(formerly published under the name A.R. Carter)
Copyright © 2012
Cover by Dreamstime
(approx: 4,000 words)
She allowed the curtain to fall – back across the window damp with morning dew – and tightened the robe tight around her breasts to take the bite from the chill.
She walked over to the bed and pulled back the quilt and covers beneath. She smiled at the lover’s stain. The memory jiggled a shudder; she appreciated it and smiled again. She would smile a lot the morning-after, to nothing and no-one in particular. And then she would replace the cover and seal the shrine with something not unlike reverence.
She made coffee five minutes later, smiling into the steam that danced over the brim of the cup, enjoying the warmth tracing a path down her throat. Warmth like his warmth.
She chased his name around the foggy circus of her head: Tim, Jim, Don, Ron, Whatever. It never mattered. He was a shadowed face, handsome, cheeky, erotic in the shifting lights of the night-club; lithe and teasing in his movements on the dancefloor; hazy, crazy, mixed up in the fog of Malibus and Martins; half-heard chat-up lines and pointless jokes jostling for attention with the gutsy, thumping bass-beat and robotic rhythms from the speakers. He was – had been (an important correction) – a tall man with a steady arm and a definite hardness pressing into the side of her, a guiding, certain hand confidently leading her to the back seat of a taxi. Then lights blurred and she felt sick and he was lifting her off the carpet as lightly as feathers and snuggling her body into his muscled arms which carried her to the bedroom. He was – had been – rock between her legs and solid weight pressing her down into the depths of pleasure.
He had been half a warm bed, a tingle and a memory… nothing more nor less. Nameless, faceless, an experience not a person, a comfort for the symptom, not a cure for the disease, which had – and might always be – in all things, envy.
Whatever had left a business card on the coffee table in her living room. She tore it in half without looking at it. She switched the answering machine on so that it would not be necessary to pick up the phone for two days, in case he called, which he most likely would – they usually did.
Considering herself – as had become part of life’s obsessive pattern just lately – she might be a tract of arable land that men most often desired, occasionally fought for, frequently conquered, sometimes even tried to settle and stake a claim on. Three out of four was okay. The marauding masses with their callused, lusty hands and tainted breath were welcome – necessary – visitors; but they weren’t pioneering fresh fields and nor would they build their damned homesteads. They travelled predictable roads of strategy on the way to her bed, and she frequently laughed at how clever they thought they’d been on arrival. She giggled at how stupid they looked when they left: spent, shallow, stripped of the magnificence which only alcohol and subdued lighting had lent them. Considering … it all seemed quite pitiful.
One man called her a Femme Fatale, and she laughed dryly at his naïve and simplistic assumption. Yet another called her a slut, and she giggled at the hypocrisy and sent him home to his wife. If she had to be defined – and really, she saw no reason why she should – it would have to be Alice Through The Looking Glass: The Looking Glass beyond which all was magical imagination, but before which all was… empty, meaningless slips of vapour dissipating into the sour atmosphere that stalked her. That green mist of jealousy for her sister. That choking noose to strangle tonsils.
So men?
… were food. Eat when you’re hungry then push the plate away.
Evaporate, love! Oliver Twist has no place here. There are no Seconds.
Ask my sister. She doesn’t have to pretend.
*
Mark threw back the bedcovers as if they were alight. It was the alarm clock that woke him; the time flashed at 7.30 in irritating green digits, puddling a green haze into the blackness of the room, smudged through sleepy eyes that took many moments to focus. Naked, he ran to the window and dragged back the curtain. The sound of her heels tapped into the distance, and he barely caught sight of her, huddled into a heavy overcoat which disguised her delightful shape, before she disappeared around the corner.
He swore. Clock was slow. Perhaps only by a minute, but her routine was so regimented that it only took a lousy minute to steal the morning’s spy clean out of his grasp. Hours to wait before he could peep at her again from the stained window.
He drew the curtain back into place and returned to bed. The clock flashed, mocking. He switched it off; it would have to be reset anyway. He debated throwing on clothes and chasing off down the street after her – knowing full well he would do no such thing, but the temptation and the internal argument were always there. To follow. To add another page to the file of her life which so far contained only one flimsy folio with very little data recorded. (He knew where she worked.) it would be so nice to know so much more; so satisfying to know everything there was to know about her, and then to study her file and soak her into his pores and breathe her in and breathe her out … to make her tangible there on the end of the bed, real to touch, solid to kiss, to have her, possessed.
And possessed he was. Possessed of a fantasy. And jealous of all the men who held her close in this fantasy, those who didn’t have to pretend.
Sleep wouldn’t return so he arose and dressed. It was, perhaps, just as well, as sleep often brought with it peculiar dreams, always after he had caught a glimpse of her, as if she turned them on, those dreams… bad dreams where something unpleasant always happened to him, as though to augur the folly of the quest.
With the curtains now ajar so that daybreak seeped across the drab furniture of the room and carefully touched everything with pale fingers of tepid light, he unscrewed a bottled and sipped. He sipped carefully to begin because the stomach turned great fists of cramp when he drank too fast. By mid-morning, though, he would swallow mouthfuls with a maniac’s appetite. Not that he was an alcoholic – not yet, at least – but cider for breakfast set up the day against a soft background of washed colours, and cushioned the nerves from sharp edges. Then life was like standing still and having everything happen on a movie screen behind you, so you were never in any real danger of getting hurt no matter what frightening prospects the scenery might threaten.
What if he did follow her? At night, of course, when she went out? Find out some things for real, fill in the blank spaces that imagination could only make guesses at. What if…
Oh, but no. There lies the pathway to obsession.
Or have I already passed that point? – he asked himself.
And himself remained sagaciously mute.
*
Mark Johnson is twenty-seven and aware he acts seventeen. He often turns away resentfully from that mirrored face which has the look, the look of a man haunted. Haunted by an infatuation.
And he is jealous of her: it is this which lays at the root of his childish fixation. Jealous of the ease with which she can fill the other side of her bed, when for him such things have been measured on a barometer whose scale ranges from difficult to impossible. Mark is not an attractive man. This was one of the last things his girlfriend told him when she left three months earlier. She looked into his face, which was warped with the indignation of loss, twisted in knots of jealousy, bloated with petulant indignation words – (I knew you’d do this to me, I knew it would happen someday … didn’t I always say you’d want something better? Well, you’ll soon miss me, you slut!) … and she hoisted her suitcase across the threshold of his misery and said:
‘I won’t miss that look, that look you have every time I’m a little too long at the shops, or late home from work, or giving the time of day to some man who asks innocently, or accidentally resting my eyes on some figure the other side of a bar lounge, that look which calls me a whore and accuses me of infidelity when I loved you too much to ever do a thing … that look which makes you ugly. I won’t miss it. I used to think you were handsome, but I was wrong. You are not an attractive man. Because you’re not a very nice one.’
Loneliness filled the space she left behind, and this became indulgent self-pity – and then became a hunger for some other to replace her – and then a passion for a girl who spoke kindly to him in a salon one afternoon … and he misread her kindness and his hunger saw more in her pleasant smile than was meant to be seen. She was only doing her business. Making polite.
And he decided he must have this girl before his sanity also packed its suitcases. But she rejected him, sending back his tentative flirting unwelcomed, and this only made him worse. So now he looks at her with loathing as well as longing; and the quest for her is really the quest for himself. Her conquest would be his saviour. This challenge must be met or he might fade into particles of dust and crumble before the mirror. He drinks cider to chase away the rage – the evil fury to which the mind plays host Whenever a car pulls up outside her house … and it’s bound to be someone visiting her, bound to be, another stinking lover with dirty hands, like the shadow that opens a taxi door when she comes in late –
(Oh, if only he could’ve rented the house right next door to her instead of three doors away which makes it hard to see exactly who comes and goes…) –
…Or like the men who leave her workplace, smiling, kings – they think they are! – because they’ve probably got a date with her, arranged sex, those lucky men who have their own sort of look and it’s smugness, not envy. And they won’t have dreams, not like he has dreams; his being bitter nightmares wound into jealous plaids, theirs being glorious dreams of conquest.
Bound to be.
Noon flashed on the bedside clock. How did it get to midday? No matter, it was here, and shortly she would be, too. Home for lunch. His beautiful little hairdresser coming home for lunch.
He loaded fresh film, loosened the lock-nut on the tripod’s swivel ball so the camera was ready to pan, and that part of him that resents being seventeen sighed reproachfully at his older self as he prepared to shoot.
Still, it was better than following her: marginally better; and that much consoled him.
Simone came around the corner, right on time.
*
There he is again, she thought… punctual, persistent, pathetic – in a sweet kind of way.
Again, as always, under the spotlight her walk became self-conscious, awkward. Why God? Why me? Why didn’t this happen to my sister?…
Oh, Christ, that’s terrible.
The man next door drove past her after she had rounded the last corner before the thirty yards or so to her house; home for lunch – as punctual as she – as punctual as the twitching net curtain – as punctual as his 6 a.m. departure for work each morning, the man next door was. Always precise; his life must exist on a routine as rigid as the caliper that made her self-conscious walk an ugly limp.
*
I bet she thought it was the most pathetic chat-up line she’d ever heard, he thought. I had a dream after the last haircut you gave me – I dreamt you rubbed some kind of magic gel into my hair which made me go bald, just to stop me coming into your salon and trying to chat you up. Ha! Funny, aren’t they, dreams.
She had smiled and looked bashful and asked why he would want to chat her up. (Of all people, she almost said, but not quite.) But Mark had no reply nor quip-loaded answer for that – surely it was obvious why. Because you’re beautiful, Simone – he almost said, but not quite.
*
Three more business cards from the salon’s customers that morning. Three more affiliated fantasies. She laid them out on the coffee table, ready. Who would be first?
*
Do they love you for your handicap, or in spite of it? – he wondered, as the prints came up in the developing dish, magic pictures drawn in watery lines beneath a sparkling chemical surface. And how many are there, Simone? If only I could better see from my window, see your front door so that I would know for sure how hefty is the competition that betters me.
*
How was it possible to love her sister so much and despise her so much – in equal parts? – thought Simone. She was a lovely sister, a lovely, lucky sister, her twin; a woman of humility and modesty, never conceited by her league of admirers, never boastful, and always – which is why she loved her so – so humble about her wholeness before her sister. Simone was told that she was equally beautiful. But she felt that she was broken…
…An oil painting whose artist had slashed a cruel brush-stroke just as the very completion of his masterpiece, for no good reason that seemed apparent. God simply divided the twins at birth, and, in a fit of pique or artistic angst or insanity or something, had dashed that malicious brush-stroke across Simone’s leg and awarded her polio. The why? – was a question that lured her through childhood like a carrot before a mule. No reason. No reason why she drew the short straw… no reason she should be cursed with a caliper tied to the lower part of her right leg, forever; clumsy scaffolding to support the frail muscles which would never develop fully now although the polio was gone. And no reason would find her why her beautiful unspoiled twin had so many handsome men to love her, while she had only business cards and make-believe, which was a pathetic compensation from Mother Nature’s candy jar. Surely Mother Nature could’ve done better.
Simone could not even find a reason that she should still be a virgin – but for the horror that struck home whenever she saw the look in a man’s eyes… at that moment he noticed her crooked leg.
*
Mark decided that most men would love Simone despite her handicap because she was otherwise beautiful – but decided this was wrong. Mark loved her because of her handicap. Because it made a lame puppy all the more adorable by its weakness and her strength.
He decided this was wrong too.
He knew it would make no difference one way or the other. It was no more important than the colour of her shoes.
*
Simone decided that tonight she would not fantasise. She would not try to make theatrical mischief a reality in the solitary playground she called home; nor would she rise to a fevered pitch of eroticism before the stereo’s background of violent dance music, and pretend to share the excitement of being sought by amatorial men through her Looking Glass – that carafe of wine which brought her sister’s life into her own living room where make-believe lovers left their business cards on her coffee table the morning after. Nor would she pretend the unwashable mark on the bedsheet was a lover’s reminder, nor the throaty car engine of the neighbour’s Vauxhall at 6 a.m. was that same lover’s leaving.
She would not pretend anything tonight, for it was her twenty-first birthday – her coming-of-age – and as she had declined her sister’s invitation to celebrate, the least she could do for herself was to make her excuse real. Bring it to life.
– I can’t come out with you tonight, Sis – I have a date.
– You have?
– I have.
– Well, that’s great. Anyone I know?
– No. Just a neighbour.
*
I must stop this nonsense. I am obsessed with her and it’s quite pitiable. Bet she can see me at the window, taking bloody pictures because it’s all I can have of her. I must make a truce with my loneliness, accept it, carry it with dignity.
Drunk – as always by the time Simone went back to work for the afternoon shift – Mark caught his reflection in the mirror of his lifeless bedroom, and was swept by a feeling of utter disgust. In a manic fifteen-minute period he destroyed all the photographs of his gorgeous hairdresser, and slept the afternoon away on promises: he would look at her with the hideous features of envy no more; he would resent her lovers no more. To be jealous of her was to sneak something away from her, at the very least her privacy.
Which is what had brought him back to his senses as she walked with graceless metallic step along the pavement beneath his window.
The beautiful cripple had been robbed enough already.
*
The afternoon strode toward close-of-business with some measure of amusement; like a spry old sage with a gift tucked under his arm, making his way to a presentation, he carried a parcel of determination bundled in nervous tissue to offer the children – whose hearts may be in the right place, but whose wisdom had for too long been misplaced.
*
Of all the nights, she murmured, why tonight is he not at his window with his camera? Has he found a new hairdresser to tease? Has some other flattered soul responded to his shy compliments with the encouragement I daren’t? – and helped him bridge that gap between the mind’s demand and the tongue’s inadequacy?
Now he isn’t there, I know for certain what yesterday I doubted. He did want me, and would not have sniggered as I unbuckled the straps around my leg, would not have asked me if both legs would ever match, would not have reminded me that I am crippled by constant inane questioning and unnecessary fussing.
…Would not have passed me over for my perfect unruined twin.
It’s strange how I know this now that he’s gone. Yet I know it as surely as I know that I waited too long to see if he really wanted me, or played with me. How do I know? That I don’t know. Only that some bemused old voice is whispering something in my ear, and I don’t recognise such a wise old whisper. I recognise my own voice that tells me I left it too late, and tells me that his curtains are closed this evening because he has obviously got quite bored with looking at me.
What is that whisper that contradicts me?
Anyway, I will miss that look. Only he has ever given me that look twice, that look that so many give my sister a thousand times. And now it isn’t there at the window where it’s been for five weeks, I really miss it.
You never miss your water ‘til the well runs dry.
So climb the hill and fetch another pail!
Ah, I hear.
*
I won’t look, he pledged, I can’t look, I shall not look. I hear her familiar lopsided steps beyond the door, unusually close, louder than normal. Perhaps she sounds closer because I have moved her further away in my mind, and the mind plays tricks to tease.
Perhaps she means to entice you to the door?
Really?
*
I have never asked for anything to compensate for what nature stole, she thought. Until now! Now I must ask for more courage than I have ever owned. Like the mouse and the elephant – this small task makes me ridiculously afraid.
She missed a step and almost tumbled.
*
If I can wipe the silly look of infatuation from my face, might I look her straight in the eye, and ask her? Ask her to come out with me? Ask her directly?
His hand reached for the door latch, then drew back.
*
If I can look him right in the eye with just a whisker of my sister’s confidence, dare I ask him if he would like to share my birthday wine? It’s all in the way you set your face. Every face tells a story.
She stepped up to the garden gate, then stepped back.
*
The tissue that bound their determination was deceptively strong.
He opened the front door as she stepped through the gate. They looked at one another, silently, and without expression.
And in the emptiness, with nothing to be misread, they understood their reflections, twinned in different faces which both held the same magical look.
***
Mark and Simone married seven months later. They became parents to twins, Sophie and Angeline, one year after their wedding – both children were born whole and healthy. Infantile rivalry between the siblings as they grew reminded Mark and Simone of their own past envies…
But whilst jealousies, of whatever variety, are destructive to a lover who shies from possession, such traits to a like-minded person proclaim affection and stability. So as both Mark and Simone needed someone to possess while needing someone to possess them too, their marriage was a paradigm of the Happy Ever After folklore… which rarely exists in such times, and should be praised when it occurs, if only for its novelty value.
It is, in case you wonder, my task to couple two halves of the intended heart so that they fit together harmoniously. A thankless task, and one in which I do not always succeed – as you may know yourself. But I do try, and shall continue to do so, for the pleasure of compatibility is reward itself. It is good to see my magic work against a prevailing wind of pessimistic and incidental romancing.
Meet me at your next flirtation.
I’ll be the one looking at you in that special way – you know, that certain way. I’ll have the Look on my face when I smile at you, and if you return my shy invitation in kind, then you’ll know who I am.
…The only positive form of obsession there is.
Optimism.
*****
No comments:
Post a Comment