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by J. Levy


  *

  Jezzy

  Standing in profile at the bathroom mirror, slightly bending forwards, Jezzy looked at her reflection. Why did her stomach stick out? It had a little ridge that wouldn’t budge and she was sure the ridge was getting bigger! A movie with Eddie Murphy came to mind, something from the eighties where there was a scene in a bathroom and the girl stood at the sink brushing her teeth or something, but anyway she was leaning over and her stomach was still flat. There was no skin overlapping, nothing. How did that happen? She bent further forwards until her back cracked, sounding like a bag of crisps being crushed within their packet, the salt and vinegar rubbing into the emotional wounds. As she hauled her body up to her full height, she tried to study her face in the mirror but it was too much of a blur, so she reached for her ‘times seven, magnified mirror. The sight of skin so magnified at such close range was disconcerting to say the least. Her cheeks were florid and flushed, the freckles and pores seemed to be expanding. Her eyebrows looked as though they had been in a fight and she grabbed her tweezers to pluck and pick. Morning glory? No way. Real life. In about half an hour, when she had performed a feat of magic, she would look fabulous. But until that time, for want of a better expression, Jezzy looked bloody horrible.

  *

  Devon

  Devon was slumped on a wooden bench overlooking the Pacific. The sun was pounding down on her with relentless, fiery force. Where were the warm, succulent rays that usually beat down on Los Angeles, the ones that creep beautifully into your blood, insidiously urging you to stay forever? Today, the ocean held aloft a narrow layer of persistent smog, a dirty ribbon, emphatically following the horizon. There really was no escaping this place. LA got you any way she could, trapping you eternally inside the wanton promise that spilled from her ruby red, smudged lips. Devon’s eyes burned into the horizon, her topaz irises glowing more golden in the dusty heat.

  A bagman dragged by, his rusty cart overflowing with soiled clothing, wrecked take-out boxes and broken dreams, leaving a stench that palpably trailed him like the train of Miss Havisham’s wedding dress.

  Devon’s nostrils twitched and then she felt a tremendous urge to let Adrian know that Birdman was gone, so that he too could release the ghosts of his past.

  Lifting her Blackberry from the black Prada bag that was swung across her shoulder, she switched it on and tapped out an email to Adrian:

  Birdman is dead. Now you can let go.

  Watching the sun reluctantly being pushed from its lofty throne into the awaiting smog, Devon thought that she should give Manny a call and they could go to a movie and grab a salad at Chin Chin. She smiled as she thought of his reaction. It was an unprecedented move on her part, as she never called him nor made a date. She owed this to him. Too much messing around, playing the field, running from her past. There and back, there and back. After decades spent inflicting pain on others due to her own torment, she felt as though she could relax at last, maybe even settle down. Maybe? The mere thought made her laugh out loud, as she lounged on the bench, in the yellow glow of the lost sun and called Manny’s office.

  A snapping secretary answered the phone. ‘Yes, can I help you?’ a typing, filing daschund.

  ‘Manny please,’ smiled Devon into the phone.

  ‘What is this regarding?’ Snap. Snap.

  ‘It’s a personal call,’ Devon already didn’t like this mutt on the end of the line, or leash.

  ‘Are you a friend,’ growled the secretary.

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Devon.

  ‘Well then you should know, as all contacts were informed by email or SMS.’

  ‘Informed of what? My Blackberry was down and I’ve been out of town. Look, could you just tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Mr. Kofsberg is dead.’

  The sun collapsed behind the horizon as Devon’s lips fell apart.

  ‘What, what do you mean?’

  ‘Dead. As in no longer living. The opposite of alive.’ The secretary has morphed from a snappy dog to something more vicious. ‘Suicide. Apparently.’

  Devon and her Blackberry lay side by side at the foot of the bench, the winking red light penetrating the darkness that closed in on Santa Monica, as the email to Adrian bounced back as ‘undeliverable’.

  *

  Frankie

  Tired, grey buildings and smoky tower blocks gradually petered out, giving way to an open, endless patchwork of green counterpanes and vast blue skies. Frankie always thought how much more sky there seemed to be in the country. There was nothing in the way, other than the odd pylon. How quickly her life had changed. She had been unfulfilled for so long, trailing from job to job, finally settling as a nanny, though always knowing it was a temporary space she was in, drifting from one unsuitable guy to the next, never really able to find the place where she was supposed to be. And then came Manny and their exquisitely, brief affair and her thoughts and dreams of what they might share, thoughts she almost dared not to dream, as they had come so suddenly before being ripped away and now Manny gone from this world as her world growing within. She felt as though she were leaving all she had ever known behind her, to begin her life anew.

  Four hours had passed when Frankie opened her eyes to see the platform at Exeter St. David’s. She clambered off the train, dragging her wheelie bin behind her, and made her way to the exit. And there she was, dressed in baggy jeans and a grey and yellow flannel shirt, the edges of her light brown hair grazed by the sunlight, waiting beside her muddy blue Land Rover with Rodney, the yellow lab, drooling by her side. Tears sprang to Frankie’s eyes as she walked towards her mother’s open arms.

  The smell of violets and fresh laundry encased her senses as her mother took her into her arms and whispered to her twenty-six year old daughter, ‘it’s alright baby, you’re home.’

  Rodney nudged the backs of her knees with his warm, wet nose as Frankie let the tears flow free.

  *

  Devon

  When Devon awoke, the sky was as black as the curtain of a final performance and the pier was pulsating out streams and slashes of vibrant color. The constant pounding pulsated through the planks and along the boardwalk, the waves curled themselves around the struts of the pier and the rhythm of the night seeped into Devon’s bones, assaulting her unconscious state and forcing her awake.

  Her head was thumping behind her left ear and her right arm was still asleep, having been squashed beneath her back.

  Astonishingly, her Blackberry was still beside her, winking at her with its solitary red beady eye, two tiny yellow envelopes reporting that her email to Adrian was undeliverable and delivering the news about Manny’s death.

  Thoughts began to flow and gush through her mind like a raging river. Torrential feelings.

  Manny was dead.

  Adrian was unresponsive.

  Mary was lost.

  She had no way of knowing that Manny had left life on this earth. That somewhere, in the depths of the English south western countryside, his child was growing inside a woman he had barely known.

  And where was Adrian? Even when he was traveling, her messages to him were held within some giant conglomerate of a huge Blackberry waiting room. He had never been unresponsive. Not ever.

  Mary. Where was she? Their exquisitely brief encounter had shown Devon what true passion was all about and she had never been able to forget it.

  Devon moved slowly along the boardwalk, as if captured in some slow, relentless dream.

  She suddenly, piercingly, missed her father. He had died when Devon was four, so her memories of him were faded and fragmented and possibly even made up. Her mother was another story. She had been good and kind but had committed suicide when Devon was eight. Which was how she and Adrian found each other. After spending years in a multitude of foster homes, some good experiences, some too terrible to recollect, they were eventually both placed in the same foster home and there, they had found slivers of solace in each other, even through their abuse by Birdman, both
too terrified to tell a soul. Had been like brothers,

  Until they fell in love.

  Which was the first reason that Devon decided to become a woman.

  Adrian and David.

  Adrian and the Devil.

  Adrian and Devon.

  Satan and the Devil.

  A perfect match.

  Looking back, accompanied by that beautiful, belated friend also known as hindsight, Devon knew that she had spent her youth yearning for love, wanting to fit in, needing something that, until she met Adrian, had seemed unobtainable. They comforted each other whilst reliving the trauma of their young lives and the concurrent abuse that Birdman inflicted upon them.

  So she crushed all previous existence of her former self, only taking Adrian along into her new life. As soon as he had saved enough money, from washing cars, stacking shelves at the local Londis and performing quick blow jobs in back alleys, David bought a one way ticket to Los Angeles.

  Adrian stayed in London, forging a career in fashion whilst David went through every surgical and non surgical procedure to emerge as Devon.

  In California, he began the end of his life as a man working as a rent boy in West Hollywood. He was so popular, with his skinny white body and English accent, that the dollars kept on rolling in. One client, a high powered attorney, worked out all of the necessary paperwork for David’s new life. This was payment for him performing every conceivable, unspeakable act the attorney wanted of him, until the time of the augmentation, castration and manipulation (whether physical, hormonal or mind altering therapies) when he was finally transformed into a woman and the attorney was no longer interested.

  David Caine was dead and Devon Cage, a beautiful, confident woman, had taken his place.

  And then, Devon began to take out her revenge.

  Now, decades later, as she stood, still and solitary on the boardwalk, looking out to the black waters of the Pacific, she knew the time had come to stop.

  She was alive and the rest of her life was for living.

  *

  Jezzy

  Jezzy never heard from Adrian again. She realized that he was, undoubtedly, the shallowest of men, only spouting false promises and conditional, faux love. She had thought that she was bewitched by him, unable to set herself free, entangled by his realms and declarations of supposed devotion. She wasn’t even sure what had finally brought her to her senses, but the relief she felt from it was palpable, so much so that she could feel it embracing her wherever she went.

  She missed Frankie, but loved the thought of being a ‘chosen’ auntie. Escaping to the country would be good for her soul and she relished the idea of weekends in Devon. Maybe one day she would meet a man who was right for her, but right now she needed to rest from anything remotely sociable, at least temporarily. She would buy cosy, fleecy socks in warm colours and lots of different bath gels laced with essential oils, indulge in the full range of new nail colours from OPI and Rimmel and splash out on a box set of a great TV series, maybe CSI in every possible location and some prime seventies sit-com and definitely the entire collection of Sex and the City, spending her nights living a spa-like existence. She would cook frequently with garlic and red onions, instead of avoiding anything that might leave an aftertaste. She would go to Chinatown and find a little supermarket on Newport Street that sold yellow paste and beans and buy herself a wok and try to make her own Chinese sticky ribs! She’d buy trashy novels and read them with impunity on the train to the country. These thoughts flooded through her mind and she welcomed every one with joyful anticipation.

  Jezzy felt so good and so free. For the first time she knew where she was going and thrilled with anticipation, she couldn’t wait to get on the ride.

  *

  Adrian

  In his agonized state of turmoil, Adrian had thrown his

  state of the art Samsung phone into the Thames. Just another

  piece of jetsam that laced the already turgid dank waters as they grappled from a wet, virtual prison, flowing evermore towards easterly and westerly estuaries, forever calling, taunting, falsely being led to believe that they could make their way to freedom where the waters run deep and pure.

  Adrian stood on Blackfriars bridge, staring into the dark vortex beneath. He felt as if his entire life had been unraveling since he was a boy and now this was the last thread, barely hanging, suspended between life and something else something that seemed to welcome him, promising him a refuge where he could heal.

  His face felt as though it was caving in on itself as his features began to crumple and wince. He had nothing in the world. He thought Jezzy could save him, but he had been wrong, she had merely been just a series of momentary blips in his radar. He felt as though the solace he had given and received with Devon had been cut and there was no way back. Rain began to shift above the swollen, grey clouds, falling heavily from the sky. At first, they were small, slight drips that poked at his face and his clothes, niggling him for a response, then turning into bigger, harder drops that pounded at his meager mind and soulful soul. He couldn’t run anymore. His mind was shot. Too many years of physical and mental abuse followed by emotionally abusive therapy, of countless shrinks always trying to make him go back to the past, retrace his steps, find out the cause of why he had ended up on a used leather chair in the blank office of a faceless, stoic stranger. How could you escape your past if all they ever tried to do was force you to go back there and remember, constantly telling you that you couldn’t move on unless you went back? How was a person ever expected to find joy if they were always making you regress into the depths of the cause? He had run for too long. His pain forever etched into his psyche, leaving him with nothing more than depleted strength and a torn mind. He was done. Finished. Adrian was drained, harmed, self harmed, he had turned into an anagram of his name. He turned and looked longingly at the bright red bus, battling along the bridge, through the piercing rain. In one swift movement, almost graceful in its execution, Adrian’s mind threw his body from the bridge, where the Thames engulfed him, withdrawing the torment of his life.

  *

  Devon

  Devon was lying on a smooth hot slab of dark green marble in the steam room of a Hollywood spa. Her thoughts drifted in and out as she lay with her eyes closed. If she opened them, hot droplets of water, created by the steam, fell from the sparkling ceiling into her eyes, mixing with the salt from her own tears. Tiny lights of blue, green and pink winked intermittently from above. Her mind wandered backwards and forwards in time to a man she had either known long ago or had yet to meet. He was tall and broad and blonde. His eyes were blue, the color of a rockpool in the midst of summer, deep and thoughtful and he was looking at her knowingly, whether present or past. Was this the man who could truly understand her? Was there such a person on this earth? Her skin was perspiring and throbbing in the intense heat, perfumed with sage and juniper and mint. Was he imaginary, someone she had known or a man she had yet to meet?

  Manny was gone, Adrian had disappeared, Mary was lost, but Devon was here, beside herself, inside herself.

  *

  Mary & Edie

  The helper, in her white stained apron and yellow mob cap, was mopping the floor of the brown and grey chequered linoleum that ran the length of the hallway between the lounge and the lavatory. Someone hadn’t made it to the toilet in time and the floor was wet. She cleaned and scrubbed, her blonde hair bobbing beneath her white cotton cap, mopping methodically until the urine had been replaced with disinfectant that smelt like pine needles.

  It was almost three in the afternoon, the sun hung low and heavy in the sky and many of the residents were asleep in the lounge, heads lolling to one side, tongues resting outside their open mouths. Fay was curled up in a tight ball, gripping her pale blue flowered pajama top around her with white, clenched knuckles, snoring softly beside the fireplace. The four men were in their ever present clutch, in some communal dreamland, maybe they were young and vibrant again, maybe not. Edie was slee
ping, suspended in her favorite armchair beside the window, willing her mind in its dreamlike state to transport her decades back to the dance.

  Mary continued to mop, clearing the mess and taking in the whole corridor, only stopping when she reached the door with the frosted glass pane at the end of the hallway. She propped the mop against the pale green wall, turned the lock and opened the door. Crisp, clean air snapped at her cheeks, leaves spun earthwards from the nearby sycamore, the sky was as adamantly blue as it could possibly be and Mary’s violet eyes thirstily, willingly, drank it all in. She gazed into the endlessly earnest blue sky, entranced by the pure vividness of its color. Her previous life seemed so very far away and anything she had ever done before had never given her the peace of mind that she had only recently come to know. She was close to her mother, making people comfortable and for want of a better cliché, stopping to smell the flowers. That was it and that was enough, for now. Mary’s life had a purpose. The cleaning and caring for people was something she had never done before. Men and women who could no longer look after themselves, as time, for them, had unfortunately ravaged at their minds and bodies, leaving some as helpless as newborn baby chicks. Life was a circle and Mary’s life as Meringue, a life as flimsy as her chosen moniker, had melted away. Now, her mind was solid and her heart felt pure. For this was where she should be and she didn’t know, could not even begin to perceive, where the rest of her journey would take her, but for right now this was where she felt secure and needed.

 

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