by Clay, Josie
“I don't want anything, Mink”, adamant, “apart from you. Why don't we have a lost weekend? Indulgent, I've almost forgotten what coco looks like”.
Four days since we'd had sex, absorbed in incubating a New World triptych for the American Institute. Cheesy clichés of corn, Custer and cowboys best avoided, we had concurred and were taking a punt at an abstract piece, describing the 'land of the free' in allusion. She rolled out her barrel laugh when I suggested we sneak in a 'Where's Waldo?'
But I had to get her something, perhaps sensation based: flying lessons? Bungee jumping? No, it wasn't her, and thinking of what, in my experience, had thrilled her most and how much I enjoyed her torrid brand of decadence, I grabbed my ‘phone and dialled S for Santa.
The blinds in the bedroom always open, broken, not yet replaced. A boring project superseded by others more urgent and gratifying. I must have been dreaming because it wasn't right what I could see in the night sky. The street light as usual, casting a sodium arc across Dale's form, a landscape of crags and foothills, but the moon, a gas dance blue. Around it spun red sputniks in circuits, trailing temporary wakes of silver, their orbits at first random, but then with a fatal intent they circled closer to the giant, frosted geometry, converging like funnelled fairies and then, in a trice, nothing. The moon went out, snuffed, as if a celestial plug had been pulled. The earth bound street lamp, the only proof that light still existed.
Dale's satisfied sleepy face rubbing the pillow, smiling as she returned from wherever she'd been. Eyes creased in comfort, cherried in chocolate sprinkles and curls. Her hands and feet pushed against me in a shuddering stretch, squeaking a tiny fart, especially crafted for me.
“Hey, min kara” she said, flexing our muscles around a warm hug, our components finding their easy mixture, her mouth in my neck, thigh on my coco, hand in my armpit, my arms around her, each morning replete. If this was all there was, I wouldn't have minded, but there was usually more. Dale, a sunrise slinky, a morgonpigg, rocking her hips, rolling her face on my chest and coming unshepherded back to my fold.
“My birthday starts here” she said, ablaze. “Friday morning, you're all mine till Tuesday”.
Materials of work banished to a drawer so our attention would be undivided. We revisited the path we had taken on our first week and by Friday evening we loved each other even more. I felt infinite, tired ...but infinite.
“Higher, faster, stronger” I said, wafting a paperback above the duvet, air dropping three squares of bagged powder. “Friday, Saturday, Sunday”, dealing them, “and on Monday we sleep. Happy birthday, baby”.
Dale's eyes saucered fantastic. “You fucking beauty” she said, scanning around for a suitable surface.
Two lines on the framed photo of us on our Christmas walk in Sweden.
“Apt” she said, pointing at the snow.
Her actual birthday was Sunday and given her appetite for the drug, I calculated it would be gone by Saturday night, allowing ample time for a smooth comedown. Eyelashes flickered at the pepper, tilting her face to the ceiling.
“Don't sneeze it all out” I said, and she sniffed, stifled and swallowed.
I saw the chemistry instantly, irises quick-silvered then retreated in a black snowball, fired by a fey force, like haunted TVs. My heart dickered with the drug before finding an equitable agreement.
“Do you know the exact time you were born?”
“Not exactly” she said, “I know it was the morning because my mum was at a diplomatic party the night before and her waters broke on an antique prayer mat. Eleven thirty, that's what I think; it feels right or my dad may have told me, I can't remember. Anyway, I was early. I should have been a Leo.
“Ah” I said, “that's why you look like a lion”.
We hoovered another and kissed in clairvoyance. A wide, demanding oration, gorging wolfish.
“Oh fuck” she said, choked, “I could come just doing this”. But I wanted my hands on her, so making my finger cold in the ice bucket, I touched it to her, she gasped reclining. I drew in her dew, painting on her an expression of personal catastrophe, as if it hurt. “Sweet Jesus” she said. “skitbra, baby ëlskling, you're so good to me”.
Ever fascinated I could excite such a response, I coaxed from her a flood of messages, her wild violet quivering. I quivered back, regulating her free fall with authority and watching closely her nuance and rising flush. She moaned deep and dark, her chin rising as if to greet the sun, the anatomy of her neck, veins, muscles, ribcage, breasts, a beautiful machine. Hips now riding the reflex, her inner sight on the prize for which she jostled and vied. “That's my baby” I said, “come on, that's my girl, here it comes”. The countless times I'd said these words never diminished their impact, designed to give her the last boost she needed to see her home.
She levitated, clutching the duvet and shouted an ancient sound, holding the thought, before the magic left her and she collapsed like an Indian rope trick to a hushed gasp. “Again” she giggled, an ecstatic child. God, how I loved her.
We spent the entire night in this padded dungeon, locked in a cocaine line dance and tit for tat sex. 'Slower, deeper, longer' our Olympic motto, until the street lamp glowed needlessly in the morning and winked out.
Eventually, we lay entwined, mellowed in our own musk, not asleep but not quite awake. Diced by chimney pots and woodwork, the sun cast a recurring jack o'lantern on the wall, but the world turned and I watched it slant to nothing in particular. Dale's swishing tide on my ear, my insatiable woman finally dozing.
A curious mew and Prudence alighted on the bed with an exasperated 'you guys!', negotiating our ridges and plateaus. Dale stirred. “Hey poo poo, you must be hungry”.
Cooking a brunch of chick pea curry and Bombay potatoes, an obsessive loop plaguing my head. The tallest pine tree in the forest, tipping through the branches of its neighbours, rotating and falling silently to the ground. The film rewound, resurrecting it, before it toppled again, standing, toppling, standing, toppling in ever faster sweeps.
“That smells awesome”. Dale rubbing her hair with a towel.
“Dale, did you know fir cone is an anagram of conifer?”
“So it is” she said. “You're such a freak Mink”.
After we'd eaten, the game resumed, Dale cutting and sliding lengthening trails of white dust. Cured, I didn't need my glasses to see the silky, dark cilia fringing her eyes, each of her corkscrews I followed with clarity, the pageant of freckles, her lips chafed and sex plumped. And when I drew aside her locks, the soft down on the nape of her neck which I kissed and breathing in her soap and skin, the shocking, sweet impalement as she lifted my t-shirt and took my sore, swollen nipples in her mouth and fingers with impossible gentleness.
We took the party back to bed and as the room grew dark and the street light stuttered on, Dale fussed with the cocaine. “I think we've got enough for two good ones each”. Emptying my screaming sinuses into a tissue, “you can have it, I think my organs are failing”. Restless and twitchy, she couldn't settle. “Anchor me”. So I climbed on top and listened to her heart rattling like a boxer's speed bag. “Minky, get off, I'm too hot now, I need some air” she said. “Let's go out”.
“Where?” I said, horrified.
“The reservoir”
“But it'll be all locked up now”, knowing full well I still had a chatelaine of park keys. “Besides, it holds horrible memories”.
“Come on” she said, “we can get in. Plus we should reclaim it, make it ours again”.
Despite the fact I'd never liked the place, I was unable to deny her slightest whim. “Alright” I said.
She buried the door keys under some pebbles in the front garden and marked the spot with a flowerpot. A carrier bag clinking by my leg contained the park keys, a half bottle of Cava and fags. The last of the charlie she had twisted into Rizlas in her back pocket. Although gone midnight, the Charedi were ubiquitous. Pillbox hats perched on synthetic hair, the women in their Sabbath black
and white and the men in breeches and schtreimals, despite the sultry July night. So immersed in their own affairs they paid us and our hand holding no attention.
“We should have brought a torch” Dale said, our feet juddering into potholes on the dirt track. The keys unnecessary after all; a section of security fence by the gate had been peeled back.
“Convenient” she said.
The emergency stairwells in the tower blocks obelized the night sky like latter day Jacob's ladders, most windows dark apart from a handful glimmering faintly in Nintendo dreams.
We settled in a dewy clearing in the reeds, which provided an ominous view of the inky water, the Plough canting above us, the only constellation we recognised. Unstopping the Cava, I took a big swig, the mournful nature of this place leaching into my bones. A reckless gesture; Dale followed the parabola of the keys as I cast them into the gloom and they splashed out of sight, sending ripples to agitate the reeds and moorhens.
“Why did you do that, silly? We might need them if we come here again and the fence is mended”. I hadn't thought of that. Or maybe I had. “I've got an idea” she said, unfolding the tobacco pouch and plucking out the two charlie bombs. “Let's do these and then when we're buzzing, let's go for a swim”.
“You're completely insane”.
“Why? It's only water at night”. She paused. “I dare you, kratte”.
Wanting very much to claim joint ownership of the moment, appear surprising and not a kratte .
“OK” I said, “we could have a race to the other side”.
“You're on” she said, dropping the bonbon into my palm. “Fucking hell, baby, this isn't a baggy, it's a fucking poultice”.
“Open zee sroat unt svallow” she ordered, watching as I tilted my head back and gulped the Cava. The wad scraped my gullet releasing its narcotic cargo.
“Gone”. Sticking out my tongue.
“Good girl”. She tossed her head back and snatched the bottle.
Seconds later a terrifying groundswell, my organs struggling to cope with the alien compound.
“Yee-hah!” Dale whooped and stood unlashing her belt. “Carp the diem, Mink!”
The rules of the game not yet established and as I tugged off my socks, she was already up to her knees. “Ooh, it's so nice” she gasped, “and hard to believe we're in the middle of London”.
Running to join her, hardly registering the stones stabbing my soles, we waded up to our cocos hand in hand, as if honeymooning in the Maldives, the water cooling our overtaxed parts. “I love you” she said, pressing her goosey flesh to mine, her pubes meeting my smooth blank. An escalating acceleration, the G force squashing my head into a square. A big small attack and I saw it all; our nakedness under the stars, miniscule atoms but vastly important, essential components in a cosmic switchboard, eavesdropping on everything. Dale felt it too. Hands touching, mouths mauling in the eye of a twister about and within. She was in me and I in her, squeezing, devouring, too wild to harness was this beast. My head seethed in a metropolis, her white smile glinting, her hair a swarm of bees and her eyes, oh her eyes, sentient diamonds in a fire storm. “Let's do it” she screamed in the maelstrom. “Ready?” Her arms swinging. “Steady”. Bending my knees and bracing. “Go!”
We launched into the obsidian, shattering it with our bodies, pumping through the cold blood, the tough liquid thump of my girl next to me - rash, thrashing high jinx, which we would be laughing about in minutes. The performance enhancer coursing through me, lungs capacious, still no sign of her foot flurry in my face because I was pulling away, me, winning! Eat my bubbles, bitch! My brain brayed in long overdue triumph.
But then a single red flare like a silent shout, arcing in space, a last laugh, a green parasol, a blue plaster horse, a spinning silver star, particles in light, a fight, a flooded engine, a falling tree, wide blue moons amazed, a curly kelp, a star burst petering out and a hand with no intention.
I stopped dead in the water and spun round to witness my empty wake. “Dale?” A coot answered. Peering into the profundity, I neutered my breath and listened hard: the sigh of tyres on the Seven Sisters Road, a squeaky wheel of seagulls, the last post of a moped and my own beating drum.
“Dale!” I bellowed, the tower blocks returning my voice unheard. She wouldn't play a trick that would frighten me, she knew I hated pranks. I scanned the shore, willing my eyes to pick out a pale waving figure who would be laughing, but she wasn't there and I realised I couldn't feel her; she wasn't at home or at the yard or anywhere. “Oh no, not yet, no please Dale, not yet”.
A patter of confusion rained down while I held the implication at bay. My body however, torpedoed me to the place where I thought I'd left her. “Not yet!” I shouted. “No wait, please, I'll find you, hang on baby”. And I dived into the Stygian, batting to the depths, a tiny whale crying in the bridge of my nose, Minky wail. Lacking method, forgetting the need for air, my legs propelled me to the surface. Diving again, winging frantically to the bottom, banging my head, groping in the mud. Battling buoyancy, I exhaled, fighting to find her, but pushing up again, breaching. “Wait!” I sobbed, diving down, emptying my lungs, touching something hard and slippery, hoping for a hand, some hair. Wait, I'm coming. Rising and plunging again and again, twenty times or more.
No, no, help, I need help. “Help!” I shot from the water, deadpan tower blocks mimicking my cry. Somehow in clothes, hurdling the broken fence, barefoot and ballistic, I burst into the ridiculous normalcy of Bethune Road. “Help me, please” to a cluster of Hasids scurrying away. “Help me!” to a young one on his ‘phone. Regarding the muddy feet of the crazy, damp goy, his hand went up in a warding off gesture. “Please, listen to me, I need to use your ‘phone”. He headed off at a pace, but leaping in front I grabbed the hem of his coat and kneeling, raising clasped hands, “Please sir, I'm begging you, someone is in trouble” I choked. “I beg you, let me use your ‘phone”. He eyed me in abject terror and looking to the ground, gingerly edged the phone towards me.
Part Four
Chapter 1
Blue lights, but not yours. These were flashing - there must have been an accident. All those feet, perhaps I've come off my bike again, that must be it. Poking my tongue through this metal hula hoop, the Min ring in my mouth. A bright light in my eyes. 'Björn?'. Sticking something plastic to my forehead, a man, not Björn, but I look at him all the same because I want him to love me.
A room, a lady, puffy bags on my feet; where are my boots? Some men asking me questions . 'This is important' they say, 'try to focus'. A clear plastic bag, our stuff in it and I divide them neatly into yours and mine. I think that's what they want. Your black jeans, your bra, your hoopy socks, your boots, your emergency bunny pants. The lady yawns and I want to go to sleep, I'm plum-tuckered, so I nod off.
Apparently they found you at first light, lying on the bottom. They showed me your silver star necklace and I put that in my mouth too. They went mental and hooked it out with their fingers; they could have just asked. Your dad's here. He must be talking Swedish because I can't understand what he's saying, I have no idea. But he puts his arm around me and I can smell the sea. He's got hiccups. His eyes like yours, but not. “Do you want to see her, Minky?” he says.
“Durr, always”. A car, then a room with you laying on the table, fast asleep. Wake up now, baby. I touch your hair. You're so beautiful, Dale. “It's not wrong if I look at her is it?” “No” your dad says. So pulling back the green sheet, I look at your body and there's another green cloth over your coco. You're perfect. Your dad is crying, but I can't help him.
Scraping some pebbles, I don't know why until I uncover three keys on your Scooby Doo keyring. On the bed, how weird is this? Your dad undressing me. I like it. He pulls my t-shirt over my head and says “bra”, but I'm not wearing one and then I remember it means good, as in 'skitbra'. At last I can go to proper sleep and I know you're not here so I can't do my ritual, doesn't really matter anyway.
Waking up, there'
s something I'm not supposed to remember, searching around for it, nope. Everything normal until I turn to you. There's a slim chance you're downstairs making coffee, but I know you're not. You're not here and that's all I'm prepared to say at the moment. Your empty glass, your book, your pyjama bottoms which contain your scent, just like the pillow they're poking out from, but I can't face that now and I wonder where Prudence is.
Fold myself in, tuck myself up, just like I always did. I can't move about anyway - it's as if one leg and one arm has been amputated, I keep falling over.
Groping about in the mud of my mind, just as well I can't think. I dream of it and sometimes I find your hand.
I keep asking myself questions I don't want to answer, but the answer to the hardest one is yes, I probably killed you. The drug, the race, all my idea and if I hadn't been so intent on winning, I would have understood your distress signal. Dale, I don't know if I can live with this; it might be too much. You didn't even make it to your birthday,. You'll always be forty three.
