Foxes (25 page)

I don’t look in the mirror much.

Below the picture Micky has written in careful block letters:
Be back at 5pm. M. x

Judging from the light outside, it must be midmorning. The day is overcast, the sky endlessly white. I smile to myself as I boil the water for a shower. Those feelings that wanted to burst out of me last night have taken up residence, filled up every empty space with brilliance and warmth. For now at least, anything seems possible.

I’M SITTING
on the edge of the pool with Milo when we hear the heavy roar of a truck outside. We glance at one another worriedly. The only vehicles that come down here in the daytime are the occasional council vans to check all the boards are still in place and that no one can get in or is living here. No one usually gets out of the vans, but there’s always a first time.

I leave Milo to get to his feet and jog over to where the old lifeguard’s tower is propped against the wall. From the top you can see out the window to what once was a small car park (and is now the place where sofas come to die) in front of the swimming pool.

“It’s a salvage truck,” I hiss to Milo. “One of those flatbed ones… and there’s a
bath
on it.”

There’s other stuff too, but the bath stands out because it’s gleaming and white and everything else looks really broken.

The truck backs up until it can only be a foot away from our plywood door.

“What the fuck is it doing?” Milo shouts over the noise.

The passenger door opens and—I nearly fall off the tower—Micky jumps out, yells something to the driver and runs around to the back of the truck.

“Where are you going?” Milo calls after me as I run outside.

Micky and the truck driver are unhooking the back of the truck, which is so close to our plywood door that I can only just squeeze out of it.

“Hi,” Micky says, grinning widely, his eyes full of light as he sees me. “I brought you a present. Could you give us a hand just to steady it as we get it off the truck?”

I stare at him blankly. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I don’t really care. He’s luminous and happy, and that’s all I want. All I ever want.

“Okay.” My shoulder hurts, but I can try.

The truck driver jumps up onto the bed of the truck and pushes the bath toward us. His arms are as big as my thighs, and he has a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. But that’s all background noise. I can’t take my eyes off Micky.

“The bath, it’s for you…. That okay?”

I nod.

A bath.
Micky has brought me a bath.
What?

Both the truck driver and Micky are waiting for me to do something.
Help guide the bath off the truck?
a little voice helpfully supplies.

Though it’s pretty unwieldy, the bath is not as heavy as it looks, and I can help lift it one-handed. It’s made to look like one of those antique cast iron ones you get in old houses, but it’s made of plastic or acrylic or something, and the heaviest parts of it are probably the big claw feet it stands on.

We set it on the ground.

“Wait a sec,” Micky says and dashes back to the cab. He returns with a bundle of plastic bags and, bizarrely, hangers, which he arranges carefully in the bath.

After the truck driver leaves, Micky and I manage to carry the bath and everything in it all the way to my room, to Milo’s calls of “What the fuck is that?” and “Do you know how ironic it is that you’re carrying a bath into a swimming pool?”

“You’re strong,” I say, ignoring Milo as we put the bath down outside my door. “You don’t look it, but you are.”

Micky raises an eyebrow and bites his lip as he tries not to smile. “If you’re looking for big muscles, you’re gonna be disappointed, but I’ve got superpowers, remember,” he whispers.

I’m not looking for big muscles.

We put the bath in one of the shower cubicles.

“It’s going to take a lot of gas to heat enough water for it.” I wish I weren’t so practical. Micky has brought me a bath, for God’s sake. I almost laugh. That’s about as far from practical as you can get.

Micky pulls a face. “I didn’t think of that. Do you have enough for now? We can get more gas tomorrow.”

I shrug my good shoulder. I have no idea.

To be honest I’m confused about what he asked last night and the bath he brought as a gift now.

“So the bath is somehow where you wanted to take me?” I ask.

“The bath is just for you. Nothing to do with where we’re going tonight.”

He pulls his phone out of his hoodie pocket and glances at the time. “We’ve got some stuff to unpack,” he says brightly. “You still trust me, right?”

Right now I can’t imagine ever not trusting him, even though the surprise element has me feeling apprehensive about what he’s planning.

I touch the bath, letting my fingers trail around the smooth, cool edge of it. One of the sides is cracked near the top. I trace the jagged line with my finger—it’s still a beautiful thing, even with this small imperfection.

“You like it, right?” Micky asks.

Smiling, I nod, and he looks so pleased and at the same time sort of relieved, and it makes me even happier.

KNEELING NEXT
to the bath, Micky pokes around in the bags he brought. He holds out one of the bags with a hanger attached.

“It’s a suit,” he says in response to my frown. “Just borrowed for tonight. It’s for you to wear.”

I’ve never worn a suit, or a dress shirt, or anything like the pair of gleaming black shoes he’s just handed me. My eyes feel pinned open as I stare at them.

“I kind of guessed your sizes. It’s only for one night. Even if they don’t fit perfectly, I’m sure we’ll manage.”

There is a tag on the suit bag: “Savile Row. Suit Hire: da Silva.” The one on Micky’s suit reads: “Savile Row. Suit Hire: Crestwell.”

“How did you afford all this?” He’s not working, and I don’t want him to have to go back on the street.

“Like I said, borrowed. I’ll take them back tomorrow. It’s no big deal, honestly.”

But I can tell it’s bigger than he’s letting on by the flush staining his cheeks and the way he’s not turning to look at me.

I leave him to fiddle around and set the pan on the stove to boil some water. It’s probably going to take a while to heat enough panfuls of hot water for a bath.

Outside, the sky is darkening to night. I crouch down and let the warmth of the stove take the chill out of me.

What does “borrowed” even mean? Did he steal this stuff? Does it bother me? If I’m honest, it kind of does, but not in an obvious way, because it’s not the actual stealing that bothers me, but that this idea of Micky that I’ve got in my head might be wrong.

A warm hand strokes across my shoulder blades—the sudden touch nearly has me vaulting forward over the stove.

How he manages to move so silently, I have no idea.

“Please don’t ask me how, but I know who these suits belong to, and I know they won’t mind us borrowing them, I swear. I didn’t steal them… if that’s what you’re worried about. Honestly, I’d make the worst thief. And the bath was being thrown out of this house that’s being renovated up the road because of that tiny crack in it, and the truck driver was coming down this way with all the salvage, so he brought me with it….”

For a moment his hand stills, his palm flat against my back, and I’m certain we’ve been transported to another dimension where he’s going to move closer, put his arms around me from behind, and hug me. I want him to. Stupidly, my heart speeds up in anticipation. But of course he doesn’t.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?” I wonder out loud, frowning at my hands.

“I haven’t got a clue. It’s just, I’d probably be thinking the same things. And if I’m thinking something, I generally end up saying it.” His smile is sweet and lopsided. “Mind reading would be, like, fourth on my superpowers wish list, though.”

“What would be number five?”

Micky laughs loud and bright. The sort of laugh that would turn heads at parties, make people wonder why he’s so happy. “You know, you’re the only person who’d ask that.”

AFTER I’VE
boiled six panfuls, the gas canister runs out. We add in some cold, and I let Micky choose which perfume he likes best because I have every intention of letting him be the first to take the bath. He chooses a heady rose one, but then he walks over to the door and says, “Take your time. I’m going to see Milo.”

He doesn’t even let me respond before he steps outside and closes the door.

I listen to the tiles cracking like fireworks as he steps inexpertly across them, a quick knock on a door, then Milo inviting him in.

THE BATH
is heaven. I stretch out and submerge myself until my pulse is a drum in my ears, then lie in the water happily doing absolutely nothing but trying to stay afloat for about five minutes—until I begin to think about having no hot water for Micky to have a bath or a shower, and then I get out.

After drying myself I put the suit on. It takes me ages to do up the buttons on the shirt one-handed, but I get there eventually. I ease the jacket over my shoulder and fasten the single button on the front.

It feels so strange. Good strange. Like dressing up and becoming someone else. Like putting on a costume.

There is even a red silk tie I don’t have to tie—it’s already knotted—so I just place it over my head and one-handedly tighten the knot. I’m so pleased about this, as I have no idea how I’d tie a tie.

I don’t have a mirror. Milo does, but I want to see myself alone first. I don’t want to be shocked and disappointed with an audience. There used to be some mirror tiles in one of the public bathrooms, so I put on the expensive (I just know they’re expensive) shoes and creep across the broken tiles and around the swimming pool.

I forget to bring my lantern and there is not much light, but still I don’t recognize myself. The skinny kid in my imagination is not the broad-shouldered young man filling out the suit in front of me. This young man is taller than I imagine too. I tuck my hair into the collar of my shirt and stare at my face. Even though I don’t look in mirrors often, my reflection is familiar enough to me that the scars aren’t shocking. They’re just scars, aren’t they? Jagged lines from eye to nose, mouth to cheekbone. Yet I still wish I had a mask—I could be the superhero pretending he’s hiding his identity when really he’s just hiding who he is.

Slowly I walk back to my room. Micky must hear me—I’m not trying to be quiet now—and he opens Milo’s door and watches as I walk toward him. There’s a strange expression on his face.

“Wow.” He smiles and swallows a few times, as if whatever it is he’s swallowing won’t go away.

It’s a nice suit. I’m pretty wowed at it too. I run my fingers down the lapels. Whatever material it’s made of is heavy but not too thick.

“Fits pretty well,” I say, peering down at myself.

“I like your hair like that. It suits you.” Micky’s voice has this tight edge that makes me look back up. His eyes are as dark as the sky outside.

“He’s not wrong,” Milo says, coming to stand behind Micky.

Feeling self-conscious I untuck my hair from my shirt. I’d forgotten I’d done that. When the wet strands hang loose, I feel more like me, and yet somehow I don’t want to. All of a sudden I want to pretend again. Just for a few hours, dressed like this, going wherever Micky is taking me, I want to pretend I’m someone else. Someone he could be with, maybe.

I gather my hair together and hold it in a loose ponytail. “I could put it back like this… or you could cut it?” I say hesitantly to Micky.

Cutting it is more than pretending for a few hours, but I don’t know… I’m caught up in the moment, perhaps, and I kind of want him to.

Micky swallows again, and I think maybe he really has got something stuck in his throat. “Okay. I… I do have scissors. Are you sure about this?”

I nod and go back to my room to grab my lantern before he can talk me out of it. I take him to the bathroom with the mirror tiles. Of course Milo comes to watch. He brings his chair, the only chair in this whole place, for me to sit on.

“You could do this in my room. I have a mirror. It’s dark in here,” he grumbles.

That’s the point, though. Dark and dreamlike, and I can pretend.

Micky instructs Milo to hold the lantern up right next to my head. He has a black case with him, and he crouches down and fiddles around inside, taking out tubes of cream, cans of hair spray, thick brushes, and about a dozen skinny cases of makeup, until he finds a small pair of scissors and a black comb somewhere near the bottom.

“How would you like it?” he asks standing back up, and I glance back at him with wide eyes, feeling everything is quite surreal. “I mean, I’m not a hairdresser or anything, I only use these to tidy up loose strands.” He waves the scissors around, perilously close to my face, and I flinch back violently enough that he gasps, “Sorry.” His hand covers his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Micky still looks mortified. Through the mirror I see Milo lay a hand on Micky’s arm and gently shake his head.

“I don’t know how I want it,” I say, feeling somehow left out by their silent communication. I meet Micky’s gaze in the mirror again. “I trust you.” I close my eyes.

Even when he tells me he’s finished, I don’t look. Stupidly, now he’s done it and there’s no going back, it’s too much for me.

“Milo’s gone back to his room,” Micky whispers. His breath is warm against my neck. “Please open your eyes.”

“In a minute.”

“Okay. I’m going to put some makeup on to cover this bruise on my nose, and then will you look?”

I nod.

“If you hate it, I’ll get you a wig, and we’ll make it right.”

“It’s only hair,” I say softly. God, it’s so pathetic that I’ll say just about anything to make him feel okay.

“Danny? I’ve finished.”

I turn my head to look at him. Amazingly the bruise on his face has completely vanished. “How did you do that?”

My hand reaches out of its own accord, but Micky takes it in his before I can touch his face. “Smudges,” he whispers and presses my fingers against his lips instead.