The Edge

by Jamie Collinson

  ‘These Yanks, eh?’ Isa said when she’d gone.

  ‘It’s a foreign country,’ Adam said. Isa had picked up a beer mat and was spinning it between her hands with their freshly painted nails. It suddenly struck him that she was nervous.

  ‘I hadn’t realized you wanted to leave London,’ he said.

  ‘You forget things, mate,’ Isa said. ‘I always wanted to come to the US for a bit. I used to prefer New York, though.’

  ‘What about your family?’

  She glanced away, and suddenly looked brittle. ‘I might as well tell you,’ she said. ‘Michael got into some trouble.’

  Michael was Isa’s younger brother, whom Adam had only met a handful of times. He was very big and tall – earning him the nickname ‘Biggie’, outside the family home at least – and usually dressed in darker streetwear than the bright colours Isa had once favoured. Although he’d been very quiet, he’d seemed friendly enough to Adam, but according to Isa he had an anger problem.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Adam said. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s in jail,’ she said. ‘And it looks like he’ll be there for at least another two years.’

  Adam began to ask what had happened, but stopped when he saw the pleading look in Isa’s eyes.

  ‘I really don’t want to go into it just now,’ she said. ‘Just wanted to tell you. I was well ready for a break from it all anyway. It was so much drama.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Adam said.

  ‘And please keep it quiet in the office, obviously,’ Isa said. She took a deep breath, and suddenly gave her trademark low chuckle. ‘Talking of the office, Scott’s running around like a little bloody baron, isn’t he?’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’d only been there two minutes, and he started telling me his vision for what I could bring to the team!’

  They both laughed. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.

  ‘And you too,’ Adam replied, realizing, to his surprise, that he meant it.

  The drinks arrived. Adam swigged his beer, the alcohol merging with unexpected relief, and something like affection. She doesn’t want revenge, he thought. Why would she? It was all years ago. Why hadn’t he thought of the idea of simply being friends?

  She was, after all, funny and clever. He’d almost forgotten that. When he’d first got to know her, he’d found her ability to switch between characters exciting and attractive. One minute she was the icy, educated, cut-glass debater, the next the raucous east London street kid. After a while, the charm had worn off, and he’d begun to believe that he didn’t actually know the real Isa. She could switch between playful and serious in an instant, but both seemed to him to be masks. It appeared now that she’d finally settled into herself.

  Maybe if I’d just been friends with her in the first place, he thought.

  Isa raised her glass, clinked it against his and took a long sip.

  ‘It’s really good to see you,’ she said.

  Before long, she was telling him of her boredom with the London music scene, and her disappointment with the degree she’d started. Adam listened and sipped his drink.

  ‘What exactly are you going to be doing now, workwise?’ he asked her eventually.

  ‘Didn’t Jason say?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Lots of meetings with big dogs apparently,’ she said. ‘Agents and managers and that, people Jason wants us to work with.’

  ‘Ah yes, our newer type of friends,’ Adam said.

  ‘Exactly. All this fucking macho big player stuff. I’ve got to go meet some EDM agency tonight, from Vegas. They keep texting me about partying together later.’ She glanced at the screen of her phone, on which several texts had arrived over their lunch.

  ‘Well, I suppose it might be a fun night out.’

  ‘But I think they mean drugs,’ Isa said. ‘I don’t really do it any more, gear and that. Also, I don’t know how to get stuff here.’

  ‘You could call my friend Craig,’ Adam said. ‘He works in music too. Seems to have all the contacts.’

  ‘OK great, why not,’ she said, looking unenthused. Adam sent her the contact from his own phone.

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Isa,’ he said.

  She looked up at him, watching him carefully.

  ‘I wanted to say, I’m really sorry…’

  Her eyes flashed warningly. ‘Mate,’ she said, quietly shutting him off. Her smile had vanished, along with any façade. ‘Don’t even think about going there.’

  Yes, this was her, he thought. This was the real Isa.

  ‘Right,’ he said, nodding and looking down at his empty plate. ‘Of course.’

  After they’d finished, he told her he had to make a call, and walked down to Echo Park. The sun was hot, and he sat on a bench, the emotion and the beer mixing potently, more memories breaking off and rising from the depths.

  He had come to hate Isa. After he’d lost Sofia, they fell into a relationship that lasted a year. Having sprung from this poisoned well, it was doomed from the start. Adam had lost his home, and moved out into a small flat in a grim high-rise with a friend from college. Suddenly he was thirty, with little money, lots of bad habits and a big weight of sadness resting on his heart like a stone. There seemed little choice but to give himself over to the darkness.

  The things he’d thought he needed, and that Isa had offered, the wildness and excitement he’d been frightened to lose, suddenly acted on him like poison. The scales removed from his eyes, what Isa offered had seemed sordid and disgusting. The path he’d been on had been the right one after all, and now it was lost to him forever.

  He hadn’t given Isa a chance. She had been what he thought he’d wanted, had emphasized the part of herself she thought he was attracted to. She was sad, too. He hadn’t left Sofia for her, hadn’t chosen to be with her. The relationship was formed purely by default.

  But the masks they’d worn for each other stuck. They dragged each other downwards into an abyss: parties, drink, drugs and depraved sex. Threesomes with other men and women. Jealous rages.

  Images of this life popped flashbulb-bright in his head, and he reeled from them, as though they’d happened to someone else. It had all been so wretched and awful.

  Between these grim episodes, the sad semblance of a normal relationship. The first time he tried to take her home to meet his mother, the train became stranded in the ice outside Reading, and they had to turn around and go back to London. When they finally did meet, his mother had been unable to disguise her disappointment.

  ‘She’s perfectly nice, Adam,’ she’d told him. But he could see the question written on her face: was she worth what you did to your lovely girlfriend?

  He’d come to blame Isa. She was a living reminder of everything he’d lost.

  After he’d finally broken it off with her, he came back to the flat one day to find her in his bedroom. His flatmate had let her in. The room was dim, lit only by the dozens of red tea lights she’d placed around it. Music was playing, something he liked, and there was a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

  She was standing before the built-in wardrobe, hands clasped before her, doing her best to look demure.

  ‘There’s dinner, too,’ she’d said. ‘Please give us a chance, after everything. It’s my fault, I haven’t shown you my good side. I can be a real girlfriend, I promise. Please give me another chance.’

  Something molten and dreadful had eaten at his numbness, but he held it at bay.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s too late, I’m sorry.’

  And he’d told her to leave.

  It hadn’t been her fault at all, he saw now. She had loved him, and he’d thought he loved her too, for a while. All that pointless hatred of her he’d allowed to grow within him. It was like an illness, dissipating now, lifting off him and making him feel better.

  Yes, they could have saved each other a great deal of trouble if they’d simply been frien
ds all along.

  28

  He messaged Erica before he left the office, telling her he was back, and that he’d love to see her whenever she had time.

  Back at the apartment, he lay on the couch, a large glass of white wine sweating on the coffee table. He’d almost nodded off when the phone rang, but Erica’s name on its screen jolted him to alertness.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ she replied. It sounded as though she was driving. ‘You wanna go hiking?’

  Adam looked at his watch. ‘Now?’ he said. ‘The sun sets in an hour or so.’

  ‘I know. This is a short hike, near my place.’

  ‘Then yes. That sounds perfect.’

  ‘Good. I’ll get you in about ten minutes.’

  ‘Great,’ Adam said.

  There was a pause. ‘Do you wanna stay over at my place, after?’ she said. ‘I have an early shift, so you’d have to be up with me.’

  Adam felt giddy with nervous pleasure. ‘Yes,’ he said, swallowing. ‘I’d love to.’

  He shoved some things into a bag, brushed his teeth and headed for the door. When Erica pulled up outside, Stef was sitting on her terrace, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Well, check you out,’ she said. ‘Did you join the Mercedes owners’ club?’

  The window of Erica’s car rolled down, and she stuck her head out, waving.

  ‘Woah,’ Stef said, leaning over the wooden railing to get a better look. ‘She’s hot.’

  ‘I know,’ Adam said, locking the door, smiling.

  ‘I won’t wait up!’ Stef called after him.

  He waved to her as he swung his bag onto the back seat of Erica’s car.

  She was wearing her long Lululemon workout pants, a t-shirt and lightweight Nike trainers, and no makeup. She glanced down at herself as he sat.

  ‘Luckily I had some gear in my locker at work,’ she said.

  ‘You look beautiful.’ He leaned over and kissed her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said as they pulled away. ‘How was Denver?’

  ‘Tiring,’ he said. ‘I’m really glad to be back.’

  She parked on a quiet street a little way north of Los Feliz Boulevard and beneath the eastern flank of Griffith Park. Adam had often seen this green, imposing hill, which rose up, stern and sphinxlike, beside the I-5 freeway and the river, as though guarding the park from the filthy traffic.

  ‘Are we going up there?’ he asked her, pointing.

  ‘Yep. It’s called Beacon Hill,’ she said. ‘Perfect for sunset.’

  In the evenings, the good ones at least, LA turned golden once again, the sharp lines of the day softening with the light. They walked along a shaded street, past the tall, tucked-away mansions of Los Feliz. The cars parked here were expensive, the houses, as in any affluent area of Los Angeles, wildly varied.

  Here was a wide colonial-style mansion, there a large Spanish villa; a little further on, the gleaming glass cubes of another modernist fantasy. The road stopped at a chain-link fence, a narrow gate which led onto a steep dirt track. A sign beside the gate warned that they were entering a wilderness area, to watch out for rattlesnakes and mountain lions.

  God, I love LA, Adam thought. Half a mile from the freeway, thirty feet from someone’s house, and we’re stepping into a different world. A city riddled with escape hatches into wilder, better places.

  ‘Ready?’ Erica asked. He leaned forward and kissed her again, running his hand under her hair, onto the back of her head. After a moment she pulled away, smiled at him and took his hand.

  The dirt track became a path, and very soon the houses were out of view. They climbed steeply, the trail winding around the folds and flanks of the hill. Before long, they could see a driving range gleaming beneath them, and to their right, beyond it, the I-5, the river, the nestled houses of Atwater Village and Glendale. To the north, the mountains rose, their ridges softened and their bulk dark green in the evening light. Adam located the summit of Strawberry Peak, and felt its newly familiar thrill.

  Above them, Beacon Hill stood out, proud and aloof from the coiling traffic below it.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Adam said, panting.

  ‘I know,’ Erica said. She pointed at a bare tree, on which a hawk was sitting motionless, watching the ground. ‘Red-tailed,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Adam replied. ‘That one I know.’

  The path wound across the hillside, bringing them eventually to a junction on the hill’s shoulder. Looking beyond it, Adam could see the I-5 narrowing in a glowing red-and-white snake of tail- and headlights, the mountains now dim and indistinct beneath the deep blue of the sky.

  They turned right, walking under a stand of old eucalyptus trees, where the air was abruptly cool. Now, the top of Beacon Hill rose sharply a little way ahead. They climbed the short, steep path and emerged, breathless, onto its sandy top.

  LA sprawled around them, a long way down. Before them were the towers of Downtown, the sluggish, firefly glow of helicopters, the bright bands of the cars’ lights, the point-to-point vectors of planes heading into LAX, and the inky creases of the hillside. Behind the park, where the city would fade out into the ocean, the light was bright orange, the sun’s disc dipping behind the cliffs and ridges.

  Erica turned to him, smiling, and they kissed again.

  ‘I love to come up here,’ she said. ‘Look at it. In the middle of this city. It’s so beautiful.’ She was lit up with happiness, and Adam held her closer, pressing her to him and feeling himself infected by it.

  * * *

  They left Erica’s car at her house, and made the short walk through Atwater Village to a restaurant called Madeleine. The place was dim and cosy, and they settled into a table in the far corner, away from the street.

  ‘There’s no real booze,’ Erica told him. ‘Just wine and beer. But they make Prosecco cocktails that’re delicious.’

  ‘Good enough,’ Adam said.

  When the drinks arrived, they clinked glasses. The cocktail was indeed delicious, though it failed to deliver the alcoholic tug that Adam favoured in an aperitif.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That beat my usual after-work walk.’

  ‘No osprey though,’ Erica reminded him.

  ‘True.’

  They ordered a bottle of wine and main courses, and got quite drunk.

  When the waitress arrived with dessert menus, Erica asked for the check. She looked steadily at Adam while they waited for it, filling his head with small explosions of happiness and desire. After a moment, he felt her toes moving down the inside of his thigh.

  * * *

  In her room, she laughed and pushed him away. ‘Let’s shower first,’ she said.

  ‘Together?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ she said.

  ‘Ladies first,’ he told her.

  While she was in the bathroom, he poured two glasses of red wine from an open bottle in her kitchen, and brought them through to the bedroom. He drank half of his quite quickly, his mind empty, waiting for Erica.

  After a short while he felt awkward lying on her bed, like some ageing lothario, and he stood up and moved over to her bookshelf, scanning the titles. Her taste was different to his, but it was good. She had books he’d always meant to read, but hadn’t got around to: Ferrante, Coetzee, Hilary Mantel and Jeffrey Eugenides. Prize-winning stuff, the popularity of which had perhaps stirred his contrarian instincts – which had the sole advantage of leaving good books out there for him to read one day. She had few of his great white Americans: Foster Wallace or Pynchon or Vollmann. Good for her.

  Ten minutes later she emerged from the bathroom in a white towel and a swirl of steam. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him, shy now. Her hair was wet and flat against her head, very dark, and this seemed to emphasize the bright blue of her eyes. The blackness made the blue pop – was how Americans would phrase it.

  They kissed for a long moment, and then she pulled away.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Your turn. There
’s a towel in there for you.’

  In the shower, he ran the water very hot and let it scald his skin a little, burning off the day and the sweat of the hike. There was a bottle of shower gel, and he poured some out and lathered it over his skin. After a few minutes he heard Erica calling him.

  ‘Adam,’ she said, mischief in her voice. ‘Don’t be too long.’

  ‘Coming,’ he said.

  She was lying on the bed, still in her towel, hands crossed atop her stomach. She smiled at him as he approached and lay beside her.

  They touched their foreheads together, closing their eyes, and kissed deeply. After a moment they began to unwrap each other, moving their hands across warm, naked flesh, stroking and pressing and following the magnet pull from between each other’s legs. Adam closed his eyes as her hand slipped around him, and he felt her moisture rise beneath his fingers.

  Erica parted her legs wider, moaning softly. Adam pulled the towel away from her and lifted himself over her, kissing her neck and breasts, her stomach and thighs.

  Her vagina was moist and splayed a little way open. He lowered his lips to it, closing his eyes and slipping his tongue into her. Her hand went to the back of his head, kneading his hair and pressing into his scalp, and he moved his hands to her thighs, pushing them wider and running his tongue further inside her. When he opened his eyes again, her smooth stomach was concave before him, she was writhing a little, rocking on her buttocks, her breasts and chin angled up, her brow and wet dark hair beyond them.

  After a few minutes the taste and scent of her grew stronger, and his erection strained painfully. He sucked the lips of her pussy and ran his tongue over her swollen clitoris. The wetness from his mouth and from her vagina had spread out over her inner thighs and onto her buttocks, where she gleamed in the room’s dim light.

  Adam would have been content to kneel there before her forever, he thought. He lost track of time. There was just this beautiful woman in the semi-darkness of the room, the sound of her sharp breaths. Her pleasure seemed to fill him, too. To run through her and into him like a wave. It was like the first time he’d kissed her, on top of the mountain. The intimacy astounded him. There was no moment he could recall in which he’d been more alive than he was just then. He didn’t want it to stop.