wisdom found in nothingness

the colour of emptiness

2011-09-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

At the age of eight, Alice Pasternack was given aseahorse. Syngnathidae Hippocampus. It was not much largerthan her thumb and bright orange. She thought it was the most beautifulthing she had ever seen and surely proof of God because who else but a playfulGod would create a tiny orange horse that lived in the sea? She eventually lost her seahorse and, someyears later, her belief in God, but she never lost her love of sea creatures.

In an indirect way, the seahorse was responsible for her joining the carnival,for falling in love, and for rescuing a beautiful, four-foot Merman.

***

Everyone remembers the discoveryof the Mercreatures nine years ago. Discovered on a small island in theSouthern Ocean, the first creature to be captured, a female they called Ariel,was displayed at the London Zoo until her death two years later. Anotherfour found themselves in other zoos throughout the world. None had faredwell.

Two othershad been sold to private owners – Donald Trump and Ken Parker. The TrumpMercreature's fate was unknown, but Parker had arranged for his to be displayedin his Miracle World Exhibition in Australia. He had been nicknamed theCarnival-Merman and he spent his time in a large aquarium, supervised by a teamof marine biologists and scientists, sometimes touring with the carnival knownas Parker's Phantasmagoria.

His name was Poseidon.

***

Alice worked in the Animal Worldsection of the Entertainment Park as an assistant curator. She oftenvisited the Mercreature, but she wasn't allowed to do anything other thanobserve; the exhibit was far too important for the likes of her.

Once, she had been walking past theexhibit in the late afternoon, and had seen pale blue light coming frominside. Curious, she had gone inside and had seen Jamie McIntyre standingin front of the aquarium. The blue light emanating from the displaypoured over him like water. He was wearing jeans and a greyt-shirt. Alice had stood looking, secretly watching him.

Jamie worked in the Big Tent,where the clowns, trapeze artists, magicians and animal acts worked. Hewas a general labourer, doing odd jobs, constructing things, cleaning up. Shehad never spoken to him before but, that night, he had turned and had smiled.

"He's beautiful, isn't he?"he'd said.

Alice stepped closer and looked at theMerman, asleep on his bed of rocks. His perfect pale grey face, smoothand round; his long grey limbs; his webbed hands; his lithe, shiny body – hewas extraordinarily wonderful.

"Yes," she had said.

"Do you think he's happy?" heasked.

"Oh, I doubt it," shereplied.

He turned to look at her.

"How can you tell?"

"How could he be happy, withoutthe ocean or his family or his fellow creatures?" she had replied and hehad nodded, turning to look at the sleeping Mercreature, watching it silently,thoughtfully.

"Victor says it's just a seamammal, like a whale or a dolphin."

"Whales and dolphins are veryintelligent."

"We kill them. I mean, theJapanese do, don't they? And the Norwegians."

"Whales?"

"Yeah. Whales."

"But… are they like us, do youthink? I mean, we have families and lovers. They're justfish."

He looked at her. He had clearblue eyes. He told her of a dolphin they had found dead on a beach. It had drowned. There were marks in its skin which came from thebeaks of other dolphins who had been trying to lift it to the surface tobreathe. They had tried to save it. They knew what to do, but hadfailed.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Alice," she replied.

"Just because they're different,Alice, don't underestimate their minds," he said, then he had left.

Shehad watched him leave. She had looked back at the tank and hadraised a hand to touch it with her fingers. The Merman opened his yelloweyes, looking at her through the thick glass.

***

Mercreatures (mermen and mermaids) – stelleptipus arieluss

Mercreatures are large amphibiousmammals who live on the island of St Victoria. Although sea creatures,they have many similarities with humans and monkeys. Up to fifty millionyears ago, the ancestors of Mercreatures lived on land as apes, however, overthe millennia, they have evolved into an aquatic species. Thisevolutionary trend is likely to be the result of mutations within the specieswhich favoured individuals who competed for food on an island with limited foodand space.

Physically they still resemblehumanoids, with two arms and legs, a humanoid-shaped head; however, they aresmooth-skinned, with no hair; their flesh is silver-grey and they have eyeswith a transparent lid which protects them underwater. Their hands andfeet are webbed and larger than land mammals. When diving underwater,they put their legs together and spread their feet so that they resemble alarge tail fin. The average Mercreature stands four and a half feet tall.

As mammals, Mercreatures arewarm-blooded, have mammary glands to suckle their young and have to surface tobreath air. Mercreatures breathe air through their lungs and thereforemust surface regularly, however they have a far greater lung capacity than mostmammals and can remain underwater for up to half an hour. Whenunderwater, their heart rate slows and their lungs collapse, allowing them towithstand great pressure.

Tiny slits in their neck, resemblinggills, are, in fact, the Mercreature equivalent of dolphin blow-holes and areused to rapidly suck in air when on the surface; when underwater, these slitsclose, trapping the air inside, preventing water from entering.

Mercreatures have an extremelyefficient circulation system. As well as breathing less frequently andtaking deeper breaths than land mammals, they have more oxygen-carrying redblood cells and can regulate where their blood is distributed. During adeep dive only essential organs such as the heart and brain get oxygen-richblood.

Unlike dolphins and whales, they spendmuch of their time on land (in this they are similar to seals), using wateronly to rehydrate and to hunt for food or play. They sleep and mate onland, though they remain close to the ocean, often sleeping on rocks or on thesand.

There have been numerous sightingsof Mercreatures over the years by sailors and explorers. Theirhuman-like shape and the tail-fin-like effect when they dive no doubt havecontributed to the mermaid myth. The first modern Mercreature was discoveredand caught in 2013. Mercreatures exist in the New York, London, SanFrancisco and Halifax zoos. Two are privately-owned. The CarnivalMerman, also known as Poseidon, is on permanent display at Miracle World inAustralia.

In 2017, the UnitedNations declared them a protected species and their island was given WorldHeritage listing. It is now forbidden to trade in Mercreatures.

***

Jamie had a guitar. Sometimes he would sit at the back of the storage bayand play. Alice would sit just out of sight and listen. He playedwell. He liked melodies that were gentle and intricate. The dayafter they had met in the Merman enclosure, she heard him playing and, thistime, instead of hiding, she walked into view. He glanced up, paused inhis playing then, when she nodded for him to continue, he resumed.

She sat near him. She watched his fingers playing the strings. Shewished she could play a musical instrument like him.

"He cries, you know," he said without looking up.

"Sorry?"

"At night. Have you ever been here at night? You can hearhim. He cries. It's like a wail."

"That's awful."

He stopped playing.

"I saw a documentary about them catching him. They flew over low ina helicopter. There were a whole bunch of Mercreatures on therocks. They scattered into the water. They dropped a net and he wascaught up in it. They pulled him up. The others watched him fromthe sea, being taking up into the air. They had to shoot him with a dart,to prevent him from tearing the net open and falling. They still sedatehim sometimes, when he becomes too agitated. He bit one of the trainersonce and they sedated him for a whole week. He just lay there on hisrock, looking up at the ceiling of the enclosure, hardly eating."

"I've only ever seen him being calm."

"Most of the time he is. It's their nature I suppose. Butsometimes the grief and the loneliness takes hold of him and they have tosedate him. If they don't he works himself up and throws himself againstthe glass, trying to break through. I think sometimes the only thing hewants in the world is to get out of his tank."

Alice remembered her seahorse. After a time, it's bright orange colourfaded to a kind of watery, pale pink. It had caught an infection and haddied. Poseidon was like that: pale and fading away with loneliness.

"Maybe they should find a mate for him?" she suggested.

Jamie stood up. He held his guitar like he would a child; gently,naturally.

"That would just be putting two of them in jail," he said, then heheaded off and Alice watched him; watched the slow swing of his hips and theshape of his back and shoulders, until he disappeared behind a caravan.

***

Interest in Poseidon had been big atfirst but, as with all new things, it was waning. The owner was makingchanges. He had opened a café called The Black Lagoon Café. Poseidon was being marketed as a kind of horror creature, with a poster of himon his legs, arms raised, as if attacking. The artist had made himgreener than he was, more reptilian. His skin was, in reality, more likea dolphin's, grey and shiny.

The souvenir shop now sold plastic models of him in the same pose as theposter. There were key rings, mugs, tea towels, t-shirts, all withPoseidon's image on them.

Then they went a step further. They stopped sedating him for a while andwaited until he started throwing himself at the glass, then they had a woman ina one-piece white swim suit stand in front of the glass and they tookphotographs. They shot him with a dart before he could do any harm tohimself. The photograph they turned into a poster showed the womanscreaming, with an angry Poseidon behind her, looking as if he were about toattack her.

Being a Merman wasn't enough now; they were turning him into a monster.

***

Despite the return of his sedation,Poseidon continued to be unsettled. Perhaps he could pick up the changein the atmosphere now that he was being billed as a threatening monster, ratherthan a benign sea creature, and the crowds were more excited?

The scientists looking after him protested but the carnival was more of asideshow than a scientific exhibit and crowd numbers were back up, so thepromotion continued.

In actual fact, in the wild, Mercreatures were placid animals. They spentmuch of their time sunning themselves. They went to the water when theywanted to exercise or fish. They also ate fruits that fell from the treesand seaweed washed up on the shore. They had no major predators, onlysome seabirds which sometimes attacked the very young.

The reason they had remained a secret for so long was that the island was atthe bottom of nowhere, on no shipping route or flight path. They werealso masters of concealment. Any sign of a ship or boat and they quicklyheaded for the depths of the ocean. No doubt ancient mariners had caughtglimpses of them; strange human-like creatures slipping under the wavesin the distance with grey fins instead of legs and feet.

The only animals they attacked were fish. They were scared of humans andmight lash out in defence, but most of the time they were calm. Intemperament, they were more like sloths than monkeys.

***

One night, before she went home,Jamie asked her to go to the Mercreature enclosure with him. He had keys,as he needed to get in for maintenance now and then. He turned on thelights and they flickered alive. It was strange being there afterhours. No people, no piped music, no cameras flashing.

Poseidon was swimming. When he swam he looked masculine and lithe, likean athlete or dancer.

"He's beautiful," she said going to the glass.

"This is what he does when everyone goes. When people are watching,he gets shy. But, when he's alone, he swims"

"But we're watching?"

"He's used to me. I come in every night. He trusts me."

Suddenly, Poseidon swam over. He floated mere inches from the glass,looking at them. She had never been this close before. It wasincredible, looking into his eyes. You could see the intelligence inthem, the individuality. He looked at her with obvious curiosity, tiltinghis head slightly. And then he reached out, pressing his tiny webbed handagainst the glass.

She jumped, startled. Jamie smiled. He took her hand and lifted it,pressing it on the glass in the exact spot where Poseidon's was. Hermouth fell open. She felt a shiver rush through her. For a fewseconds their hands were pressed together, separated only by the cool,clearness of glass, and then, in a swift, graceful movement, he turned and swamaway.

She looked at Jamie who laughed.

"We have to rescue him!" she said suddenly.

He nodded.

"I'd hoped you'd say that."

***

It was Jamie who suggested Alicedisguise herself as a boy. When they found out Poseidon was gone, they'dcheck the security cameras and, if they thought it was two males, it might putthem off the scent for a while.

They were going to drive down to the coast, hire a boat and sail to the islandof St Victoria, where they were going to let him go. Jamie had seen afilm called Turtle Diary, which was about a couple who rescued a turtlefrom a zoo. It was where he got the idea.

They met in Jamie's flat. It was small and neat. His guitarwas propped up against the wall beside a bookcase. He had a poster of adolphin on the wall. He poured wine and they talked, making lists ofthings they needed, the best routes, the best times. She had suggestedthey do this on a whim; now it all seemed so real and dangerous.

Jamie cooked them pasta. She wondered if they would end up in bed. Shethought she wanted to, but she wasn't sure.

When it was late, he called her a taxi. He gave her a twenty dollar notefor the fare. It was a cold night and the moon was full. His facewas illuminated by moonlight, making it look white and ghostly. She rodehome feeling a little drunk and light-headed.

***

The night before they did it, theypractised dressing her as a boy. She had cut her hair short and she worea check shirt, pants, boots. In the bathroom she had used cloth bandagesto tape her breasts flat. She wore a fake moustache; small, nothing tootheatrical. She wore glasses as well.

Jamie told her to watch him walk. She mimicked him. He told her notto be too dramatic; to try to walk naturally. It was necessary, shediscovered, to walk with natural confidence, to be straight andcalm. He held her by her hips and turned them gently, showing her a wayto turn so that her hips swivelled as if on a fulcrum.

"On the night, it's important you look strong and natural."

"Strong and natural," she repeated, aware of his fingers resting justbelow her waist.

"We'll have to get you bigger clothes though."

"They fit perfectly."

"That's the problem. They show your shape."

"What's wrong with my shape?"

"There's nothing wrong with your shape. You're thin, Alice, butyou're shaped like a girl."

“Wellmaybe you should dress as a girl? Twogirls would really throw them.”

Hethought this was funny and he agreed to try on her dress. She took him into the bathroom and used hermake-up to paint his face, smearing red lipstick onto his lips, showing him howto press his lips together to smear the glossy paint in. He had long hair, which she tied in apony-tail with lilac ribbon. He was masculine,but looked good as a girl.

After, they sat and drank Jack Daniels. The ice chinked in theirglasses. He said they were doing a good thing. It was a good thingthey were doing.

She drank her whiskey and, once again, felt light-headed. She didn't gohome that night. He made up the couch and she slept in his bed while heslept in the front room. His bed smelled warm and masculine. Sheclosed her eyes and listened to the rain fall outside. She felt like shewas sinking into the bed, drowning.

***

They had hired a van. In the backthey had placed a plastic tub and had filled it with salt water. It wasdeep enough to hydrate him, but not drown him.

They would have to sedate him. They had a fish with pills stuffedinside. Jamie had stolen the pills from one of the scientists and knewthe correct dosage from some notes he had read.

When the van drove up and she climbed in, she had laughed.

"What?"

"Nothing," she smiled, touching him on the knee, "you make acute girl, that's all."

Inside, Poseidon was asleep. Jamie tossed the fish to him and he awoke,but he wasn't interested.

"Now what?" Alice asked anxiously.

"Wait there," Jamie replied.

He returned a short while later with a dart gun.

"This is probably better anyway," he said.

He climbed up and aimed the gun, looking somewhat ridiculous in his yellowfrock.

"Sorry Poseidon," he said then fired.

The dart hit him in his side. The Mercreature felt for the dart, shocked,but soon fell and rolled off his rock into shallow water.

Jamie unlocked the glass cage. They had brought a stretcher from the sickbay and they somehow managed to roll Poseidon onto it. He was heavierthan they had imagined but they managed to carry him out. Outside it wasbitterly cold and the stars were sharp and bright.

With some difficulty, they managed to get him into the back and rolled him intothe tub. He lay there with his head resting on the side. They tiedhis legs and hands with cloth bandages. They didn't want him panicking andrunning around when he woke up.

"Will he be all right?" Alice asked.

"I think so. We can keep checking."

The left him in the back, in the dark, and climbed into the cabin. Jamiereached out and grabbed Alice's hand, squeezing it.

"I'm glad I met you," he said, then he started the engine and theydrove off.

***

They turned on the radio. Theylistened to country music while they drove out of the city, through thesuburbs, heading towards country roads. They hoped to be a few hundredmiles away before Poseidon's absence was noticed.

Alice looked at Jamie, his face lit by the passing street light – bright, thendark, bright, then dark, his lips dark, like red lollies.

"Shouldwe check on him?" she asked, after a while of driving.

"When we get to a petrol station. The sedative will still beworking."

When the news came on the radio, they both expected to hear of the theft ofPoseidon but it was just news about wars and car crashes and the stock market.

They pulled into a petrol station. Jamie filled up, looking shy andawkward in his dress, while Alice bought sandwiches, coffee, juice andwater. They checked on Poseidon. He was still asleep. He madea little murmuring sound. Alice cupped her palms, filled them with waterand splashed his face so that it wouldn't dry out.

They closed the doors. A police car drove in behind them. Theyclimbed into their cab and drove off.

***

It was raining hard now. The windscreen wipers pushed the water acrossthe glass.

"When will he wake up?" Alice asked.

"In a few hours. He's dreaming now."

Their tyres splashed through the water on the road.

She wondered what Poseidon dreamed of.

"WhenI get old, I’ll tell my grand kids how I rescued a merman and let him free,"she said.

He laughed. He looked at her and, in the red light of thetraffic light, with his lips bright red, his face looked oddly clown-like,but lovely.

***

They drove through the morning. The rain eased. The sky became washed with pale light. Soon it wasday.

They found another station. Theychecked on Poseidon first. He was awake. He looked at them withperplexed, frightened eyes.

"It all right," Alice saidsoftly, stroking his head; wetting it again. He made a little whimperingsound that was a bit like a dog crying.

Alice stayed with him while Jamie wentto the bathroom and became masculine again. They bought breakfast. They ate as they drove.

"He must be awfully scared,"Alice said.

Jamie didn't reply. He turned onthe radio. This time, when the news came on, they heard a report aboutthe theft of the Carnival Merman from Miracle World. "CCT footageshows two women in their mid-twenties, driving a white van. TheMercreature is highly valuable and would be worth millions on the blackmarket. Scientists at Miracle World say they are anxious about hissafety as any long absence from the water could be dangerous to hishealth."

"Well, we'd better keep to theminor roads," Jamie suggested.

"We're criminals now, Isuppose."

"We'd better push on."

***

They drove along a country road. Trees surrounded them; pale, ghostly eucalypts in a dense forest. Alicelooked at the road map. It was an area simply called the Wooded Glen.

"Aren't you tired?" sheasked Jamie.

"Yeah, but we'll push on for a bit. I want to reach the boat."

"It's dangerous driving whenyou're tired."

He glanced at her.

"Tell me a story. That'llkeep me awake."

"I don't know any stories."

"Tell me about seahorsesthen."

She laughed. She thought for afew moments.

"Shall I tell you about theircourtship? They have such a marvellous courtship."

"Yes. Tell me."

She took a deep breath and let it outslowly. The morning sunlight was shining through the grey clouds creatinga kind of luminous, halo effect.

"Well, when two seahorses becomeinterested, it's not that wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am stuff you get with mostfishes. They court for several days. It's a slow, lovingprocess. And, while they court, they change colour. From red toorange to green or yellow. They swim side-by-side, holding tails, andsometimes they grip the same strand of sea-grass with their tails and wheelaround in unison. It's called a 'pre-dawn dance.' It's verybeautiful."

"I bet."

"And then the true courtship dancebegins."

He laughed. She looked at him,wondering if he were making fun of her, but he was smiling kindly.

"Do tell."

"Well, it lasts for about eighthours. Can you imagine that? Eight, long, slow hours makinglove? The male pumps water through an egg pouch on his trunk and thisexpands, opening to reveal a colourful emptiness. That's how I heard itdescribed once. 'A colourful emptiness.'"

He grinned.

"The female likes this?"

"I guess so. While he openshis pouch they both drift upwards, snout-to-snout, spiralling as they rise, andshe deposits her eggs into his pouch. When it's all over, they float backdown and then the female swims off. It's the male that has the babies see."

"And the female just buggersoff?"

"Not quite," she laughed,"it's not as cold-hearted as that. The pregnancy lasts up to threeweeks and every morning the female returns, and they undergo a little courtshipdance again, changing colour, entwining tails, wheeling around sea-fronds,finally dancing a little promenade dance with their tails entwined. Itlasts around six minutes and happens every morning of the pregnancy. It'svery beautiful."

"Sounds like a real littleperformance."

"Weeks and weeks of lovely dancing. How romantic."

Jamie laughed loudly and she could seethat he was happy. He reached across and touched her hand, keepinghis eyes on the road.

"What about our friend backthere? How do his lot mate?" he asked.

"More like apes. Not nearlyso lyrical."

"A shame."

"Though they often choose thewater when they have sex. They like to mate under the sea, and it's kindof like a swimming-dance. Very balletic."

He was about to say something and heopened his mouth and turned to her, but then the van spluttered andstalled. He looked puzzled. And then the engine cut out altogetherand he let it drift onto the side of the road into some gravel.

***

"I have no idea what's up,"he said, after inspecting the engine, "we've got plenty of petrol. And the engine hasn't overheated."

"Could it be somethingelectrical?"

He shrugged.

"Vans aren't my thing."

He tried turning the key but there wasno response other than a little electrical whine.

"So, what do we do?" sheasked.

He ran a hand through his hair. Helooked up and down the road. He scratched his head.

"Chuck us the map book."

She reached inside and pulled it out.

He inspected it. She could seehim thinking. Then he said: "Change of plan. We can hardlywait here and flag someone down. There's a shore line about twomiles this way.

He tapped the map.

"But what about the boat?"

"That's at least twenty milesway. We'd never walk it. We'd be spotted anyway."

"So we release him here? Isthat what you're suggesting?"

"I don't see any other way. It's not how this was supposed to work, I know, but this thing isn't going tobe going anywhere in a hurry and if anyone comes along they'll be likely todiscover Poseidon. We don't have much choice do we?"

Alice sighed.

"This isn't fair. How are wegoing to get him there?"

"On the stretcher. We'll tiehim to it. It'll freak him out I suppose."

He looked up suddenly. In thedistance there was the sound of a helicopter.

"Come on. Let's getmoving."

***

With some difficulty they put Poseidonon the stretcher, binding him by his wrists and ankles. He wasn't tooheavy but it was awkward carrying him through the dense forest that was markedon the map as The Wooded Glen. The ground was covered inmoss. The trees soaked up the sound so it was like walking through asacred place, hushed and lonely.

"Are you okay?" Jamie asked.

"I'm all right."

"I shouldn't have got you intothis."

"It was my suggestion,remember."

"They'll charge us. He'sworth a fortune. And a protected species to boot."

"Well we've done it now. Itwas the right thing to do and you know it. He would have died backthere. It was just a matter of time."

"Is he okay?"

"He's quiet. He'sterrified. He won't have any idea about what is happening to him."

She looked at his grey face; it had nonose but it was very human-like. Carrying him like this, through thesilent, white trees, was eerie. It was like carrying someone to a secretexecution in the forest. Did he think he was going to die?

"He'll be drying out. He'snot too heavy?"

"I'll cope. He'll be allright, won't he?"

Jamie didn't answer. They justkept on walking.

***

They heard the helicopter comingcloser. They put the stretcher down and crouched down.

"They must have seen thevan. They're searching for us."

"It might be a coincidence."

"Maybe? But I bet youParker found the van and now they're searching the forest. He's after hisinvestment. Damn! They shouldn't be able to see us through thetrees though if we don't move."

They both looked at Poseidon whowhimpered softly. He looked at them with frightened, yellow eyes. Alicewanted to hold his hand, but would he understand her meaning?

They waited until the helicopter flewoff into the distance and then they headed off again.

***

"What are we going to do when thisis over?" Alice asked as they carried the supine Mercreature through theshadowy trees.

"Well, we can't go back, canwe?"

"We'll have to keep onrunning."

"I suppose so. If we canmake it to the train station a few miles east, we can catch a train down to thecity. We can get a room, think things out. Work out where we'regoing to go."

"It's us now,isn't it?" she asked a little tentatively.

He looked over her shoulder ather. He nodded and smiled gently.

"Us," he said firmly.

That's when Poseidon started making amoaning noise. He struggled frantically with his ties.

"What's the matter? What'sup?"

They put him down.

"Take it easy, fella."

Alice stroked him but he struggled andstruggled. Jamie sniffed the air.

"He can smell the ocean," hesaid.

Alice understood.

"Let's put him out of hismisery."

***

They carried him down to thebeach. The sea was grey and rough. The salt wind was cold on theirfaces. Exhausted from their walk, they lay the stretcher carefully on thesand.

"What should we do?" Aliceasked.

"Just untie him I guess."

So they both knelt down. Alicetook care of the feet, Jamie undid the ones around his wrists. Poseidonleapt up. Alice was afraid he might attack them; it would be a reasonablething for him to do in the circumstances. But, instead, he just stared atthe ocean in awe, staggering a little, as if drunk, and unsure on his webbedfeet. It was as if he did not know what to do, as if he couldn't believewhat he was seeing. He was frozen on the spot, sniffing theair, listening, looking.

Then, without a thought for Alice orJamie, he walked steadfastly towards the water, over the wet sand, into thefoamy surf; he paused, briefly, the white foam frothing around his sleekankles, then he waded deeper and deeper, until the waves were around hiswaist. Alice hoped he might turn and wave, but that was too much of ahuman gesture to expect. Instead, he dipped under the waves suddenly andthey saw him swimming for a few metres - just a hint of shiny grey skin - and then he was gone forever.

"He'll be okay, won't he?"Alice asked after a while, almost sobbing.

"I think so."

"Will he find his way home?"

"I don't know."

"Jesus, what if he drowns or getseaten by a shark?"

"He's in his element now. He'll be all right. He belongs out there."

Jamie put an arm around her waist andshe wasn't surprised by the gesture. She rested a head against hisshoulder. They stood in silence, wondering.

"Well that's that, Isuppose," said Jamie at last, "the end of our little adventure."

"Or the beginning?" Alicesuggested.

He looked at her and smiled.

"Come on," he said,"we've got some running to do."

They headed back through the wood,holding hands. Just before they disappeared into the trees, Alice tookone more look at the ocean; at the silvery, turbulent waves and the pale, grey horizon.

He was out there somewhere, swimminglike a dancer, supple and powerful and free.

Jamie pulled her along and they walkeddeeper into the dark forest, and soon the only thing left of the now unseen oceanwas the sighing sound of waves behind them.

the other continent

2010-05-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

The thing they most remember about the magician, Silvestri the Magnificent, was his tulips. Gaudy yellow flowers, glossy and radiant, which always formed a part of his act. He could pull tulips, literally, out of thin air. He would hold out a hand, pulling back his neat, black sleeve to show there was nothing hidden there, revealing a crisp white shirt and, underneath, soft, pink skin, then he would say something under his breath – a spell, charm or incantation? – and, out of nowhere, a bunch of yellow tulips would appear.

One of his special tricks was to walk down into the audience and choose a woman, apparently at random. He would take her bag and wave his black and white wand over it, telling her he chose her because she was beautiful and that her beauty shone in the crowd like a candle burning in a paper lantern. People would laugh and she would smile, and maybe blush, and he would place her bag on her lap and wave both hands over it, then the bag would spring open and out of it would pour dozens of yellow tulips on green stems. The audience would applaud and the woman would gasp in amazement and the magician, Silvestri the Magnificent, would hold up his arms and bow deeply.

Of course, most believed the woman was a plant. She had been sitting in the audience from the beginning, her bag stuffed with tulips, waiting to be chosen. It was the only rational explanation. Some, though, believed it was real magic. But only a few. In the end, only the women knew. Only they knew what had been in the bag in the moments before Silvestri the Magnificent bent to pick it up. Only Silvestri and these women knew whether it was really magic or not.

At the end of his act, he would declare that he possessed an ancient, sacred spell, handed down through the generations, which enabled him to open a portal to another world. He could open this portal and send a member of the audience into that other world if he so desired. But it would require the desire of the chosen person also. Then he would walk down the aisle and he would take the hand of the woman whose bag he had filled with tulips earlier. He would take her onto the stage. The same woman; more evidence that she was a plant. And he would tell her to stand perfectly-still. He would wave his wand over her head. Would she like to visit that other world? he would ask. Would she like to leave this world behind and go to a world of mystery and wonder? Invariably she nodded and smiled shyly. He would turn to the audience and shout: ‘Behold!’ And, around the woman, a pale blue light would shimmer, like sun reflected on water, a kind of light-filled pale blue window, which engulfed and surrounded her. And, in an instant, she would appear to fall into the light and, equally instantaneously, the light would disappear. And the woman would vanish into nothingness.

There was always much wonder at this. And Silvestri the Magnificent would joke that he could make all the women in the room disappear like this, so the men had better watch out. People would laugh. And then he would clap his hands and, from his cupped palms, wings of golden, glowing light would fly upwards, like shining birds. And he would point. There, standing in the balcony, was the woman, a confetti of silvery light falling around her hair.

It was a trick, of course, but no-one knew how it was done. Everyone wondered how she had managed to get up onto the balcony with such speed. And how he had made her vanish before their very eyes. And, each night, they would fill the theatre with loud, cheery applause.

* * *

A strange coincidence: women were disappearing across the town. Women who didn’t come back from the shops, or who went out for a drive and never returned, or who went to visit a friend but never arrived, but didn’t come home either. Six of them, in all. All disappearing in a matter of two weeks.

Some of the men noted that Silvestri the Magnificent had been in town for two weeks. Reluctantly, the police agreed to interview him, as a person of interest. He sat in a small interview room and was asked what he knew about the women who had disappeared?

“You think I had something to do with it?” he asked, incredulously.

He wore a red carnation in the lapel of his black jacket. He had a black goatee beard and a fine, neat moustache. In another time he would be called ‘dashing.’

“You threaten to do such a thing in your act,” said the female officer.

Silvestri the Magnificent smiled.

“It’s just part of the show. To make people laugh. You don’t really think I can do magic do you?”

“How do you do it?” the other one asked, leaning forward, “how do you make the women disappear?”

“Oh, I can’t possibly tell you that. It’s a trade secret. A magician’s art relies upon mystery and secrecy.”

There was an air of superiority about him which annoyed the policeman.

“There are no secrets with us,” he said.

“My magic has been secret since the time of Merlin,” Silvestri remarked with a little smile, “no temporary authority can make me reveal such sacred truths.”

The female police officer smiled quietly.

They quizzed him about his whereabouts over the last month. They checked with police departments in other towns where he had been. They had hoped to find women had disappeared in the other places, but there were no such reports. They put him in a cell over night, but they couldn’t hold him any longer, and so they let him go the following morning. The young policewoman with dark hair took him back to his hotel.

Once there, she asked if she could see his room. Perhaps she hoped to find some crucial clue? He obliged. He had a room on the second floor. It was small room with a balcony overlooking the main street. In the corner was a tall and slim, black, enameled box. She walked up to it.

“What’s this?”

“A Japanese magical cabinet.”

“It’s very beautiful,” she said.

It was dark, shiny and polished. Engrained in the black shellac of paint were tiny yellow dots, little dips from a paintbrush, in the shape of small, yellow flowers. It was as if the cabinet were encrusted with pollen. She touched the cabinet with her fingertips and let out a little surprised gasp. The wood thrummed, an ever-so-faint humming of energy, like a tiny electrical current. She looked at him.

“Can I see inside?”

“Most certainly.”

He opened up the door and she looked inside. She was disappointed. She had expected something exotic, but it was just an empty box, dark and unmysterious. It smelled faintly of spicy wood.

“See? No hidden bodies,” he smiled and she smiled as well.

* * *

Silvestri the Magnificent was doing thirteen shows over two and a half weeks. Word soon spread about how good he was and each show was quickly booked out. The town was a little on edge, worried about the disappearance of the women, and they were looking for something to distract them. They were never disappointed, for his act changed all the time and, each night, he performed ever more wonderful tricks.

He always started with the usual ones. Tulips falling from thin air. The tulips in the woman’s bag. And he ended, as always, with the vanishing woman and her miraculous reappearance on the balcony minutes later. But, in between, were a variety of different acts.

One night, he made a tiger appear on the stage, fierce and fierily muscular, roaring with primitive, raw anger. As the bewildered animal leapt through the air at the magician, he waved his hands and the tiger vanished before their very eyes. Silvestri the Magnificent bowed to a sea of applause.

Another night, he told his audience to look up and they were astonished to see hot, boiling flames rippling along the ceiling. There were screams. The theatre was on fire! But, even as some leapt to their feet to flee, Silvestri the Magnificent turned the flames into sheets of water, which began falling towards the audience, only to vanish mere seconds before inundating the crowd with wetness.

Yet another night, he made a flock of brilliant green parrots appear in the air above the audience. They flew in a mad, iridescent panic, screeching noisily, until he made a square of sky-blue light appear in the ceiling, and the birds flew out, high up into the sky. With a whispered incantation, the hole closed and Silvestri the Magnificent bowed.

* * *

One night, as he was sitting drinking tea in his room, there was a knock on the door and, when he opened it, he was surprised to see the young policewoman who had been to his room before. She wasn’t in police uniform this time, but was wearing a simple cotton dress with leather shoes.

“I hope you don’t mind me coming? I wanted to ask you a question.”

He invited her in. He took a mini-bottle of champagne from the fridge and poured it into two glasses. He handed her one.

“What is it you would like to ask?”

She studied him carefully.

“I was wondering. How do you choose the women? The ones whose bags you fill with tulips? And then make disappear?”

He sat on the bed and smiled.

“Let me tell you a secret. What is your name?”

“Claire. Claire Waterford.”

“Let me tell you a secret, then, Claire Waterford.”

He sipped his wine, then said:

“Everyone, at the very core of their being, is lonely. To varying degrees, everyone yearns for something they can not have. They want to be someone they can not be. They have an emptiness which can not be filled. They ache. They cry.”

He paused, sipping more champagne, then put the glass on the table beside the bed. He looked at her.

“All I do, when I look for the woman of the night, is look for the most lonely woman there. The woman who, of everyone in the audience, would most want, even need, to see a glimpse of another world, where such loneliness is banished.”

“But, that’s just silly. How can you see loneliness?”

“Oh, to the experienced practitioner, loneliness shines from within like a candle burning inside a paper lantern.”

She looked at him as if trying to work out if he were having her on. Then she laughed.

“Okay. I understand. It’s all part of the act.”

He stood. He walked over to her. He very gently brushed the side of her face with his fingertips.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

He looked into her eyes and she was a little afraid.

“I don’t know.”

“Let me tell you why,” he said softly, “you came here, Claire, because you are very lonely. You go home at night and you yearn for happiness but that part of you which needs happiness is just hollow and sad.”

He brushed the top of her mouth, just above her lip.

“You came here because you sensed I could take you to that other place. The place where happiness exists. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer at first, she just stood there, looking at him, but then she said: “It’s hypnotism, right? All your tricks are just hypnotism.”

He didn’t answer. He held her by her narrow hips. She should have pushed him away but, instead, she felt herself falling towards him. And he stopped her falling by putting his mouth on hers. A kiss so gentle it almost wasn’t a kiss, but it was the loveliest kiss she’d ever experienced, and she was suddenly filled with the most wonderful, warming desire. He was right. She was terribly unhappy and had been for some time but, here, in this room, she could feel the unhappiness fall from her like a discarded gown, and she was almost overwhelmed by it.

It wasn’t long before she was naked and he was caressing her deliciously, kissing her body, stroking her skin. He told her that her nipples were like rosebuds and wet them with the touch of his mouth. Her neck was like soft silk and he made a necklace of tiny kisses in a slow circle around her delicate throat. He held her by her boyish hips and he tugged her gently towards him, kissing her shoulders and arms. She wanted to surrender to his embraces, to be swallowed-up by the hungry feelings she felt inside.

But then there was a loud, urgent knocking on the door and a male voice demanding to be let in. She looked at him with a startled, scared expression.

“My boyfriend,” she said.

He nodded. He scooped up her clothes and opened the Japanese Magical Cabinet. He threw them in.

“Hide in here,’ he said.

Afraid, she stepped into the cabinet, and he closed the door. She stood in the darkness, the woody, spicy darkness, naked, but not cold. The wood seemed to emanate a kind of gentle heat which warmed her. She could hear her boyfriend on the other side of the door, demanding to know where she was. Silvestri the Magnificent pleaded ignorance but her boyfriend was insistent. Then he demanded to know what was in the box. Let me show you, said Silvestri. She shivered, not with cold, but fear. She slid down to the floor of the cabinet, feeling wood touch bare skin, and she held onto herself, closing her eyes, waiting for the door to open.

* * *

He opened the cabinet. The boyfriend looked inside. It was empty.

“See,” Silvestri the Magnificent said with a smile, “there’s nothing there.”

* * *

Claire was the seventh woman to disappear. She was a cop, so the police investigated with even more enthusiasm than normal. They arrested Silvestri the Magnificent. The person at the hotel reception swore he had seen Claire Waterford going up to Silvestri’s room. The boyfriend said he believed she had visited him, though he had no proof and he had to admit that he hadn’t found her there and, if she had been there, there was no way out other than back past the reception. They interrogated Silvestri the Magnificent for hours but he remained perfectly-calm. Whenever they asked him where Claire Waterford was, he answered truthfully: “I have no idea.”

When they finally let him go, he turned at the door and said to them: “Let me tell you this. All of the women who have disappeared were very unhappy. They all wanted to go. Where ever they went, they went because they wanted to go.”

They told him to get out. To leave town and never return.

* * *

The final three shows were cancelled. Word got around that Silvestri the Magnificent was leaving town. Some of the men gathered in the pub to discuss what they were going to do about it. The men whose girlfriends and wives had disappeared favoured taking things into their own hands. Someone came in and said he had been seen at the train station with a strange black box. The men downed their drinks and headed off after him.

They found him standing beside his lustrous black cabinet. They rushed him. He was held roughly by his arms. He had a large, black leather bag on the floor beside him. They emptied it and assorted items – wand, clothes, balls, playing cards, plastic crocuses, beads, silk handkerchiefs, a tarot deck - fell out onto the station.

“Where are the women?” one man asked angrily.

“I have no idea.”

He was slapped.

“We’re not mucking about. We want to know where they are.”

He didn’t answer. How could he tell them what he did not know?

They opened his cabinet and found it empty. They asked him over and over again but he just kept reiterating that he didn’t know where the women were. Eventually, frustrated, one of them threatened him with murder.

“If you don’t tell us where the women are, we’ll put you in your precious black box and throw you in the river.”

They waited, but he had no answer. So they tied his hands with his white scarf and dragged him up the road. Four of the men carried the cabinet, which was surprisingly light. When they reached the bridge which crossed the river, they put the box down.

“This is the moment of truth,” their leader told him, “you live or die. Tell us the truth.”

He looked at them calmly. Perhaps they were bluffing? Perhaps they were angry enough to do it? Either way, what could he tell them?

“The women left because they wanted to,” he said, “they are part of a great continent. Part of the great whole. But they ached inside because they didn’t know it, though they yearned for it.”

They looked at each other, perplexed. He said this in a calm, authoritative voice. His commanding manner infuriated the men. They bundled him into his cabinet and closed the door. With some difficulty, they pushed the cabinet up so that it hung precariously over the edge of the bridge. He lay inside, waiting, smelling warm, dark wood.

* * *

The cabinet toppled over the edge and fell, landing with a great, loud, hard splash in the river below. The men rushed to the edge, looking down. The cabinet floated for a while and they thought he might float away, but it soon filled with water and was sucked under the surface.

The men stood watching the bubbling water for a while then, because they were good men, who now regretted what they did, they went to the police station and told them what had happened.

An hour later, a rescue team stood on the edge of the river, looking at the dark water. A couple of the men pointed to where the cabinet lay. Divers went into the river. Word had spread and women from all over the town congregated on the banks of the river, many of them crying. The cabinet was pulled out of the river, water gushing from within. Everyone looked at it and a pall of heavy sadness hung over the crowd. No-one dared to open up the cabinet. A few camera flashes went off.

A policeman approached the cabinet. He had been at one of the shows a few nights earlier. He had spoken to the woman who had vanished on stage at that performance.

“Where did you go?” he had asked, smiling.

She had looked at him, stunned, silent. At last, she had said: “Somewhere wonderful.”

Some of the other police helped to turn the Japanese cabinet on its side, to let the water pour out. The policeman knelt down beside it, wetting his knees. He looked up at the anxious faces of the women all around him. He took a deep breath and opened the cabinet doors.

Everyone expected a body to fall out. Instead, from inside the darkness of the cabinet, tumbled dozens and dozens of buttery yellow tulips; a glorious, golden mess of them, bright and summery, falling out across the grass in a wonderful perfumed torrent. Everyone looked on in disbelieving, shocked silence.

Until, at last, the air was filled with the sound of clapping; all the women cheering and laughing, raising their hands towards the sky in jubilant, triumphant applause.

the book collector

2009-10-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

I own a small bookshop called Baskerville Books. I sell good quality fiction, poetry, art books. It's in a quiet part of town, tucked away in a small corner beside a tavern and a music shop. I don't really have the money for advertising so rely upon word-of-mouth. I try to make it the kind of place that people want to come back to; nice music, pleasant booky smells, a friendly smile...
One rainy afternoon, a woman with shoulder-length black hair came in. She wore black horn-rimmed glasses, a grey shirt and skirt, black pumps, had a mauve bag slung over her shoulders. I watched her as she perused the shelves. I couldn't put my finger on it but there was something unusual about her. She was like Barbara Gordon. You expected her to remove her glasses, pull off her clothes and reveal her lilac Batgirl outfit underneath.
She chose a Margaret Atwood novel. I had just ordered afternoon tea from a local shop: Earl Grey tea with two pistachio cakes dusted with icing sugar. As I processed her payment, I watched in quiet amazement as she reached over and picked up one of the cakes and lifted it to her mouth, biting a piece off. She put the rest back on the plate and wiped her lips of powdery sugar.
Stunned, I handed her her change and she smiled a tiny smile, then walked out of the shop with her book under her arm. I looked at the cake, bitten off at one end. I laughed. Well, that was a first, I thought.

She came back. It was a week or two later. She was wearing the same clothes. She didn't look at me as she walked in but headed straight for the poetry section. It was pouring down outside but she was bone dry, even though she wasn't carrying an umbrella. She was humming a little tune; something from West Side Story I think.
Eventually, she came over with a volume of Seamus Heaney poems.
"I'd like this book, but I haven't any money. Could I take it anyway and pay you later?"
I have no idea why but I said:
"Sure. Just write your name on this piece of paper."
I pushed a notepad across the desk and she bent over and wrote her name. Then she looked at me over her black glasses with her grey eyes and said "Thank you," then turned and left.
I looked at the notepad. She had written: "You'd like to know my name, wouldn't you?"

I thought I'd never see her again. I didn't understand why I had let her leave without paying for the book. I put it down to my hormones. She was an attractive woman and I had allowed my attraction for her get the better of my good judgment.
However, a few days later, she came back in. This time she looked at me and smiled as she entered. I thought she might be coming in to pay for the book but she headed for the shelves and ran her fingers along the spines of the books in the drama section, pulling a book out every so often, then sliding it back into its spot.
One of the things which I like about my job is the order. Everything is in its correct place, thematically, alphabetically, in order of surname.
I remembered who she reminded me of now. Ms Amos, the librarian at my high school. She wore glasses like hers, had straight black hair that curled up at the ends in the same way. I fancied her when I was a kid. I had imagined marrying her when I was old enough. I had taken a fancy to the shape of her hips in her grey skirt as she climbed the little ladder to reach the top shelves of the book cases.
She came over with a Harold Pinter play. The Dumb Waiter.
"Now, I can't expect you to let me go without paying a second time," she said, "but (opening her black handbag) if you'll let me leave you with this?"
She pulled out a single white rose. She placed it carefully on the desk.
"A token. I'm not leaving you with nothing, after all."
I didn’t know what to say. She didn't wait to hear whatever I might have said anyway. She smiled, slipped the thin book into her bag and turned to leave. I watched her open the door and walk down the street. I looked at the rose. It was perfectly shaped, not yet open.
Why was I being so acquiescent in this nonsensical affair I wondered? I stood up. I decided to follow her. I closed the shop, putting a 'back in ten minutes' sign on the door and looked up and down the street. I couldn't see her but walked in the direction I had seen her take and soon saw her a little way in the distance.
We walked through the main retail section of town, past hairdressers, CD shops, DVDs retailers, tailors, dressmakers, shoe shops. She turned a corner and I quickened my pace, not wanting to lose her. We walked down an alleyway, past some Chinese and Japanese restaurants, then around another corner.
We came to a part of town I was not familiar with. The shops were bright and cheerful: flower shops with colourful displays in their windows, an art shop with gaudy paintings on display, a shop which appeared to sell nothing but brass statues of lions.
She slipped under some eaves and into a little coffee shop. I stood in the road, hesitating. Then I followed.
Inside it was warm and smelled of cinnamon buns. I saw her sitting at a table near the counter, with her back to me. I took a seat at a table near the front of the shop. She was perusing the menu. I picked up a menu and opened it. Why was I following her? I should be back at the shop making money not out following a woman I didn't know. It was as if I were under some form of spell.
A woman with orangey-red hair came up beside me and asked what I would like to order. I looked at the menu. Everything was a little odd. Chilli and almond cakes; vanilla and tangerine buns with basil; apple and avocado milkshake; cherry and coffee potatoes. I chose hot chocolate with peppermint and plum brandy. The woman smiled kindly and left.
The woman with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses was reading her play now. Why the hell had I let her take a book worth $23 for a single white rose?
Her food arrived. She had chosen a sandwich and what looked like a cup of coffee. She ate delicately, very carefully, sipping her drink slowly. My drink arrived. The woman with red hair wore lipstick the same colour and had skin as pale as cream. She smiled a wonderful smile, which revealed little creases at the edge of her mouth, then left my drink and the bill beside it. I sipped my drink. It was hot, aromatic and deeply choclately.
I sat watching the woman with horn-rimmed glasses, drinking my drink, feeling it warm the insides of me. Then she rose. I looked away, not wanting her to see me following her. I heard her clothes swish beside me as she passed, then a rush of cold air as she opened the door. I looked at the bill. $5. That was a bit steep, but I pulled a five dollar note from my pocket and, my drink unfinished, got up to follow her, but caught my trousers on a nail and ripped a large tear in one of the legs. The sound of the ripping fabric was loud and people looked over. The woman with red hair came over.
"Oh dear, we should do something about that."
"No, it's OK. Thank you."
"No, no. It was our fault. Please."
"Really __"
"I insist. I can't let you leave in that state. Come out the back."
Reluctantly, I followed her and she brought me a gown then told me to remove my trousers. Embarrassed, I did as I was told. We were in a back room with a little open fire. Underwear was drying on a clothes wrack. She took my trousers and invited me to sit in an armchair, where I sat drinking my spicy hot chocolate while she went off to fix my trousers. In the comforting heat, I dozed off.

I dreamed the woman with red hair was dancing with me. We were happy, laughing. We were the best of friends. We had known each other for years and years. And then the woman with horn-rimmed glasses came in through a door way carrying some books and I was immensely happy; we kissed. "I wondered how long you'd take," I said, 'I always miss you so much when you go out."

Then I woke up. I wondered where I was for a moment. The dream had been so real. My trousers were folded neatly beside me on the arm of the chair. I looked at my watch. I had been asleep for over an hour. I looked at my trousers. Incredibly, there was no sign of the tear, none whatsoever. Surprised, I slipped them on and headed out into the shop. The woman was behind the counter. She smiled when she saw me come in.
"Thank you. You've done a wonderful job," I told her.
"That's OK. Did you have a nice little sleep?"
"I'm sorry about that."
"You looked very happy. I didn't want to disturb you."
"I don't know why I fell asleep. I'd better go. Thank you."
"A pleasure."
She laughed, as if a little amused. I headed off out into the cold. I walked back to my shop and it started to rain again. By the time I got back it was too late to open up again.

I waited for her to return to the shop as I was sure she would. The single rose she had left me sat in a vase on a mantelpiece. It was still an unopened bud but its fragrance filled the shop wonderfully. It was if I had a dozen roses, not just one.
The days passed but there was no sign of her. Every time the door opened, I looked up and was disappointed when someone else walked in. My business was suddenly doing very well and I was inundated with customers but each sale somehow just added to my disappointment at not see the woman with horn-rimmed glasses.
One afternoon, I decided to visit the café, to see if the woman with orange hair knew her name. So I closed the shop early and headed off. I found the alley way and walked past the Chinese and Japanese restaurants, but the street it lead into looked different somehow. I realised the shops were different. There was a second hand shop, a trinket shop, a barbers. I must have taken a wrong turning. I went down a side street and came out on a main street that I was familiar with. I headed back in the direction I came, searching the streets in vain. Finally, I came across the shop which sold brass lions, but the café was nowhere to be seen. Either I was completely lost or the shop had vanished.

I walked back to my shop. I was certain I had followed the same route as before but clearly I had missed a turning somewhere. I was disappointed. However, my spirits rose when I returned to the shop, for the woman with horn-rimmed glasses was standing on the front step waiting for me to reopen.
"Hello," I said.
"I've been waiting here for half an hour."
"Sorry. Come in."
We entered the shop. She ignored me once inside and went to the children's section. I stood looking at her.
"Would you like a hot drink?" I asked.
She looked over at me.
"That would make up for keeping me waiting on the cold step," she said with a smile.
So I went out the back to my kitchen and put on the kettle. A little while later, she came into the kitchen herself, clutching a book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. She sat, resting against the table, clutching the book to her chest.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Charlotte," she replied.
"What are you going to pay with this time?" I asked wryly.
"What would you like me to pay with? Did you like the rose by the way? It's aroma attracts customers. I think you've made hundreds and hundreds of dollars thanks to that rose."
"You think so?"
"Oh, I know so."
I looked at her: her jet black hair, her red-painted lips, her glasses.
"Who are you?"
"I told you. Charlotte."
"No, I mean, what do you do?"
"I'm a librarian. I collect books."
"Do you ever pay for them?"
"Always. Usually a lot more than they're worth. Why did you follow me the other day?"
"You knew?"
"I'm not stupid."
I was a bit taken aback at being caught out.
"I was curious, that's all. About where you came from."
"Did you find out?"
"No. I'm none the wiser."
She smiled.
"Well, I hope it wasn't a wasted trip then?"
"Look __" I began, but she raised a hand.
"No time. I have to go. Thanks for the offer of a drink but I have to go now."
"The book?"
She came over to me.
"It's a lovely book, Luke. It's a nice edition. It'll go well with my collection."
"How did you know my name?'
She shrugged. She was so close to me now, I could smell her perfumed skin, see the tiny creases in her lips.
"This is for the book," she told me, then she leaned across and kissed me on the mouth; a kiss that was warm, soft and fragrant; a kiss that was oily with lipstick which tasted faintly of lavender. I closed my eyes, and felt myself falling into some emotional whirlpool, and then the kiss was over. I opened them and she smiled gently then headed off, leaving me speechless and shaken, as if bewitched.

I spent the next few days thinking about that kiss. I had never been kissed that way before. It was a kiss which left me longing for more. I was haunted by it. I felt as if I would do almost anything for just one more. I found myself dreaming of her mouth and lips when I drifted off into sleep at night.
It drove me crazy when she didn't come in. I was addicted to her now and craved her visits. I even found myself going to the front door, looking up and down the street, hoping to see her approach.
My business continued to do well. In fact, it had never been so good. I was raking in the money. Every one seemed to have heard of the little bookshop which smelled of roses and no-one came without leaving with at least one book in their hand.
She arrived three weeks later. She looked me directly in the eye and smiled knowingly. She headed off for the science section this time. I watched her as she perused the shelves, taking books out, reading the blurbs on the back, then replacing them. I ached to be beside her. I adored the shape of her hips, the way her hair hung just above her shoulders.
Finally, she came over with a book on quantum physics.
"Is that hot drink still on offer?" she asked.
"Of course!"
We headed off to the kitchen. She sat down and crossed her legs. I put the kettle on and stood by the sink, admiring her knees.
"This is the last time," she said.
"For what?"
"The last time I'll come here."
"Why?" I asked, feeling ridiculously heartbroken.
"I have to leave."
"Where are you going?"
"Nowhere you know."
"I'll miss you."
"Will you? That's nice."
I made her a peppermint tea. She took the cup with a friendly smile.
"Do you have to go?'
She nodded.
"Nothing lasts forever. Not in the real world."
She sipped her tea. She looked at me and I had the strange feeling that we had known each other for a very long time, even though I knew this wasn't true.
"Do you love me, Luke?"
I was surprised by the question.
"I hardly know you."
"That's not the point. None of us know each other. Falling in love is all about a journey. We get to know each other over time, but we never know each other from the beginning. That's love's raison d' être."
I didn't know how to ask the question. I had feelings for her; I was certainly attracted to her. I'd even go as far as admitting that I'd done my fair share of yearning over recent months. Was this the beginning of love? She stood up and she came over, putting her hands lightly on my shoulders.
"You know, you could be very happy. Did you know that? You could have more happiness than you ever imagined. But I'm not offering you something safe and easy. It's a risky and dangerous choice, Luke. A once in a life time choice."
And then she kissed me again. A long, slow, wondrous kiss that made my blood feel as if it were boiling. I held her by her hips and she fell against me, and I had never felt so happy or fulfilled; we held each other and swayed slightly on the floor of the bookshop, our feet barely touching the carpet, as if we were swinging on an invisible fulcrum and were about to float up into the ceiling.
Then she pulled away.
"That was for the book," she told me, "but there's more. If you want it."
"I don't understand what's happening," I said, bewildered.
"You don't have to understand. You just have to make the choice."
"What choice?"
"Come with me. Leave every thing behind."
"What?"
"You can do it. It's a simple choice. It's one of those rare moments. Like bungee jumping. Risking everything. When you have to chose to continue doing what you've always been doing or truly live."
"But where are we going?"
"That doesn't matter either. Here."
She threw me a box of matches, which I caught.
"What's this for?"
"Do you trust me?"
"I don't know."
"Here's the thing," she said, "in a minute, I'm going to walk out of that door and I'll probably never come back. You can try to follow me but you'll never find me again. Or you can come with me and I'll show you a life that will truly amaze you. But you have to pay the price."
"What price?'
"You have to show me you're willing to let go of your old life."
"How?" I asked nervously.
"By setting fire to the shop."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She must be crazy.
"Are you kidding?"
She shook her head.
"You can have me, Luke. We can live a happy life together. I'll show you things you never dreamed possible. But you have to prove to me that you're the kind of person who can take the kind of risk it takes to be truly free and happy."
I looked at the matches.
"Set fire to my own shop?" I asked incredulously.
"Create a blaze that will start something new and exciting. Something wonderful."
She looked at me hopefully. I had never wanted a woman as much as I had wanted her that day.
"But the books?"
"There are other books. There's nothing unique here. It's not about the books. It's about letting go and embracing life with a capital 'L'."
"You really mean it?" I asked.
"I really mean it," she said with conviction.
I had the matches in my hand. I think I even opened them. And I'd like to tell you that I piled a whole load of books on the floor and set fire to their pages; that we watched the fire grow and gradually engulf the shop; that, in the heat of the golden flames, we had laughed, held hands and then run out into the wild streets to a new and wonderful adventure. I'd like to say that, I really would.
Instead, I put the matches down.
"I can't do that," I told her.
She looked disappointed. She came over and kissed me softly on the forehead, stroking the top of my head gently.
"Goodbye then, Luke. I won't make you do something you don't want to do. I'm sorry."
"Wait! This is crazy! You can't just leave."
But she did. She left through the front door and I never saw her again.

In the weeks after she left, I prayed that she had been joking. Surely it had just been a test? She'd come back and share the joke. I waited and waited for her return but, after a few months, I realised that she had gone. I searched for the café a number of times but never found it. I looked at my books. My shop still did well, but my books always reminded me of the choice I had made that day. I had chosen the real world, the ordinary world, over mystery and possibility.
Do these kind of choices come to you more than once in a lifetime? Having made your choice, is that it? Have you determined the course of your life forever? Or do we sometimes get the chance to revisit our choices and make up for the mistakes we have made?
I have one hope. The word 'probably.' She said 'I'll probably never come back.' Which means, of course, that she might.
The front door of my shop opens, these days, onto a world of fragile hope. I don't know if Charlotte will ever come back but, if she does, I am ready this time.
Sometimes I open up the top draw of my desk and look inside and I am filled with longing and desire. It is filled to the brim with boxes and boxes of matches waiting to be turned into flames.

Blood Oranges

2009-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Martin Smith looked down at the lawn below. It was the hottest April day on record. The lawn was lit by a distant, fluorescent streetlight and he was surprised to see his neighbour across the corridor, the young Polish woman, lying face down on the lawn in a bikini. She was lying in the path of a sprinkler, one of those ones which moves in a slow half-circle arc, then chatters back. Every time the water ran over her body, her muscles clenched. Her skin was dotted with glistening water droplets, like diamonds or pieces of glass placed on her back and legs.
He stood in the darkness of his hot room, watching his neighbour, imagining how good it must feel in this heat to have all that cold water drum into your bare skin. He enjoyed the sight of her water-studded back, but felt a little guilty spying on her like this. He didn’t know her first name. They had never spoken. They had once shared an elevator; she had been wearing a satin dress and carrying white tulips. But they hadn’t spoken. The name on her apartment buzzer was Cielecka.
He had been intending to open the window but daren’t now, in case it alerted her to him, so he went to the kitchen instead and poured a glass of water from the tap. When he went back to the window, she was gone.

When he lost his job, he convinced himself that he would find a new one pretty soon, but it had been seven months now and he’d run out of his savings. The money he got each fortnight from the government was enough to pay his rent with just ten dollars to spare. His electricity and gas had been cut off weeks ago. He had books on his shelves but the last thing he wanted to do was sell his books. He sat in his room at night, lit by cheap candles, resenting the fact that he couldn’t even make a cup of tea.
In the mornings he would go to the local church and pretend to pray so that he could participate in morning breakfasts of bad coffee, toast, jam and, if he was lucky, a couple of eggs. Sometimes he would splash out and spend a third of his ten dollars at a good café. It was a luxury he could ill-afford, but he would sip his strong espresso and watch all of the lucky employed going about their business trying not to feel bitter and envious.
A few days after seeing his neighbour on the lawn below, she passed him in the corridor and asked him into her apartment. He was surprised, but followed.
“These hot days,” she said, ushering him in, “they are terrible. You know what I would like? A glass of chilled vodka with a twist of lime. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Her flat was spotlessly clean. There was a green sofa, a couple of red armchairs, a small television and a bookcase, a rattan rug on the floor. She gestured for him to sit down then disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with two glasses of sangria, with pieces of lime, oranges and strawberries. She handed him one. It was nice to hold something chilled, straight from the fridge. She sat down opposite him. They sipped their wine, looking at each other awkwardly.
“You’re Martin, right?”
“Yes.”
”What do you do Martin?”
“I’m unemployed at the moment.”
“Ah. I thought so.”
“Why?” he asked, wondering how she could know that.
“Just a hunch,” she replied.
He wondered what she wanted with him. Maybe she had just asked him over for a glass of sangria, but he somehow doubted it? He tried guessing her age. Thirty? Thirty two? Her hair was the colour of summer: golden and bright.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Nothing flash. I temp. It’s irregular but okay. It pays the rent and puts food on the table but not much more. Which is why I can’t afford vodka.”
She laughed. He smiled politely. She leaned across suddenly.
“So I have a proposal,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“You do?” he asked, surprised.
“It’s up to you, of course. Just an idea. But something which would benefit us both, I think.”
He waited for her to explain but she just sat there watching him. She crossed her legs, straightened her slacks. Finally she asked: “You like vodka?”
“Yes. But I haven’t had a drink for a long while.”
It had been a beer three weeks ago which he bought with half of his ten dollars one very hot evening. The memory of it made him thirsty.
“So a bottle of vodka would be welcome, yeah?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well… I was sitting up in bed reading the other night. It was hot. I was lying on my sheets with the fan on. Do you know what I did before?”
He shook his head.
“I went down to lawn. The sprinklers were on. I lay on the grass and let the water run over me. It was lovely.”
She paused, watching his reaction. He drank his wine, wondering if she knew he had watched her.
“Anyway, I came back and I lay on the bed naked and wet, letting the air from the fan cool me.”
He imagined her, lying on her bed, glistening with droplets of water. In this stifling heat, it was such a lovely, cool image.
“I was reading a book. A novel. It’s by an American. It’s about an aspiring writer. And he has a neighbour who tries to help him out because he’s very poor, see. And he can’t afford milk. So the neighbour has a plan to invite the milkman up for vodka and while they are drinking the writer goes down and steals some bottles of milk. But he does it all wrong and he steals buttermilk instead and he can’t stand buttermilk.”
She laughed.
“What are you getting at?” he asked again.
She gave him an irritated look, as if she was annoyed at him interrupting, but then said:
“Well, it gave me an idea. There’s a bottle shop which delivers. It does its deliveries in one hit. I thought, well, I could ring and order a bottle of vodka. And he’d come up here and I’d be all apologetic and say how I thought I had enough money but didn’t. And he’d be all right with it because I’m a pretty blonde and men never get angry with pretty blondes. And all the while, you’d be downstairs taking a couple of bottles of vodka from his van. So we’d both have vodka and it’d be for free.”
She sat back and smiled.
“What do you think?”
“But that would be stealing.”
“So?”
She looked at him as if his objection was just silly.
“I’m not a thief.”
“But it would only be a small thing. And just imagine, sitting back, with a glass of vodka and ice, with a twist of lime, getting slowly drunk. Wouldn’t that be just wonderful?”
“But I don’t want to steal,” he said, not quite believing she was even suggesting it, especially to a stranger.
“Let me tell you something,” she said seriously, leaning closer again, “once I was in this man’s shop and he propositioned me.”
“He did?”
She nodded.
“He asked me if I would sleep with him. When I said no he overcharged me for a bottle of wine. When I accused him of it he denied it. This isn’t just thievery, you see, it’s payback.”
“But aren’t you afraid he’ll be angry when he sees it’s you?”
“Oh no, he uses a boy to do his deliveries. It won’t be him. But it’s him who will pay.”
She put her empty glass on the table. The ice was nearly melted.
“So what do you say? A favour for me. It’s just a lark really. And you get a bottle of vodka for your time.”
He thought for a few moments. He wasn’t sure. What if he was caught? What if the man came back when he discovered the bottles gone and accused him of theft?
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Maria.”
He looked at her and the way she looked at him with her cool blue eyes, with expectation and anticipation, he felt as if he would be a failure in some way if he said no, so he nodded, without really understanding why he did so, and she clapped her hands in delight.
“That’s my boy, Martin,” she said, “well done you.”

So an hour later, he found himself waiting downstairs, standing in the phone box on the corner, pretending to speak into the hand set. He was waiting for the delivery van to come. He kept scanning the streets, checking to see if anyone else was around, but everyone was inside, in their air-conditioned rooms, watching television. He felt ridiculous, like someone playing at being a spy.
The van came. A young lad climbed out and opened the back. He took out a bottle and, checking the number of the apartment, went inside the building. Martin put the handset down and walked over to the van. He looked up and down the street. He had to act quickly. He looked at all the windows with their shutters down, keeping out the sweltering heat. Nervously, he opened the back of the van. There were cartons of beer and champagne and a box of spirits. He grabbed two bottles, pulled them out, then walked hurriedly across the road and into the park, where he hid behind the shelter of a tree.
He waited. The bottles were hard and glassy in his hands. He watched the empty road, the parked van washed by the light of a lamp. The boy was taking a long time. He felt bad about what he had done but it was too late now. He toyed with the idea of putting the bottles back but it would be just his luck to get caught, so he waited. What was taking him?
Finally the boy came out. He walked to the van. He put the bottle of vodka back into the box, then went to the cabin and climbed in. The engine started up. He drove off.
Martin sighed with relief. He ran across the road and up the stairs. He rang her doorbell. She opened it, saw the bottles and laughed loudly. She pulled him in.
“Sit down,” she said, taking one of the bottles from him.
She went into the kitchen and came back a little while later with two tall glasses of vodka and ice with a slice of lime floating in each one.
“That was so easy,” she said gleefully, “he said he didn’t mind. He understood. He was very polite and friendly.”
She laughed again, handed Martin his drink and sat down, resting her feet on the table. She sipped her drink and sighed happily.
“That was a great little adventure, Martin. A great adventure.”
He drank his drink. It went down, chilled, sweet, perfect. She looked at him, her eyes sparkling.
“And now we have a secret, don’t we? You and I have a secret to share.”
She smiled, resting the tip of the glass to her bottom lip, watching him.

They finished off her bottle between them. He was happy to stay as she had ice and lime and a fan which blew on them. They listened to music on her radio. He started to feel brave and heroic for stealing the vodka. He made derisive comments about the boy who hadn’t even noticed that the back of the van had been left open and she’d laughed brightly. Drunk, she persuaded him to join her in the park, where they stripped to their underclothes and stood under sprinklers, enjoying the coldness of the water, wet droplets on their limbs, the sudden pelting water drumming against their bare skin; they laughed, looking up at the starless sky.
When they got back to the apartment building, they stood outside her door and she grabbed him suddenly, and surprisingly, and they kissed. Their mouths tasted of purloined vodka. He was caught up in the perfumed smell and alcohol-taste of her. But then, just as suddenly, she turned away and opened her door.
“Goodnight,” she said, waving and shut the door.
He stood looking at her apartment door for a few moments, then turned and went back to his. He had imagined climbing into her bed with her, both wet and naked, but now here he was in his darkened, hot room, drunk and alone, a trail of sweat sliding down his forehead.
He lay on his mattress and his mind swirled.

They didn’t see each other for a few days. He found his bottle of vodka by his door one morning, half of it gone. He knocked on her door but there was no answer. He drank the vodka warm, without lime, and finished off a plastic container of cold vegetable curry he had bought at his local church fete for one dollar.
Nearly a week later she called him over. Her place was bright and warm, but cooler than his. She gave him a glass of iced water.
“How have you been Martin?”
“Okay I guess.”
“It’s so hot, isn’t it? I come from a cold country. I’m not used to all this heat.”
He nodded, sipping his water.
“That was fun though, the other night, wasn’t it? The vodka, the park, the water?”
“Yeah. Fun.”
She laughed. Then she put her glass down.
“I have another proposal, Martin.”
“Not more vodka? It won’t work a second time.”
“No. No vodka. Something else.”
He waited. She smiled a little smile.
“You know, in this heat, I hate to clean. It only makes me hot. But cleaning has to be done. The floors swept, the beds made, the dishes done.”
“I suppose.”
“But I have to work also. So it’s all so tiring. But here you are, Martin, with all that time on your hands.”
She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
“You want me to clean for you?”
“That would be very helpful to me. Yes. While I’m at work. That would be convenient for us both wouldn’t it?”
“A job? What would you pay me?”
“Oh, not money.”
“What then?”
“Well, I’ll leave you a sandwich, some coffee.”
“Is that all? That’s not much for cleaning work.”
“But I’ll give you something more valuable as well.”
“What?”
“Silence,” she said.
“I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”
“Well, like I said, we have a secret. But it’s a secret I can share with others if I want to. I could ring up the man in the bottle shop and tell him how I saw you take the bottles from his van.”
“But… you asked me to.”
“Only you and I know that, Martin.”
“I’d tell him the truth and you’d get into trouble as well.”
“Oh I don’t think he’d believe it. A young, respectable and pretty blonde versus an unemployed boy. Besides, he’d have his man. He’d be happy with you, I daresay.”
“But you’re joking, aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t really do that.”
“If you think that you really don’t know me, Martin.”
She crossed her legs and watched him.
“Besides, it’s a good business proposition. I’m not talking about much. An hour at the most. You have the time. We both benefit. What do you say?”
He couldn’t believe she was treating him like this.
“You’re a nasty bitch,” he said and she laughed.
“I’ll leave the key under the mat,” she shouted as he turned and left.
He could hear her laughing as he crossed the hall and went back to his own apartment.

In the morning, he told himself he wouldn’t do it. But he was hungry and the thought of coffee was very tempting. It was only a small chore after all.
He crossed the hall. He took the key from under the mat. He entered her apartment. He went straight to the kitchen. On a small table was a sandwich on a plate and a packet off coffee. Propped up against an empty vase was a note.

1. Do the dishes
2. Make my bed
3. Vacuum the floor

No ‘hello’ or ‘thank you,’ just a list of what she wanted him to do. He sat at the table. He ate the sandwich. He boiled a kettle, poured coffee into the plunger and made the coffee. He washed her dishes. He found the vacuum and cleaned her floor. He went into her bedroom and made her bed.
He drank his coffee and washed up the cup and plate. She couldn’t complain he hadn’t done a good job. He spent the rest of the day at the library and in the park.

The next day was the same. A list of things to do. He ate the sandwich, had a coffee. He had a glass of orange juice as well. He did the chores, then went home. It wasn’t so bad after all.
On the fourth day, the list changed.

1. Do the dishes
2. Make my bed
3. Do my washing
4. Do my ironing

She was pushing it too far now. He did the dishes and made her bed. He went into the laundry and found a basket of dirty clothes. He put them in the washing machine and, while he waited, made a second coffee and watched a program on her TV. Then he hung out her washing and went home. She could do the ironing herself.
But, when she came home she knocked on the door.
“Martin? You didn’t do the ironing.”
“You can do the ironing.”
“But we had an arrangement?”
“You’re pushing it, Maria. I’m not your servant.”
“But you want my silence don’t you?’
“You can push it only so far. Besides, I don’t believe you’d do it.”
She smiled in an amused kind of way. She went back to her own apartment, leaving the door open. He followed. He watched her pick up the telephone and dial a number.
“Is this Mr Royston? Hello. I understand you had some vodka stolen the other week? Yes? Well I saw who did it and wondered if you would like to know his name? Yes. It was from the van. Of course. His name is Mar…”
He rushed up and pressed the receiver button down. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. Then it occurred to him that she had probably rung the time or the weather. She was just pretending. He pressed the redial button and took the receiver from her hand. He pressed it to his ear. “Royston Cellars. Is that you again?”
He hung up. She looked at him.
“Are you going to do the ironing now, Martin?”
He nodded silently.
While he stood at the ironing board, she sat in an armchair, watching, drinking white wine. She put on a piece of choral music and listened to it while he ironed her shirts, pants, dresses and underclothes.
“That’s good,” she said, handing him a glass of wine.
He felt like refusing it but it was icy cold and it was so hot, and, besides, he was thirsty.
“By the way,” she said, as they sipped from their glasses, “I like fabric softener in my washes. That was my fault. I should have told you. But next time use it please.”
He downed the wine in one go and left.
“Goodnight, Martin,” she said.

The lists got longer. Do the dishes. Make the bed. Wash my clothes. Do the ironing. Dust the furniture. Do my shopping. Clean the bathroom. Make me a vegetable casserole.
He obliged. He ate his lunch and drank his coffee. He worked conscientiously. And, sometimes, she’d invite him for dinner and a glass of wine. Sometimes she would chat with him as if they were friends and he would almost forget their arrangement. But then she would go days without seeing him and she would add something to the list. Take my dress to the dry cleaners. Clean the windows. Bake me a chocolate cake.
One evening, she called him over. She poured him a glass of wine. She sat down.
“I’ve been thinking, Martin. I think we’re doing this the wrong way.”
“We are?”
She nodded.
“We’re wasting resources.”
“How so?”
“Well, you come over here and look after me. I come home and you sleep in your hot and dark room. It’s not very sensible is it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, why don’t you give your landlord notice? Move in here. You can sleep on the couch. Then you’ll be here when I want things.”
“You want me to move in?”
“Yes. You’ll have to pay of course.”
“Pay?”
“Rent.”
“How much?”
“How much do you pay now?”
“Two hundred and fifty a week.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t ask that much. How about two hundred?”
“Two hundred? For sleeping on your couch and doing all your housework?”
“Yes, but you’d be using my water and eating my food. You’d have to contribute. And be reasonable. You’d be saving fifty dollars a week.”
“And losing my independence!”
She laughed.
“Don’t be such a bore. Think of it, Martin. Think of the opportunities.”
She stood up and walked over to him. She pressed her mouth against his and kissed him warmly.
“Think of all the possibilities,” she said.

He gave three week’s notice. He dumped most of his possessions on the street, then boxed up his books and clothes and moved into her apartment. She gave him some bed clothes and a pillow and he made up a bed on her couch. On the first night he expected a goodnight kiss, but she simply turned out the light and went to her own room.
He lay on the couch, wondering what he had done.

In the mornings she would wake him up and, while she showered and dressed, he would make her breakfast. Sometimes she would wake him with a kiss, other times with a nudge. It was like living with two people. Sometimes she was cold and distant, other times affectionate and friendly. A few times she cuddled up to him on the couch and they touched and kissed. Most nights they didn’t.
But the odd thing was that, the more time she spent being cool towards him, the more he wanted her. He would admire her perfect skin and her shiny hair and he would look at her mouth and remember the last time they kissed; and, the next time they kissed, her mouth was all the more wonderful, her touches all the more delightful. And, if she thanked him or wished him well, he was filled with a strange kind of happiness which, even when she was cruel to him or indifferent, he remembered with fondness and longing.
Once, on a very hot night, she left her door open and he could see her lying naked on the bed with her back to him. He stood looking at her, admiring her in the way you might a fine sculpture in an art gallery. He had the feeling that she knew he was there and was letting him look; that perhaps she had left the door open for this very reason?
But he daren’t go in. She had made it clear to him that, apart from when he made her bed, her room was her domain. So he just stood in the doorway and looked.
In the morning, he saw her in the kitchen in her satin robe and she looked so wonderful. He grabbed her lightly, pulling her gently close, then kissed her. She slapped him hard on the face. His face stinging, he looked at her in shock.
“Don’t do that again,” she said calmly, but firmly.
He shook with rage.
“You know what?” he said, “when you get home, I won’t be here.”
“But where would you go?” she smiled.
“I’ll find somewhere.”
“You’d sleep like a homeless person?”
“I have friends.”
“Really?” she said with a raising of her eyebrows.
“You can’t treat people like this,” he said, trembling.
“You love me, Martin. You are a country I have colonised. I came into your life and changed you forever and, no matter what you may feel, you can’t do without me any more.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said.

After she went to work, he packed up some of his books and clothes then left. He walked aimlessly. He sat in a café drinking coffee and eating cake. He sat on the library steps watching the people and the pigeons.
He wasn’t going back. He didn’t care if she rang and told them about the vodka. He didn’t care that he had nowhere to go. He would never go back.
He bought himself a cup of tea from a tea van. He found a park bench and sat drinking it. The day was very hot so he found a tree and sat under the shade. He remembered standing, watching her back as she lay on top of her sheets the night before. It was painful to remember.
He remembered the night he had seen her, lying on the lawn, with her skin shining and wet. She had enchanted him.
He wondered what might have happened if he had refused her suggestion of stealing the bottles of vodka. Would he still be in his own apartment, alone and with no electricity or gas? Drinking water from the tap, buying cold curries from church fetes?
The other day they had shared a bottle of white wine and an aubergine curry. She had sat opposite him with her left foot resting on his right thigh and she had smiled.
He walked around the park, wasting time. He wasn’t due for money for one and a half weeks and he only had twenty dollars to his name. Living with her, he had been able to buy wine and books, even a bottle of vodka which they had shared with ice and a twist of lime.
He thought of the long days of cleaning floors, washing clothes, cooking dinner, making her bed. He remembered running her a bath, pouring shampoo into her golden hair, massaging her head, soaping her neck and shoulders. But he also remembered the nights when she didn’t come home until very late, with him pretending to be asleep on the couch; or when she spent days largely ignoring him, leaving him notes of instructions propped up against the vase in the kitchen. Nights of tender kisses, other nights of stony silence, angry criticisms, all depending on her mood or desires.
He would be better off without her.
He found a delicatessen and bought some iced water and sat under a bridge drinking it. He fell asleep and was kicked awake by a passing cop.
As the sun went down he walked past a paddock and watched a group of school boys playing football. The ball made a loud, leathery, thudding sound when it was kicked. He wondered how they had the energy to play in this heat.
He imagined long, aimless nights like this, carrying his heavy suitcase of books and clothes, watching other people get on with their sweatyblives.
He went back to the apartment.

The front door was open and he found her sitting on the floor with her back to the sofa, wearing grey silk pyjamas. A window was open behind her and a breeze was blowing out a white, lace curtain, like the sail of a boat. She was eating slices of blood orange which were laid out on a plate before her. They lay in dark, red crescents, along with the orange and white strips of the ones she’d already chewed back to the rind.
She looked up as he came in.
“The breeze is cool,” she said, “and these oranges are delicious.”
She held up the plate and he took a slice, biting into the moist flesh. It was sweet and juicy. He sat down beside her. She turned to look at him.
“I knew you’d come back,” she said, then she leaned across and kissed him, her mouth sticky with citrus, her teeth biting into his bottom lip, but not enough to break the skin.
Outside a van went by. Together they finished the oranges, piece by bloody piece.

poised in that plum-coloured moment

2009-07-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Louise walks into the hotel foyer which is opulently-silent with its deep crimson carpet and brightly-polished brass lights; and the reception desk staffed by a man in a suit and a young woman; both as motionless as mannequins; the man holding a white phone to his left ear, the chord twirling downwards, the woman looking ceaselessly, mindlessly, at her computer screen; not like people at all, but modern artworks, made of plastic. Incredibly real but real people would not be so frozen, so still.
She walks up to the desk, goes behind it, searches the pigeon holes and collects a few keys. She touches the cloth of the man’s suit, feeling its warmth. She touches the woman’s skin, on the side of her face; it is warm, soft, the flesh of someone alive but without volition; these strange, sad, unmoving people of the frozen past.
She heads to the elevator and presses the button for floor nineteen. She rides the elevator in total silence and when it reaches the floor the doors ‘ding’ and open.
She steps out into the carpeted hallway. On the floor outside the room directly opposite are the remains of someone’s meal on a tray: empty coffee cups, an empty glass, plates, knife and fork, a metal teapot, a half-finished croissant. Nothing decayed or changed despite it having been there for months.
She finds a room to one of the keys. She opens the door. Inside the lights are off and a man stands naked at the window, looking down, illuminated by moonlight. His pale-fleshed nakedness, the thighs and buttocks, the line of his spine, are like a marble statue. She admires him briefly, then closes the door. She finds another one. It is empty and made-up.
She goes in and closes the door behind her. She goes to the bar fridge and takes out a small bottle of gin. She pours it into a glass, opens a bottle of tonic water and fills the glass; adds ice cubes, then, ice chinking against the glass, she kicks off her shoes and lies down on the bed, sipping her drink.
There are no sounds. No cars, no people, no birds. Nothing. Just her own breathing and the sound of ice on glass.

On a roof, a couple of young teenagers lie looking up at the night sky.
- How long since we saw the day? the boy, Peter, asks.
- Over a year, Alice replies.
- No sun, no clouds, just darkness and stars.
- Yeah. Stars.
- Why!? Why!? he asks exasperated.
- You keep asking that question.
- I know. But why us?
- And that one, she says in a slightly irritated tone.
He turns to look at her.
- Shut up. You don’t ask yourself?
She shrugs.
- Of course. But there are never any answers, so why bother?
Silence.
- Do you think we’ll find someone else? he asks.
- We found each other.
He looks at her wonderingly.
- But could we be the only ones?
- keep asking questions I don’t know the answers to, she says irritably.
- The world doesn’t just come to a stop without a reason, but how do you fathom the reason?
- Do you believe in God? she asks, spinning their conversation around with her question.
- No. I don’t think so, he answers doubtfully.
- But God could do a thing like this.
- Why would He do it though?
She thinks for a quiet moment but can come up with no answer.
- You think it’s us? she suggests, just us and not the rest of the world? Everything else is normal and people are rushing around everywhere but there’s something wrong with us and we can’t connect with that world?
- Now you’re asking a question we can’t answer.

In her hotel room, Louise finishes her drink, then heads down to the kitchens. Women and men stand frozen over pans, sinks, cupboards. A fork hovers in mid-air, fallen from a tray. She touches the fork with the tip of her finger and it falls with a hard, metallic ring to the floor.
She looks at the plates sitting ready for collection. She chooses one and takes it into the restaurant. She finds an empty table and eats the dish, still hot, looking at the people around her. She takes a bottle of wine from a nearby table and pours some into an empty glass. She drinks it. It is over a year-old, this opened wine, but it is fresh and good.
Afterwards, she goes into the bar and finds a bottle of whisky. She takes it to a booth and sits down. She lifts the bottle to her mouth and drinks.
Time can’t have stopped, otherwise how could she drink? This whisky, it flows, yet the clocks remain forever at 7.46; the people remain as motionless as dummies; cars, with their lights on, stand still on the dark roads. The world as it was at 7.46, thirteen months ago, preserved and mummified by some unimaginable force which only she escapes.
Only she.
She drinks more whisky, wiping her mouth.
She remembers that first night, wandering around in a daze, looking at the motionless population. She had held someone’s hand, felt its warmth and softness, yet the man hadn’t moved and his eyes were like glass. There was another man she saw at a bus stop weeks later, so beautiful, so angelic; she had kissed his soft lips, her heart beating faster at the touching of their mouths, but he just stood there, his lips wet from her touch, like a waxwork-dummy, agonisingly lovely and serenely unattainable.
She remembers the tram, stopped in the middle of a crossroads, like a becalmed metal whale. She had walked beside it, her fingers tracing a cold line along its curved frame. She had looked up and a young boy was looking out; and their eyes met. She had started, thinking that he was looking at her. But she had shifted sideways, to the left, and his still-eyes had remained looking ahead. It was a moment of quiet heartbreak; one of many in those first few months alone.
And, she remembers the moth. After so much stillness and silence, the sound of it flittering under a lamp had astonished her. She had stood looking at it, grey and tormented, crashing into the bright heat of the lamp, until it fell, helpless and burned. It lay in the gutter, dazed, flapping. She had put it in her hands and felt its tiny wings, as thin as paper, tickle her palm. Her whole body had felt the thrill of that movement. Tender, gentle life.
For days she wandered aimlessly, calling out, hoping for an answer, but the city was asleep and only she was awake.
She takes the bottle outside the bar. She heads up to the swimming pool on the roof. The night is deathly silent. If she shouted, her voice would echo over the city and possess it. The swimming pool is illuminated from within. She kicks off her shoes and steps into the shallow end, wades out, fully-clothed, until the water laps around her waist. She drinks from the whisky bottle. She turns slowly, the water slapping gently. She causes ripples. Ripples which sing like bells.

Alice and Peter walk through the streets, hand-in-hand. He drinks from a bottle of lemonade, she eats an apple.
They know there are lapses in this madness. A wind sometimes blows, lifting leaves and dust; a fountain in a plaza miraculously flows and astounds them; a mouse skitters across the road in front of them, like a dusty ghost. Once there was bird; a single, fawn sparrow hopping about among the motionless pigeons and sparrows on the pavement beside it. They had raided a shop and broken up a loaf of bread for it and had watched her eat all afternoon.
These brief and strangely-wonderful moments give them momentary hope. Somewhere there must be someone else like them. They can’t be the last people on Earth still living and moving, can they?
Once, in a hotel, they had heard a splash. They had run to the swimming pool and it was lit with blue light. The pillars were mosaic tiles of aqua and azure blue. The water rippled. They dared to hope that there was someone swimming under the surface but it was empty; water reflecting and breaking up light as it swayed.
At the edge of the pool, was a woman in a red swimsuit, mouth open, in the middle of removing a white robe. Peter went up to her and put a hand on one of her shoulders, which was warm and soft. The woman stared across the pool, not moving.
They both stood, looking down at the rippling water, wondering what had caused the loud splash, watching its wake as the still pool swelled gently, mysteriously. They had held each other for comfort.
They find a shop that sells cakes. They look at all of the multi-coloured confectionary, laid out like soft jewels. He chooses a cake with lemon-coloured icing and glace cherries, she a tart with glazed strawberries on custard and a bottle of sparkling water. They eat as they walk, savouring the indulgent sweetness. When they finish, they hold hands again, their fingers sticky.
- Do you think it’s the Americans? she asks.
- Why would it be the Americans?
- Well, I read somewhere they were experimenting with a Quantum Bomb.
- What’s a Quantum Bomb?
- I don’t know. Something to do with disrupting time. Stopping time in a selected area so the troops can go in.
- That’s just comic book stuff, he says derisively.
- No. It was real.
- If they were doing that kind of thing, they’d hardly let it into the papers would they?
- It was in a magazine.
- Same difference. It’s just someone’s imagination.
She looks around her.
-This isn’t imagination is it? she says vehemently.
She is angry with him, but she holds his hand even tighter because she is sometimes afraid of losing him. They walk past a woman sitting on the front step of a shop, a bottle of beer poised against her mouth, glass touching dark red skin, the liquid poised like an amber globule inside a spirit level.
- Maybe it’s the Americans, he concedes, but I don’t know. Probably a force of nature.
- What kind of force? she asks curiously.
- How do I know?
Ahead of them, a building is on fire, the flames frozen, like sheet-metal, bright and reflective. A woman is petrified in mid-run, her clothes on fire. They rush up to her. They douse the flames with their drinks. They hiss and disappear. The flames have melted away but the woman remains transfixed to the spot, her clothes burned, flesh exposed and red raw.
- Let’s go back to the roof, he suggests.
- Why?
- I like being near the sky.

Louise wakes. She has no idea what time it is. She laughs in the darkness. Of course: it is 7.46. She turns on the light. She undresses and showers. How can water flow when everything is still? It is something to do with her touch? Perhaps. She touches things and they come alive? But then, why don’t people come alive when she touches them? Nothing makes sense.
She stands under the water, soaping herself, then washes off the soap.
She dries herself then dresses. She goes downstairs to the café and makes herself a black coffee. She makes toast. See, the miracle of time in a timeless world where everything is frozen but here, in this café, when she touches the toaster, the toaster heats and turns bread into toast, hot to the touch and smelling of burned wheat.
She butters it, spreads on marmalade. The coffee is good.
Beside her, at an adjacent table, sits a man reading a book. He has an espresso cup lifted to his lips and a glass of port on the table beside him.
It is morning to her but, in reality, 7.46 at night; the day forever poised in that plum-coloured moment between late afternoon and night.
There were days, at the beginning, when she had left money for the things she had taken on the counter, but now she takes coins from the tills, using them in vending machines and coin-operated doors. Why bother worrying about stealing from those who can not use the metalled artefacts of a lost world? She could steal all the money she could carry and it would be mostly useless now.
She goes to the fridge and takes out a grapefruit. A young woman in a mauve dress stands beside the counter. She cuts the grapefruit into quarters and then halves the quarters. She stands by the counter, biting into the sharp-sweet flesh, sucking, chewing, until she is left with eight yellow and white rinds which she drops carelessly at the young woman’s feet.
She goes out into the silent, still street. She has long-since given up trying to find a word to adequately describe this silence; this terrible, night-loneliness; this empty space of madness.
She walks among the motionless world. She weaves in between cars and buses. Pedestrians are obstacles for her to meander through.
If only the world turned. If only the night changed into day. If only she could see the remembered-sun.
She sees her own reflection in the window of a shop. It moves. It makes her laugh, as if such movement in this world is a comic surprise.
Behind the glass are teddy bears and dolls. They look out with bead eyes, dull and hard.

- What do you want me to do? Alice asks.
- Nothing.
- You don’t want me to do anything?
- I said so, didn’t I?
- But I’m cold.
- Well hold me.
- Can’t we go back inside?
- I want to look at the night and the stars, he says distantly and the distance scares her.
- It’s not going away, she says, Ever. And we could be in beds with cotton sheets and woollen blankets.
- Well go downstairs, he says coldly.
- I don’t want to be alone, she says in a quiet, childlike voice.
He turns his head, regretting his indifference.
- I’ll be up here when you wake, he promises.
- How do I know?
He looks at her.
- I won’t ever leave you.
- How do I know?
- Why would I?
- I don’t know.
He walks up to her. He holds her, wrapping her up in his arms.
- No-one’s ever been as married as us. Not in the whole history of time. We’re the only people in the history of the human race who can never let go of each other because we’re the only people we’ve got. Just us. No-one else. Forever.
She touches his face, stroking it. He smiles.
- Go downstairs. I’ll be up here waiting, he says gently.
She nods. She goes down into warmth and the gentleness of cotton.

Louise finds a cinema. She helps herself to popcorn and soda. The woman behind the counter is smiling, her mouth parted slightly, like a piece of art, imitating reality.
She goes into a darkened cinema. A few people sit in chairs around her. The movie has frozen on one frame: a woman, looking to her right, with blonde hair down to her shoulders.
She sits sipping her drink, looking at the woman on the screen. Her eyes are brown, lit up. Her face glows with some distant light, perhaps a fire? She has a tiny mole under her left nostril. Her mouth is open, as if she is about to say something or perhaps let out a gasp?
The movie mirrors the world; a frozen moment in time, a piece of unfinished choreography waiting for the moment of its completion.
She eats her popcorn and drinks her soda, watching the screen and the face of the woman, which is as big as the side of a house. The cinema is lit by a pale blue glow and the people around her are in shadows, as still as statues.

In an office somewhere, on the twentieth floor, a woman sits at her desk. Her colleagues are gone and the sole occupant, aside from her, is a cleaner, frozen in the moment of picking up a bin.
She has returned to this place time and time again and again, though she has no idea why. She has spent the last year surrounded by silent, unmoving people, alone and lost.
Each time she returns to her old office, she looks at the cleaner, bent over to lift the mesh bin. She remembers speaking with her many months ago. She sometimes speaks to her still, like you might speak to a gravestone in memory of a loved one.
She stands at the window looking out at a city which exists always in night. Surely there must be other people like her, still aware and walking through lonely streets? She can’t be the only one.
She walks across the room and sits at her desk. She reaches for the phone directory. She lifts the phone from its hook.
She will be like a holy person, performing some long, hopeful ritual. Measuring the death of time with her fingers.
She opens the directory to the first page. The ‘A’s. The first name is Aab, a name she has never encountered before. She puts the phone against her left ear, listens to the dial tone, then punches in the number. Somewhere, in the suburbs or city, a phone rings. Loudness in the midst of silence. She lets it ring and ring. She gives it time. There are millions of names in this book. She will spend her days ringing every number. If there is someone else out there, they will answer. One day the phone won’t just ring and ring but will be answered by a human voice.
She hangs up, runs her fingers down to the next person, and punches in the number.

When Alice wakes from her cotton-warm sleep, she wonders how long she has been asleep. There is no way of measuring time anymore. No clocks or watches, no movement of the sun; just the ever-present moon, hanging like a lamp in the velvet sky. She still finds herself looking at the clock. The illuminated dial says 7.46. It is always the same and always a shock.
She climbs out of bed. She goes up to the roof.
He is not there.
She looks out on the eerily silent city and wonders, in a moment of panic, if he has betrayed her, though she can fathom no good reason for him doing so.
She sits, cross-legged, on the hard roof. She waits. He will come to her. Please let him come to me.
She thinks of her parents, still sitting in front of the TV. She wished she hadn’t left them but there was no point in remaining; touching them, feeling their warm flesh, the hardness of the bones underneath; looking into bright, glassy eyes. It was heartbreaking; they were there, within the realm of her touch, but gone; gone.
So she had wandered, alone, for months, before she had found him; the shock and wonder of another human being like her.
They shared their bewilderment and loss. They walked strangely among people who might as well be corpses. They both wondered.
He comes to her after a while. She is aware of him without seeing him. The sound of his footsteps and breath. She is ridiculously relieved.
- Have you eaten? she asks.
- I was waiting.
- Let’s go down.
- Did you sleep?
- A long time.
They ride the elevator down to the foyer, past the frozen reception clerks. They go outside.
- It doesn’t have to be God, he says.
- What?
- I was thinking. Last night. It doesn’t have to be God or Americans.
- Okay
- It could easily be nature. I mean, I remember at school they told us that every now and then the magnetic field of the Earth changes.
- It does?
Well, something like that. You know, the way the water goes when you pull out a plug? Anticlockwise or the other way?
- Clockwise.
- Yeah. And every so often it changes. Reverses.
- Okay.
- So, what if, every now and then, Time changes?
- But it hasn’t before, has it?
- How would we know? What if it changes every million years? We haven’t been around that long have we?
- But what about us? Why has everything else stopped but not us?
- I don’t know that bit. I mean, it doesn’t fit, does it?
She smiles.
- Let’s eat. What do you fancy?
- Pancakes, he grins.
She laughs and they run down the street, holding hands, heading towards a kitchen that has good pancakes and which they know has a plate piled high, just waiting for them.

Louise leaves the cinema, with the other people still sitting in their seats and the face of the woman still on the screen. She throws the empty popcorn box and soda cup into a bin.
The thing to do, she has decided, is to act as normally as possible; to live her days as if this is the every-day world. Days? Even the most fundamental thoughts are mocked by the world around her.
She passes a newsagent’s stand. She has read every single newspaper, with its news about a long-lost world. The man inside looks out, his jaw still in the same state of unshaven-ness. She picks up a magazine. She leafs through it but is only half-interested. She sees faces of famous people, more animated than the people around her.
She has a sudden desire to visit the train station, though she has no idea why.
She looks into the faces of the people she walks by. She has begun to think of them as Dolls, though they are real people. Perhaps it is she who is a ghost in their world? It is one of the possible permutations which have run through her mind over the months.
She finds the stairs to a nearby station. She heads lower, under the earth.
People wait, looking at newspapers, sitting, standing, craning their necks to see down the tunnel. There is a light from within. She stands on the edge of the platform. She jumps.
She lands on the tracks. She suddenly gasps, and thinks she is going to die. In the tunnel is a train, its lights pouring over her but, of course, it doesn’t move. She has commited suicide but only in the world which moves. In this world she can walk slowly up to the train; put her hands against its warm, metal frame; look up at the driver who stares blindly out of the window.
If the world were to become suddenly alive, she would be dead. She has thought of this often as she walks among stationary cars. This doesn’t stop her from walking beside the train, in the gap between its carriages and the curved wall of the tunnel, looking up at the windows lit from within and the lifeless passengers, reading newspapers, listening to silent iPods, talking, sleeping. Perhaps the sleeping have the best deal?
She climbs back onto the platform. She has ruined her cardigan with grease.
She walks past a young man, with his bling and tracksuit pants and cap back-to-front. She takes off his hat and flings it across the platform, across the rails, to the other side. She has no idea why.
She passes a man collecting for charity. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a handful of clattering coins and forces them into the box, pressing them in with gluttonous determination. A meaningless gesture.
She sees a man in a suit standing beside a young woman, his eyes preserved in a moment of leering at her cleavage. She finds his wallet and opens it. She peels out hundred dollar bills. She slips them into the girl’s jacket pocket and throws his wallet onto the tracks. She turns him so that he is leering at a drunk sleeping with his back to white tiles.

The two of them enter the fair ground. They are holding hands again. They wander through the stationery crowds; children, like them, with toffee apples and candy floss; adults, laughing, shouting, eating, drinking; a couple locked together in an eternal kiss in the corner of an alley.
- Have you ever been here before?
- When I was younger.
- It’s like we’re living in Madam Taussards.
She looks at a girl like her with red lips and bright blue eyes, beautiful and creepy at the same time, erotically-strange in her unbreathing loveliness. She looks away. Sometimes it is hard to look at these people, who might easily be dead or asleep or in a world between existences.
Look at the people on the roller-coaster. Those people screaming silently. They’ve been going down like that curve for over a year.
- Only to us.
- What?
- To them it’s probably not even a second. If this thing ever stops. I mean, if time ever gets back to normal I bet it will be the blink of an eye to them.
- Do you think it will?
- What?
- Get back to normal?
She looks at a woman standing beside her, wiping her glasses clean with a cotton cloth.
- How would I know? It might stay like this forever.
- Just you and me.
- Unless we find someone else.
- What are the odds of that?
- We can’t be the only ones.
- Have you ever thought it might be us and not the others?
- What do you mean? Like you said before?
- Yeah. That the rest of the world has left us behind? That everything else has moved on and it’s us who’ve fallen out of step with Time?
- But how?
He shrugs.
- Maybe this happens sometimes? People slip through and get trapped in a moment?
- So my parents, they’re somewhere in the future? They’ve left me behind?
- They wouldn’t have had any choice. It just would have happened. They went on as normal but we didn’t.
She looks at the crowd around her. Will they live here among the silent citizens of a becalmed world for the rest of their lives?
- Will we grow old? she asks wonderingly.
- I suppose we will.
- What if we don’t? Maybe we’ll stay young forever?
- Maybe?
He looks down at the ground. It is littered with papers; old tickets, scraps, sweet papers. Perhaps in sixty years from now they will come back to his place and he will remember this moment? The world will still be spellbound and nothing will have changed? The people on the roller-coaster will still be on their downward plunge, their mouths open in silent screams? But what will have become of them?
- Let’s do something silly, he says suddenly.
- What?
- Imagine if things get back to normal…
As he says this, he walks up to a red-headed man wearing black pants. He undoes them and tugs them down. He is wearing white underwear with a rose print on them.
- Do her, he says, gesturing with his head.
She looks at the woman standing beside her.
- Imagine time starts again, he says with a laugh, and they all have their trousers around their ankles. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
She smiles. Feeling a little shy, she pulls the woman’s pants down. They both laugh merrily. They wander the crowds, removing trousers and skirts until they are surrounded by dozens of people with pink-skinned, bare legs, clothes puddled around their ankles, like a scene from a silent movie. They sit in the saw dust, holding each other, laughing. She rests her head against his shoulder and he pulls her close into him, stroking her gently, hot tears rolling down his sobbing face.

Louise finds a wine bar and goes into the kitchen. She takes a sandwich and a bottle of white wine to a table by the window. She finds a CD-player and puts on a CD. Bach Cello Suites. The mournful music fills the café.
She eats. She looks at the people on the street. It has been thirteen months since she has spoken with a fellow human being; thirteen months since she heard a human voice. Sometimes she will go up to one of the mannequin-like people and touch them; stroking their faces, holding their hands, smelling their clothes, just to remind herself that they are real people, not painted dolls.
Once, a few weeks ago, seeing a beautiful man standing at the edge of a street, she had longed for the touch of another human being. She had looked into his blue eyes. He was handsome. She could imagine sharing a meal with him, going home, making love. She had unbuttoned her cardigan and had lifted the man’s heavy arm, placing his hand on her left breast. She had closed her eyes, feeling his warm fingers against her skin, yearning for tenderness.
She had cried. She had stood on the edge of the street and cried with this stranger’s hand held up against her chest.
He is still standing on the edge of the street. She knows with absolutely certainty that, if she were to walk back there, he would still be standing in the same position, still looking out across the street, with his mouth slightly parted, a sad reminder of hollow, manufactured intimacy.
She drinks her wine from the bottle. She finishes her sandwich.
Where will this end? she wonders. Will it stretch out into years? The rest of her life? An entire life lived without human contact or companionship?
She goes outside. She enters a hotel foyer. She rides the elevator to the top floor. She finds the steps to the roof. She goes up onto the roof and stands looking at the lights of the city. But for the absolute silence, it could a normal city, alive and thriving.
She drinks from the bottle, contemplating the endless darkness. It, too, has its effect on her. She is locked away from the day and sunlight forever. She drinks more wine, wiping her mouth.
She walks to the very edge of the building. The tips of her pink shoes are over the edge. She holds out her arms. She need only topple forward to drop twenty storeys to the street below.
That would end all of this.
Surely it would?
She takes a deep breath, tasting the city on her tongue.
To freefall to her death. It is a thought.
The neck of the bottle slips through her fingers and falls. It is a little time before she hears it, but the city is so silent, hear it she does, crashing below.
She laughs at the absurdity of it all.
She steps back.
- Damn you! she shouts defiantly, then heads back downstairs, where she will drink more wine, not yet ready to die.
Not only wine. Whisky, vodka, absinth, brandy, beer and champagne until, drunk, she finds a room and falls asleep in her clothes, with the clock beside her telling her it is still 7.46.

In the amusement park, they marvel at the rides, stopped in mid-swing or swirl. They laugh at a boy stopped in mid-run, being chased by a man waving a stick. They take sweets from stalls and munch on them as they wander the sawdust aisles. He picks out some flowers from a bunch and pulls out the yellow petals, dancing backwards before her, scattering them at her feet, as if she is a princess or goddess. She laughs gleefully.
He goes behind a hotdog stand and makes them hotdogs with bright-yellow mustard and relish.
They drink Coca Cola and search through show-bags to eat Violet Crumbles and Jaffas.
At a shooting gallery he shows off by putting a rifle to his shoulder, shooting at a metal duck, which he misses seven times, which makes her laugh loudly.
They walk past a band, their instruments still to their mouths, cheeks puffed. She bangs the drum and it falls out of the drummer’s still hand, clattering to the floor.
They stand under the Ferris wheel. People sit in carriages, waiting to ride. There is a queue. He tells her to get in.
She climbs into an empty seat, then he presses the button and it starts moving. He jumps in beside her and they ride slowly to the top, looking out at the bright lights of the sleeping city, holding hands while they circle around and around.
On the third revolution, they hear a phone ring.
They look at each other.
They are on the rise so have to wait until it ends its spin then jump out but, by this time, the ringing has finished.
The memory of the rings echo around them.
- No! he shouts, running around, trying to find the phone but, eventually, he falls to his knees in the sawdust. She falls gently beside him and lays an arm over his shoulder.
- They’ll ring again.
- What if they don’t?
- There’s someone else out there! We’re not alone.
He looks up at her.
- But what if they don’t ring again?
- It doesn’t matter, does it? There’s someone else out there, looking. One day. One day, we’ll find each other.
He looks at her and nods. He is crying. She wipes away the tears from his cheeks with her fingers. They kiss for the first time. Three quick, soft kisses. They hold each other tightly, lovingly. Above them, the Ferris wheel turns and turns and turns.

Louise wakes. She has no idea how long she has been sleeping. Instinctively she turns to look at the clock.
7.47.
She sits up and stares at it in disbelief.
7.47
She puts a hand to her mouth, gasping.
7.47!
Time has moved! A single minute. It has taken Time thirteen months to move a single minute. She slides off the bed. At this rate it will take, what? Fourteen or fifteen years to complete the hour. Time is moving infinitesimally slowly, but it is moving. This changes things, but she is not sure how. For the first time in a long time, she feels hope, though it is like the thinnest sliver of light in a dark room.
She walks to the window. From up here she can see the west of the city. The lights of cars not moving. The shopping precinct. The amusement park.
Something catches her eye.
The Ferris wheel is moving! She can see its multicoloured lights revolving in a pattern of red, yellow, white and green.
Is the world slowly awakening or is the changing of the minute on the clock and the slow revolution of the wheel a coincidence?
Last night she had wanted to kill herself but here she is, looking at some magical hope, some possibility of change. She watches the wheel turn beautifully, mesmerised, trying to fathom its meaning, wondering if she dare dream of salvation.
She goes downstairs, riding the elevator in a rush of impatient excitement. She steps out into the street. She walks past people standing in various poses. She wanders through the lines of cars. She doesn’t recognise this part of town. She wonders if she is heading in the right direction and, for a moment, panics. But, as she turns a corner, she comes across a street which heads downwards and there, not so far away, is the slowly turning Ferris wheel, brightly-lit, like a beacon.
She heads in its direction, having no idea what she might find there, but thinking that it might be some sort of beginning. It is a hope she tries to hold down but it flutters upwards like a bird.
As she heads closer she can smell sawdust and sweetness, the musty smell of horses and other animals. The wheel is magnificent, turning, turning, making the air sing, its gleaming lights lending it the quality of something sacred and ceremonial.
As she enters the front gates, she thinks she can hear voices. They are too far away for her to be sure, too quiet, but she begins to run. The lights wash the air with beautiful colours and the hurdy-gurdy music of the Wheel is making the world giddy and strange.
She feels like she is falling now; falling forwards into the vortex of the Wheel, like a leaf being drawn into a whirlpool. She prepares herself for astonishment or, perhaps – please no! - disappointment?
Above her, the stars, whose ancient light has taken hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years to arrive here, pierce the night sky with their astonishing brightness.

sorrow valley

2009-07-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

PC Emily French started her day much the same as most days. There was nothing about the morning to suggest it would be any different from any other run-of-the-mill day. She had breakfast, showered, caught the bus to work, changed into her uniform. She attended the morning’s briefing, was assigned duties with PC Lancashire. There was always a certain awkwardness between them. He had once confided that he had a bit of a crush on her. That had been at last year’s Christmas party. He had drunkenly told her she had pretty ears. He had apologised the next day and she’d told him to forget it, but it remained an issue between them. any more.
They drove down the main street. They attended a drunken argument between two customers outside a 7-11. They cautioned someone whose right brake light was broken.
Then they got a call about a delirious man at Sorrow Alley. They attended. He was a young man, wearing a crumpled suit. It looked like he hadn’t washed for days, but he didn’t look like your normal down and out.
She climbed out of the car. She approached.
“Okay, sir. How are we doing?”
He looked up, surprised, as if confused about his whereabouts.
“What?”
“What seems to be the trouble?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Trouble? Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Have you been drinking, sir?”
He shook his head.
“Taken any illicit drugs?”
He shook his head again. He was pale and shaking.
“Do you have anywhere we can take you? Someone we can call?”
He tried to work out what she was saying, then said:
“Fuck off! Just leave me alone!”
“I can’t do that, sir. You’re causing a disturbance. If you don’t have somewhere to go, we may have to take you in.”
He looked up, panicked, then started running down the alley way. She looked at her colleague and rolled her eyes.
“Leave him,” he said.
“There’s something not right with him.”
She started running down the alley after him. He wasn’t running very fast.
“Stay where you are!”
They ran past rubbish bins, the back doors of restaurant kitchens. God this alleyway stank. There was smoke. The man disappeared into it. Was there a fire somewhere? She ran ahead, covering her eyes, choking.
On the other side of the smoke, she stopped. She was still in the alley, but something felt different. It was colder. Yes, there was definitely an icy chill about the place. And there was some kind of sweet smell in the air. What was it? It reminded of her childhood. Marzipan. Yes , that was it. Marzipan.
She walked ahead slowly. She pulled out her baton. A rat ran across the puddled path in front of her.
“Where the hell is he?”
She kept walking. The alleyway seemed to go on forever. Surely it wasn’t this long?
Then she saw something on the ground up ahead. A body? She ran up to it. It was the man. But something about him had changed. He was cleaner somehow. He looked recently-washed. He was smiling, with his eyes closed. She knelt down beside him.
“Are you all right? ”
He opened his eyes. He looked at her.
“Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” he said, in a calm, quiet voice, “sorry, I was just resting.”
She helped him up.
“What’s going on?” she asked, feeling a little disturbed about the way he had cleaned himself up so quickly.
“Nothing’s going on. You’re so beautiful!”
“All right. That’s enough. Are you coming back with me?”
“What have I done?”
“Disturbing the peace.”
“I’ll be okay now, I promise you. I’m happy now. I won’t be going back. Just leave me and I’ll be perfectly, perfectly okay.”
She considered him carefully.
“Have you got somewhere to go?”
“Yes. My house is just around the corner.”
“What… what happened back there?”
“What? Oh. I had a turn that’s all. It happens sometimes. I’m okay now. I promise.”
He looked calm enough. She nodded.
“All right. But be careful. We’ll be watching out for you.”
“You won’t see me ever again. I assure you.”
He smiled and she looked at him a little suspiciously, but then turned to go.
“Oh, officer!” he shouted after her.
She turned to look at him. He had a posy of violets in his hand, which he offered her.
“You’re very beautiful, you know.”
He smiled, then headed off and she laughed, shaking her head.

Back at the car, PC Lancashire was waiting for her.
“Thanks for the back-up.”
“I didn’t think you needed it. Where’d you get those?”
“That guy gave them to me.”
He looked surprised.
“Where is he?”
“It was kinda weird. I found him on the ground.”
“He fell?”
“I don’t know. But he was different somehow. Calmer. Cleaner.”
“Cleaner?”
“His clothes were crisp, his hair washed. He was normal.”
PC Lancashire laughed.
“You were only gone a few minutes. He washed his hair and changed his suit did he?”
“I told you it was weird.”
He looked at her suspiciously then laughed.
“Right. You let him get away, didn’t you?”
“He was perfectly calm. He gave me these.”
He shook his head and laughed again, convinced she was having him on. She felt an odd wave of anger rush through her. They got into the car. She bristled. She didn’t like being disbelieved. She clenched one of her fists and felt an odd desire to hit him.

Over the next few days, she found herself thinking about the alley. What had happened didn’t make sense. She looked it up in a street map and was surprised to see it was actually quite short, not the seemingly never-ending alley she had walked down.
It bothered her more than it should.

A few days later, they heard a call to a purse snatch over the radio. Sorrow Alley. She said to record them dealing even though they weren’t close. Her partner, PC Johns, said: “There’ll be other units closer.”
“Well put your foot down then.”
At the scene, there was an elderly woman in a pink dress looking distressed. She told them some youth had snatched her bag and it had all of her money inside. She left PC Johns to take the details while she searched the alley.
She felt an odd tingle of excitement as she walked down the alley slowly. The same smells of decay and rubbish. Someone really should clean this place up.
She kept walking. She walked past some crates. The air ahead of her shimmered, like a heatwave.
She walked through it. The air was suddenly icy cold and, there it was again, that smell of marzipan.
She felt as if she were in some weird dream. She walked in slow, deliberate steps. There was something not quite right about this place. She couldn’t see the end of it.
“You’ve been here before?”
A woman opened the door to one of the restaurant kitchens.
“Sorry?”
“I haven’t seen you before, but you must have been here before.”
“Why’s that?”
The woman shrugged. She went back inside and closed the door.
PC French kept walking.
Eventually, she came to a red door that was ajar. She knocked. There was no answer, so she stepped inside. It was a simple room with a large dining table, an open fire, some platters laid out ready for some party. On the platter were all manner of sweets and lollies. A brightly-colourful array of them. White, pink, black, yellow, orange, lime, blue, speckled with red dots, purple-striped. She could smell icing sugar, aniseed, liquorice, musk, peppermint, vanilla… marzipan. The aromas were so enticing, making her mouth water. She couldn’t resist reaching out and picking one up, a small, round one with a red top. She put it in her mouth and it tasted intensely of raspberries and marzipan. It was the tastiest sweet she had ever tasted. It was smooth, creamy, soft, melting in her mouth; something buttery and nutty, berryful. It seemed to communicate its sweetness and fruitiness to her very soul. It was as if someone had condensed something particularly wonderful to its purest essence. She shivered. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
She looked around the room, suddenly aware that she was intruding. But the sweet had thrown her off centre. It was as if she had discovered something that she had never known could exist in this world. Something incredible. Some nectar made possible only through sorcery.
She sat down on a chair. She felt overwhelmed by it. She could feel the sweetness rush through her veins. It was like a revelation.
Hearing a noise inside the house, she stood up. She didn’t want to be caught out. She went outside. She debated whether to go off in search of the handbag thief, or whether to go back. She resisted an almost overwhelming urge to go back inside and try another sweet.
She headed back to the street.
“Anything?” PC Johns asked.
She shook her head. The air felt thick and suffocating. She got into the car.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, not able to speak. She wanted to hold the sweetness inside of her mouth. She was afraid that, if she spoke, the gloriousness of it would float away, leaving her bereft. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, the tip of it searching for the memory of that honeyed, almond wonder.

The sugar spun through her blood sweetly all day. She felt deliriously happy. After work, she uncharacteristically joined some of them at the pub. She drank vodka and cranberry juice and got very drunk. She played Pulp’s ‘Common People’ on the juke box and danced, holding her arms out, as if crucified in air, spinning around happily.
In the corridor, on the way back from the bathroom, she saw PC Lancashire and suddenly pushed him against the wall, kissing him. He was surprised, but she pressed her mouth hard against his, wanting to taste and smell him, wanting to eat him, until he suddenly yelped and pushed her back.
“What the fuck, Emily?”
He raised his hand to his lips. His bottom lip was swollen and bleeding. She looked at him, surprised as well, but then laughed.
“You sure you still wanna fuck me, Harry?” she asked, brushing his bleeding mouth with her soft fingers.
She licked the blood from her fingertips, winking at him before she headed back to the front bar.

For the next few days, she was somewhat distant from the rest of her colleagues. She was inside of herself for most of the time. But, in the car, at the end of the week, she said;
“Sorry, Harry. I was drunk. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He looked at her, his lip still a little swollen.
“You were crazy, you know?”
“I know.”
“You were like an animal.”
“I’m saying sorry, mate.”
He nodded and smiled.
“Okay.”

She went back to her normal self. If anything, she was more cheerful than normal. She brought in a large box of chocolates to hand around at morning tea. She took to carrying blocks of chocolate in her jacket: organic dark with chillies and ginger, milk with Early Grey; lavender, basil, cinnamon and nutmeg; vanilla and cherries. She would break pieces off and chew them throughout the day, but seemed oddly frustrated by what she ate, often not finishing it, but throwing it away.
“What’s with you and chocolate?” PC Lancashire asked her.
“Nothing’s with me and chocolate. Just drive, okay?”

She decided to pay a visit to the alley again She was curious. No, she was being dishonest with herself. She craved that experience of utter joy she had felt when she had eaten the single marzipan-laden sweet. Her bedroom and front room was littered with the torn papers and crumpled aluminium foil of abandoned chocolates and sweets which had failed to meet her expectations. She had bought marzipan sweets, had even laboured to make them herself, from a recipe in an old cook book she found in the library, but it just wasn’t the same. She yearned for marzipan that was really marzipan.
She drove there on her lunch break. She walked down the alley with a sense of nervous anxiety and anticipation. She smelled rotting fish, mouldy vegetables. She held a hand to her nose.
Somewhere, a cat meowed. She stepped in a puddle. She looked down and watched reflected light break up in the rippling water.
She felt that familiar sudden coldness that indicated she had stepped into that mysterious place where weird things happened; where there was a rumour of marzipan in the chilly air.
Her skin was goosebumpy and tender to the touch. She walked as if following the pull of a magical spell.
She came to the red door, but it wasn’t ajar this time. She turned the door handle, but it was locked.
“You came back?”
She spun around. It was the woman from the restaurant kitchen the other day.
“I was wondering… the other day… inside this building..?”
“You went inside?”
“Yes. There were… I tasted…”
“You want to taste it again?”
She wondered how the woman knew what she was talking about. She nodded. The woman smiled.
“What did it taste like?”
“Oh! Like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.”
The woman laughed.
“Sweet? Hot? Bitter? Fishy?”
“Sweet. Like marzipan.”
The woman raised her eyebrows.
“Marzipan? Marzipan always reminds me of Christmas. My mother used to make rich fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing.”
“Yes!”
The woman smiled knowingly.
“There’s a shop. You have money? I could show you.”
“Please.”
So she followed this stranger down the wet alley, feeling the coldness of the place seep into her skin. She shivered. It felt oddly as if dozens of eyes were watching her.
“This shop I’m taking you to, the sweets cost a lot of money, but they’re like nothing you’ve ever tasted before.”
“I don’t mind paying,” she said, knowing, suddenly, that she would be prepared to pay anything for one more taste of that glorious marzipan.
She was following a stranger to a sweet shop. Whatever was happening to her? But she felt her tastebuds tingle in anticipation.
The shop was the most wonderful shop she had ever seen. She felt like she had suddenly and inexplicably been thrown back to the days of being a child.
It had a huge bay window and, behind it, were shelves of sweets. Gobstoppers, sherbet lemons, aniseed balls, peppermints, truffles, chocolate drops, gummy bears; handmade confections with flavours printed on little cards: mandarin and coconut; raspberry ripple; nutmeg and custard; vanilla and redcurrant; apple and cinnamon; coffee; pistachio; nougat; brandy and butter; dark chocolate, white chocolate; bitter chocolate; milk chocolate; chocolate with rum; chocolate with vanilla cream; white chocolate with dark chocolate insides…
She nearly fainted with the wonder of it.
They went inside. The aromas were almost too hard to take; they overwhelmed her with their sweet, nutty, chocolaty, spicy luxuriousness.
“This young lass here craves something with marzipan, the woman said to the person behind the counter.
“Marzipan?”
PC French had been looking at a tray of dark chocolate truffles. She looked up.
“The other day, I had a marzipan sweet. With raspberry topping.”
“Ah, the Marzipan Kiss. Yes, that’s one of ours. You like it then?”
“Oh, it was wonderful!”
The woman behind the counter seemed pleased.
“How many would you like?”
“How much do they cost?”
“$50.”
“For how many?”
“Just the one, dear.”
“$50 for one truffle?”
“They take many hours to make. It’s a special recipe. There’s none like it.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Okay. I’ll take… well, just the one thank you.”
The woman nodded and headed off. She came back a little while later with a single marzipan sweet wrapped in orange cellophane. PC French handed over the money and took the sweet. She was trembling.
“Thank you,” she said to both women.
She headed out of the shop. She walked back down the alley. She held the sweet in her palm as if it were something precious, something she should be careful not to break.
Eventually, she could carry it no more. She sat down on a step and carefully opened the cellophane. She looked at the tiny sweet, no bigger than a small plum. It looked unremarkable; the kind of sweet many would avoid among the prettier ones. She raised it slowly to her mouth and popped it in, whole. She chewed upon it…
… and was transported to a place of joy. She could feel the glorious flavours seep into her skin, making her face and arms glow. She felt lighter, less troubled by the world. She knew the world could be a good, kind place where incredible beauty flowered.
She closed her eyes, feeling the sugar rush through her veins. Her head spun, as if drunk. She laughed. She sobbed. She sat on the cold, damp step, crying out of the sheer joy of knowing such wonder existed.

She came out of the other side of the alley, stunned and shaken. Her face was sticky with tears. Her uniform was splashed with mud. The memory of the joy lingered, but she was shaking. She walked in a daze. She took the police car and drove home. She undressed. She stood under a hot shower and cried.

The next day, she felt oddly off-centre in the world. It was as if she was at a distance from it; she was in her own, quiet space, dreaming. In the car with PC Lancashire, she said nothing. Every now and then, she closed her eyes, summoning up the memory of marzipan. It was still there, lingering deep inside of her; reminding her of what it was like to experience perfection. Looking around the world as they drove through it, she understood how flawed it was; the cracks in its surface; the blemishes; the aspirations never satisfied. The greatest, most wonderful experience in this imperfect world couldn’t come within an inch of the joy she had felt from eating that single, heavenly sweet.
She wondered if it contained some drug? If she was becoming addicted? But she knew, instinctively, that this wasn’t true. It wasn’t a drug. It was a state of being; it was a revelation of some sort; some kind of new understanding of the world.
“Emily, are you okay?”
“What?”
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look ill.”
“I’m not ill. I’ve never been better. Stop by a sweet shop will you? I fancy something sweet.”

She visited the alley whenever she could. She rationed it. She didn’t want to let it get out of control. But she fell the pull of it getting stronger and stronger. And, each time, she bought a single Marzipan Kiss. She was never tempted by any of the other sweets. And, each time, she found she couldn’t wait to eat it and sat somewhere in the alley, chewing on the sweet, never ceasing to be astonished at its marvellousness. She met other people in the alley as well. There was something about them, something different, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. They all smiled at her, as if understanding her and she smiled back.
Whenever she was in the normal world, she unsuccessfully sought out that experience of pure joy she felt in the alley, but it was never there, it existed only as an empty craving.

PC Lancashire visited her one day. She hadn’t turned up to work. He found her looking pale and bleary-eyed. She invited him in, telling him she felt out of sorts.
“What the hell?”
He looked at the room. It was littered with cellophane, aluminium foil, chocolate wrappers, coloured boxes, unfinished chocolate bars.
“Emily, what the hell’s going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s going on. I’ve been a little tired, that’s all.”
“But what’s all this?”
She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time and was embarrassed.
“Yeah. It’s a mess, isn’t it? God, I’m not normally like this.”
“If you keep going like this, you’re going to lose your job.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Okay. I’ll be in tomorrow. I’ll pull myself together.”
“But what is it? What’s happening to you?”
She looked at him. She felt suddenly sorry for him because he would never experience what she experienced; he would never understand. She felt a tear brim in one of her eyes.
“I’m okay. I just needed a day off that’s all. I’ll be in tomorrow. I promise.’
He looked at her sceptically, clearly worried about her, but she didn’t want his concern. Life on this side of the world was tough, but, on the other side, she knew a perfect kind of joy that PC Lancashire would never know.
“I’ll be okay,” she said, “I’ll be okay.”

At night, she curled herself up into an embryo. She imagined herself being born. She would emerge in a perfect world where no-one suffered, no-one yearned for things they could not have.

She pulled herself together. She woke, showered, resisted the urge to seek out confectionary heaven. She walked to work, needing the fresh air.
In the car, PC Lancashire glanced at her every now and then.
“I’m okay,” she said, without looking at him.
As they drove, she looked at the world and it seemed pale and watery, not quite as vivid and strong as the one she had known previously. She still felt distanced from her surroundings, sunk slightly within herself.
She looked at PC Lancashire. She studied his skin, which was the colour of musk lollies. She leaned closer, smelling his flesh.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Stop the car.”
“Why?”
“Just stop.”
Reluctantly, he parked the car.
“What is it?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“What?”
“Let me kiss you.”
“Why?”
“Just let me kiss you,” she laughed.
She put her mouth on his and they kissed. She needed the texture of another human being to feel real.
“You’re not going to bite me again are you?” he asked and she looked at him.
“No. I’m going to lick you.”
“You’re what?”
She began licking his neck, under his ears.
“Emily?”
“I need to taste you. I need to taste the world.”
She licked his mouth; kissing, licking.
He pushed her away.
“Emily!”
“I need to know how everything tastes. To make it real again.”
“You’re mad. Get away!”

They drove in silence. She felt angry. She had liked the salty taste of his skin. She had wanted more. She looked at the washed-out, insipid city and felt angry at it for lacking the vibrancy she craved.
She sank lower in her seat, sulking. She petulantly wanted to disappear from this world; evaporate into nothingness; melt into pure flavour and aroma. She smiled at the thought.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” PC Lancashire said.
She tuned out his words.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you.”
“It’s none of your fucking business.”
“It is my business, Emily.”
She looked at him.
“No. You don’t understand. You will never understand. You don’t even have the capacity to understand. I’ve been to a place where you will never go. I feel sorry for you.”
“Emily, you’re not well.”
“Stop the car.”
“Why?”
“Stop the car.”
But a call came over the radio about a petty theft nearby and so she went silent and they called in.
They found the thief not far away and he saw them, running off. She jumped out of the car and ran after him.
“Stop where you fucking are!” she shouted.
She pulled out her baton. She felt a rush of adrenalin spur her on. This was living! The rush, the thrill, the joy of it! They were headed for Sorrow Alley. She felt a sense of proprietorial fury at the thought of this scumbag encroaching on her beloved territory. As he ran into the alley, she put on a burst of speed and caught up, swiping him around the back of the head. He fell. She hit him again. Again. She swung her baton back and forth, left and right; until the fury subsided in sobbing gasps.
PC Lancashire caught up with her.
“Jesus Christ.”
She looked down at her blood-splattered shirt. She was trembling. A trickle of splashed blood ran down her face.
“Emily? What have you done?”
She knelt down. She looked at the bloody head of the man on the ground. She touched his head, feeling its heat and stickiness. She looked at her bloody fingers. Stunned, she lifted her fingers to her mouth, sucking on them, tasting the thing she had done.

While PC Lancashire radioed in, she walked down the alley. She tossed her baton on the ground. This wasn’t how she wanted her ecstasy to end up. She hadn’t meant to do that.
She pulled off her radio and tossed that to the ground as well. She walked slowly, almost unaware of her surroundings, sensing cold bricks and doorways only at the margins of her reality. She thought she heard a voice calling after her but it was far away and quiet.
She walked into coldness. She shivered.
Her mouth was filled with saltiness.
Her veins felt like ice.
She headed slowly towards the sweet shop. She thought of the man who had first led her here. She remembered his lost expression outside and his sense of peaceful, well-being this side of the alley. She understood now. It wasn’t possible to live on the other side of the world once you had tasted this one.
Inside the shop, she bought dozens of sweets: marzipan, caramels, liquorice, white chocolate truffles, Pontefract cakes, coconut creams, lavender buds, cherry blossoms.
She took her sugary haul to a small doorway not far away. Bloodied, pale, she sat on the cold step, swallowing them down, filling her mouth with bursts of intense flavour; feeling the sugary, soft, creaminess of the combined flavours explode within her head like a constellation of bright stars.
The pain left her, bite by bite. She swallowed her salvation in small pieces. Her own hot blood returned to her and the world was no longer cold. Her lips tingled with fruitiness. Whatever she had done, she would be redeemed with vanilla softness. She looked up at the grey sky and felt lilac and lemon flavours surge through her like some citrus-tinged divine light. Grace fell upon her in a pastel, peppermint halo. She knew that would live here forever now; she would live here in happiness and scented, caramel bliss. Sweet, hot tears rolled down her cheeks. Her tears tasted of almonds and sugar.

rachel didn't like peaches

2009-07-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

We always used to say: "How is it possible for someone to not like peaches?" It seemed an impossible thing, like not wanting to breathe, but Rachel refused to eat the ones we had stolen that day because she said they were too furry.
Lily was the one who had stolen them. She had sneaked them into her schoolbag while the greengrocer had been serving another customer. She had spent a few cents on a single red apple just to seem legitimate, but she had walked out of the shop with four ripe, juicy peaches hidden at the bottom of her bag.
We ate them in the secret place we had discovered in the attic above the art class. It was used to store tins of powdered paint and boxes of coloured paper and it had a window which overlooked the oval and the boys' change-rooms.
We called it our Look-out and we'd sneak up there after school to watch the boys play football and share stories, drinking sometimes from wine bottles one of us had stolen from the local bottle-o; or to tell jokes about the teachers we didn't like and the girls we thought were stupid.
That day we heard some shouts and we looked down below to see Billy Jones running out of the boys' change-rooms with Paul Lang's clothes. Paul was cursing as he chased Billy, coming out of the change-rooms completely naked. We laughed. We watched as he ran after his clothes with a red-faced expression, swearing loudly.
Paul Lang was a bit of a nerd who didn't really have any friends and we should have felt sorry for him, but we laughed, delighting in his embarrassment. And he looked so funny, naked, with his ever-so-pale skin.
It was a funny thing to see.
And then, when the fun was over, we sat down and ate our peaches, our mouths glistening with juice. Rachel stayed at the window and said:
"He shouldn't really have done that."
"Do you fancy him then?" asked Claire.
"Wrack off," Rachel said and we all laughed.
The peaches were the best peaches we had ever tasted. It was as if the juices from every peach we had ever had in our short lives had been concentrated into their pale flesh so that they were bursting with unbelievable, impossible flavour.

We called ourselves the Fearless Four. Lily, Claire, Rachel and me. Up in our secret Look-out, we thought we were the Queens of the school. We thought we were goddesses looking down on the small world below us.
The world wasn't our exactly oyster waiting to be shucked, but it was definitely our plaything, ready to be explored. Individually, we may have had our own private hopes and fears but, together, we were invincible and the world owed us, and whatever we took from it belonged to us. Peaches were the least of it.
Many, many years later, when Rachel sat on her porch, swallowing her medication, her mouth still scarred from the thorns, she told me that she wished she had eaten her peach that day. She longed, now, for its furry sweetness. But it hadn't been like that back then.

Secretly, I was in love with Rachel of course. There was something special about her that fascinated me. She told stories about herself that most people thought were crazy, and most of the school thought she was just an oddball, but she was accepted in our group and I thought her stories made her all the more lovely.
The thing about Rachel was that she was always somehow detached from the rest of us. It wasn't that she wasn't part of the group – she joined in the pranks and larks as enthusiastically as anyone and could be trusted with the deepest and darkest of secrets – it was just that there was a sense of distant loneliness about her, as if part of her, at least, was watching the world from the outside.
I watched her that day when we ate the peaches. When she thought no-one was looking she leaned forward and kissed the glass of the window. She was looking at something below and her lips met the hardness of glass with softness and longing. It was just a brief moment and she quickly looked around to see if someone was looking, so I averted my eyes, but I wondered who had been the object of her desire.
Many days later, in a private moment, I plucked up the courage to ask her and she was a little surprised that I had witnessed her glassy kiss.
"Oh, I was just practising," she said after a while.
"Who for?"
"No-one in particular."
I wasn't sure I believed her. I think she saw my disbelief, for she added:
"I always smell of roses. Did you know that?"
I didn't know what to say and she smiled a little at my confusion. She reached out and pulled my head closer, her hand on the back of my head, pressing it ever so softly into her neck.
"See?'
Sure enough, the skin of her neck was heavy with the heady aroma of pink roses. It astonished me. I looked at her and she had a serious expression, the look of someone sharing a terrible secret.
"Kiss me," she said.
"What?"
I was shocked. I had always wanted to kiss her, but…
"Just because," she said.
My heart beating a little faster, I leaned across and kissed her on the mouth, our lips barely touching, so that it almost wasn't a kiss at all. But I gasped. Her mouth tasted, incredibly, of rose petals.
"See," she said when I looked at her, "I am cursed, cursed by flowers."

The incident involving Paul Lang troubled me a little. I had enjoyed laughing at him and had told the story over and over about how we had seen him naked, running outside, his thin body with its skin as pale as curdled milk. The girls asked me for details. His chest was bare. His penis wasn't small but it wasn't large either. His nipples were tiny red welts on his pale chest.
When he walked down the corridor, girls looked at him and smiled. They whispered and laughed. Sometimes he cringed. The boys began calling him 'soft-cock' and 'milk chest.' Someone wrote some graffiti in the library suggesting he was impotent.
I felt a little responsible, as if I had had deliberately provided the material for this cruel ribbing. But I didn't say anything to anyone. When people laughed at him, I laughed as well.
One afternoon I came upon him in the corridor. He looked at me resentfully. Normally we ignored each other but he spoke to me that afternoon.
"It was you wasn't it?"
"What was me?"
"You told them about what happened."
I didn't deny it.
"You've changed things."
"How?"
He looked sad.
"People have always laughed at me but now they like being cruel. When I walk down the corridor they pinch me. Did you know that? Not just the bullies. Everybody. Someone put a turd in my locker. And they do things like steal my lunch. Or put drawing pins on my chair."
"You should stand up to them."
"How do you stand up to an entire school?"
"You should try something."
He looked suddenly very angry. I thought he was going to hit me because he came at me but all he did was hold me by my arms and press me against the lockers.
"What should I do?" he asked bitterly, "what should I do to you?"
"Let me go," I said angrily.
But his fingers dug deeper into my skin as he pressed me against the doors of the lockers.
"This is what it's like," he said, "this is what it's like to feel helpless."
He looked me fiercely in the eyes. He just held me there. He was almost trembling. Then he kissed me. He kissed me on the mouth in a clumsy, insistent way. I think he was almost as surprised as me for he looked shocked after he had done it and, before I could say anything, he let me go and, leaving his locker door open, rushed off.
"You're a knob, Paul Lang!" I shouted after him.

I'm sure he thought I'd tell everyone else about what had happened but I kept it to myself. I felt sorry for him and didn't want to add to his woes.
When I say I kept it to myself, I told the rest of the gang, of course. We shared secrets among ourselves like boxes of delicious chocolates.
"What a dickhead," said Lily, "do you think he fancies you?"
"I don't know."
"Was it a good kiss?" asked Claire.
"Bloody awful."
We all laughed.
"We should get him back. Play a trick on him."
"I think he's very unhappy. People bully him all the time."
"Yeah, well he brings it on himself," said Lily, "he's so pathetic. We should send him a love letter. Ask him to meet at some place. Watch from a distance."
"That would be cruel," said Claire.
"I know. That's the point."
"We should just leave him alone," Rachel said out of the blue and we all looked at her.
"Why?" asked Lily with disdain.
"People bully him enough. He's already as unhappy as anyone should be."
I could see Lily getting ready to argue and I knew that meant we'd end up doing something mean so I said:
"Maybe she's right. He's not worth it. I think we should just leave him alone too."
Lily looked annoyed but we had our own kind of democracy in the gang and she could sense that she had lost the argument so she changed the subject and we ended up making plans for a raid on the local church orchard where we'd steal shiny red apples, as many as we could, and persuade Claire's mother to make us sweet apple pies with custard.

Rachel became quieter and more aloof. I thought perhaps she was in love. She missed a few meetings in the attic. Lily said she was going soft but I defended her, saying she was sometimes sick.
One afternoon, we went to the museum and it was here that the first of the rose events happened.
Rachel looked pale and tired and, while we wandered trough the room with cases filled with tiny glistening insects pinned to boards, I asked her if she was all right. She smiled weakly and said she had been feeling odd lately. I reached out and held her hand and she smiled, threading her fingers through mine.
"Sometimes, when I'm with you, I'm just about the happiest I can be," she said.
I think she would have said more, except she started coughing. It was the type of dry cough you have when something is stuck in your throat.
"What is it?" I asked, "what's up? Are you all right?"
But she kept clearing her throat and coughing, until something fell out of her mouth and floated to the floor.
A tiny, pink rose petal.
I thought she was playing a trick, but she looked so scared I knew it was real and she hadn't stopped coughing; and then she opened her mouth, as if vomiting, and a stream of coloured petals began tumbling out of her mouth, fluttering in the air, falling to the floor in a pink, yellow, white and red carpet; thousands and thousands of unbelievable rose petals, spewing from her mouth like confetti; filling the air with their astonishing aroma. Until, at last, she was done and she fell to her knees, gasping, tears rolling down her eyes, a few papery petals still falling and landing on her fingers.

No-one else was in the room and no-one believed us, but they could see that Rachel was sick, so they sent us home. On the bus we held hands again and we didn't say a word, we just sat there, speechless and stunned.
We hugged goodbye and I kissed her on the forehead and I noticed that her skin tasted of roses.
She spent a few days in bed and, when she came back to school, something had changed; she was far more serious, even more withdrawn than before, dwelling in her own thoughts.
At one of our meetings in the attic, where we ate stolen Lamingtons, Lily suddenly turned on her telling her that she was as boring as hell these days. Without a word, Rachel stood up and left. She never came back.
I was afraid I might never see her again. She avoided me most of the time. I still went to the meetings in the attic, but it just wasn't the same. The light-hearted camaraderie had left us and Lily's pranks took on a harder, crueller edge.
Paul was still being teased. Someone stole his bike and threw it in the creek. He started receiving death threats, typewritten on blue paper. At sports he was regularly tripped up or punched when the teachers weren't looking. Even some of the teachers began picking on him. The photography teacher locked him in the dark room as a punishment for poor work and his maths teacher loved humiliating him by getting him to answer difficult maths questions he knew he'd fail.
One afternoon, he opened his locker to find someone had filled it with red paint, covering everything: his books, his spare clothes, his lunch. They had written the word 'blood' on the back of the locker door.
Two days later, Paul Lang committed suicide by hanging himself in his bedroom. We found out at assembly one morning.
No-one said anything, but we knew that the person who had filled his locker was Lily, using paint from the attic.
An eerie quiet fell over the school that day. Virtually everyone had reasons to feel guilty and ashamed about how they had treated Paul.

Rachel and I started talking again. She said she had been freaked out by the rose petal incident, but was feeling better now. We started hanging out in the library and I missed a few meetings in the attic for the sake of her company. The meetings weren't enjoyable any more anyway. Lily denied being the one who filled Paul's locker with red paint and said: "That wasn't what made him kill himself anyway. He killed himself because he was a loser."
Being with Rachel, reading books and newspapers in the library was much nicer than cold afternoons in an attic surrounded by paint tins and paper. Besides, there were too many memories up there, hanging around like unwelcome ghosts.
Rachel and I decided to attend the funeral. Apart from the school Principal, we were the only ones from the school that went. The Principal said a few words, telling the congregation of mourners how Paul was a decent lad who was liked by all.
Rachel headed off suddenly and I followed, thinking she was upset but, when I came upon her, kneeling under a plane tree, she was coughing and I thought it was going to be petals again, but this time something small and dark fell out of her mouth. I thought it was a dead tooth, but then a few more fell out and I realised they were thorns. I watched in astonishment as hundreds and hundreds of dark, sharp rose thorns tumbled out of her mouth, making a little pile on the damp earth.
When she had coughed up the last one, she looked at me, her eyes open in terror. Her mouth was bloody and torn, the blood shining on her pale jaw, trickling down the sides of her mouth. I rushed up to her and held her, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could, not worrying about the blood staining my shirt, just letting her shake and sob into my chest until she could sob no more.

Our lives changed after this. The gang fell apart completely. We no longer went to the attic. Rachel and I grew closer and fell in love.
Lily went on to be a politician. You've probably heard of her? Claire went interstate and we never heard from her again. Rachel and I moved in together. Sometimes we visited Paul's grave, not out of obligation, but because we wanted to.
Rachel developed a kind of epilepsy, which had to be treated with medication. She had all sorts of little illnesses with made her lethargic and in need of careful attention. I got a job in a bookshop a few streets down and, in the evenings, cared for her.
One of the side effects of her medication was that she could no longer taste things. Food, for her, was just a series of bland textures. That was why she regretted not eating the peach, back in the days when she was young and could taste the world.
All in all though, we've made a reasonable job of our lives. We still love each other and, for the most part, we are happy.
Rachel is still haunted by roses.

shame

2007-06-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

A recently-released report has shown that child sexual abuse is rife amongst certain indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Alcoholism and petrol sniffing are also widespread. These are remote communities, living in extreme poverty, with appalling housing conditions, few jobs, poor schooling. Australians should be ashamed that fellow Australians live in such conditions.

John Howard has declared this a crisis akin to a national emergency and has declared that he will take over the constitutional powers of the Territory Government in order to solve the problem. This was announced with much bluster and without consultation with the Territory Government. Needless to say, there was no consultation with the communities, themselves, nor with the elders who run those communities.

John Howard has no respect for the Indigenous community. The problem certainly is a serious one and it demands decisive action, but it smacks of paternalism, at best, and racism, at worst, to intervene in a manner which has total disregard for the Indigenous leaders who form the councils responsible for leading such communities. Surely, any genuine Government, would work with the communities in solving this problem, rather than simply taking over and imposing their will upon them?

Incidentally, the Howard Government declared the living conditions of Indigenous communities in the Territory a 'scandal and crisis' over ten years ago. In that time, he has abolished ATSIC, making Australia the only developed country without a democratically-elected body for its Indigenous population. He has pulled funding from programs introduced by Labor to tackle social issues. He has sacked locally-elected Councillors. He has closed programs designed to tackle child sexual abuse. So why his urgency now? Anything to do with heading towards an election this year?

And what is the proposed solution? Well, first of all, it's an increase in the police presence. Once again, as is too often the case in this country, problems experienced in poor Indigenous communities are perceived in strictly criminal terms and the solution is seen as the provision of more police. And how is this going to work? We're talking about sixty communities in remote areas, some of them hundreds and hundreds of miles apart. Howard's sixty extra police (borrowed temporarily from the States)will have a big task ahead of them policing these communities. Incredibly, the police will be accompanied by soldiers from the army and the Minister is describing the first six months as an attempt to 'secure the ground', making it sound like a war; which perhaps it is?

Then there is the banning of alcohol and pornography. Prohibition. Yeah, history shows us that works. How are you going to guarantee such a ban? We all know that prohibition leads to a black market in the things being prohibited. The Northern Territory is a vast area; it doesn't take a genius to imagine how some enterprising people will come up with a way of smuggling alcohol into these communities, selling it at ridiculously-inflated prices. And, in any case, you can't solve alcoholism by simply removing alcohol. Alcoholics needs counselling and support, not simply denial of their addiction. If an alcoholic capable of domestic violence is deprived of alcohol, what behaviours are they likely to exhibit? And how do you prevent pornography? John Howard's solution: Government inspectors who will regularly inspect computers to make sure no-one is accessing pornography on the Internet.

Perhaps the most disturbing of all of the proposals is the plan to make it compulsory for children under the age of sixteen to be inspected medically for signs of sex abuse. Can you imagine the outrage if John Howard proposed that all white, middle class children be inspected medically in such a way? Isn't forced physical inspection of young children a form of abuse in itself, no matter what the motive? Can you imagine the distress and upset, with soldiers and police taking over a town, with a few doctors in tow, forcing young children to have gynaecological examinations? It's too terrible to imagine.

In fact it is so terrible to imagine, that the town which has been cited as the first to have a visit from the army and police, is reported to be in a state of extreme anxiety and fear. So much so, that a number of families have fled into the desert. There are fears for their safety. Why so scared? Well, the last time police and welfare workers came into Indigenous communities in such a planned, programmed manner, they were stealing children from their parents. Vans arrived, children were herded into them and then driven away. For many, this was the last time they ever saw their families again. If you want just a hint of what happened back then, watch the film "Rabbit Proof Fence." So, thank you, John Howard, you've revived the fears and despair generated by the Stolen Generation. We've not learned a bloody thing in all these years!

So, to sum of John Howard's plan: we keep Indigenous people in remote communities with little access to services. We don't improve their living conditions one iota. We don't provide them with counselling or rehabilitation services. We send a bunch of police and soldiers out to watch over them. We send inspectors out to check their computers. We force young children to be physically inspected in an invasive, scarily-intimate way. We ban alcohol and pornography. We don't consult with the local communities, we don't involve Indigenous leaders. We rustle up a few extra police on a temporary basis who will 'occupy' the lands and then leave after a few months. Mission accomplished? We've heard that before.

This is policy-making on the run. It's John Howard exploiting a serious issue for political gain. It's coming up with a bunch of poorly-thought out, inappropriate policies in order for him to look tough. And it's based upon a complete misreading of them problems.

Alcoholism and pornography may be contributing factors to the issue of sexual abuse, but sexual abuse is more complex than that. You take away alcohol and pornography and you stop child sexual abuse? I think not. Child sexual abuse occurs for a variety of reasons. There are paedophiles within our communities who aren't alcoholics. There are alcoholics who aren't paedophiles. And, as far as I know, there is no proven causal link between pornography and paedophilia. And how do you distinguish between pornography, burlesque, erotica? You think everyone who subscribes to Suicide Girls is a paedophile? And Canberra banning pornography? Ironic considering Canberra is the only place in Australia where it is still legal to purchase X-rated pornography (coincidentally, the politicians exempted the ACT when it introduced a ban on X-rated pornography everywhere else.)

You can't take a complex issue like this and solve it with simple, black and white measures. Complex problems require complex, subtle solutions. Policing and prohibition. What about treatment, counselling, rehabilitation, support? What about examining the causes of abuse and finding ways of removing the things which contribute to the problems? What about consultation, research, democratic involvement?

Child sexual abuse is not endemic to Indigenous communities. It happens to be a serious issue in those specific communities, but it occurs within white communities to an alarming degree as well. Would we ever suggest such draconian measures in those societies? And what about the paedophilia which has been discovered in our churches? Would we ever suggest the banning of alcohol among priests? The inspection of church computers? The forced examination of under-age parishioners? I think not.

Not surprisingly, if you look at the research and statistics, child sexual abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence is concentrated in areas of severe social disadvantage, regardless of the issue of race. Of course it occurs in middle class communities as well, but the evidence suggests that, where it occurs in a widespread manner, it is related to poverty; poor education, poor nutrition, poor access to services; unemployment and disempowerment. If Howard truly cared, he would be tackling the severe social disadvantage experienced by these communities, not simply offering increased policing and invasive, intrusive inspections of children's' vaginas.

Child sexual abuse is caused by many things, but one thing it is always about is power. Adults exerting their power over young and vulnerable children in a criminal way. Treating the problem by exerting white power over the Indigenous community; by removing any vestiges of self-determination and self-respect; by not even talking to these communities or asking for their views; by removing privacy, dignity and choice – these measures are a form of abuse in themselves and simply contribute to the feelings in these communities that Aboriginal people are not respected or valued in our broader community. They are an expression of privileged power over centuries of dispossession, disenchantment and the undignified destruction of cultural inheritance.

John Howard is a man from yesterday. These policies come right out of White Australia; the kind of policies which led to the Stolen Generation. It's a replication of failure and a continuation of an arrogant disregard for Indigenous people and their culture. Let's find a way of removing abuse from these communities as quickly and effectively as we can, but not in this way. I'm a Buddhist and am not supposed to hate but I hate john Howard and everything he stands for and I yearn passionately for the day he is thrown out of office. His cold, calculating, heartless way if running this country is damaging so many lives.

a stranger's tears

2007-06-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

An odd little episode at lunch:
I was heading through the cold and grey Adelaide streets, on my way to buy some mushroom & potato soup. I came across a young woman, standing on the edge of the pavement, bawling her eyes out. She looked so unhappy and stricken. I walked up to her and said: "I know it's none of my business, but are you okay?" She shook her head and said: "No." "Is there anything I can do?" She looked at me then, to my surprise, put her arms around me and sobbed into my chest. Hesitantly, I put my arms around her and held her; and there we were: two complete strangers, hugging. I wasn't sure what to do. I just held her. Then, she let go, looked at me and said: "Thank you." Then walked away.
I don't know who she was. I don't know why she was crying. Like I say: odd.
I bought my soup and walked back to the office, my shirt damp from a stranger's tears.