by Clay, Josie
Already the trees turning. I'm now seventeen months older than you. A boisterous wind forcing the Hasids to keep a grip on the wide brims of their fedoras and snatching at the curls of a young woman marching purposefully. Pulling over just ahead, I swung open the passenger door. She peered in composed.
“Hi Minette, how are you?”
“Never mind that” I said. “Get in”. She parked herself compliant. “Buckle up” I said, nudging around an ancient Hasidic man who was labouring into a gust on a giant tricycle. “Now then, young lady, what's your game?”
“You must know” she said, with equanimity.
“I have an inkling but please spell it out”.
“Are we going to yours?”
“Yes”.
“Oh good” she replied as if we were off to the seaside.
“So why, Sasha?”
“Well” she began, pressing her hands between her knees. “I've been trying to contrive a situation whereby I'll bump into you”.
“To what end?”
“I don't know, just to see you”. She shrugged. “So we can start to normalise”.
“But you've been spying on me, I saw you at the window”.
“I was only checking on you to see if you were OK, I've been worried ...there's one there” she said pointing to a space where I was already heading.
Hair, dark again, past the awkward transitional stage now, puppy fat assimilated into a trim but shapely suggestion. More archetypal female than me, or her mother for that matter, her hands uncalamitously average, she had inherited Nancy's graceful walk. Her face fascinating, pared down to high Slavic cheeks, the angles of an icon, aquiline and ebony framed. Almond eyes lidless, as if she'd stepped off the Steppes, but with the same disconcerting black Smartie holes. More Nancy around the mouth, but a smaller cupid's bow, pensive cherries as she bit her lip. An adult, moreover a woman.
“You know about Dale then?” I said, pouring Merlot.
“Yes” she said, “I'm so sorry”. She seemed genuine.
“OK, I don't like you spying on me. if you want to see me, just call or knock at the door”.
“Really?”
“Really, so how do you feel about me now? Do you still claim to love me?”
“I guess so” she said, tantalising clarification.
Truth be told, I was slightly disappointed. I liked it when people loved me wholesale, even inappropriately.
“What does that mean?”
“I've managed to close in on what I want” she said. “The first step, the rest will follow”.
“Yeah? And what might that first step be?” Her shark eyes shifted to mine.
“I want my concept crystallized …I want you to fuck me”.
Rather than placate, she was attempting to wrong foot, cunning minx. I pinched the bridge of my nose, arresting a surprise Pavlovian response.
“Sasha, I'm forty five years old, you're what, eighteen?”
“And a half” she said. “Why is that an issue?”
“Because you should be with someone of your own age”.
“People my own age are ridiculous”.
“Sasha, this is so fucked, you don't know what love is”.
“Minette”. Bristling indignantly. “Who are you to say what does and doesn't constitute love? You know, you're actually no better than those who would purport love between women to be invalid, a pale imitation, or worse, an abomination”.
“I prefer the abomination option myself” I said, mildly impressed by her argument. “At least it acknowledges existence”.
“Minette, do you think I'm an abomination?”
Clever. If I said yes, by my own words I'd be admitting her authenticity. A no would infer a sympathy and fondness, which if I attempted to qualify, would appear patronising and muddled. She'd allowed me to paint myself into a corner. She was so sharp, Queen of Diamonds.
I opted for no and she smiled artfully. Once more a strong urge to put her over my knee and punish the little smart arse. Instead I rolled a cigarette while she sparked up a Marlboro Light and glanced around.
“Fucking hell. There must be a teenage boy living here, this place is minging”. She sighed smoke. “English people are so dirty”.
This was something her mother had told her. She was right of course, I'd been planning that old cliché, to tidy up before hiring a cleaner.
Eyes widened as she seized on an idea. “I could be your cleaner, you could pay me”.
Something felt right about it, but I reiterated “Sasha, I'm not going to fuck you, do you understand?”
“Whatever” she shrugged.
At least it might stop her hanging around at night, which was dangerous. Plus she might realise how old and totally mental I was. Turning the Min ring on my finger.
“I can do Friday afternoons” she said. I rubbed the emerging bristles on my chin. “And when it becomes obvious I'm not going to fuck you, you won't try and kill yourself, will you?”
“I promise” she said. “I won't try and kill myself”.
“Alright, but no ‘Misery’ style weirdness OK?”
“OK Dirty Birdy” she said, in a brilliant mid-west accent.
“Sasha” I smiled. “Go home”.
After she'd gone, I sensed you, but couldn't pick up on your slant. But Dale, wouldn't it be great if we could sort out this girl? You always said it was better to face the music.
Chapter 7
A regular date now, me and Nancy at the park for an early lunch. Wrapped up under the awning because Sebastian couldn't go inside. He sat by our feet in his little tartan coat. The air clotted with mist and Nancy pawed at her hair. Perhaps 'Frizzease' was required, but then the winter sun magically punched through.
Ours, a sideways negotiation, a dignified gavotte, respectful, restrained. At any point we could bow out, but I suspected if that happened she would drop her handkerchief. Difficult to imagine we'd once been crazy in love and I'd lifted her skirts, but the fact remained between us on the table like a closed book.
The atmosphere tacitly charged, like endless foreplay and, dare I say it, eminently sexy. We knew each other's skin and rudimentary characteristics, but had little idea of anything more. The disparity bizarre. She was calling the tune and subscribed to a left brain approach, unemotional, ordered, rational, controlled. She had the intelligence to understand emotions, sympathise even, but stopped short of feeling them. The Queen of Spades, and as such liable, once in a blue moon, to lose it. She might, say, be compelled to scream at the wind, piss standing up or bolt hell for leather towards an all-consuming catharsis, legs spread wide, hips bucking, spitting profanities at the world, until the fugue passed through her system. Then she would pull up her knickers, touch up her lippy and close the box, balance restored, viewing any collateral damage as regrettable, but ultimately inconsequential. Bless. I could have been bitter and full of hate for her but I really wasn't – it was uncalled for now.
I learnt she was now a bereavement counsellor and I recounted your visitations. “A normal and healthy aspect of the grieving process that would wear off in time” she'd said. How dare she dismiss you as a phase; she has no concept of our shared circuitry.
Admiring her disposition, I favoured mine, not least because there wasn't a creative bone in her body. How at once baffling and liberating that must be. No polite way of weaving our long ago heat into the conversation, so we didn't. We were two different people now, except for when I told her the difficulty I had getting angry with those I loved.
“You got angry with me once” she said, but failed to elaborate. I smiled, for not only was she forgiving the wisteria incident, but validating my feelings.
Scraping at a clutch of pebbles in the front garden; something about keys. Then it came back to me and I sidestepped a pain bullet. No sign of the Scooby Doo key ring. Sasha had been and hopefully gone. I opened the front door, provoking its enquiring creak, a smell of Sweden in the hall. Red diamonds crept across the glossy black floorboards as I
closed the door behind me. Only one leather jacket on the peg now, Dale's stowed presumably in the wardrobe. Surfaces dust-free, tumbleweeds of cobwebs and cat fur no more. The smeary hall mirror now a pristine portal to another place where there might be pine trees; that freshness had to be coming from somewhere.
The living room had received the same rigorous treatment; plumped cushions, twinkling ashtrays. And the kitchen, swabbed and scoured. The sticky scabs around Prudence's eating area, purged. Clean bowls containing fresh, hairless water and new crunchies, no longer dark unappetising pips. Our white bedding rippled on the line, filtering non-biological light through the naked wisteria. Even the dubious items in the fridge had been rationalised. The fridge itself gleamed surgically. The envelope I'd left on the kitchen table still there, penned on the back in pretty, clever script.
'Dear Minette,
‘this is way too much money so I'll use it to buy cleaning products for next week.
‘Love, S x
‘PS. I found this in the bag for life and didn't know if it was important for your work.’
Dale's voice 'why Minky, is that a proposal?” I smiled, between my fingers, the Queen of Clubs.
These agreeable trysts between Sasha and my house, her mother and myself, continued in just that way for a while, until the unspoken rules began to erode. Nancy, unable to make the park, awaiting a delivery, switched the venue to Highbury. Sasha wouldn't be there she said. Apparently she had a cleaning job on Friday afternoons.
I stood before the front door of 12 Palladian Road, spellbound by the full blooded capriccio flowing from the piano.
Perched on the tall stool once again, heaping green leaves and olives onto my plate from an enormous salad mothership. Nancy poured Sauvignon Blanc into stemmed glasses which accommodated a third of a bottle.
“Cheers” she said, butting my glass with hers and then predictably holding my gaze over the rim, once and for all banishing ambivalence. A curious tickle in my chest, not unpleasant. With this potent gesture, she opened the door to the past and we entered that room, flinging wide the curtains, permitting the sun, blowing the dust off memories and showing them to each other. A smile on her lips, reminiscent, melancholic. The best and worst time she said, but always love for me, a fondness which never quite died, despite her best efforts ...leaving her to wonder why. And the reason she'd ended it, well, she just chickened out.
“I'd like to see where you live” she said, pushing the envelope, and I, reaching inside the lining pocket of that same leather jacket from which I'd retrieved the Russian wedding ring all those years ago, pushed an envelope of my own across the breakfast bar, a white one, containing one hundred pounds. It was unsurprising then, when she stood, came to me and tutting, ruffled my hair. Her fingertips stroking the nape of my neck and resting on the soft point of blonde there.
Bowing my head, we stayed in that tableau for some time, reflected in the light of a January Janus. Her heels tick-tocking across the floor, she replaced the wine bottle with one of schnapps. Her chagrin, swallowed in an eyeblink, when I got to my feet and shouldered my swimming bag, winning this round of brinkmanship.
“You can come to mine any time you like” I said. “Just call or knock at the door”.
Her smile, subtle like a seasoned tsarina.
“I'll call you tomorrow” she said.
I left her on the doorstep watching my diminishing back.
Chapter 8
Standing in the fragrant hallway, I hung my jacket on the peg next to an alien sheepskin, listening to evidence of a further infringement. The thunderous applause of running water issuing from the bathroom and when I put my keys on the spotless kitchen table, a bottle of Bordeaux, two glasses, a ruby droplet in one, its meniscus twitching in the storm of vigorous ablutions from above.
Shrugging, I poured myself a glass and took it upstairs to see what was going down. I rapped on the bathroom door, the frosted window running with condensation, expecting to be met with Marigolds. “Oh, you're early” she shouted. “I hope you don't mind me taking a shower, I got all sweaty”.
In our bedroom, immaculate bedlinen, the duvet folded back enticingly, under sheet tight as a drum and standing tautly to attention, the dildo, like an exclamation mark. Sighing to the ceiling, I drained my glass.
The bathroom door opened, releasing clouds of steam and stepping from this Stromboli, Botticelli's dream. Her hand modestly pressed to her chest securing the inadequate towel that skirted her bottom and pelmetted her pubic hair, which she obscured with her other hand. Strange how she'd elected to cover her breasts and not the lower, more intimate place, plus I knew there was a larger towel on the rail. Flushed and moist, radiating peaches and honeysuckle, her curls relaxed into corrugations, embracing her shoulders.
“What's the meaning of this?” gesturing at the silicone sentry. Like Venus, propelled by lustful zephyrs, she stepped forward and taking my index and middle fingers in her fist, she squeezed.
“I was hoping you could tell me” she pouted. “Or better still, show me”.
Running my hand over the unfeasibly soft skin of her buttock, a pulse flickered in the hollow of her throat, from where there bloomed a luxuriant pink rose. Drawing my hand back, I slapped her arse hard. Her eyes widened, first in confusion and then in excitement. She offered her face to mine, but I placed a finger on her lips.
“Sasha” I said. “Not yet”.
She cast her eyes down, then regarded me again. I shook my head solemnly.
“I understand” she said, retreating to the bathroom. I turned to the mirror. “I'm glad one of us does”.
I wanted you badly. Pulling aside the wardrobe door, my hands sought out your leather jacket. I sat on the bed and the dildo toppled, rolling towards me. I buried my face in the red, quilted armpit and wrung the distressed shoulders, holding it on my lap, staring blindly. A solitary tear splashed on the sleeve. Sasha in the doorway, fully clothed, sending me all the devotion and pity her coal eyes could summon.
“I'll call you tomorrow” she said and galloped down the stairs, closing the front door with a respectful click.
Sliding my arms into your jacket, its weight settled across my back, the wings of the Nephilim upon me. 'Please baby, come tonight”.
That evening, I cooked your favourite dinner, chicken with ginger and cashews and as I washed the pans and put them away, determined to sustain the cleanliness levels Sasha had established, I talked to you about ideas I'd had and the funny things that had happened lately. Over dinner we reminisced about the days we had collaborated in every conceivable way. We pleasured the dickens out of each other, didn’t we? So in tune, so akin, but variant enough to provide each other with challenge, stimulation, surprises, wisdom and an intrinsic 'otherness', which was at the heart of our ferocious attraction and would ensure it would never die. But it was too short Dale. I've had toothbrushes that lasted longer. Dale, Min sanna kårlek, jag sakner dig …so much.
After dinner, Prudence sat with me and I watched telly, not really paying any attention except for a programme about a man whose mind had been fooled into thinking the dead man's hand he'd been issued with was his own, lost in an accident, his brain filling in the gaps. One of those primal drivers again; we must function, even if it means tricking ourselves. You've been gone a year and a half now, more or less the same time we had together. Although the shape of my grief changes, its mass doesn't. It's everywhere - I meet it on the stairs, the first and last thing I see.
I went to bed and after an hour, setting down my book, I snapped shut my glasses case, applied my night cream and put out the light. Shivering into the cool cotton, I lay on my back, arms at my sides and inch by inch I slid, inexorably, from the sloping board into the sea, buried once again for another night.
Can't breathe, black slab, ribs crushing, legs pinned. 'Breathe'. A liquid voice and I inhale to make myself more robust and catch you in my arms. Laundered jumpers, cedar, ozone, wood smoke, caramel, a strong presentation and I relax. Your
hair on my breasts, your heat a shocking depth charge as I feel your nipples on my skin. I want to touch you but I can't. You move up me and I'm not crushed but anchored. You're here and tears fill my ears. But Dale, I'm afraid to open my eyes.
“Don't be afraid, silly, it's only me”, your breath like parchment. But you're not really here. I have to re-remember that every morning, over and over again. Your warm mouth on mine. “Sshh Minky, I'm here, I really am”. And now I'm frightened in case you are here because if you are, I'm insane. But I have to see. I'd die happy if I could just see you.
“Dramatic” you say and my lungs hitch with laughter. I open my eyes.
There you are, kind of resonating on me in waves, a shaggy silhouette, corkscrews flopping over your face, which I can't quite see. Dale, your hair has grown loads. One eye glinting like the moon in a dark pool. Here's your hand touching my cheek, a hand used to handling stone, I've missed your hands. Let me kiss it. You touch my lips with your fingers. Now pushing back a hank of curls, you're too close baby, I can't see you, so you draw back, straddling my body, your coco on my belly, your eyes spinning sparks like catherine wheels. They're smiling but I sense a physical effort in you being here. Desperate to touch you but I can't move.
