The Memory of Water

by JT Lawrence

  I sigh and twirl my pen. Francina brings in a bottle of Italian mineral water and a sandwich on a side plate, then goes back for a paper serviette.

  She must be feeling sorry for me – she is never usually this kind. It’s ham and tomato on rye, with enough Dijon mustard to singe your sinuses. She must have done the grocery shopping. The cool heat travels up my nose and spikes my eyeballs. It feels good. Perhaps she thought I really was going to die. I suppose that’s enough to make anyone feel generous for a day. Death definitely has a way of kicking you in the arse, forcing you to live.

  If you survive it.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon smashing my already-wounded head against the wall. I try free-association, reading the paper, reciting poetry, brainstorming, masturbating, listening to Lady Gaga, flipping a coin. It doesn’t help. Poet Friedrich von Schiller had a habit of keeping nasty apples in his writing desk and sniffing them before starting his work. Auden preferred tea; Coleridge, opium. Kipling fantasized about having his own Indian ‘ink-boy’ to grind him fresh ink every day. I, on the other hand, would be happy with a burnt stick and a cave wall, as long as the words came. Writing has never been this hard.

  I skydived once. I’ve been scared of heights ever since. It started well with a lovely lady-instructor, who went on to give me ‘extra lessons’ in my chalet the night before the jump. I was pretty blasé about it (the jump, I mean, not the sex. I was rather enthusiastic about the sex) and it sounds dull-witted, but it didn’t actually occur to me that I would end up so very high in the sky. When the realisation struck and I decided that I couldn’t possibly go through with it, I turned around to my lady-friend and told her. Either she didn’t hear what I said, or she thought I was joking. She threw her head back, laughed, and pushed me out of the plane. In an instant I forgot everything she’d taught me, extramurally or otherwise, as I was caught up in sheer bowel-dissolving panic. I was so shocked by what was happening I didn’t even have time to indulge in the whole life-flashing-before-my-eyes phenomenon, which I think I would have rather enjoyed. Luckily for me I was on a static line, so the cord I forgot to pull didn’t kill me. My parachute lines were tangled, so I screamed and rocked from side to side which somehow loosened them. It seemed that Jesus (Bless You) was on my side and I remember a few moments of utter exhilaration as I took in everything around me: the topographical map beneath, the overwhelming amount of sky and, most of all, the silence. I have never since heard that startlingly clear complete absence of sound. I remember saying my name out loud as a way to assert my – meagre – existence. I was definitely having a moment. It was thrilling to the toes. I wondered why I had never done this before and swore it would be my new hobby. Which was when I saw the power lines. By then it was too late to do anything about it, even if I had remembered how to adjust my toggles to land.

  I know it sounds like I knock myself out a lot but I don’t, not really. I mean it’s not a thing I’m known for. At a cocktail party you wouldn’t introduce me as the accident-prone guy, or the bandaged/broken/concussion guy. I’m not the guy in slapsticks who falls into manholes and skis into trees. I don’t even have a lot of scars. One fine line on my cheek from a scratch when I was a child. A small button on my back from the tomato-crate-stake. A silver gash on one of my fingers, hardly noticeable. Oh, and I don’t have all of my teeth, not the original ones anyway. I can’t tell the porcelain veneers from the real ones anymore. I’ve been bashed up a bit, that’s true, but I’m just not that guy, despite all previous evidence presented to the contrary.

  But I did have a concussion when I woke up in hospital the next day. Fractured ribs, smashed scapula and a collarbone broken in three places. A sprained ankle that took the longest time to heal. That’s how I met Eve. She came to me like an angel in the night: a beddable Florence Nightingale. Sifiso had sent her with the latest artwork for a book cover that needed ‘urgent’ approval. How urgent can something possibly be? I had just looked Death in the eyes for God’s sake.

  Despite being exceptionally cheerful on all the morphine they were pumping into me, I disliked the artwork and told her so. As I was trying to check her out through the dark clouds of pain, the conversation went a little like this:

  (SFX: convincing hospital equipment bleeping in the background, squeaking rubber soles of nurses on linoleum, et cetera.)

  Eve (looking hot): “So this is where we are at the moment. Obviously it’s still quite rough, a work in progress which needs crafting, but Sifiso wanted to make sure you bought into the concept before we refine it any further.”

  (Shuffling of papers and then: awkward pause.)

  Me: “What? Is that it?”

  (Everyone in the room pauses to look over at us.)

  Eve: “Yes.”

  (Everyone in the hospital stops what they are doing to hear what comes next.)

  Me: “Two months of work and I get this?”

  Eve: silence. (Still looking hot. Red cheeks. Blushing. She must like me. I must show off.)

  Me: “It’s dogshit. I hate it.” (Actually it wasn’t that bad.)

  Eve: “Oh … Okay. Maybe if you could you be more precise with …”

  Me: “Precise? Sure. I wouldn’t use it to wipe my arse. I think the artist should be stripped.”

  Yep, I’m that powerful.

  Did I just say stripped?

  Me: “Whipped, I mean. Whipped.”

  I make vague cuckoo gestures at my head to communicate the large amount of drugs circulating in my battered brain.

  Eve crosses her arms. I am hooked.

  Eve: “What I meant was, could you be more precise about what you don’t like about it?”

  The black clouds are getting thicker. I am riding on pink-purple pain-laced delirium.

  Me: “The writing is post-modern, for God’s sake. Avant-garde! It needs more chaos! More shaking up! Tell Sifiso I never want to use this piss-ant artist again. He has the talent of an … an … aardvark; and he clearly hasn’t read my book.”

  I hammed it up a bit because Eve was particularly attractive and I thought she might end up thinking I was more important than I really was. Also, I was very high.

  Despite being happily married – if there is such a thing, but that is a conversation for another day – Sifiso only hires gorgeous Girl Fridays. They are his own Playboy Bunnies in the little mansion that is his mind. Eve seemed to be the most delicious so far. I wanted to grandstand a little, fluff my tail feathers, show this pretty lady who The Big Guy was.

  Eve (smiling): “That’s a shame.”

  Me (caught off guard by her blazing smile): “Why’s that?” I see rainbows. Lots of little rainbows emanating from her skin. Mmm, pretty.

  Eve: “Because I was really looking forward to working with you.” (Exit Eve.)

  Me (under my breath): “Crap.”

  Then, on second thoughts: “Can I get some more morphine?”

  Sifiso called me later that day to let me know how annoyed he was. He had spent weeks trying to persuade Eve to agree to do a cover for us. She was then an up-and-coming artist who was receiving great press for her latest exhibition and not keen to do anything too commercial.

  Sifiso has a short temper and shouts a lot. He’s short and shouty. Or perhaps shouty because he’s short. He likes putting a lot of emphasis on the keywords in his admonitions; he especially loves shouting over the phone. Usually editors are quite nice to their writers, but not mine.

  “She’s an ARTIST!” he screamed down the phone. “A REAL artist! Not like the two-bit Corel Draw designers we usually get! I finally pull someone fantastic to do it as a FAVOUR and you tell her you’d like to WHIP her? What was THAT about?”

  “I didn’t quite say …”

  “You didn’t know it would OFFEND her? Telling her she looked like an wild pig and that she should be BURNED at the STAKE?”

  “Now, I don’t think I quite said that …” I mumbled, hoping to God that I hadn’t. “But you need to shoulder a bit of the blame here, man. I mean
what were you thinking?”

  “What was I thinking?” he shouted.

  Despite my shattered collarbone I was doing lots of forehead-holding and frowning.

  Nasty silence from Sifiso.

  “I was out of my head with the drugs! I was seeing in goddamn Technicolor! No wonder I was saying bizarre things. What did you expect? Besides, what on earth were you doing sending the artist on a run? Are things that bad?”

  “Eish,” he said.

  “Don’t speak Zulu to me. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Slade,” he sighs, “I am Xhosa.” All I can hear is clicking.

  “And?” I shout.

  “And I had the courier all set up but Eve’s such a great fan of your work, she asked if she could take it in person, so she could meet you.”

  “Oh,” I said. Crap.

  So Sifiso sent Eve flowers and I called to apologise. I outright lied to her and said that I didn’t really remember much but, apparently, I had been rude to her and I was very sorry, would she please reconsider the contract she had shredded, burned and posted back to Sifiso. She laughed a lot and I knew from that moment that I liked her. She told me the contract was in fact still in fine form and sitting on her desk, and she would be happy to work on a new cover with us. It seemed Eve, unlike Sifiso and me, was a Grown-Up.

  I’m sure she knows I’m in love with her but she’s never been that into me. She is my Unattainable. Daisy Buchanan to my Gatsby. Rosebud to my Kane. Even though I live in hope, I know I will never have her. When I have sex with other women I am mostly fantasizing about Eve. Her petite frame; her generous tits; her cheekbones; her distracted glance; her creative mind; her short-nailed fingers. I am rougher when I think of her, and usually don’t last long enough. I forget myself.

  She cares about me, I know that. Even after I was such a prick to her in the hospital that day, she continued to visit to see how I was doing. That’s probably when it happened. When I fell in love with her. Psychobabblers will tell you I’m obsessed with Eve because of my unresolved Oedipus complex, exacerbated by my mother leaving me at such a vulnerable age.

  She brought me grapes, for God’s sake. What did she expect?

  4

  Shaking Off Snow After A Long Walk Home

  “Harris, where have you BEEN?” shouts Sifiso into my ear.

  “I’ve been around. What’s up?” I think that maybe, if I’m really casual about everything, I will be able to diffuse his anger. I hold the phone away from my ear just in case.

  “What’s UP? I’ll tell you what’s UP!” he yells. Oh boy.

  “What’s UP is THIS: you’ve been AVOIDING my calls! Now why would you want to do THAT?”

  I wind my watch.

  “Are you angry about something, man? Want to talk about it?”

  “You don’t have time to TALK, my friend! That’s unless you have been so quiet because you’ve been finishing the NOVEL you’ve owed me since FEBRUARY.”

  Eish. I didn’t realise it had been that long.

  Ha. Who am I kidding? Every month since February has slid by like barbed wire on naked flesh.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t avoiding you on purpose. Things have just been a bit slow around here. I’m battling with the ending.”

  More like, I’m battling with the opening sentence, but he doesn’t need to know that. This seems to calm him down a little. He sighs, martyr-like, down the line.

  “Look, Harris, I KNOW you don’t need the extra pressure from me but it’s my JOB, you know? I need to get that finished manuscript from you. Everyone here is breathing down my NECK.” I visualise the veins in his neck almost popping out of the skin.

  “Yes.”

  There is a welcome respite as he takes some time to gather himself.

  “People are SAYING THINGS, Harris.”

  I harrumph at that. As if anyone would dare. I have more talent than this whole fucking city combined. I don’t give a flying shit-arse what they’re saying.

  “What are they saying?”

  “I don’t want to upset you. I don’t want you to think about it. I want you to concentrate on finishing the MANUSCRIPT. That’s ALL I want you to think about.”

  “What are they saying?” I ask again, an edge to my voice.

  “They’re imbeciles. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “Sifiso …”

  “They’re saying you’ve lost it. You’re dried up. BILTONG. You’re finished.”

  “Oh.” Expected, but it still stings.

  “They say you only had three books in you and now you’re empty. Finito.”

  “Okay, I get the message.”

  “Kaput.”

  “Sifiso …”

  “Toosuccessfultoofast. That it’s over. IS it over, Harris?”

  “Of course not. This one has just been a little slow. Tolstoy took ten years to write War and Peace, for God’s Sake. Sometimes you can’t rush these things.”

  I think I hear him stifle a chuckle.

  “THAT’S what I TOLD them! And then I flipped them the birdie.”

  “Good.”

  “I told them to pick a finger!”

  “Thanks, Sifiso.”

  “But it’s still my ARSE on the line, my reputation, Harris, so for fuck’s sake just FINISH IT!”

  There’s no way I can write after such a grilling so I decide to go for a walk around the neighbourhood, get some air. The air is fresh and the roads quiet. I suppose most people are at work. Thank Christ I don’t have to sit in a smelly open-plan nine-to-five. Or have those humiliating office parties where you invariably end up vomiting punch into the accountant’s dustbin, or shagging the half-conscious intern over the photocopy machine. Or have a manager of sorts, someone with receding hair and a boep who dresses in chinos and walks around in a loud tie with a mug in his hand, bestowing pie charts and spiky performance reports. The horror! I walk past a little black cat that looks at me with dubious yellow eyes, sleek body poised, ready to dart. Skinny and elegant except for her short legs. Munchkins, I think they’re called. Dwarf-cats. Perhaps if I weren’t so selfish I would get a pet. Pets are good. Pets are normal. You can’t spiral into the darkness when you have a dog to walk, a cat to feed. I’ve never really had my own, apart from Maxwell, who didn’t really count. He had fleas that were more entertaining than him. And I’ve never really liked cats much. Too damn self-assured. And a little scary. They have this way of just appearing out of nowhere. Witches’ familiars. Munchkin and I stare each other down. She’s pretty. Despite myself, I want to touch her, so I take a tentative step forward. She’s up and through the fence before my trainer touches the ground. I won’t take it personally: I know thoroughbreds are skittish. I’m tempted to tell Starling & Co. to take a running jump with their three-book deal but then think of the advance money I have spent. Which is all of it. Despite the generous royalty cheques I get, I’m in a little debt. I’m a bit over my head with life in general. There’s no need to panic, really. If I’ve written a bestseller before – three times before – then I can do it again. It will come, I sigh to myself, when the time is right. Bless you Jesus. I keep walking.

  I’ll never forget my first book launch. Sifiso was there from the beginning, a fresher face, a flatter gut, and hungry. Just as I was. He was a junior editor when he worked on my first book, Mercenary. He had rescued it from the slush pile at Starling & Co. and it became the book that launched his career, although you’ll never catch him admitting to it. For the last decade we’ve shared an erratic bond that started with that scrawny manuscript. The book was about a woman who would do anything for money. I painted her as a cold bitch with just enough redeeming qualities to make the reader curious about what happens in the next chapter.

  I didn’t plan the novel at all.

  The launch party was at the Grace Hotel in Rosebank, when it was still Something. My father came in an old suit and highly polished, scuffed shoes. I was so excited that evening, it seemed to pass in an hour, and at three
in the morning Sifiso and I found ourselves stretched out on wide leather settees, the last to leave. He had the company credit card and we were drinking the last of many bottles of some Cap Classique and guffawing over our sudden success. He ended up giving me a lift home, not because of how drunk I was but because when we finally found my precious brand new Jaguar XKR in the parking lot, the tyres had been slashed and the doors keyed. The car itself seemed distressed and looked at me with blame in its headlights. Sifiso had been upset by this: he didn’t understand why someone would deliberately drive a butcher knife into the handsome oily rubber of my Falken tyres, especially on such an important night. I acted as bewildered as he looked, even though I of course knew exactly who had inflicted the damage. The knowledge rang as clear as an alarm bell in my head.

  I intentionally date women I think will yield the most interesting experiences. Warning signs on first dates, sending sensible men running in the opposite direction, guarantee I’m hooked. I like to think of them as sub-plots. Some sub-plots you should develop, others, not. Fay Weldon said that she was good with relationships, they just weren’t very good with her. But she doesn’t regret anything because it is all good copy.

  There was Melany, who told me on our first encounter that she had father-issues (read: liked to get spanked). She taught me a lot about psychoanalysis and the Elektra complex. I used her for a short story. It was good. Eventually the relationship fizzled out: I could only stand to be called ‘daddy’ so many times before it became awkward. Then there was Vanessa. She was a sweet, pretty little thing, a most unlikely fan of S&M, or rather, M. She was a great character study for me: opened up a whole new world. She would take me to bizarre underground clubs and ask me to tie her up, which I did with pleasure. She had a walk-in cupboard of erotic outfits I had to write about the minute I laid eyes on it. It was like a costume department of a pornographic vampire film set. And the costumes weren’t just for her. I liked the whips and studs and hot black latex but I drew a neat line at the gimp suit. I didn’t mind the stuff that gave her a little pain without too much damage, but I wouldn’t do anything that drew blood. She was disappointed but, as Clint Eastwood says, a man’s got to know his limitations. The sex itself was mediocre. It was the only relationship I have ever left thinking that I hadn’t hurt her enough.