Foxes (12 page)

His voice cracks and I close my eyes, feeling his hurt expand around us and inside me, eclipsing my own.

This is when I could ask him what happened to him, how he ended up selling himself on the streets. This is the moment. But at the same time, I can’t. I’m scared by how much he’s hurt, and I’m scared talking about it will hurt him more, like talking about Dashiel hurts me. So I let the moment slip away and instead find myself changing the subject and asking, “Is Jack your boyfriend?”

Maybe I ask this question because if I confront it head-on now, it won’t be so bad later on. I’ll figure out a way to protect myself—people do that, right?

Micky moves onto his side. He’s so close to me.

“No,” he whispers. “I don’t know. Sometimes.”

When I turn my head, I see he’s watching me with a sad smile on his face.

“Don’t hide behind your hair with me,” he whispers. He sits up. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

I hear him throwing up in the bushes behind us. I wonder if I should go and see if he’s okay, but he’s back before I decide.

“Are you okay?” I ask, getting up.

“Yeah.”

Apart from breathing a little heavily, he looks as bright and happy as always. Except with Micky, I’m beginning to think “bright and happy” is sometimes a mask he wears when he needs to hide.

Before I walk home, Micky writes his address on my hand with my pen. He insists on writing on my hand rather than writing in my pad, and I squirm as he does it because I’m incredibly ticklish. This is something I don’t think anyone alive knows now but Micky.

“Come find me there tomorrow,” he says. “Any time before six.”

“Okay…. I could walk you home now.”

“You live that way, though.” Micky points across the park away from the river. It surprises me he knows this.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll be okay. I promise. You helped me get my superpowers back, remember?”

He says the words so softly, I have to lean forward to hear him. Micky mirrors my movement and our faces end up so close that my heart starts thudding hard, my whole body longing to be closer—a longing so great, so much bigger than me, that I want to do something stupid like put my arms around him and hold him tightly. I want to promise him everything, the sun, the stars. I want to give him back all the things that were ever taken away, to erase every hurt. Because something tells me he’s been hurt plenty.

I’ve never felt anything as strong as this.

I need to find a way to
stop
feeling like this.

“Tomorrow,” Micky says as he leaves.

I watch him walk across the bridge to the embankment on the other side. I walk after him a little way. He’s almost out of sight, but I could catch up. I could still follow him, just for a while, just to make sure he’s okay. But he didn’t want me to walk him home. I screw my eyes shut and grip on to the wall of the bridge until he’s gone.

Following him when he doesn’t want me to would be weird, and I don’t want to be weird anymore.

Before I walk back to my shell, I take out my pad and copy Micky’s address into the back. I write it over and over, until it’s as though I’ve carved it into my skin and I’ll never forget it.

IT’S EARLY
when I wake. I think about my dreams as I warm a pan of water on the stove to wash with, mixing in a little of the flower water I made from windblown flower petals I collected in the summer, and inhaling the fragrant steam.

This morning I feel so good. I’d forgotten I could feel like this. A little voice nags at me that I shouldn’t let myself feel this way. Pictures of Dashiel are there every time I close my eyes, but all I see today is his smile.

I stand in the nicest of the shower cubicles—the one beneath the window—and slowly pour the warm water over my naked body. I think about Micky and watch my cock grow hard. I stare at it, stuck out in front of me. Feel the tug low down in my stomach:
touch me
,
touch me
. I think about how touching myself is comforting. But I won’t. Not when Micky is the only thought in my head. It’s wrong. It’s like I’m using him. I want to be Micky’s friend.

THE SWIMMING
pool is silent when I leave. It’s still early, and Milo was shouting out in the night.

Outside, the can of soup is still untouched by the foxes. They’ve probably moved on now.

I head up to the high street. I want to do something to make Micky smile.

For five minutes I stand outside the Chinese flower shop, building myself up to going inside and asking if the flower lady has anything she’d like me to fix. Flower Lady doesn’t speak much English, and I’m always a little uncomfortable in her presence. She tries to look at my face, which in turn makes me try to hide it even more. But I really want some flowers for Micky. I think flowers will make him smile. I took Dashiel a bunch of daffodils I picked in the park once, and he smiled for ages after I gave them to him. But it’s winter and there are no flowers in the park for me to pick now.

Flower Lady is out the back when I push the door open—the bell above the door chimes and she calls out that she won’t keep me waiting.

Inside, the flower shop smells wonderful. It’s a tiny space right by the train station, with hundreds of flowers packed in. Around fifty black buckets are stacked up in tiers five or six high along the walls, several bunches of flowers in each one.

“What you want?” Flower Lady asks, marching up to me.

She is always abrupt. It makes talking to her harder, but I’ve seen her with other people enough times to know it’s just how she is with everyone.

Every time I see her, I expect her to be taller. Her head barely reaches my shoulder. From the tight wrinkles that map out her skin and the graying black hair she wears scraped back into a bun, I guess she must be about as old as Milo.

I take a deep breath. “F-flowers,” I stutter. “Do you have anything I can fix?” I have fixed a few things for her before, and she paid me with delicious home-cooked Chinese food.

“No fix.” With her arms folded across her chest, she looks around at the flowers. “Delivery just come. You help. I give you flowers.”

I unload the delivery for her while she haggles with the driver over something. I’m not really listening and they’re talking too fast for me to catch every word. I suspect some of it is Chinese.

It takes about forty-five minutes for me to unload the buckets. When I’m done, Flower Lady hands me a little pot of dumplings in meat stew.

Disappointment makes my chest feel tight. She’s forgotten I wanted flowers.

“Thank you,” I say. I am hungry.

Flower Lady shakes her head and just about pushes me through to the front of the shop.

“Choose.” She points to the lower tier of flowers. Fat bunches of small pretty flowers, all pink and white. The sort of flowers you’d find growing on a hillside somewhere. “You take two bunch. You hard worker. Tell her she lucky girl.” Abruptly she turns and walks away.

I almost correct her—people always just assume—but I don’t. With a giddy feeling in my stomach, I pick out two bunches, one pink and one white. Then I head outside, my arms full, toward the river and the address Micky gave me.

I WALK
by Battersea Park, thinking about last night, thinking about Micky, wondering if Dollman ever comes this far, if he ever ventures across the river.

I stare at the Pagoda. It looks completely different in the daylight.

Up ahead, Chelsea Bridge is all triangles and lines. The sunlight on the river is glasslike and burning bright. It hurts my eyes and I squint.

I’m still squinting when I see the figure on the wrong side of the railings, leaning out over the water. I blink, thinking my eyes are playing tricks on my brain, but the figure is still there.

It’s probably a kid messing around, doing it for a dare. It’s a good fifty-foot drop into the murky, cold Thames. If you don’t break your neck as you hit the water, you could easily drown from shock or cold. But there is no one else around, apart from a few commuters who cross the road so as not to be involved in anything outside of themselves.

It starts to sink in that it might be exactly what it looks like—that there is someone standing on the lip of the bridge, holding on to the railings as they lean out over the water. Someone who’s thinking about letting go, about falling. The figure is tall and extremely thin, with curly hair that looks like it could be a wig.

It looks like Dieter’s wig.

Dieter?

My heart thumps. I walk quicker, breaking into a run when I notice the people around me, at how they’re avoiding this.

Why is Dieter leaning over the water? Why does he look like he’s going to jump? Fuck.

I slow my pace a few meters from him, and walk. I don’t want to startle him.

When I think I’m close enough for him to hear me, I speak. “Dieter?”

He doesn’t respond, but his shoulders tense, so I know he heard me. His thin hands grip the railing tighter. His skin is so translucent I can almost see the bones beneath.
Fragile
, I think suddenly.
All his bark and bite are just a cover for him to hide behind.
Even the way his whole body is trembling makes him seem smaller and in need of protection. He must be shivering from cold. The winter sun is shining, but the wind has a bitter edge to it and Dieter’s only wearing his working clothes: skinny black trousers and a thin black T-shirt with a see-through blouse over the top. His large narrow feet are bare.

Funnily enough, this is the thing that makes everything seem so real. The fact that Dieter has lost his precious shoes somewhere is what really scares me.

I put the flowers and my little box of Flower Lady’s food down on the pavement. I haven’t eaten the dumplings yet—I was going to share them with Micky.

Moving as carefully as I can, I slip over the railings. I watch Dieter the whole time, checking his reaction. I don’t move too close.

“What are you doing?” I ask, peering down at the dark churning water and pressing my back tight against the railing. My stomach feels as though it has crawled up into my throat.

Dieter snorts as if it’s a stupid question. And maybe it is, but if he said it out loud or wrote it down, he might begin to see what he’s doing a bit more clearly. That’s how it works for me.

It’s true he’s treated me like crap, but I don’t know—it’s another fucked-up thing in my head probably—seeing someone hurting makes me want to take the hurt away.

“Nice day for a swim,” I say.

My mouth is dry, and no matter how many times I swallow, it’s making no difference.

Dieter turns his head and my skin prickles as he looks at me, but I don’t take my eyes off the water. I can’t. My blood rushes like the river below us.

“There really is something badly wrong with you, isn’t there?” he replies flatly, with none of his usual venom.

“Definitely,” I agree. “Where are your shoes?”

For a moment he doesn’t say anything.

“Down there,” he says eventually, lifting his foot off the narrow ledge and pointing at the water with it.

“Want me to go and get them for you? I’d quite like a swim.”

I’m not above saying anything. I think it’s probably a good thing to keep him talking. Keep him from thinking about whatever it was that dragged him over here. Careful not to move my head too much, I glance around, hoping someone else will stop and help. But all that happens is that a few gazes avoid mine as though there is a force field separating us. Maybe someone will call the police, because I have no idea what I’m doing.

Dieter grows silent again.

“Are you really going to jump?” I ask him.

My fingers ache from how tightly I’m gripping the railing. Slowly I ease one hand open at a time and edge a little closer. I dare not lift my feet from the ledge, so I shuffle them along. My boots are heavy and big and not good for standing on narrow ledges.

“What do you think?” he says in a hollow voice.

“Why?” He doesn’t answer. “Because of Dashiel?” I say softly.

Dieter makes a small sound, a choked-back gasp, and when I drag my eyes away from the water, I see the tears running down his face.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

But it’s the wrong thing because he gives this strangled shout and I’m so shocked and scared he’s going to jump that I fling my arm out to stop him and end up half hanging over the water, my right hand pressed against his chest, my left hand straining to hold my body weight.

Dieter appears as surprised as I am, and for a moment we stare at one another. It’s as though a channel has opened between us and for the first time I really see him. Beneath my palm I can feel his heart beating really fast. It occurs to me he could push me off if he wanted, and if he did, I could end up dead in that water.

“How do you do it?” he whispers, his voice rough. “Look at you. You have nothing. You live out here and you’re—” He turns his head and his gaze falls on my flowers and the little pot of food I left on the pavement. “—buying flowers for someone. How can someone want you?”

“They don’t,” I say honestly. Right now everything but truth has been stripped away. “The flowers are to make someone I like smile.”

It suddenly strikes me that perhaps Dieter’s need to hurt people is like Flower Lady’s abruptness—just the way he has become to cope with the world. I don’t want to be like that, but I know I have my own detrimental ways of coping.

“Why don’t you give up?” Dieter frowns as if he genuinely doesn’t understand why I’m not jumping off this bridge with him. “If I looked like you, I’d give up.”

“I can’t.” I swallow. That question makes me angry too. Shouldn’t it be more than what I look like that matters? I wish I didn’t give a fuck.

I’m starting to feel really dizzy. My fingers are aching, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep gripping on like this. If I lift my hand away from Dieter’s chest and ease myself back, I wonder if he’ll stay where he is. I’m scared he won’t. His eyes are a little wild, the energy he’s giving off too unpredictable.