by Grace Lowrie
‘Models?’
She blushed. ‘You know – the other women that have… sat for you or whatever…’
I wish she’d sit on me. Before I could contain it the errant thought spawned a delicious mental image of her butt nestled in my lap, and she squirmed with embarrassment as if reading my mind. ‘You’re the first to sit for me,’ I admitted, her mouth popping open in surprise. ‘Just come over when you like.’
‘Oh… but… I wouldn’t want to interrupt you when you’re working or sleeping or…’
‘Fucking?’ Her face blanched and I fought the urge to adjust the tenting in my pants. ‘How about this: I’ll leave the door on the latch when it’s safe to come in, and I won’t when it’s not.’
‘OK,’ she said, uncertainly, unable to meet my eye.
The intercom buzzed. A brief check of the screen showed it was Tom making a delivery, so I pressed the door release button to let him in, my hard-on subsiding. Cally moved over to my bed and perched on the edge, while I answered the door.
‘Alright, Bay? Just two boxes today.’ Tom cheerfully set the parcels inside the door at my feet and handed me a device to sign. ‘Oh, hello again,’ he called over my shoulder. ‘It’s Cally isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Hi…’
I glanced back at her. She was blushing again and self-consciously attempting to stretch my T-shirt further down over her finely-curved knees. Tom was beaming like it was his birthday. He was a nice enough kid; still in his twenties, blonde and good-looking, but cocky with it.
‘You two know each other?’ I said.
‘She’s your neighbour isn’t she? She sometimes signs for your post.’ Cally nodded behind me and Tom smiled at her again, making me want to deck him. ‘I never forget a pretty face,’ he added.
‘Get out of here.’
Tom backed away towards the lift, his hands raised in amused surrender. ‘Sorry man, I’m just saying, you’re a lucky guy.’ He was trying not to laugh as I slammed the door.
Chapter Nineteen
At 3 a.m., at the end of my Saturday night shift, Zena called me a cab and Leroy saw me safely into it. Sinking into the back seat, I listened to the dull rhythmic pulse of the windscreen wipers and let the watery lights of London wash over me. It was almost June; I’d been in the city nearly two months – I was already a third of the way through my time here – and I’d not visited half the places on my list, or saved up enough money to venture abroad, or even started writing my book. But at least I was free; independent; a dancer, of sorts; and now an artist’s muse.
As a result I saw Bay most days. True to his word, he left his front door on the latch each night and I would wander in to find him painting, or smoking, or perusing a random book on violent crime, philosophy, or wildlife photography. Some nights I would dance for a couple of hours – either around the pole or without – while he sketched or painted me. But often we would simply talk, eat, drink, and listen to music. I was starting to believe we might be friends. I still missed people from back home, Marguerite and Liam in particular, but Bay was surprisingly good company.
That said, he was still sarcastic, evasive and hard to get to know. I’d barely managed to glean anything about Bay’s past, and he refused point blank to discuss the mysterious woman in white; the girl who haunted so many of his paintings, cropping up again and again, delicate and disturbing. Of course his most recent studies were of me, or rather abstracted, stylised parts of an anonymous figure in red, dancing. But I hadn’t seen anything approaching a finished, full-sized version yet; I wasn’t sure if Bay was deliberately stalling, or simply hiding canvases away in one of the bedrooms.
At least he wasn’t as dangerously intoxicated as he had been in the past. He still drank and smoked too much, and I regularly smelled marijuana in the air, but he no longer seemed to be taking it to extremes like before. Of more immediate concern to me was the stark realisation that I had never seen Bay beyond the top floor of his building. Did he ever go out at all?
Everything was delivered – groceries, booze, cigarettes, books, art supplies and who-knows what else. Bay was on first-name terms with the postal and delivery guys, and they catered to his antisocial schedule – meaning his parcels usually arrived early in the morning, before he went to bed, or in the evening once he was awake again. On the odd occasion that a courier tried to deliver while he was asleep, he would ignore them completely, forcing them to buzz me instead. It was infuriating when that happened – I didn’t like being woken in the middle of the day any more than he did, but I was too well-mannered not to let them in.
On a hunch I’d Googled agoraphobia, and I now had it in my head that Bay needed coaxing out of his apartment like a hermit crab from its shell. Clearly I had too much time on my hands because I fancied myself for the job, but if not me, then who else would do it?
My taxi pulled up outside TMC Tower, the rain tapping gently against the windshield. The moment I paid the fare and shut the door behind me, the driver took off into the night, leaving me alone on the wet pavement. London cabbies were not like the cab drivers in Wildham, who at least waited to see a woman safely through her front door before disappearing. With a sigh I let myself in through the side door before travelling up in the lift.
There was a stranger standing outside my flat as the lift doors opened on the twelfth floor. He was dressed casually in jeans and a shirt, sporting a Beckham-style mohawk circa 2000, and swigging from a beer bottle as he gazed out the landing window. I gaped at him in surprise, before hurriedly stepping out of the lift as the doors began to close again.
‘Alright? Come for the party?’ he said with a warm smile.
‘Party?’
‘Yeah, it’s in there,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder to where loud rock music was emanating from Bay’s flat. ‘I was just checking out the view from this side of the building. I’m Matt, by the way,’ he held out his hand and I shook it reflexively.
‘Cally.’
‘Good to meet you, Cally, come on inside and I’ll get you a drink.’ He was moving before I had a chance to say anything so I followed him inside.
There were a dozen or so different people in Bay’s flat – stretched out on his bed, cross-legged in a circle on the floor, draped across a couch that I’d never seen before. Two women were dancing together by the windows. All Bay’s sketches and canvases had disappeared from the room and his paints and materials were piled up in a corner out of the way. Bay himself was sat up on the breakfast bar, his legs dangling and head bent as he nimbly rolled a joint between his fingers.
‘Everyone, this is Cally,’ Matt announced. ‘Cally, this is everyone,’ he concluded with a sweep of his arm. Several people smiled and said hello and I smiled back nervously. But when I glanced across at Bay, his expression, the look in his eyes, was impassive, as if he didn’t know me. Did he not want me here? Before I could react, Matt was helping me out of my damp coat and putting a cold beer in my hand. I took a swig, enjoying the cold bubbles as they slid down my throat.
It was a long time since I’d been to a party. I gripped my drink tightly and automatically slipped into wallflower mode – my default setting – quietly listening to other people’s conversations with nods and smiles, but contributing little.
I learned that Theo was a fashion photographer, working for some big names I’d never heard of, though I tried to appear suitably impressed. Fashion had never been my forte. His Australian girlfriend, Dionne, was a pretty aromatherapist who talked passionately about her work, but unfortunately she smelled of garlic and I had to fight not to wrinkle my nose. But the girl she was speaking to, a nurse, I found particularly interesting.
Willow could have been mistaken for a surfer chick with her hair like ropes of wet sand. I’d never seen dreadlocks up close before, but there was nothing dreadful about them as far as I could see. Quite the opposite in fact; they were textural, sculptural, and attractive against her golden-brown skin. She also had a pierced nose and the most beautiful tattoos that I
’d ever seen. A sinuous weeping willow tree curled around her left bicep in ribbons of grey and soft green, but it was her other tattoo that really captured my attention – an intricate arrangement of wild-flowers winding their way up her right forearm from wrist to elbow. As she raised a can of beer to her mouth, I glimpsed delicate cornflowers, daisies, harebells, and buttercups displayed so beautifully and with such a lightness of touch that they almost looked real enough to gather with my fingertips.
Faced with these new people, I’d immediately relapsed into my old shy self; afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing. And I hated that. The new me was supposed to be fearless. Luna wouldn’t hesitate to speak her mind.
‘I love your tattoos,’ I blurted out, interrupting the girls’ conversation.
‘Oh, thanks, Sweetie,’ Willow said, turning her warm smile on me. She shuffled closer, placed the beer can at her feet, and stretched her arms out like a contented cat, rotating them slowly to allow me an unhindered view.
‘This one reminds me of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s botanical watercolours,’ I said, my hand hovering in mid-air.
‘Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s OK you can touch them if you like.’ Taking Willow at her word I gave into my impulse, gently tracing the twining stems and translucent petals with my fingertips, her skin soft and smooth beneath my touch. To physically experience such fine art work on a stranger’s body felt extraordinarily intimate and made me shiver. And yet Willow looked entirely unfazed – as if it were a daily occurrence.
‘You don’t hate all tattoos then… Just mine.’ Bay’s gruff voice made me jump – he’d snuck up close behind me.
‘I never said I hated yours.’ Heat rushed to my cheeks at the accusation and the grim expression on his face. He loomed over me, a tumbler of something alcoholic in his hand, his eyes darkly dilated. ‘Yours are beautiful, what I’ve seen of them, it’s just that they’re a bit…’
‘A bit what?’
‘Scary.’
‘Scary?’ Bay’s eyes narrowed as Willow laughed.
‘OK, not scary, that’s the wrong word; they’re a bit… morbid.’
‘Morbid,’ Bay echoed, his voice flat.
‘Yes – as if designed to keep people away.’ Surprise flickered in Bay’s eyes, but mostly he looked angry with me, and I wasn’t sure why.
‘And what makes you an expert all of a sudden? I bet you’d never even consider getting one yourself.’
‘I never claimed to be an expert, and what makes you so sure I don’t have one?’ I snapped back, unable to refrain, but mortified to have been drawn into a petty argument in a room full of strangers. Bay’s unwarranted antagonism only seemed to provoke my own. He was silent for a moment, his eyes burning into mine, but I refused to look away.
‘Let’s see it then,’ he said, calmly calling my bluff.
‘No.’
‘Oh, so it’s OK for you to pass judgement on everyone else, but when it comes to—’
‘I’m not passing judgement! You invited my opinion – it’s not my fault if you don’t like it.’ Bay’s jaw tightened with tension, his free hand fisting at his side. Willow rested a placating hand on his arm, but his eyes didn’t stray from mine.
‘OK guys, ease up, this is a party,’ she said, clearly amused.
Without another word Bay downed the contents of his drink and stalked off back to the kitchen for a refill. I took a deep calming breath, aware that my pulse was racing.
‘Sorry,’ I said turning back to Willow.
She shrugged and smiled, glancing down at her tattooed forearm and running her own fingers over it. ‘You know, Bay designed this.’
‘What…? Really?’
‘Yep. It was a few years ago now, but I told him what I wanted and this is what he came up with.’
‘Why didn’t he say?’
‘I have no idea – it’s not like the great Bailey Madderson to be modest.’
‘You’ve known him a while then?’
‘Yeah, we hook up from time to time,’ she said, cupping her hand in front of her face as she lit up a menthol-scented cigarette. I nodded nonchalantly, but turned away to hide my face. The idea of Bay and Willow sleeping together had caught me completely off guard. It shouldn’t have – they seemed well suited, both boldly creative types – and yet I was oddly upset at the thought. They’d probably had sex in the very bed I was now sitting on. Lurching to my feet and looking to escape, I was grateful to spot Matt’s friendly face across the room. He grinned and waved to me and I made my way towards him.
Chapter Twenty
I could tell there was someone else in my bed the moment I came to. For a split second Cally crossed my mind and my eyes sprang open, but it wasn’t her. I quickly shut them again against the harsh sunlight that filled the room, piercing my head with pain. During the night it had stopped raining and I’d obviously not managed to draw the blinds this morning before stumbling into bed. The room was now warm and stuffy, despite its vast size. I swallowed down the bad taste in my mouth and, with considerable effort, thought back to the party the night before, but as the recollections rolled in, I soon wished I hadn’t.
I’d been hoping that Cally would show up after her shift, but the sudden sight of Matt leading Cally in, touching her and introducing her as if she was his, had filled me with rage. She’d quickly gotten cosy with my other friends, too. What was she doing caressing Willow’s ink like that, when she wouldn’t even touch mine? And how dare she suggest my tats were to keep people away. She was dead right of course, hit the nail on the fucking head, but to just announce it like that; flay me open; in front of everyone… it just wound me up. Maybe it wasn’t Cally, maybe it was bad weed, but it was the last straw when I overheard Matt asking for Cally’s number. I wanted to kill him. In retaliation I grabbed hold of Willow and kicked everybody else out. In my addled state I’d decided I needed to fuck it out of my system, whatever ‘it’ was. Now I just felt sick and ashamed and I couldn’t even remember the fucking. Why did Cally rile me up so much?
Willow stirred from sleep and stretched a hand across the bed towards me. Rolling out of reach I sat up, planting my feet on the floor and narrowly missing the used condom lying there. My head was pounding, but as hangovers went, I’d survived worse – it was nothing a good work out wouldn’t fix. Swiping my boxers up off the floor I pulled them on, noting from my mobile phone display that it was just 2 p.m.
‘Time to go,’ I said over my shoulder.
‘Uuugh. What time is it? Can I have a coffee first?’
‘Help yourself. You know where the kettle is,’ I said, leaving her to get dressed.
I spent twenty minutes pummelling the hell out of my punch bag and then took my time in the shower. When I re-emerged from the bathroom I was relieved to find Willow had gone. Having taken extra pharmaceutical measures to further subdue my hangover, I opened a window, pulled down all but one of the blinds, and then dragged the canvas I was currently working on out of storage and into the patch of natural light. Once it was fixed to the wall I stood back, smoking several fags and contemplating it for a while.
It was entirely different to everything else I was working on; more figurative than anything I’d produced for years, and uncompromising in its clarity of subject. It was a portrait of Cally dancing, minus the pole. She looked vibrant, graceful and confident as she leapt from the shadows and into a pool of light, the motion almost alive within the oils. It was verging on brilliance, I was confident Felix would agree, but it needed more work, and I couldn’t make myself get on with it. I was prevaricating; afraid to put more paint to the canvas. But knowing that didn’t change anything. With a frustrated sigh I returned the canvas to the bedroom and re-covered it in a sheet before locking it inside.
Returning to the main room I put on some music, discarded the condom, changed the bed sheets and, in a fit of optimism, set the front door on the latch. Through lack of anything else to do I rooted about in the kitchen, searching for something to fill th
e hollow space inside me.
Chapter Twenty-one
When I crawled into bed this morning I’d been adamant I never wanted to see Bay again. I was hurt by the way he made me feel so unwelcome, embarrassed by the way he’d spoken to me in front of his friends, and angry about the way he’d rudely ejected us all from his flat. But what really made me furious was having to listen to Willow’s cries of pleasure as he had sex with her. Admittedly it hadn’t lasted long, it was all over rather quickly from what I heard, but it had grated on me none-the-less. I’d been sorely tempted to call my best friend – to vent my frustration and perhaps gain some much-needed advice – but how would I even begin to explain Bay to someone as put-together as Marguerite?
Now that the alcohol had dwindled from my system, I could see my reaction for the over-reaction that it was. I should be accustomed to Bay’s bad manners by now, and I’d enjoyed meeting his friends. Why should I care who he slept with? He wouldn’t give a second thought to my sex life. If I had one.
Picking up the scrap of cigarette packet which had Matt’s name and number scrawled across it in blue pastel, I tore it in half and then dropped it in the bin. No matter how nice Matt was, I simply didn’t have the time, energy, or inclination to even think about dating.
It was eight in the evening and I was restless. I wanted to go next door and dance; stretch my legs, practise my latest routine and prove to Bay that he couldn’t hurt me that easily. But would he want to see me? Was Willow still there? Two hours later I knocked on his door and found it open as usual.
The flat was in total darkness and atmospheric orchestral music was softly playing, brooding and creepy. It took my eyes a while to adjust to the gloom, but when they did, I found Bay by the glowing ember of his cigarette. He sat alone on the floor, in a corner by the window, observing me from beneath his brow.
‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t sure I would.’ I tried not to look at the bed as I picked my way through a minefield of empty cans, bottles and overflowing ashtrays, but I couldn’t help noticing, with relief, that the sheets had been changed. ‘What’s this music?’