Lolito (14 page)

‘Baby, you’re a firework.’

What does that even mean? There are better metaphors to flatter people with, I feel. Alice and I played metaphors in the mornings sometimes. You are an infinite Jacuzzi. You are a vat of Nesquik tea. You are afternoon naps.

She’s back.

She won’t leave.

Go away. You don’t live here any more. I’ll call the police.

Have fun.

Alan has a boner now. He isn’t trying to conceal it. It’s nudging my leg like Amundsen when he wants to be stroked. I don’t want to stroke you, Alan. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. There was nothing in the book
for this. I only know what to do if he tries to attack me. I know about gouging eyes and headbutting noses and kneeing balls. I don’t know about how to stop a smiling man from grinding me. He looks happy. He looks content.

Have fun.

Alan spins me.

I think, what is fun and how do you tell when you are having it? This doesn’t feel like fun. Maybe I don’t understand fun. Maybe this is exactly what fun is and I don’t like fun but that’s okay because I do like some things:

– Morning breakfast on the patio with Alice when it’s hot and we’re trying to remember what bad things we saw or did or were victims of the night before.

– Sharing vodka and coke with Alice in Geography.

– When Alice

– Masturbating as soon as you wake up. Sometimes over things from your dreams or vintage porns or Rashida Jones.

– Whistling to the theme tune for
CSI: New York
in bed when it’s late.

– Yogurt.

– Rum.

– Macy.

– I don’t know.

but not this. Definitely not this.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I need to go.’

‘Wait,’ Alan says.

‘Bye.’

‘I bought you a drink.’

‘Sorry.’ He seizes me by the arms. I see a bear the size of an apartment block, with fat yellow teeth connected by webs of saliva, and eyes like glasses of red wine. He is going to swallow me. I’m going to starve to death inside the cathedral of his stomach. My tiny people will marry his tiny people. We will all melt into the ground. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Please.’

I feel stubble against my cheek. I shout. Alan’s lips are in my philtrum. He is kissing me. I should hit him. I should stop hitting people. Hitting people is a counter-productive hobby, I feel. I don’t know what to do. Sleeping man should appear and be my captain. We had a deal. Come on. Appear.

Alan flies away from me. His parted hair sinks until it’s planted on the floor. Two men are standing over him. One of the men takes hold of his collar and whispers into his ear and pushes him towards the exit. I feel heavy. He disappears. I know he won’t appear again and it’s okay.

Have fun.

I’m sitting on the floor. I didn’t realise. Hands grip my armpits. I think about Alice. She’s here. She’s not. It’s the men. They carry me. They carry me through the shoulder gaps and the air is cool and my back’s against a cold brick wall. A cigarette is nudged into my mouth.

‘Thanks,’ I say. I blink and look up. One of the anti- Alan men is holding a lighter. His eyes are soft. He brushes his hair backwards. The sky behind his head has gone the colour of undiluted Ribena. We are in the smoking pen.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’ I scratch my head. ‘I feel drunk.’

They laugh. ‘You’re not gay, are you?’ the other man asks. He’s wearing small, circular glasses and a teal Ralph Lauren shirt.

‘I don’t think so.’

They laugh again and sit down on the asphalt in front of me. We are a triangle. Their names are Alex and Pablo. They ask who I’m here with and I say Macy and they want to know about her. I tell them about the Internet. I talk about Alice. I don’t know why. They laugh when I say I called her a walrus. They tell me to be nicer to Amundsen because it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be fingered by Aaron Mathews.

Alex and Pablo have been together for three years. They met because Alex saw Pablo’s picture in a fashion magazine and emailed him. Pablo is a model and Alex writes newspaper headlines. Sometimes they read
Twilight
to each other and laugh until they fall asleep.

‘You should write a letter,’ Alex says. ‘I did that with my last boyfriend. It forces you to slow down and organise everything in your head.’

‘I’ll try it, thanks.’

‘Don’t send it.’

‘Listen,’ Pablo says, jumping up. I listen. A familiar piano melody is floating out of the open doors. I stand up. It’s Vanessa Carlton. We go back inside. The room is loud with the traffic of voices. People are locked together, singing into each other’s mouths, wetly and inaccurately, and happily, like sea lions.

Alex puts me on his shoulders and I knot my arms around his neck. We sway. I shout the words, sometimes falling behind or ahead. I’m burning bright. I feel tall. I look down into bald islands on people’s heads. Alex is a concrete ballast. He won’t drop me. Maybe I’m gay. No, I already tried that. I’m okay, though. Not everyone is trying to kill me. Maybe I’ll forget tomorrow. Maybe I can move in with Alex and Pablo. When we go into The Outside, they’ll fight bears off with scooters and unempty threats.

The bridge happens.

Piano again.

Making my way downtown,

walking fast,

faces pass,

and I’m homebound
.

I sat in a bush opposite Alice’s house and listened to this song twenty-six times once. There were two boys and a moped between me and her front door. They were showing each other pictures of their girlfriends naked.
What the fuck is wrong with her nipples, one said. They look like blueberry muffins. Fuck you, the other one said. Kailey’s cunt’s like a BLT. I started laughing. The boys saw me. I threw myself out of the bush and ran until my legs felt like bricks. Alice laughed when I told her. She said they were her brother’s friends and that they were nice, just occasionally disgusting.

Vanessa finishes.

Alex sets me back down on my feet. Macy is a few metres away, watching us with her hands on her hips. She’s smiling. We kiss. I introduce her to Alex and Pablo. I tickle her hand. I go to the bar and order four bottles of champagne. The barman asks me if I’m sure.

‘Sure as I’ll ever be,’ I say. I have no idea why I say that. I’m not sure if it’s even a real saying. It doesn’t matter. I cover the numbers on the card machine while I enter my pin. We
cheers
with the champagne bottles. We
cheers
to Vanessa Carlton and we
cheers
to nothing because what else.

Alice Poem #4
I am going to have sex with someone else
for the first time in a long time and it is going
to be fucking wicked, okay? Underground
travel is the scariest bear when you are gone. How
we visited, threw one hundred pennies into
the Thames, drank rum, rode bronze lions. You
put cream on my hands when they came open and
were red. Maybe
if we crashed somewhere warm
it would be like
we didn’t really crash. Send me an airbag
if you want. You can make it out of your stupid
massive cellulite thighs you fucking gay bitch.

29

In the taxi back, Macy falls asleep on my shoulder. Her hair folds into a cushion for my head. The driver asks if I had a good night and I say yes. He says his football team fucked up today. I try to remember sports news. I don’t say anything.

‘Someone’s a sleepy bunny,’ he says, turning to look at Macy when we get caught behind a coach on its way to Brussels.

I worry that he’s going to rape us both so I nudge her awake and push money into his hand. We link arms and walk ten minutes back to the hotel. The lobby is empty except for its receptionist, reclining with a
Private Eye
propped in his lap. In the lift Macy keeps her eyes closed and her arms around my middle. In the room,
we make coffees to wake up a little. It’s four. We sit crosslegged on the bed, with the television on and showing a long-haired man in a parka walking along the Jurassic coast, talking in hundreds of millions of years.

‘I went there,’ I say. ‘It was a geography trip. Everyone got drunk and sneaked out of the hotel to swim. It was November, I think. I stayed in the room. I kept thinking about how currents would carry them out to sea and they’d all drown.’

Nothing happens.

‘Why are you so scared?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You weren’t scared tonight.’

‘Alex and Pablo were nice.’ ‘Some people are. Not all strangers are scary. If you talk to people, they normally aren’t.’ I think about sitting in the bush with Amundsen while it rained and meeting Mabel. I think about talking about nothing but feeling like I’d been given emotional liposuction. ‘Sometimes people get abducted and murdered.’

‘If you don’t try then you won’t meet the ones that won’t abduct or murder you. Would you have spoken to me if we’d met in a bar?’

‘No.’

‘Are you happy we’re here?’

‘Yes.’

She takes my mug and puts it next to hers on the
bedside table. Her mouth comes to mine. Our tongues wrestle. Macy’s hands slide into the back of my hair. I fill my fist with her skirt. I feel like a child holding onto his mum in a thunderstorm. I move my hand up. I think, these breasts have been restaurants. I think, stop thinking that. Macy pushes me down and climbs on top of me. Her skirt rides up past her knees and I glimpse the swarm of black pubes waiting behind her lace pants. I put my hands on her bum. I get a boner.

‘I don’t have a condom,’ I say.

‘What?’

She’s kissing my neck.

‘I don’t have a condom.’

She stares at me and sits back. ‘I’m forty-six,’ she says. ‘We don’t need a condom.’

‘I thought you were thirty-five.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

She gets off the bed and goes into the bathroom and locks the door. I sit up. I don’t understand. She does look thirty-five, I feel. I’m not good at ages. She doesn’t look forty-six. She definitely doesn’t look forty-six. I thought women liked it when you said they look young. I thought it was the best compliment. Mum always drops coins when the man in Tesco asks her for ID as a joke.

Maybe she needed the toilet.

Maybe she’s putting on sexy lingerie.

Something more comfortable.

I put my face against the bathroom door. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.

‘I’m okay,’ she says. It’s difficult to make out what she’s saying. ‘You should sleep. It’s late.’ Her voice is wet. I don’t know what I did. I did something wrong. Macy’s upset and it’s because of me. This is why I shouldn’t talk to people. Even nice people are bears when they make heavy weather happen in you.

I get into bed and pull the duvet over my head. I don’t feel tired. I drink a Tiger from the minibar and read about how to land hot-air balloons, make fire from rocks, and skin pigeons.

*

Macy fits herself in behind me. She shuffles her head and goes still. I’m the little spoon. Sometimes I pretend that the entire world is the big spoon, curling around me like a castle wall, endless and impenetrable.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

I open my eyes. I can see drawings of crooked red flowers and cats on the wallpaper. The curtains are open and the black sky has peeled away, leaving behind a blue the colour of flames on a gas hob. Macy’s in her underwear. I can feel the damp warmth of her leg skin on mine. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry for hiding. You made me panic.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No.’

Nothing happens.

Macy rearranges herself. I can feel her breath tides going in and out of the hairs on my neck. She folds an arm over my chest. Her toes tickle the soles of my feet.

‘Etgar,’ she says. ‘Can I say something?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re young.’

I try to laugh and shake my head. She can’t see it and it isn’t convincing. I stop trying to laugh. I say, ‘Okay, yes, I am.’ I awkwardly rotate my hand and lightly grab a fistful of her dress.

‘How young?’ She doesn’t sound angry. She sounds curious and far away.

‘Eighteen.’

‘Eighteen.’ Her finger traces my bellybutton. She forages in it. I think, I hope I didn’t leave anything in there. ‘Eighteen is young.’

‘I know.’

‘I lied too.’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t have a business. I stay at home all day. I play Internet poker and watch porn. I don’t know why I came here. It’s partly you and partly home. Is this making sense to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a husband. I didn’t tell him I was coming. I
just left.’ I roll over onto Macy. She grips my shoulder blades like stressballs. We are the only things left in the world. A zombie apocalypse has engulfed the planet, leaving only us intact. I feel like Macy has something else to say but she isn’t going to say it. I don’t mind.

‘I feel calm,’ I say. ‘I don’t feel anxious.’

‘Good.’

The reason I’m calm is because of being honest, I think. I’m not having to hold and remember made-up things like being a mortgage broker and living in London. If you lie to people then you expect people to lie to you back. Hattie. That is why I pretended to be Marie. I shouldn’t have pretended to be Marie. If I hadn’t pretended to be Marie then me and Alice would be lying in her bed watching the porn musical of
Alice in Wonderland
and drinking rum screwdrivers. Being dishonest makes me anxious, but I mostly want other people to not tell me the truth.

I lie on top of Macy and start to kiss her. My hands are flat on her temples. She cups my balls. I remember her saying about massive balls and I try not to laugh. I navigate her pants and slide a finger into her vag. It’s extremely wet. It feels like uncooked bacon. I think, actual human children have fought their way out of this cave. I think, stop thinking that. Country house. Igloo. Puerto Rican driftwood.

30

Me and Alice were sitting under a web of blankets in her living room. It was the month we stopped leaving the house, except to visit her mum in hospital, and buy vodka, and spend whole days getting drunk in the cinema, moving from screen to screen without paying. I rolled over and said it was a bad blanket fort, that it was cramped and the ceilings were too low. Alice said it wasn’t a blanket fort at all because we aren’t American. She said it was a blanket castle.