Love Me (19 page)

Or the lyrics might mean that he's moved on. In love with somebody else.

‘HEY!' shouts a sudden voice nearby and my thoughts break out and scatter like a flock of pigeons. A young man walks up and stands next to me. ‘Good afternoon. Or is it a good afternoon for you? Mine is so-so. Definitely not fantastic. But maybe it will be now you're here.' He's olive-skinned, with deep-set blue eyes, a shaved head and all the barely tangible signs of a broken mind. Or heart. Or both. ‘What's your name? They call me Lucky. I come here to think too . . . you know, when I'm not at my job. It's really
nice here. The river and the lights. It's really peaceful even though we're right in the middle of the city. It feels like you're far away from it all, the noise and cars and stuff, you know what I mean? Really far away, like in Europe or somewhere.'

‘Yeah,' I reply, and I'm thinking that cracked people are the most dangerous. Pain leaves them blind, deaf and drunk behind the wheel, driving in the wrong lane. And that's why most are afraid of people like this boy, including me.

‘Really nice. I like the water. I like the sky . . . sometimes I write things about them in my little book.' He lifts up a small leatherbound notepad. ‘I write about a lot of things. Stuff that affects me and makes me feel sad or angry or when I'm really scared and can't do anything about it I write it all down and I feel better.'

‘OK . . .'

‘Yeah. Sometimes I write to my mom and dad, but I don't send it though because I never really knew them and they're bad, they're not like you and me. I don't know you really well, but I can tell that you're a nice person and that you don't try to hurt people. My parents aren't like you. They're empty. Bad people always are. They're like, hollow. You know what I mean? Hollow. That's why they do things that are wrong, because they're trying to fill themselves up or something, I guess. My parents are in jail for things they did, but sometimes I still miss them. Human beings are like that. When we love people we still miss them even if they hurt us . . .'

‘I'm sorry but I'm,' I say, feeling chained and ill, ‘I'm late. I've got to go.'

‘Where are you going? Can I come?'

‘No. I don't know you.' I have to get away from him.

‘Can I take your number then? Maybe we can hang out sometime? Girls like the movies, right? Or to go to restaurants? We could do whatever you want . . .'

Quickly I walk away. I keep my face blank and unresponsive, refusing to acknowledge looks of sympathetic amusement from the lovers on the park bench and from a man walking his dog.

They may be laughing at the kid, but it feels as if they're laughing at me too. And I can't help but wonder how many times people have walked away from him.

Saint Lucia, 15 August

 

Cherry Pepper,

Castries never used to be so small or so achingly poor or rich or pretty. I walked by the deep harbour today, a steep drop from the road. There was still no kind of fence or barrier. I imagined that a person might jump without planning to, just for the oblivion of it. The market is a mountain of fresh produce. Music flows together seamlessly from a dozen sources, distilled by the sweet air. The children are neat and shiny, just like I was at eleven. This is where the first half of my childhood ended and the second one began, in the little toy-like house on Coral Street. Flaking pink and green paint.

I was sent here alone, with a light bag full of my belongings. I came up the front steps and stood in the doorway, gave my shy greetings. I had all the reserve of a child made aware of herself too early. Paul's mother embraced me with a hard species of warmth. She was strong, fair, a real mother. I thanked her for having me and she shushed me with vigour, hinting at favours that had gone back and forth between our families for longer than anyone cared to remember. She took my bag away and replaced it with a bowl of soup.

I absorbed my new world. Hotter, dustier and smellier. The Hippolytes' house was half the size of what I was used to. Cockroaches stalked the wooden floors like kings and only thin walls separated family from family, and nothing could ever be hidden. The sound of creaking beds, loud arguments,
fights and laughter would provide nightly entertainment from the neighbouring houses. But it wouldn't take long for me to realise I was happier here than in my mother's silent, immaculate home. I felt alive for the first time, electrified by the newness of it, by the freedom I suddenly had to be myself.

Paul and his two brothers bounced in the door at sunset with airy excuses for their mother and wide, happy grins. He was the one closest to me in age, although a couple of years younger, so we became fast friends. The games we used to play! Ticky tock with stones out on the sidewalks, and marbles, and tag. We'd race each other to the end of Coral St and back, laughing all the way.

Paul's niece lives here now, with her husband and children. It's changed less than I thought possible. The smell is the same, of wood expanding, of the drains, of food cooking, of time rolling out slow and fragrant. Enough time here for almost anything. Seems like there's an hour for every minute in America. The walls must be thinner between people. I can't help but wonder if Paul visits sometimes, now that he has no need of a plane ticket. Out of the corner of my eye, I almost see him standing at the window, looking out.

Being back here is another knot unpicked. I remember how strong I was, how determined to shed my eleven-year-old wounds and start fresh. Be something new. And here I am now, a grown woman, half a century later with my friend gone. But I'm not old, I realise that now. Youth is not in the age of a body, but in a person's willingness to start! And start again. And again. And again . . .

Soon,

Aunt K

I WAKE UP
to a guitar and the hot, dry sound of a man singing ‘Redemption Song'. A fancy cushion is rough under my damp face, my legs are thrown over the side of the living room couch. I feel far from rested. For three days I've knocked around this barren house and these bare neighbouring streets. Bare of Zed. Falling in and out of blue-black naps all day long, up at night watching game shows and porn. The basement oppressed me today. I felt all the weight of the house pressing down. I came up to the living room needing a change of scene, up to where my grandmother would sit at the window and watch the world before she died. The patch of world I could see through the glass was uneventful. I fell asleep again.

Cautiously I open one eye and Spanish is sitting cross-legged on the floor. He's wearing a velvet jacket in the eighty-degree heat but looks, if anything, as if he might be cold. He stops when he sees me looking at him, guitar cradled like a pet in his lap. I fuss with my rumpled clothes.

‘Aren't you hot?' I ask him. My voice is hoarse.

‘No,' he says, scratching his head through the wild curls.

‘But it's boiling in here.'

He shrugs. ‘I've been fasting. Everything changes when you fast for long enough. It's like the body gets quieter and quieter.'

‘Well that explains why you're so skinny.' His face: with all its starved, tortured angles. His lips are flushed, his eyes golden syrup against the beige skin. His hair is dirty, jeans cut haphazardly at the shin, exposing bony knees. His All Stars make my oldest, most disgusting pair look brand new.

‘What have you got against your body, anyway,' I say, pulling myself into a sitting position, ‘that you're trying to make it shut up?'

‘Nothing,' he says. ‘I just want to hear what my soul has to say.'

‘Right.'

‘Yours is like rock music,' he says.

‘Huh?'

‘Your body.'

I say nothing to that because I'm not sure if it's a compliment or an accusation. There's a chuckle. ‘Thrash metal.' Zed's voice from a deep corner of the room jerks me utterly awake. I didn't know he was here. Was half-convinced I was dreaming Spanish. They look impossibly staged. Zed almost invisible, sitting on the floor in the crevice between a sofa and the bookcase. Spanish sitting closer, pale brown washed gold by the sun through old curtains. I pull a cushion to my chest. ‘She's like thrash metal, dog.'

‘No, not thrash. Psychedelic rock, like in the seventies, man! Flowers and LSD,' says Spanish, slowly.

‘What time is it?'

‘'Bout three thirty.'

It's still light, so that means it's the afternoon. I wouldn't be sure if it wasn't for the windows.

Spanish starts singing again, softly this time.

‘What's your real name, anyway?' I ask.

He says, ‘That don't mean shit. A real name is an oxymoron. A name isn't real. It's just a symbol.'

‘Is that why you're fasting? Is your body just a symbol too?'

‘I'm fasting because freedom isn't free.'

‘Freedom,' I repeat. It's a word that always seems to swell and hover when you say it. And today the meaning eludes me completely. I chase it around my mind as if it's a helium balloon with the air escaping.

‘Freedom?' Zed's laugh is very slightly vicious. ‘You need to liberate your damn stomach, man. It ain't right. A free man doesn't choose to starve. Crazy-ass . . .'

‘You're only saying that shit 'cause you're a slave. That's exactly what I'm talking about! Too many of us these days are a slave to our nuts or our stomachs. Usually both. You're just too close-minded to see that.'

Zed laughs again and then we're all silent. Spanish lightly plays his tune, round and round. So natural he may not even know he's playing. His fingers are quick on the frets.

‘So when did you get back?' I ask Zed.

‘About half an hour ago. I went to a party that just kept on going.'

‘Right,' I say, anger leaden in my stomach. I can barely look at him. ‘Good, was it?'

‘Bananas.'

I spent a lot of my time awake today looking at Zed's website. I don't know what I was looking for. Clues? The URL should be www.needlesstorture.com.

There were images in his ‘gallery' from performances he's done, face shiny black and swirling with coloured lights. Mic clutched tight in his hand. I kept thinking about all the people who were looking at him that moment. Anyone could. They could be using him as a screensaver, waking up to his face every morning. Printing him on T-shirts. Jerking off. There were so many girls with their little soft-porny thumbnail pics and vapid comments that I had to leave the site or risk submitting to my darker urges. I felt like leaving a comment of my own:
Zed, please stop rapping, you're terrible at it and ugly and how's your herpes, by the way?

I didn't, though.

And just for the extra kicks, I found Max on her model agency website. She had an online portfolio and was unblemished in every picture, unassailable. In this one, a femme
fatale. In that one, an ingénue. A leggy alien. Every shot, flawless. She can be anything she wants, to anybody. I dared not Google my own name in case it just came back as Bible stories. Eden who? Indeed.

‘What? Did you miss me?' laughs Zed. ‘Looks like you been sucking on limes.'

‘Why don't you,' I say, evenly, ‘go suck an exhaust pipe?'

I swing my legs off the couch and almost catch Spanish in the head. He barely flinches. I think that odd word – freedom – again. I look at his clothes, wonder idly if he's had a shower today.

‘My band's playing at a bar downtown tonight,' he says to me quietly, his voice husky and sincere. Zed's phone rings and he answers it and I wonder who it is but I don't really care. Spanish says: ‘We gotta go do a sound check, get ready for our set.'

‘Cool,' I say. ‘Let's go.'

‘What?'

‘I said, let's go.'

Glance over at Zed, grinning into the phone, the long shadows of his eyes. Bastard.

Spanish smiles. ‘OK,' he says. ‘Yeah. Good. You know . . . I think it's gonna matter what you think of us. The guys are gonna drive down there in the van so we gotta take the subway.'

I go to the small shower a few rooms down, next to the one Zed sleeps in, and wash off my all-day funk. My head is full of plots.

In my towel, I go to the living room and say, pointlessly, ‘I won't be long.'

‘K,' says Spanish. Zed smokes and stretches.

In the basement I pick my short shorts up off the floor. They need a wash and I don't usually wear them outdoors, but whatever. Braid my hair sternly away from my face. The colour is washing out again, back to the sandy brown it was
before I dyed it. I go back to the living room and Spanish is alone. He's moved from the floor to the armchair and looks me over carefully. I wish I'd put on more fabric.

‘Ready?' he says.

‘Yep.'

We sit close on the subway, en route to Spanish's sound check. I feel liberated! Zed-less on purpose. Spanish idly strokes his battered guitar case and looks perfectly happy with our lack of conversation. Personally, I think that's a luxury of the properly acquainted.

‘You know what?' I say to the side of his face. My clicker likes him, squealing in excitement at the play of light on his cheekbones and jaw, at his careful way with the world, his lovely hands.

‘What, Ms Photo Obsessive Soul-stealer?' he says to the row of empty seats opposite. I snap them too, and then his eyelashes, his moist, translucent gaze.

‘I think the subway is where sinners go when they die.' He gives me a quizzical glance. ‘Seriously. It's like corporal punishment down here. The platforms are one hundred degrees and you're cooking like a pig on a spit, then on the train they freeze your ass off.'

‘I guess you wish you had on a velvet jacket right now too, huh?'

‘Very funny,' I laugh.