Closure

by Jacob Ross

  He has felt the threads fraying at the seams for some time now. Over the years she’d dropped her tomboy airs. The worn dungarees gave way to designer outfits. And she’d bloomed – a tall girl in a woman’s body, a force to be flirted with. Older guys ask her out on dates. He has to ask himself – why is she with him? The anxiety grew malignant when she started attending drama school. For the first time they were students in different buildings, and while there had always been moments when she appeared distant and sullen, he frets now about the frequency of her blues and how distracted she appears most of the time. They would plan to meet on weekday evenings only for her to cancel on him to stay behind at college for workshops and master classes. Then the Saturday rehearsals began.

  There are several bodies between them when “Black” alights at Piccadilly Circus. He follows her through the dense crowds of Leicester Square and the Trocadero shopping mall, keeping his distance as they climb the escalators to the Arcade centre and amusement rides on the top floor. He loses her amongst a swell of teenagers, a throng of bomber jackets and baggy jeans, aerobic footwear and high-top basketball trainers. He weaves his way between the video arcade and coin pusher machines. He spots her at an arcade game, the screen light casting a velvet-blue hue on her face. He takes in the man who stands close behind her: the olive skin and dark hair, the single stud earring, the square set of his jaw and the facial hair. His clothes are south London chic – a laundry-beaten polo shirt, straight-fit jeans and Hi-Tech squash trainers. His arms caress Black’s midriff.

  The boy stands there, unsure of what he sees. The resemblance could be all in his mind. But he has seen this man in and around the neighbourhood and he is confident that it is Black’s father. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to keep himself concealed, and just one GAME OVER later, Black lifts her eyes from the screen, gazes across the floor and spots him. Her features tense. She turns from him as from an unsatisfactory reflection, breaks from her father’s grasp and rushes away. Her father, startled by her abrupt departure, looks around him for an explanation.

  The boy turns towards the exit, puts his Walkman headphones back on. He hesitates at the top of the escalator weighing what he thinks he has witnessed. He is embarrassed by the helplessness he feels, the tears that begin to stream down his cheeks.

  3. The Saturday morning in the Kebab shop with the elephant.

  She gives him “The Talk” in the takeaway area of a Turkish restaurant. It is close to 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning, after their Friday night revelries. There are a dozen or so people around them, most of them exhausted. It is a ritual – an early morning kebab before heading home. They stand sharing a bag of chips at the small table in the narrow dining area and try to talk over the din. Even though music blares over the speakers, he hears her clearly when she says she’s tired of his accusations and announces that “they are done”.

  She has cut her hair in recent weeks, shorn on the sides but tall on the top, spray-held in a huge quiff and dyed platinum blonde. She wears fuchsia lipstick with electric-blue eyeshadow and a matching sequined dress.

  “You’re a bitch,” he says, “a fucking bitch.” Then he stops himself. “I didn’t mean that, Black.”

  “I’ve told you not to call me that,” she spits. For a time she’d demanded he call her by her birth name, Natalie Newton, but now she has a stage name and insists he use that. She tells him that she doesn’t care what he thinks of her or what his friends have told him.

  “People do that. People will talk about me, bad or good, and I’m not going to let anyone or anything stand in the way of making it.”

  “And I stand in the way of you ‘making it’?”

  She says nothing at first, but then tells him that they are different; they want different things and are heading in different directions.

  “That’s rubbish and you know it,” he replies. “I know what you’re doing. What you’ve been doing all these years. It’s disgusting. You’re no better than a dog.” He calls her a bitch again as he wipes his eyes.

  Her mouth hangs open but there are no words. It takes all of her will just to fling the chips in her hand back into the bag. She has sidestepped confrontation well enough over the last few years, and will not start now. She doesn’t know if there is anything she could say to him even if she wanted to. She looks at him and his tears; she sees boy, she sees man, and realises that she shouldn’t expect anything of either of them. She snatches her clutch bag from the table and walks out.

  They’d had half-a-dozen mini break-ups since he left for Liverpool University, but he’d put them down to the difficulty of a long-distance relationship and they’d always managed to work out their differences. This, he knows, is something else. He has kicked dirt between them and roused the elephant in the room.

  He wraps the chips up in their paper and tosses them in the rubbish bin. It’s only then that those around him, despite their best efforts to pretend they weren’t listening, return to their conversations.

  She does not come to his house on Saturdays for dinner anymore. The first few weeks of summer pass by and his parents stop asking after her. He suffers her silence when he sees her in the neighbourhood. It is an excruciating silence in which she busies herself, looks past him and ignores anything he has to say to her. After a few weeks he begins to see her with the same boy – a wannabe New Jack Swing star, black with light skin and a Gumby style haircut.

  He heads back to school in Liverpool during the autumn and doesn’t return to London as frequently as he used to. He tells his mother, during a phone conversation, that over the break he will be doing extra hours at his job in the HMV store.

  “I’m trying to save,” he tells her, and only when he says it does it feel like some version of the truth.

  4. The Saturday at the Theatre.

  He is seated just a few rows from the stage, slightly left of centre. He tries, without success, to follow the onstage brothers as they come to terms with the suicide of their father. Natalie is playing the role of wife to one of the brothers, and he is preoccupied with her every gesture. He wonders how far she is from the person offstage. He wants her to fail at everything she does, just as much as he wants her to succeed. The only thing he is sure of is that after fifteen years, she still has the capacity to confuse him. The two tickets had arrived at his mother’s address without warning, in an envelope marked with the Soho Theatre’s branding. The note attached simply read:

  Hope you can make it.

  Best

  Natalie Diamond.

  He had felt compelled to go. He also felt compelled to bring his fiancée along.

  After the show they mingle in the bar area, waiting to thank Natalie for the tickets. She is among the last of the performers to emerge. She’s in sheer tights and red high heels, in full make-up. A black dress exposes her shoulders. She spots him, throws her arms up and screams in delight. He is thrown by how excited she is to see him. She hugs him and plants an air kiss on each cheek. He feels obliged to tell her the performance was amazing when really he found it tepid. Yetunde, his fiancée, steps forward and extends a hand.

  “This is Yetunde,” he says and he knows it will be a crime if he doesn’t quickly add “my fiancée”. He is not sure if Natalie is rattled or if he just wants to believe this is the case. They exchange brief histories, and are tortured by the silence that drops into their conversation until the actor who played the alcoholic brother steps into their circle with a group of grey-haired white men and begins introductions. Natalie comes alive again, raising her arms just as she did with him, hugging people, grasping hands, leaving traces of her red lipstick on cheeks.

  When the opportune moment arrives, he thanks her for the tickets.

  “Thank you for coming,” she replies. Then she winks.

  It stops him for a moment and, at first, he considers the thought that tonight’s invitation might be part of some game she is playing with him. But then he acknowledges the truth: that wherever she is, she is always onstage an
d he is just a member of her audience.

  5. The Saturday with the status update.

  He slouches in his chair and runs his finger along the dining table’s edges. His wife sits two and a half chairs away from him, sharing a seat with her girlfriend. Her laughter roars around the room, drowning out the Bitches Brew that dribbles from the iPod speaker system in the adjoining living room.

  He has no comment to make on Miles Davis, the Iraq occupation or the 1999 bottle of port. He excuses himself, telling them he has to add some money to the parking meter, even though he knows there is credit left. He stands outside for a while and takes in the cool evening air; the road is quiet but cramped with parked cars and lit up by the streetlights. He thinks about his marriage – he always does when amongst his wife’s social circle – and wonders whether love ever really exists in the way that it is supposed to, and if his parents and in-laws, as Nigerians, even believe in such an idea. He cares for Yetunde, appreciates her willingness to tolerate his fragility. He is grateful, but not content. Neither of them is content, but each is scared to give the other up. Then there is the endometriosis Yetunde has struggled with. He sympathises with her pain, but a truth he’ll never admit to is that the absence of kids is a relief. He suspects that while Yetunde feels the loss of being unable to have children, she does not regret being unable to have his children.

  He takes out his phone and checks his Facebook account. He browses Natalie Diamond’s profile page, a habitual preoccupation. She has been his virtual “friend” for a couple of years, every now and then giving a thumbs-up to a statement or photo he has posted. Her profile photo has changed: a new professional headshot; her hair is big and bottle blonde. She has recent photos of herself in a police uniform – stills from a bit part she briefly played on TV.

  He browses for a while, until a burst of laughter leaps from the house. It is his wife’s unmistakable roar. He puts the phone away, knowing he has been gone too long and that they will argue later about his antisocial behaviour amongst her friends.

  6. The Saturday with the clammy handshake.

  He walks towards where he parked his car, making his way through the Aylesbury Estate. The playground is abandoned; teenagers race by on their long-boards; a homeless man rifles through the rubbish bags at the foot of the chute. Then there is a woman in the parking area, loading boxes into the back of a minivan.

  His nerves race like he is fourteen again.

  He makes his way across the forecourt towards her, rehearsing his words. Natalie is different. The changes he’d watched evolve online are amplified to the naked eye. The extensions in her hair are huge – thick sweeping curls that fall to her shoulders. She wears a tan shearling coat with a matching pair of UGG boots.

  She stiffens as he nears, but then she recognises him and allows her shoulders to slump once more.

  “Well, well,” she says as he draws close, “all my cobwebs tumblin’ out the woodwork today.”

  “Natalie…” he says, and as they hug he takes her in at close range: the fake tan that runs from her neck down; the hot pink cheeks, eyebrows thin and dark and pronounced. He feels the need to say something worthwhile, something significant. But nothing comes to him.

  “Shit, it’s been ages. What are you doing ’ere?” she asks, as they break apart.

  “I was passing through – from my parents.”

  “Oh my word! It’s been so long since I’ve seen ’em. How’s your dad?”

  “Facing retirement with dignity,” he replies. “Now the two of them are talking about returning to Nigeria. How are yours doing?” He gestures towards the building’s stairwell but she shakes her head and tells him her mother died four years ago and she hasn’t spoken to her dad in over fifteen years.

  “I didn’t know they weren’t together.”

  “They split up the year we – you – went to university.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  She chuckles. “You sorry? What you sorry for?”

  “I’m sorry about everything.”

  “We were kids.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  “My mum?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Your dad.”

  Her smiles falls away. “What do you mean?” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No,” she replies, “say what you mean.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You keep saying you’re sorry. Say what you mean.”

  “I didn’t do anything about him.”

  “You didn’t do anything about him? What was there to do? What was there to do about him?”

  A middle-aged man, heavy-set and balding, waddles over towards them. He wears an oversized elderflower coloured suit over a white polo shirt. “We all set?” he enquires.

  “My dad didn’t do anything,” she says.

  “Alright?” the man asks.

  “Sorry, Scott, this is Ade an old school friend. Ade, this is Scott, my husband.”

  “Ade,” he says and shakes the man’s hand. His palm feels clammy. Husband. He rolls the word around in his head. Scott is everything he would not have expected her to want.

  “Ade and I grew up here, Scott,” she says. “We would spend every Saturday together. He was my best friend.” Her smile is tight and her words are hesitant.

  He doesn’t want to look at her, or to remember her like this.

  “I should be going,” he says and throws a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” she says. “I understand. It was good to run into you though.”

  He walks a few metres before she calls out his name. He turns to face her. “Have a great birthday,” she says. “Isn’t it your birthday in a couple days?”

  “Yes. I’m surprised you remembered. After all these years, Natalie.”

  He turns again to walk away.

  “Natalie?”

  Scott is confused, both by her questioning her own name and the weight of her tone.

  He stops. This time he makes his way back towards them. He places an index finger on her nose and presses gently. “Black,” he says. “Black. Black. Black.”

  He’ll leave it for her to explain it all to Scott.

  JUDITH BRYAN

  RANDALL & SONS

  Randall was napping in the back of the mini-van, squashed between the window and another man’s broad shoulders. The man was a Foreign. He smelled of spice and fruit, a comforting smell that infused Randall’s half-dream: Janice in a big kitchen, stirring pots; the boys sitting around a table, all of them laughing. Then the man nudged him awake.

  The van was pulling up outside Legacy Village. Randall peered out of the window. Tower One loomed above them – the perspex balconies and beige cladding made almost beautiful by a pink sunrise. Forty-eight storeys. His back ached in anticipation of the day’s work. It would be the usual: two men per ten storeys and the toppers got whatever was left, sometimes as few as three floors. It was only fair: the electricity was off, the lifts out of order. Less fair was that the boss got to sit on his arse in the mini-van, playing Viral Vengeance Five or whatever the hell he did while the rest of them worked.

  Randall closed his eyes again. He listened as the boss called the pairs: a lullaby of foreign names, incomprehensible, barely pronounceable.

  “Randall. Biggs.”

  He opened his eyes with a start. From two seats ahead, he saw a young lad nod at him, jaws moving mechanically around a wad of gum. An obvious work-scheme recruit, he was all knobbly joints, not a muscle in sight. Randall groaned. He would get the one Englishman. Randall preferred Foreigns. They were strong and silent.

  “Boss, give us a break.”

  But the boss said the others were needed for higher up. Randall was a fat bastard and the kid was a kid: they could do one to ten and thank him for the favour.

  Randall said, “What use is he if we find Squatters or Ferals?”

  Biggs’s pale eyes blinked furiously under the brim of his
hard hat.

  The boss shrugged. “Got your tasers, ain’t you? Got your phone?”

  Grumbling, Randall collected a kit bag: gloves, crowbars, tasers, e-pad and some cans of spray paint. With a jerk of his head, he led the way into Tower One. Oil-sheened puddles lay in the reception area. Electrical cabling spilled like entrails across the floor.

  Straight off, Biggs began to gab. About Serial Killer Eight, what level he’d reached and what you had to do to get there. His voice scratched and scrabbled against the concrete walls. Randall made himself count to ten. He knew the lad was spooked. The job was spooky the first few times, especially with the distant noise of the other pairs echoing in the stairwell, as though the building was still occupied. Which was always a possibility.

  The tenants from Legacy Village had been moved to Jubilee Skyway, and the tenants from Jubilee Skyway had gone to Olympic Reach. Sometimes people clung on. Sometimes, in the weeks between emptying an estate and finishing the refurbishment, Squatters and Ferals got in. It made the job interesting, in a funny kind of way, never knowing what you’d find.

  Outside the door of the first unit, Randall made Biggs shut up and listen. He showed him how to clip his taser on one side of his tool belt and the crowbar on the other. “We,” he explained, “are the second wave. Police are the first wave; they clear the tenants. Second wave clears the shit the tenants leave behind.”

  The work had got easier over the years. People kept most of their stuff now, however ramshackle. Still, there was the odd mattress, general litter, electrical items. Bash them up, dump them down the rubbish chutes. Sign off on the unit, job done.

  Biggs said, “What’s the third wave, then?”

  “Builders, decorators, proper skilled people. Don’t worry about them. All you need to know is B.D.S: Bash, Dump, Sign-off.”

  Biggs nodded. “Bash, Dump, Sign-off.”

  “Use your crowbar and your boots.” Randall rocked on his heels. He was beginning to enjoy himself, telling Biggs the ins and outs. “It’s why they give us steel toecaps: good for bashing things.”