by Hazel Hayes
As we approach the iron gates on the south side of the park, Lena opens the wine and swigs it.
‘So, you speak Italian,’ she says.
‘Not really.’
She hands the bottle to me and I take a sip.
‘How many languages do you speak?’ I ask.
‘Five.’
‘Five!?’
Lena laughs.
‘Which five?’
‘Let’s see,’ she says, ‘English, Swedish, of course, Norwegian – quite similar to Swedish – also French … aaaand … oh yes … Italian.’
I stop dead in my tracks. Lena keeps walking. From the back of her head I can tell that she’s smirking.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she says, without looking back.
I feel my face flush bright pink.
‘Come on,’ she says, over her shoulder.
‘You didn’t say!’
‘You didn’t ask,’ she says, turning around to face me. We stand this way for a while, her grinning, me glaring, then I give up and cover my face with one hand. I am absolutely mortified. Serves me right for trying to show off, I think.
Lena walks coyly towards me, peels my hand from my face, and looks into my eyes, smiling sympathetically. As soon as I smile back she grabs the bottle of wine from my other hand and sets off again, giggling.
‘You’re a fucking troll,’ I shout, hurrying after her. She guffaws.
‘Now that’s racist!’
She takes another swig of wine before I grab the bottle back off her and gulp some down, then we fight over it a while, doubled over laughing and spilling it everywhere.
Lena and I languish in the park all afternoon. We find a spot right by the pond, beneath a cluster of trees, so that she can lie in the sunshine while I sit just left of her in the shade. She says she can’t believe that I burn so easily and I tell her I’m not willing to prove it today.
Couples paddle up and down in little blue boats, and geese waddle this way and that, accepting scraps of bread from picnickers all along the length of the pond. Several dogs jump in the water and emerge dripping and delighted with themselves. At one point a toddler breaks free of her mother’s grip and runs headlong towards the water, arms outstretched, her face the picture of unbridled glee. People gasp and the mother gives chase, catching her at the last possible second. Peace returns to the pond.
We watch this tiny drama unfold, then we lie down on our backs. Lena closes her eyes and tilts her chin up to the sky. I turn my head to look at her and find myself staring at her throat.
‘Shall we have dinner tonight?’ asks Lena, without opening her eyes.
‘All right,’ I say, not letting myself think about it too much. Thus far I’ve found our interactions exhilarating but tense and I’m not sure I can take much more, but I want it all the same.
‘I’ll cook,’ she says.
‘You’ll have to,’ I say. ‘Unless you want beans on toast or overcooked pasta.’
I watch as a little smile forms on her lips. I like conducting the conversation this way, with her eyes closed and me able to observe her at will.
‘We can cook at my place,’ I say. ‘My boyfriend’s away.’
‘Oh,’ says Lena, and her smile drops momentarily. ‘Yeah, sounds good.’
I wonder then if she was suggesting a double date. She probably doesn’t want to spend an entire evening alone with me, I think.
‘Would your boyfriend like to join us?’ I ask, and her eyebrows creep towards one another like two furry little caterpillars.
‘My boyfriend?’
‘Yeah.’
Now I’m afraid she thinks I don’t want to spend a whole evening with her. I find this all incredibly stressful.
‘The guy in the pictures,’ I add.
She doesn’t say anything for a long time. If she’s confused, she doesn’t let on. Finally something clicks, and that knowing smirk returns to her face.
‘That’s my brother,’ she says. ‘I’m visiting him this week.’
I instantly replay the events of the past twenty-four hours in my head and am almost impressed by how magnificently wrong I was. I flash on my reverie about them fucking on the sofa last night and wince.
‘You’re more my type anyway,’ says Lena.
Wait. What?
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that means when she changes the subject completely.
‘What would you like to eat tonight?’ she asks.
We decide on risotto and talk about food for a while – mostly the dishes our mothers would cook when we were little – then I close my eyes for what feels like a moment and when I open them again the sun has dropped notably in the sky. The park is quieter and several sunbathers have vanished. Lena is snoring softly beside me.
I check the time: half past six. We’ve been asleep for over an hour.
I lean up on one elbow towards Lena and as I do I notice my right shoulder is a vivid shade of pink. The sunburn spreads down my arm and halfway across my chest, my left side is still in shade.
‘Fuck!’ I say, waking Lena up.
‘What?’ she mumbles, half opening her eyes, then she notices my arm and her eyes fly open.
‘Oh fuck!’ she says. ‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault.’
‘I made us lie here,’ she says, and I find her concern quite sweet. She’s just woken up and her guard is down.
‘It’s my own dumb fault for not wearing any sun cream,’ I say, pulling the strap of my dress gently to one side. There’s a perfectly thin white line on my shoulder that looks like a string of spaghetti.
On the way home, Lena offers me her t-shirt to cover my shoulders, which I think is incredibly kind, since that would mean her walking the whole way back in her bra. But then, I’m not sure Lena cares about that sort of thing. I certainly wouldn’t if I looked like her.
The first thing I do when we get back to my apartment is take a cold shower. Lena gets straight to work on dinner, since we’re both starving. In my bedroom afterwards, I carefully pat myself dry, then lather my arm and chest in aloe vera lotion. There’s a knock on the door and I open it a crack to see Lena with a glass of wine. Her face is turned the other way.
‘I thought this might help,’ she says to the wall opposite.
‘Oh my God, yes please!’ I say, taking the glass from her. I watch her walk back towards the kitchen and the smell of lemon wafts past me. I can actually feel my mouth salivating.
I stand naked in my bedroom for a while, sipping on my wine and relishing the cool breeze on my skin as the lotion soaks in. I put on a strapless dress – the only thing I own that won’t hurt me to wear – and grimace at my reflection. I look like a drumstick lolly; bright pink on one half and cream on the other.
When I emerge from my room, the risotto is simmering away and Lena is standing by the window with her own glass of wine. She takes one look at me and covers her mouth with her hand, trying to suppress a laugh.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘This is definitely funny.’
Just then I notice the pages in her hand. It’s the story I finished last night. Lena looks at me sheepishly.
‘I hope you don’t mind. I found this on the table and I read it.’
‘The whole thing!?’
‘Of course,’ she says, ‘I liked it a lot.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, suddenly self-conscious. ‘It’s not done, I still need to edit it.’
‘Pffft!’ says Lena, waving her hand at me. ‘It’s good already. I know because I forgot where I was while I read it.’
I don’t know what to say. I can’t help but clam up when people give me compliments.
‘Thank you,’ is all I can manage.
‘So this is your job?’ she asks, and I laugh.
‘I wish! My job is to write press releases for a pharmaceutical company.’
‘Oh. Well, you should do this instead.’
‘Noted,’ I say with a smil
e, as though it’s that easy.
‘You write in pencil?’
‘I do. But I’ll type it up later.’
‘How did the pot fall?’ asks Lena, leaning out of the window now. I like how she constantly changes the subject without warning. As though she got what she needed from the last one and has no desire to linger.
‘I was trying to get rid of a bee.’
Lena looks at me quizzically.
‘Do you not like bees?’
‘Not particularly,’ I say. She frowns like that’s an odd stance to take on bees. I feel the need to explain.
‘When I was a kid,’ I say, perching on the edge of the sofa, ‘there was a boy on my street called Thomas who collected bees.’
‘Aw,’ she says.
‘No,’ I say, ‘not “aw” at all actually,’ and Lena looks at me as though bracing herself for something.
‘He would put the bees in his freezer, then attempt to resurrect them.’
‘Resurrect?’ she says, trying to place the word.
‘Bring them back to life,’ I say.
‘Oh! Like Jesus!’
‘Exactly, like Jesus, yes,’ I say, ‘but with bees.’
She sips her wine, cautiously invested in my story.
‘Anyway, one summer he froze an entire jar full of bees. Then, months later, he took them out one by one and tried to heat them up in the sun with a magnifying glass. Every kid on the street turned up to watch.’
Lena’s face contorts in a scowl.
‘Did it work?’
‘Of course it didn’t work!’ I say, laughing. ‘He just scorched a load of dead bees!’
She laughs and shakes her head.
‘The smell was awful … I remember the smoke rising up off their singed little bodies.’ Then I realise I haven’t thought about Thomas and his bees in years.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about that,’ I say.
‘It’s a good story,’ says Lena. ‘You should tell it before dinner always.’ Then she crosses back to the kitchen to check on the food, emphasising her punchline. I’m starting to get a read on her humour, I think.
‘This is ready now,’ she says, bringing the pot to the table. I grab two bowls and some cutlery and follow her.
‘Tell me about your boyfriend,’ she says, while she dishes out the food.
‘Oh, well, he’s nice,’ I begin, pouring us both more wine. She gestures for me to say more.
‘He’s very caring, reliable, calm …’
‘Fun?’ she asks, as we sit down and I’m surprised by my sudden candour.
‘He used to be. The past year or so has been kinda shit, to be honest.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Las Vegas.’
‘Ugh,’ she says, and I nod.
‘This is sort of a welcome break for the both of us.’
She pulls a face that says, Tell me about it, and I ask if she’s seeing anyone. She says she was, but they broke up a few weeks ago. From the sounds of it, the girl she was seeing hadn’t quite come to terms with her sexuality; she wanted Lena in private but wasn’t ready to display affection in public or introduce Lena to her family, even after three years as a couple. Lena ended it, but I can tell it broke her heart to do so.
‘Is there any chance you could work it out?’ I ask.
‘Maybe we could. But sometimes I don’t know if we should.’
‘Yikes,’ I say, and the heavy mood lifts a little when she laughs.
We chat for hours, abandoning the empty dishes when we’re done with dinner and relocating to the sofa. It’s easy to talk to her, maybe because of the transience of our relationship – she’s going back to Sweden tomorrow morning – or maybe because of the wine. I find myself talking to her about my childhood; things I’ve only ever discussed with Theo and my therapist. She tells me about her job, her first kiss, the kids who bullied her at school, and the time she almost drowned. This reminds me of the dream I had the other night, and I tell her about waking up all tangled in my sheets. I confess that I saw her in the window that night, that I’ve looked for her there since. She smiles at this but says nothing. Then she asks why I didn’t go away with Theo. I try to explain my feelings about Las Vegas, and by extension Disneyland, but I’m quite tipsy at this point and I’m not sure I’m articulating myself very well.
‘I just hate places and events where I’m supposed to feel something, you know?’
Lena nods.
‘Like Christmas,’ I go on, ‘or New Year.’
‘Fuck New Year,’ she says. ‘Needing to be happy at an exact time. Worrying you’re not happy enough. Or that next year you still won’t be. Too much pressure.’
‘That’s it!’ I say. ‘It’s the pressure. To feel stuff. That I can’t always feel.’
We both nod and sip our wine, then Lena says, ‘Nobody has ever died in Disneyland.’
‘Bollox,’ I say. ‘Somebody must have.’
She shakes her head solemnly.
‘If you die there, they take your corpse off their property before declaring you dead.’
‘Why?’ I ask in horror.
‘So it stays magical, I guess,’ says Lena. Then she sees the yoga mat on the floor and asks me about my exercise routine.
‘That’s the first time I’ve exercised in months. Because I was jealous of you!’ I blurt out.
‘Me? But you’re so skinny!’
Neither of us can believe this. She wants smaller boobs and thighs, and I’d give anything for her curves. She grabs a handful of flesh on her tummy and says she needs to lose weight. I tell her not to change a thing. She’s perfect. Actually perfect. If I could be any woman I would be her.
The conversation turns to sex, as it so often does late at night with a head full of wine. Lena has never been with a man and I find this fascinating.
‘You’ve never had a penis in you!’
She throws her head back and laughs.
‘Have you ever been with a woman?’ she asks.
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘Not really?’
‘I’ve kissed women,’ I say, suddenly very aware of myself, ‘and done … you know … stuff.’
‘It’s called a va-gi-na,’ she says, mockingly, and I put a finger to my lips and shush her, pretending someone will hear us. This makes her laugh again. I could get drunk on just her laugh.
‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘I got with my ex when I was seventeen and after that I met Theo, and I never really got to, you know, explore that side of me.’
‘Have you said this to Theo?’ she asks, and I nod.
‘He said it was hot. And he mentioned maybe having a threesome.’
Lena winces and I feel immediately embarrassed, for telling her and for choosing to be with a guy who said that. It hadn’t really bothered me before but now, saying it out loud to someone else, I feel a sudden flash of anger towards him. I confided in him that I might be bisexual and his first instinct was to fetishise it.
‘It doesn’t make him a bad person,’ Lena says, as though reading my thoughts again. ‘A bit immature, I think.’
She has a way of instantly putting me at ease.
‘Maybe you could help him understand,’ she continues. Then, perking up, she adds, ‘And hey! A threesome could be fun!’ She grins at me and lifts her eyebrows comically and I burst out laughing.
We’re still talking at 1 a.m., both of us getting sleepy, when I decide I should tidy up. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want the remnants of this evening still here when Theo gets home. I haven’t done anything I couldn’t tell him about – in fact I probably will tell him all about my day with Lena, so I know it isn’t guilt that’s driving me – but somewhere in me is a deep desire to erase all physical evidence of this night and keep a mental picture of it that only I can see.
I’m stood at the sink, elbow deep in sudsy water. Lena is sprawled out on the sofa.
‘Are you happy?’ she calls out to me.
‘I’m not unhapp
y.’
‘Wow.’
She sits up to look at me. Her face is unapologetic and flushed from all the wine.
‘Do you love him?’
‘Yes,’ I say, without hesitation, ‘and I know he loves me too. It just feels … different to how it used to.’
I can hear myself slurring. I’m drunk.
‘Sometimes I feel more like his flatmate than his girlfriend,’ I admit.
‘Then why do you stay?’
‘You ask that like it’s so simple,’ I say, a little frustrated with her now, ‘and maybe it is. Maybe what we had is gone. Maybe it’s more like a building that’s been burned to the ground than some lovely home I could just go back to and find everything intact and in its place. But there’s a paradox with relationships, isn’t there? The more time you’ve spent trying to make it work, the more time you’re willing to keep spending, trying to make it bloody work. I stay because I genuinely believe, if we both try hard enough, we can get back to that place. And I’m not willing to admit to myself that it’s just a pile of fucking ashes.’
I hear a little sniff and turn to see Lena wipe away a tear.
‘You have such a way of choosing words,’ is all she says.
I go back to the washing-up, scrubbing each bowl a little too aggressively, and a moment later Lena approaches with our empty wine glasses and adds them to the stack of dishes next to me.
‘Can I help you, please?’ she asks.
‘All good, thanks!’ I chirp back, maybe too chirpily.
I can feel her eyes on me.
‘Hold still,’ she says, and before I have time to react she’s stepped right up behind me. I can feel her breath on my neck.
‘Lena?’ I say, uncertain what’s happening.
‘Your shoulder is peeling,’ she says, and I look down to see that it’s red raw and flaking.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ I say.
‘May I?’
‘May you pull my skin off?’ I ask, looking back at her over my shoulder.
‘Yes,’ she says, staring into my eyes. I can smell the wine on her breath. ‘Please?’
I grab a towel to dry my hands, then I hold on to the edge of the sink. Lena steps closer and brushes my hair to one side, letting it fall across the front of my shoulder. She places one hand on my left arm to steady me, and I find myself looking down at her fingers pressing into my arm. Her right hand reaches towards me and I flinch.