours before (always The Guardian and always placed back in order, section within section, without crease or jam stain, just like new although she had surely read it over breakfast hours before). When the sounds of his shower had ended I went back to the kitchen and poured one inch of milk into a mug that held one gray tea bag, then laid the steaming water on top of it. David would appear, in long pajama bottoms and still no shirt but maybe a towel across his thick shoulders or on his head like a frustrated boxer. He would sit hunched over, a few feet from the table, so that his head was nearly level with it as he held his tea mug close to his mouth with both hands. Sipping was the only treble. For bass, he might moan.
