Chrysalis

by Jeremy Welch

  Returning to an empty room, feeling confused and light headed he looked around for Pepper. Her only presence was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a wine glass and the lipstick-tipped roach. The noise of deep but peaceful breathing came from the bedroom.

  “Come in here and cuddle me,” she said dreamily. As he slipped into the bed he remembered Clarissa and didn’t feel it was the right time to kiss Pepper again. He held her warm body spoon-like with his hand resting open and relaxed on the small curve of her stomach.

  Waking slowly it was with the feeling of dislocation, having had a full night’s sleep but knowing it was still evening. He was gently being drawn back into consciousness by a slow tickle on his back. Not the maternal stroking of the back with a flat hand to awaken a child for a pre-dawn start to a long journey. This was defined and with the point of a finger, nail slightly pressed against the skin. The motion not random but fluid and seemingly writing. His back muscles awake and alert now trying to decipher the movements.

  “Again.”

  The process restarted with heavier pressure, slow and determined. The letters a collection of perpendiculars and flowing movements. He thought he had it.

  “Once more.”

  In silence a repetition of the exercise with harder pressure and exaggerated movement not with anger but an urgency to be understood. The pointing of the finger after the last letter definitive and not to be repeated. He turned towards her, lifted her head and kissed her gently.

  “I do too, I like you,” he said, looking into her eyes with pleasure.

  As if the spoken word was unrelated to the finger scribing she asked, “Let’s go out, how about a pizza? I know a place off Leidsedwarsstraat, we can walk there from here. It’s such a lovely evening.”

  More inhibited by the absence of wine and dope it was awkward for him to get out from under the sheet. There had been the shared intimacy of thought but nothing physical.

  “I’ve got no clothes on so if I shut my eyes you can get yours from next door.”

  She curled the sheet around her, kissed the top of his head and moved towards the sitting room; at the threshold she dropped the sheet and turned her head towards him with a smile of the future.

  Initially the walk towards Leidseplein was awkward. He walked by her side avoiding eye contact. His inward arms occasionally and intentionally bumping into hers. He felt the back of her hand gently stroke his limp and indecisive hand. Opening thumb and forefinger she slipped her hand into his open palm. She squeezed.

  A laugh of relief escaped as he squeezed her back.

  “That took you long enough!” she laughed.

  The walk took them past the Bull Dog Coffee Shop populated by marijuana-smoking tourists liberated by the drugs and legality of street smoking. For a pub the street tables showed scant evidence of alcohol, tables frugally covered with nursed half-drunk beers and their owners looking placid and non-responsive to the techno thump from inside the bar. In a contradiction to their late afternoon dope smoking there was no shared experience, just mutual disappearance into solitary worlds. The unenticing entrance to the Casa Rosso erotic entertainment centre heavily patrolled by uninviting dark-coat-clad musclemen; the photographic display that, rather than entice, looked to be advertising a gynaecological convention. The entrance was full of undecided tourists goading each other to enter.

  Sebastian felt protective of Pepper and put his arm around her shoulder. Pepper obviously enjoying the walk looked around her and said,

  “I do love this place. It’s so liberating, how I imagine San Francisco in the seventies.”

  Sebastian wasn’t too sure of the liberation and felt some relief when they crossed the boundary of the red light district at Damstraat. Over the Singel canal with the lingering scent of the flower market with discarded petals bright against the cobbled street. Passing Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht he felt the air of sedate security that only comes with wealth; a lone middle-aged woman watched her dog crap against a railing-protected tree whilst nodding an evening salutation to her neighbour. Her wrist was heavy with a bracelet of gold.

  The sound of laughter and activity increased as they passed the American Hotel approaching Leidseplein. The square like a chessboard with tables of red and white covers, the noise of the diners’ laughter and conversation echoing off the surrounding buildings. Cycles formed a perimeter around the patchwork of tables waiting patiently to be pushed home by languid arm-over-the-shoulder lovers at evening end.

  “It’s just over there,” she said as she guided him through the tables with her hands on his hips.

  “Hello Marco, before you ask, I’m Pepper.” She smiled at the restaurant owner.

  Marco, red faced and content with a film of sweat on his forehead and underarm damp patches.

  “You are as beautiful as your sister. So beautiful I cannot tell you apart,” he said as he kissed her on both cheeks. “A table for two?” They sat at the only empty table.

  The proximity of the tables, so close that conversations were shared with fellow diners and the cacophony of noise one of happiness and contentment. Candlelight reflecting off eyes and teeth, heads pushed back in laughter. Men with jumpers draped over their shoulders at the ready to cover bare shoulders should the evening cool.

  “Isn’t it great here? I love it, it’s always alive and hopeful on a warm evening.”

  She ordered a large pizza to share and a carafe of house rosé. The carafe sweated in the evening warmth.

  “What happens next, Pepper?”

  “Let’s see,” she said with a smile.

  Sebastian felt the rush of blood to his face. Embarrassed as the words tripped out.

  “Not us, you, I mean. Well not you exactly, I meant what happens with the show?”

  “Sorry.” She giggled as she placed her hand over his. “We stay here in Amsterdam for the next four weeks. Rehearsals next week, the show for three and then on to Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Brussels. Nothing in November and then London for Christmas and then Edinburgh for New Year.”

  Four weeks and she will be gone. She sounded excited and sure. He felt a longing for something that had surety. Who or whatever it was he was missing it already. At the moment there was only the flimsy relationship with Pepper to build a structure around, and that would only be a nomadic home.

  “Where do you go in November, before the Christmas season starts again?”

  “We go back to the US. It’s the best time of the year. We miss Christmas as we are performing, so Thanksgiving is our Christmas. Mom and Dad are always so excited when we arrive they have the whole house decorated for Christmas. Well nearly, they don’t have a tree that early. On the morning of Thanksgiving we pretend it’s Christmas Day and give each other presents. Going back from Europe in November is always great as the sun shines all day in San Francisco.” Her face beamed in anticipated familial pleasure.

  This tale of contentment was in stark contrast to Christmases at Sebastian’s. A damp mist-covered morning in Hampshire. His father dressed in a Viyella checked shirt, regimental blazer and tie standing in heavyweight orthopaedic brogues with the toecaps shining like two bald heads on the beaches of Spain in summer. Mother dressed in an aged floral dress and perhaps new shoes from Primark. Conversation halting and stuttering around neutral territory. The one present each to avoid excess. Mother bravely trying to inject some levity which fails as soon as the Queen’s Speech is watched, a preliminary to an overcooked chicken for the sake of economy. His brother desperate to escape the routine of shared misery by getting drunk on cheap imported Californian red wine, and Sebastian by fingering car keys in his trouser pocket. The only sign of contentment is his grandfather who sighs with each post-Christmas dinner fart as he sleeps off the schooners of pre-lunch sherry.

  “What’s Christmas like at your house?”

  “Oh, similar, great excitement all round,” he lied. Thinking of the
four weeks until Pepper disappeared perhaps forever. He thought of Zoe. “Do you know the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco?”

  “Sure I do. You going to stay there? You had better get a couple of bestsellers under your belt. It’s packed with the oil rich and Wall Street types. Why?”

  “No reason really, just that a friend of mine is staying there, or has just stayed there.” Sebastian omitted to add, “An old girlfriend actually with a nasty little overly paid and single-minded prick in tow.”

  “Well tell me about your novel and perhaps when you have a bestseller you can put us up there on your book tour.”

  “Oh God, do you really want to hear?”He said with feigned indifference, eager to tell her.

  A nod of interest as she lifted the empty carafe of wine up to a passing waiter indicating that a period of monologue from him was to be given due consideration in the company of a refill.

  “It’s very difficult, I see it all in three dimensions and technicolour but when I write it down it’s one dimensional and in sepia.”

  “That doesn’t tell me what it’s about.”

  “A man, youngish, who views his life from two events: the setting of the sun and its rising at dawn. He has no ability to live in the present. The future approached with apathetic torpor and the past irrelevant. He has been surrounded by the structure of stability, like a house, but it’s bland, painted in magnolia. He knows what he needs. Excitement, love, passion, purpose; but apathy rules as he drifts listlessly from one day to the next without leaving the slightest imprint on the previous day and knowing the next will remain equally unblemished by his presence. Hoping that something will happen to introduce him to a life worth participating in, to being alive to life.”

  “Oh my God, it sounds so bleak.”

  He lifted the cold carafe of wine, filled the glass to the brim and swallowed. The cold wine heated his imagination.

  “No, no it’s not. Something happens that changes him, an event or series of events that lead him to want to leave his mark on each and every second of every minute and every minute of every hour of every day.”

  “This is getting exciting. What happens, what’s the event?” Pepper was now keen to find out more leaning across the table, eyes wide with an impatient smile of anticipation.

  Staring at the table top, the coloured squares of the tablecloth blurring into a shade of undefined pink Sebastian looked frustrated.

  “I don’t know. A car crash, a dying sibling, fuck, I don’t know. Perhaps an alligator jumps out of the canal and eats Miss Amsterdam before being hunted by ex-whalers in a long boat. I could call the book “Captain Ahab’s Alligator.””

  Her face was serious for a moment before her lips parted and a small expulsion of air escaped like a bubble deflating on reaching the surface. Her eyes narrowed and her cheek muscles rose supporting her smile, then she laughed.

  “I love you Brits, not always sure what you are talking about some of the time, but love you anyway. It’s a start for sure. Don’t all books have to have a start, middle and end? Well you’re a third the way through already!” She believed it too. The American way – the belief, the hope.

  “If you are going to be rude I am going to tie you up and feed you to my pet alligator.”

  He knew he wanted to tell her of the horizon, shapes forming in relief to the previous endless and blank vista, forms as yet undefined but separate and animated as individuals. The colour of the background not monotone grey but shadowed and interspersed with pantones of colour. He knew he wanted to write the book, but what about the middle and end?

  He took the usual retreat.

  “Let’s finish this.” Waving the now half-empty carafe. “Then let’s get a nightcap on the way home. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think it’s enough to have events make a character. Can’t the character make the events rather than be the result of the events?”

  “I don’t know, the story line is still a little undefined. Do we do what we do as a result of an event or do our actions produce the event? One is responsive and the other conditional. For now I am going for the latter.” He leant over the table and kissed her firmly on the lips. Hoping for the result to follow later that night.

  The walk back to the boat started slowly but quickened as she pulled Sebastian along. Passing the Vlinder Sebastian looked in and contemplated a last drink to bolster his courage. Sitting at the bar he saw Anneke in the shadow of the corner and Umuntu with his back turned to order drinks. Sebastian felt inexplicably guilty at the thought of being seen with Pepper and decided against the drink. Guilty for what, he couldn’t decide. Zoe? Anneke? With himself? As he turned to leave he caught a flash of Anneke’s eyes before they disappeared into the manicured foliage of her hair, a smile on her face as she turned back to face Umuntu.

  He laughed at her enthusiasm as they stumbled into the Tulp. Sebastian looked around him with urgency. Pepper plugged her iPhone into the docking station and chose ‘California Girls’. Sebastian threw his jumper over the photograph of Zoe on the bedside table. Turning towards him she let her unbuttoned shirt fall to the ground as her hips swayed to the music and the unzipping of her jeans.

  “Come here,” she said with a playful smile on her face.

  Their lovemaking a contradiction. His clumsy and intense in the search of shared intimacy, protection and hope. Hers deft, sensual and for playful physical pleasure alone.

  Chapter 5

  It was early with a haze of damp air. The trees stood like sentries evenly paced along the canal, only visible in the fog as far as ten metres away. The leaves were bent and soft with moisture dripping into the canal. Sebastian’s hands were thrust in his pockets while his unfocused eyes stared downward at the slimy cobbles. It would clear later as the sun burnt through but now it was cold.

  Two hours earlier he had been woken by the urgings of his bladder. Leaving the bed gently so as not to wake Pepper. It was the lonely hour when the lights had been extinguished and the new day hadn’t started. The streets belonged to the cats and other nocturnal animals heading home.

  Easing himself back into bed he put an arm around the sleeping body of Pepper for comfort and warmth. It was cold but soft. He reached for her head and felt a piece of paper on the pillow.

  “It was fun last night. Have to go as Salt doesn’t like to be alone at night. C.U. P x”

  Sleep evaded him. Frustration dressed him and loneliness made him walk.

  “Neither do I,” he said to the rear end of a cat as he swung his foot in its direction. It missed. The cat turned around and with eyes unblinking confirmed his status of loser before disappearing through a cat flap.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said to the swinging door of the cat flap.

  The only light visible on the street guided him. It was the same café where he had met Anneke. Cold and miserable he entered. At this early hour there was only one other person, positioned in the corner, dressed against the cold in a heavy coat, with legs crossed with the ankle of the right foot resting on top of the other knee, feet in black Converse gym shoes. He couldn’t see the face as the sports pages of the Bild newspaper screamed the success of Bayern Munchen.

  Out of the window the gloom was lifting, the fog pierced by the red rear lights of vans delivering supplies to the unopened restaurants and cafés. An occasional flickering of light as a newsagent opened to dispense news and cigarettes.

  “Latte please,” he said to the newly shaven face of the waiter behind the counter. The newspaper rustled as he dragged his open palm over unshaven cheeks. As his eyes followed a drop of water falling down the window he heard her voice.

  “Sebastian, are you alright? You look awful.”

  It took a moment to realise the voice belonged to Anneke.

  “Hello Anneke. I know what I am doing here… well I don’t actually. It’s so early. What are you doing here?”


  “I like it at this hour, it’s peaceful and quiet. Makes you thoughtful. Do you want company or to be left alone?” He felt a sympathetic smile behind the newspaper.

  The corner of the café was dim. This was the first time he had seen her face unencumbered by her hair. She lowered the newspaper to the bottom of her nose. A thick layer of skin-coloured foundation covered her face; the tips of her wide cheekbones, highlighted by rouge, poked above the newspaper. Her eyes offset by grey eyeshadow. It was early and this was not the makeup of last night. It was fresh and precisely applied. She must have risen very early to look so manicured. Sebastian found her attractive in her makeup.

  “Company would be nice.” Out of habit he looked at his watch, it reported 7.30. “It must be about 5am and it’s already been a long day!”

  He took his coffee over to her table and prepared to sit down opposite her.

  “Sit here, Sebastian. We can look out of the window.”

  She pulled the chair next to her away from the table. As he sat down she lowered the newspaper and let her hair fall. The paper folded on the table with the sports section visible.

  “You a football fan?”

  “When I was young living in Germany I used to go to some of the matches.”

  “Really? I just can’t imagine you and a group of ladies from Berlin shouting and chanting whilst surrounded by the baying mob.”