by JT Lawrence
30
Nights Are Quick
I begin to worry about Denise. How my psychological vacuum is affecting her. She hardly eats, hardly goes out. Has she always worn this much black? I wonder if she has contracted my emptiness. When we are together we are still alone. Is this love?
We don’t talk about it. I spend time in my den, trying to get words on paper, giving up, then drinking enough whisky to fell a small elephant and generally wallowing in my existential angst. She disappears into the garden. I have stopped cooking. Even grocery stores seem out of bounds to me now. When I think I am being overtly paranoid I look at the rock that was thrown through my front window. I keep it in the lounge near the jagged window frame. It’s a warning. ‘Stay on your toes,’ it breathes, ‘there are people who mean you harm.’
I want to write to Denise, tell her she is crisp and honeyed but that makes me think of apples and fruit-juicers and Eve. I want to type words about the corrugated silk on the inside of her body but my fingers just hover, impotent, above the keyboard, thinking of the pink pills, the mind map, the porcelain knife. I want to scribble that without her, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the mornings, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t shower. The days are everlasting but the nights are quick. She wraps me up in her molten body till I fall through the floor.
31
Red Islands on Her Neck
I find myself outside in the weak morning sunshine. I sip coffee and walk barefoot on the cool dewdamp grass, looking at how the plants have swelled and multiplied. Yellow arums, peach incas, and lavender grown wild and spindly. Their proliferation makes me feel shrunken. I hear the dog barking next door and, as I turn to look in the direction of the noise, I see movement behind the wall. I duck behind a shrub. I think it was the dog, but one can never be too safe. I inch my head around the leaves to get a better look and that is when I see her: Munchkin is back. She slithers easily through the drainage holes at the bottom of the wall and rattles her wiry tail at me. I wonder to whom she belongs, if anyone. She has me well trained and I crouch down and rub my fingers together to beckon her towards me. This time she comes. She drags her body along my knee, then chin-cheeks my outstretched hand. Her purr is too loud for her delicate build.
“Denise,” I call softly to the house, “come and look.”
When I don’t hear her coming, I call a little louder but this spooks the cat and she dashes back through the wall. Shinyblacklightning. Denise comes to the door.
“Did you call me?” she asks, “what is it?”
I stand up and dust my hands off. Pick up my cold cup of coffee.
“Nothing,” I say.
After checking the peephole for Edgar and his cunning associates, I slip out to the letterbox to get my newspaper. The post goes straight into my wastepaper basket. I delete all the messages on my phone. After the obligatory few hours in the den, scratching a hole in my notebook, I give up and read instead. I have always found it difficult to find enough time to read all the books I want, all the books that would help me become the writer I was meant to be. The writing usually takes over, but not now. Now I read at least a book a day. I am finally demolishing the swaying pillars of books I have piled up in my house. When I bought this place I thought I’d turn one of the rooms into a library but I never got around to it. They lie around the house in great toppling stacks, impatient to be read. Truthfully, I like that they invade every room in the house; it seems right, somehow.
Denise wakes me up with her tongue in my mouth. The den is dark and I can hardly make her out. I must have dozed off. She kisses the scar on my cheek, then pulls up my shirt and eats my nipples. I don’t know how long I have been hard. I put my hands on her head but she shakes them off. She straddles me on the chesterfield, lowering herself onto me. She is not wearing panties. I gasp at the suddenness of her hot crush. She rides me in slow arcs and I dream I am in a new bright place. She gets me to the top and just before she lets me slide down the other side, she raises herself off me, turns around, lifts up her skirt to show me what she’s got. I grab her butt cheeks; try to pull her towards me. I want to taste her, but she resists. Something buzzes through my body and I can’t take it; I wrestle her to the floor, pinning her down. She resists, breathing fast, like an animal, and tries to bite me. I hold down both her wrists with my left hand, and use my right to slip myself into her. Then I put my fingers around her neck, as if to strangle her, and she groans. I can feel her excitement grow as I apply more pressure. Her breathing is laboured. I start to move inside her. This is good. So good. I can write about this.
More weight on her throat and her back arches. I can feel her pulse in my palm. My body is electric with power; I build up and up until my mind dissolves and I fly out of my body for a sublime second. Denise stops resisting and I think she has come too until I get back to myself, and her, and see she is not moving.
I shake her still shoulders. I try to make out her face in the dark.
“Denise!” I yell. “Denise!”
Oh my God, oh fuck. Jesus Christ. I turn on the lamp near her head.
Her face is bloodless. Red islands on her neck.
A mental flash of light: Eve.
Eve, dead. Blue and leached of all goodness. Flash, flash, flash, till I can’t see what is in front of me.
“Eve!” I cry.
And then her chest is moving and I hear her breathing. I touch her chest and feel her strong heart racing. A laugh bubbles up from her; she takes my hand and kisses my fingers.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I say, taking my hand back and running it through my hair. She laughs again but there is sadness in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask, touching her neck. She nods and pulls me down so that we are lying together. I am extra gentle with her as I rub her back, kiss her spine. I wait for her to go to sleep before I carry her to bed.
32
Kiss the Bruises
I am in the garden, shirtless, reading, when the doorbell rings. I watch to see if Denise will answer it but she doesn’t. She has a habit of disappearing without telling me where she’s going or when she’ll be back. I put down the novel and approach the door with caution. It is a teenager in a suit. I swing open the door in what I hope is a menacing manner. It has the desired effect and the youngster takes a step back, as if he has just realised he has stumbled upon the (half-naked) village madman.
“You a bible basher?” I ask. “Jesus Freak?” He shakes his head.
“Jehovah’s Witness?” Headshake.
“Hare Krishna?”
“No, sir,” he says. He doesn’t look like a Hare Krishna.
“What are you selling?” I ask, eyeing his fake leather hand-me-down briefcase.
He opens his mouth but says nothing.
“Vacuum cleaners? Stain pens? Avocados? Lawn dressing?”
“Uh,” he says.
“Well, I don’t have any money. So you may as well move on. Mrs Fritz next door seems like a nice old lady.”
“I know,” he says.
This catches me off guard.
“You know Mrs Fritz?” I ask.
“No,” he says, looking at the ground, “I know you don’t have … any money.”
“What?” I bark.
“I’m from United Bank,” he says, digging for a business card in his shirt pocket.
“You’re from my bank?” I say, not without incredulity.
“Yes, sir, Mister Harris. I have paperwork for you to sign.”
“Who sent you?”
“The bank, sir.”
“Not Edgar?”
“Er … no.”
I consider him for a full minute before buzzing open the gate. I find a wrinkled shirt slung over my gentleman’s valet, sniff it, and throw it on.
In the kitchen the kid opens his briefcase and sheaths the table in legalese. He has a giant pen uncapped and offers it to me. I cross my arms.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I ask.
He smiles a tired smile.
“A
re you going to tell me what this is about?”
“Oh,” he says, confused, fingering his forehead. “I assumed you had been advised.”
I give him a hard look.
“But,” he says, searching for words, “but you got three letters.”
“Ja,” I say, “I get a lot of letters, what’s your point?”
“The letters from the bank sir,” he says. “Three letters.”
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” I demand.
“F-foreclosure,” he whispers.
“What?” I wind my watch.
“You have failed to make your last six payments. And we’ve had no communication from you.”
I shoot up and the chair falls behind me.
“We tried to contact you on various occasions. We offered you payment plans and debt counselling. Quite frankly we did everything we could.”
“The bank is repossessing my house and they send a punk kid to break the news? How old are you, anyway?”
He clears his throat.
“Thirty.”
I kick the kid to the curb. The house seems different now that it’s not mine. I touch the cool walls; admire the pressed ceilings. Wonder what the fuck I’m going to do.
They say that you should not measure your worth by the things you own but what else do I have left? What will happen to my ShowerLux™? How will Francina find me if she comes back? How will I stay safe without these walls around me? The blue-skinned man watches me pace. I curse the bank with every bad word I know in every language I know. Bloodsuckers! Bloodsucking mothertruckers! When the money was rolling in, the managers were tripping over themselves to give me crappy free desk pads and take me out to lunch, now I have nothing and they send a ten-year-old to break the bad news in his breastmilkbreak.
Denise gets home and I tumble into her. I kiss the bruises on her neck.
I call Sifiso to ask for another advance on the royalties for the book I have not yet written.
“Look, Harris,” he sighs, “I’ve been meaning to call a meeting.”
“Yes?” I say, still hopeful.
“They’re pulling the PLUG. They’re tired of waiting.”
“What?”
“I did everything I could.”
“They can’t pull the plug,” I say, almost amused. “It’s a three book deal. They’ve already practically paid me for the first one.”
“Yes, they’ll be needing that advance money back,” Sifiso says. He is almost whispering. I have never heard him this quiet.
My mind somersaults.
“They’re being rash. I have the book in me, I just need to get it down on paper.”
Sifiso sighs. “That’s what we told them this time LAST year.”
“I can do it,” I insist, knowing that I can’t.
Sifiso is quiet.
“Look, Harris, you’re going through a dry patch. It happens to EVERYONE. I’m sure that something will come to you, but Starling & Co. won’t wait any longer. Their lawyer will contact you to agree on how you’ll pay them back.”
I laugh. And then I am angry.
“Those unclefuckers!” I shout, “We had a contract!”
“They held up their side of the contract for a year longer than legally required.”
“Whose fucking side are you on?”
“I’m on yours, Harris, but you haven’t given me anything to WORK with. Nothing, not a SCRAP!”
“Well, fuck you!”
“I understand that you’re angry …”
“You understand fuck-all, you lousy fuck. You’re fired!”
I chuck the phone against the wall and it springs apart. Fucking editors. Fucking publishing houses. Fucking banks taking my house away. Fucking phones that break every time you throw them. The rage builds up so quickly that I am no longer in control of my actions. I kick a pile of books in a clumsy stumble and then push over the bookshelf next to it. It lands on its side with a crash. Dull thuds of books and spinning of ornaments on the floor. I pick up the fruit bowl and smash it. Send the kitchen bin flying with my foot. Then the pictures in my brain fade to white.
I come to, minutes later, surrounded by destruction. Blindviolence. The place is trashed and I don’t remember much of what I have done. I limp through the house; broken bits stick to the bottom of my shoes. When I get to the lounge I fall to the floor. Eve’s painting. It has a hole ripped through it: the blue-skinned man is decapitated. I cradle it awkwardly in my arms. I stroke his face. A thought hits me hard in the stomach: I have nothing. I am alone and I have nothing.
I zone out for a while and when I come back to my body, I am still bent double and stroking the painting, as if to soothe it. The paint near the tear is flaking off like skin and there is a muted colour underneath. I start to peel off the top layer and it reveals shapes, textures, more colours. Leaves. It’s a photo-realistic painting of people in a garden. I get a knife and scrape the paint off the canvas in the areas where the paint won’t peel. I unearth strelitzias, ivy, bougainvillea, jacaranda in bloom. A scorched lawn. A family. Conservative-looking parents: father choking in a dark suit, mother in a floral sack, with icy eyes staring into the camera through horn-rimmed glasses. Both gripping the shoulder of a blonde-haired little girl as if to prevent her from running away. I turn the canvas around and tear off what is left of the brittle brown backing. There is a photo wedged in the wooden frame, the one the artist used to paint from. It’s faded: the trees have turned blue. The pencil scribble on the back says ‘Shaws, October 1979: Miles, Nicolette, Evelyn (10)’. I flip the photo around again and look carefully. It’s washed out and grainy. I recognise her cheekbones and her lips, the way she sticks her chin out. It’s Eve. She painted over her family portrait. I sit there for a while and think.
Denise doesn’t come home.
33
A Life In The Sky
I feel as though I am standing on a ledge on the outside of a high-rise building. The Ponte Tower, perhaps. Enough people have fallen to their death from its soulless windows to make it some kind of macabre landmark. So I am on the fortieth floor and the rubber at the bottom of my leather slip-on brogues is the only contact I have with the earth. My body sways in uneasy arcs and I feel the wind lifting my hair. Below the cars and people are in a hot swarm as if today is their last. Above is all oxygen-blue sky and near silence. It is understandable that a man in this position would take the easy way out and opt for a life in the sky instead of down there. But first the man has to be brave enough to be devoured by the earth. Brave enough to bend his knees and lift his soles in a childish hop, or merely step off, stiff-legged, into oblivion. I feel the pull. I feel the earth calling in its husky sotto voce. But I am not a brave man.
It’s a kind of psychological vertigo. I feel myself being drawn in by the darkness: age, defeat, despair, the black hole that is my life, the inescapable feeling of loss that I have carried around in my pocket since I was eight. But there is something else too, some power that is holding me back, doesn’t let me stumble, doesn’t let me jump. An invisible harness. If I believed in God I would be tempted to say that it is His mischief.
I decide I won’t jump.
Not today.
34
Night of the Long Knives
When Denise doesn’t show up in her own family portrait (or for breakfast the next day), I give in to the hungry paranoia and look through her handbag. She has the usual feminine trinkets: a half-empty pack of tissues, a rattling tin of mints, cinnamonwax lipstick and a spare, slightly scuffed tampon. I also find her wallet, a sleek rectangular mockadile rectangle with a large silver clasp but, in it, only cash. The paranoia coldpaws the skin on the back of my neck. I rationalise: not everyone has a credit card. Not everyone has a driving license. Not everyone carries their ID around like it’s 1984. And anyway she must have a second wallet, a second handbag which she has with her now or how would she get around? I wonder fleetingly if she has left me and so check the drawers for her clothes, which all s
eem to be there, tousled and softsable. As I am fingering her things I feel something hard and cold. Small metal symbols on a circle. I extract them and see that they are three keys attached to a silver apple key ring. Eve’s house keys.
The doorbell rings and without looking I know it’s the cops. They have come to handcuff me and push my head down into their shrieking blue and white car. I grab the tote bag out of my cupboard. It is pre-packed with a few changes of clothes, essential toiletries, condoms (force of habit) and my Moleskine. I packed it days ago when I began to suspect that my life was about to take an unusual turn. It reminds me of the bag my mother kept in the latter months of her pregnancy with Emily. She would sit with it on her bed and unpack it once a week, shaking out the clothes and receiving blanket and smoothing them down, only to refold and pack them again. Dad used to shake his head and make vague cuckoo gestures. She’s at it again, he would say with an elbow in my ribs. I wondered if that meant she did it for me, too.
I reach under the bed for my emergency wad of cash. The envelope isn’t as thick as I remember it but it’s all I have, so I toss it in before zipping up. I can’t take my car because A) it no longer belongs to me, and B) the cops will be camped outside the front of the house where the garage is. The doorbell goes again. I consider leaving a note for Denise but I have no idea what to say. I take the keys instead.
The boundary walls in Johannesburg are notoriously high and usually barbed or electrified but there is a chink in my neighbour’s barricade I think I can slip through. I sling the tote over my back like a backpack and launch myself up into a tree. If I can climb along the branch we share, I should be able to make it over the deadly palisade fence without losing my manhood. Crouching there, holding on with hot fingers, I wonder what the hell I am doing. I should definitely climb back down and hand myself over. Be responsible. Be an adult. Face whatever consequences there may be. Instead I scuttle and jump and land on happy groundcover. When I stand up, I’m in the neighbour’s garden and I hear a growl.