Dead of Light

Dead of Light

Chaz Brenchley

 

Book View Café

 

May 2010

 

It was a good night, the night my cousin Marty died.

Not a great night, by definition: a great night would see me in bed with Laura, sated and sleepless and sublime. I didn't have great nights. By definition.

A good night, though. That, for sure.

Good night, bad bad morning.

o0o

Actually we'd been on a rage that evening, pre-arranged: Rick and Angie, Dermot and Vanessa, Colin, Laura dark and lovely and me. Two medics, two linguists, one lit-freak, one agric and one fine artist, not necessarily in that order. Not necessarily in any order, rarely the same order from one term's end to the next. Always something of a group, though, always coming back together at the last, however often or however violently we might fall apart betweentimes.

Just then we were a peaceable kingdom, two steady couples and three singletons and not a quarrel among us, not a bone to be picked, seemingly no tensions: only my own long hunger that I'd long since learned to hide. To tell truth I was never sure if any of them even remembered, these good close friends of mine.

It was Laura who'd phoned that day — or at least had phoned the upstairs neighbour, who'd come down to fetch me and then unashamedly listened in, her perk for the service — Laura who'd set this particular ball to roll. “Coming out to play, Ben?” she'd said; and not a question, that, it was a command. Not allowed, to say no to that particular invitation. Impossible, in any case, to say no to her.

So I only asked when, and where. Where was Albuquerque, a glossy, glitzy video bar, far too pricey for every day but Laura didn't, wouldn't talk to me every day and this was a rage anyway, we wouldn't be there long; when was six o'clock, cocktail hour. “If you're going to mix your drinks,” she said, “which we are,” she said, “you might as well start with a mixture. Don't be late.”

“Would I?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “you wouldn't. Not you,” and for a moment she sounded wistful, almost, and I thought that maybe one at least of my good friends did remember. She ought to, she of all of them, she had most cause. She
was
the cause, damn it (but never
damn her
, never that; all unwitting, it was none of it her fault), she was the be-all and end-all, she ought at least to remember that.

o0o

I was early and she was late, and that might have been deliberate but probably wasn't. We spent enough time on our own together,
no need to get paranoid about this, Macallan.
Except that love is paranoid, it has to be, that's how it works.
She doesn't want to be alone with me,
my sweetly treacherous mind was telling me,
she's hanging back to be sure the others are here.
And maybe she was, but there could be other reasons. She always liked to make an entrance, Laura.

And she certainly did it that night, she swept in like a star, a constellation of one. Dark star, all in black tonight and radiant, pulsing, dangerously electric. Touched us all where we stood at the bar, a pat on the bottom or a squeeze of the shoulder; I got a fist in the ribs, when I passed her the drink that stood waiting.

“Don't get clever, Macallan,” she said, growling, scowling, sipping.

“I know what you drink,” I said,
and what you like best to eat, and to wear, and to dance to; I know your shoe size and your bra size and the size of your slim, slim waist.
“What's your problem?”

Which was tempting fate, perhaps, she just might be in the mood to answer that; but no, she let me off easy. She only said, “Don't take me for granted, right?” as if I ever would or could or had the grounds to, and clinked her glass privately against mine before she drank again.

Too many messages in that, too complex to work out in company; or else there was nothing at all, just a brief light-hearted interchange between two friends in a bar at the start of a long light-headed evening. I smiled, toasted her silently, more with my eyes than my glass, and turned to talk to Angie; and if Laura didn't know how hard that was for me, to turn those few inches from one friend to another — well, it was only one more small entry in the very comprehensive lists of things that Laura didn't know about my sad life, the long sad years before I met her and every sad and solitary hour since.

If
she didn't know.

o0o

It's a short step from Albuquerque to Milan. Or in this case
il Milano
, which is the best Italian restaurant in town, and therefore the one that knows us best. We got our regular table and our regular waiter, young Gino with the big eyes and the cherubic smile, the party soul and just as well his mother's in Treviso, she wouldn't want to see what we've made of her cute son or what he does for fun these days. She really, really wouldn't want to see it.

Two litres of the house red to get us started, orders for
gamberoni
— “shells
on
, for Christ's sake, Gino, I shouldn't need to tell you that, where've you been, sodding Treviso?” — and
antipasti
and sardines; and the cigarettes came out while we were waiting, and already the lights were starting to shine a little brighter, we were sharp and witty and laughing loud, we loved ourselves and each other and too bad if the rest of the world didn't love us, what the hell did they know?

o0o

No need to hurry: no pressure from the staff, and we weren't going anywhere that wouldn't wait for us. So we ate through the menu, and idled over espressos and liqueurs, amaretto or
sambucca a la mocha
, pale blue flames and three coffee-beans floating, “like drowned flies,” Vanessa said, because she always did say that, it was the ritual.

And then it was out into the street and into the first pub we came to, one quick pint and on to the next; and now we were hurrying suddenly, last orders like a whip to sting us on. Not a problem, last orders, this was a rage and we weren't going to
stop
, we weren't going home at eleven o'clock like good little children ought. It was a challenge, that was all, something to be defied, to be stared down and defeated.

o0o

After the pubs, the clubs. We wanted to dance, we
needed
to dance; with such a load aboard, on such a night, we needed to move and sweat in a hard light, we needed each other's hot bodies as a counter to our own.

Rites of Passage
is a queer club, by and large;
Gay Rites
they call it, as they would. But they're a tolerant crowd, they give us rights of passage, in and out as we choose most nights and welcome on Thursdays. This was a Thursday; a good rage doesn't happen by chance, it just has to feel as if it did.

So we pulsed and thundered, music in our bones and every cell awoken. Between dances we drank Red Stripe viciously cold and straight from the cans, and then hauled each other back to the dance floor again. And yes, I danced with Laura, how not? Been doing it for years. Warm body, fine bones, skin oiled with her own sweat and mine and five hundred others', the air was sodden with it. And oh, it was cruel to hold her, separated by so little and so much; and oh, what the hell, it was just my life, that was all. And so much better than the other thing, not to dance with her, not to see or speak, not to touch or hold or sweat with her at all.

o0o

After the sauna, the ritual plunge into ice water; after being so hot, crucial to be cool for an hour. We left
Rites
before it closed, waited for Colin to be sick in the gutter — just another part of the ritual, he always was; not the booze, he said, it was the dancing and the heat and then the sudden change, air and silence did him in — and straggled arm-in-arm up a quiet alley that was only a little noisier for our arrival. Cooling already, we were, running close to empty.

We hammered discreetly on a discreet little door, no lights showing, no noise. And known here too we were let in, we were found a table and a bottle of bad German wine; and we sat still like good children and listened to the jamming. Blues and easy jazz, nothing frenetic this time of night, just souls in harmony doing what comes right.

o0o

About four o'clock they threw us out. Nothing aggressive, just, “Don't you kids want to go home?” and
take the hint, if you want to be taken back.

We did that, we always did. A night at Delilah's was a privilege and we valued it, wouldn't abuse it. Wouldn't take risks, so we took the hint instead, said goodnight and left them. Stumbled over our feet a little on the way out, perhaps, but it was dark in there and the tables were too close, and the aisles filled with bags and instrument-cases and people's big feet; and swayed all across the road as we headed for home, perhaps, but there wasn't any traffic and we were just reclaiming the highway for pedestrians, and what was wrong with that?

Split up when we had to, going this way and that. Said goodnight slowly, slurringly, fumbling over arrangements to meet again, some of us in one place and some in another; and said goodnight again, and some had hugs for everyone and some had kisses for a few. And I got hugged and kissed, no different; but not as I should have been in a world with no wicked sense of humour, not as I yearned to be. She kissed me, sure, but only on the cheek and fleetingly; and her hand squeezed my arm, and what did that mean?

“'Night, then, Ben,” she said; and
Yeah, right
, I thought, supplying the elision for her, getting at least one message I could read tonight.
Good night, chalk it up as that, that's good enough.

And I smiled, brushed a hand meaninglessly across her shoulder, jerked it at the others like a last brief wave and went walking off up the hill alone.

Again.

Naturally.

o0o

Home to a dark flat, and the Yale achingly hard to get into the lock, scratching and scratching; and then at last inside, grabbing the door to stop it crashing too loud against the wall, not to wake Jacko. Closing it so, so softly; and going through to the kitchen almost on tiptoe, opening a fresh pint of milk and swallowing it straight from the carton, chug-a-lug; and dribbling toothpaste onto my treasured silk shirt when I cleaned my teeth, and standing for a minute over the toilet wondering if I was going to puke, and thinking maybe I should take a bowl to bed with me just in case, and
no, that'll only make it more likely, forget it, you're not going to puke, not you, boy, not tonight...

And keeping a hand on the furniture or the wall all the way through to my bedroom, and stripping off in about ten seconds and dropping onto the bed because I couldn't stand upright any longer, feeling my way under the duvet almost comatose already, and the last thing I heard was Jacko coming in, being desperately quiet, not to wake me....

o0o

And that was the night, that good good night; and then there was the morning.

Which began with a hammering, more than in my head, dragging me halfway up from sodden dreams; and then light and action, more than movement, a tremendous shaking; and I opened claggy eyes on the morning and my hangover and Jacko.

He was bending over the bed rolling me to and fro with hands of long experience, almost a year my flatmate and this the only way to wake me. Surprising that even this worked, after a good rage; and we'd never had the chance to find out before, no one had ever
wanted
to wake me after a good rage, and why the hell was he doing it now...?

I grunted, shoved him away, glared at him as best I could with no focus yet to my bleary sight. I could see his wild hair, an afro wrecked by sleeping, and I could see his weak beard, too thin to hide the weak chin behind it; I could see his bathrobe hanging open, showing his scant red body-hair and his bones beneath; I still couldn't see what he was here for.

Couldn't ask either, I was in no fit state to shape an English sentence. Sour saliva pooled behind my teeth; if I tried to use my mouth too cleverly I could yet throw up, and with a witness now. So I ran a hand down over my face, rubbed at a night's rough stubble, grunted again, the best he was going to get. It was enough, apparently.