Imperfect Strangers (2 page)

I should add that to my list of poetic writing.

When the song ends I immediately press the track selector, sending it back to the beginning, and shrink into the chair with my eyes closed. The singer purrs like a kitten, ‘
When I’m walking down the street on a quiet afternoon
’, and I picture Sally walking down the street singing those very words, fascinating knees just visible below the hem of her dress. The sun is on her back. Her cheeks are flushed pink. A slight breeze disturbs her hair. Glimmers of sunlight dappled by swaying branches capture its brilliance with a gleam of copper filament. I turn my face into the chair, twisting at the waist, breathe deeply and swoon to the line: ‘
I hear our favourite song and it gets me in the mood
’.

Maybe there
is
someone out there for everyone. Maybe Sally is meant to be
my
someone. That hair of hers captured me first of all – six or seven inches past her shoulders, ruffling in the breeze, its mid-brown colour catching the sunlight. I don’t know the colour of her eyes, which bothers me. Blue or green? I can’t recall if I’ve even noticed.

I must have
or why would I have to decide between blue and green?

It’s not like me to miss such detail. I pride myself on it, noticing the small things, categorising them, placing them in sets, making lists. Her eyes are not dark. That’s
for certain. Nothing about Sally is dark. But are they blue or green? Maybe there are notes of both colours. Both? Yes. Blue and green, rippling like the colours of a tropical ocean. Inviting. Like her lips: the cherry-gloss beauty of her smile that struck a blow to my chest as it radiated from her face, reflecting my own when I passed her on the steps to the building. Women never smile at me, but she did. She returned my smile, and the sky became a sizzle. For that reason, if for that reason alone, she must be my type. She has to be. Why else would she smile at me? Sally actually saw me. She actually noticed me. Chose me.

A beginning.

With it came the realisation of what loneliness truly feels like.

T
hat smile was the first sentence of a story; the first piece of a jigsaw; the first item on a list; the first, most important piece of a picture not yet complete: a corner piece: a perfect place from which to start. First came the smile and now the song.

Up until that moment we had been perfect strangers.

That phrase rankles. I have difficulty attaching the word
perfect
to myself. For me it is not an appropriate word and it jars because I know it’s untrue. It doesn’t do to lie to oneself. Sally is perfect. For her the word fits... perfectly. Though I don’t like to think so, strange suits me better.
There’s none stranger than my Keith
, mother always used to tell people.

Strange and Perfect. Can t
hey ever fit together? Stranger perfection. Perfect strangeness. Strangely perfect. Perfectly strange. The two words combined take a new meaning in my mind. They fit in an altogether new fashion: an unexpected, recently birthed collocation.

Intoxicated with imagined promise, I listen to the track eleven times before placing the
player back in the drawer. Rummaging deeper, I find a paperback novel –
Bound to open on passages of smut
– and flick through the pages.

Mother
would
expect it to, wouldn’t she? She
would
expect it to open on well-thumbed pages of smut. It doesn’t, and I myself am not surprised. I’m pleased to show mother she was wrong. This proves that not all women other than her are coquettish, self-absorbed sluts. More pleasing still is the artful way in which I managed to ignore mother’s acid tongue. With my mind a flood of sublime music, her words had no grip and slipped away like... like... like something particularly slippery.

Slugs, maybe? Yes. Slugs,
slugs soaping in a sluice full of bleach.

Sally is not a slut. Sally is a good girl. Sally is an angel. Sally is perfect.

On the back cover it says: “
A must read for any woman searching for the meaning of true love
.”

Sign number three.

Perfect.

Add it to the list.

A corner piece and two well-defined edges make for an excellent start.

Where the book had been, s
itting beneath it, as if specifically hidden, and I can see why she would be ashamed, sits a box of tampons – half empty. For some reason I can’t quite fathom, I flip the lid and take one and place it in my pocket. Mother would disapprove. I suppose that’s reason enough. A shudder grabs me as I recall her monthly ritual: rags hanging from a rope strung over the bathtub, dripping acrid-bleach into my bathing water. Rags far too soiled with shame to be dried outdoors in the wind. The memory doesn’t bring on an episode, but it does sketch a sensation of spider’s web on my cheek. It’s nothing but a trace of memory on my skin, but as quickly as a thought I brush it away. I have to.

S
moothing away the recollection, rubbing the pains that come to my wrists, I drag my attention back to the drawer. From under the box of shame, its corner only just visible, a thin diary beckons. Yesterday’s date has a reminder, written in the most exquisite handwriting, to collect photographs of a cousin’s wedding. The words:
Remember to bring to work
, follows, in a different hand,
by order of Colleen. Ha Ha!!

This unsettles me somewhat.

Replacing everything in exactly the same position, I close the drawer and determine to check at a later date to see if I can find the photographs. I put on my shoes and twist the cap to my head.
You’ll grow into
Arthur had said, when I was new to the job. That was eleven years ago, and now, at the age of twenty-eight, it’s still too big. Turning off the lamp three times, I glance at the window. From thirteen floors up – 12B, though I prefer the most feared of primes – the spread of the sleeping city takes on a strange, far-removed quality, as if viewed on a cinema screen. In the middle distance there is an expansive patch devoid of light: a large area of darkness enclosed by the park’s boundary.

Sally lives just beyond the park – her home nestled on the edge of darkness.

She’ll be in her bed, all warm and comfortable and safe. I can’t see the house, but I know exactly where it sits. There’s a light near the park-gate that’s brighter than those lighting the pavement. A few days ago I walked from the gate to her house and counted the number of streetlights.

Sally has nothing to fear from shadows.

I look beyond her house and notice the occasional flash of emergency-blue, before wandering back to the streets below where traffic lights command empty junctions. The damp tarmac shows a distorted reflection, the colours muted as if the tarmac has absorbed and destroyed some of the brilliance.

The thought disturbs me, so I turn away from the window. When I shine the torchlight onto Sally’s desk my note stares back. Torch off
. Torch on. The writing,
To Sally
, shouts loudly in my mind. It’s my own voice this time and I can’t seem to shut it up.

Off. On.

TO SALLY, the voice in my head yells.

TO
SALLY!!!

And through my voice, as if I’ve awakened her from the slumber of soft music,
comes mother’s.

IDIOT
, she screams, laughing, before launching an abusive string of put-downs.
STUPID. FREAKing HEADCASE. Whojathinkyar
?

Off. On. Off. On.

Five now. It’s not working. I could try seven, or eleven or thirteen. I could keep going to the thousandth prime of 7919, but I suspect it would make no difference.

‘Shut up.’ I blurt, but I can’t drown her out. More and more foul words stream into my head. ‘Shut up, shut up,’ I cry, trying to be louder than her. I know what she wants; I know it’s the only thing that will silence her. I try to hear the music, but I can’t, it’s gone. Lost
to my mind already.

I have no choice other than to give in to her
, so I pick up the note, screw it into a ball and stuff it in my pocket. This isn’t the end though. One way or another, I will have Sally. She’s under my skin now, like a splinter. It’s only a small part of her, but small splinters are the most difficult to remove. The flesh sucks them deeper, holds onto them, and, refusing to let go, eventually absorbs all trace.

CHAPTER
2

W
aking more readily than me, Steve keeps the alarm clock on his side of the bed and usually stops it at the first wail. “Steve!” I grumble. “The alarm!” I use a low, warning voice, clenching my eyes against the pulsating pain in my temples. “Steve!”

The alarm continues its cry. Why the hell doesn’t he turn it off? I fling out an arm, backhanding Steve’s side of the bed, and discover why. He’s not there, and it all rushes back to me then in a rapid flood of recollection. My fingers outstretched, head pounding, I waver around the vicinity of the rude noise, only to knock over the wine glass.

“SHIT!” The echo of the expletive pounds through my skull, cave-like amid the drip drip drip of abandoned wine. Finally, I find the elusive off button, flop back to the pillow, and just lie there looking at the ceiling painted orange by curtain-filtered streetlight.

Through the resulting silence whirs a milk float, the sound of tyre on tarmac suggesting a heavy fall of rain in the early hours.
A little bird song accompanies the clink of bottles. I say a little, because most birds have already flown away to winter in warmer climes. My parents have flown away too: have done ever since I first left the nest. Five months in Cyprus, spanning every winter. Yes, I wanted my own place. Yes, I desired my own space, room to breathe, some distance from my parents, but I didn’t want this much.

“I still need you,” I whisper.

Right now I couldn’t be any further removed from my little-Sally-lying-awake mornings. My parents are not preparing breakfast in the kitchen, their voices muffled by ceilings and closed doors. They’re not singing along to the breakfast radio. There’s no rumbling boil of the kettle. No clatter of crockery. The heart of this house is silent. Those little-Sally-lying-awake mornings that were so comforting are now so long gone that they seem to have belonged to another. I felt safe, cared for, and would only come down when the smell of bacon became too strong to resist, its sweet yet charred scent drawing me like a bear to a picnic. I miss it so much, I realise, as I lie here, listening, my lips pinching tighter with every drip that falls onto the recently new carpet –
Ivory-velvet-plush – £38 a square metre
.

When
I reach for the bedside lamp an orchestra begins tuning-up in my head. A wash of pink-haze floods the room, and despite its muted quality the light rips through my pupils like razor wire. Screwing my eyes I listen to the drip, drip, of rich-red Barolo: a robust wine– according to the label – complex on the nose, with subtle notes of violet and pencil lead accenting the cherry and plum fruit. Its fragrance reminds me of the recent break to Florence. The street-music is absent, however, as are the art galleries and the man who took me there.

I
sit up and slope against the faux-suede headboard.

Faux
? I think.
Faux
! with a snipe of sarcasm.

Faux
! meaning false. Fake. Manufacturers and retailers using the French to make their product sound fanciful.
Oh it’s faux-suede madam
, the assistant had said. Why not just call it fake, I had replied, not quite meaning to, not realising I’d even spoken out loud until I noticed the look on the assistant’s face.

I have no problem with what it is, but it isn’t suede, so don’t pretend that it is. At least be honest. Call it fake. False-suede. Like Steve
: a false boyfriend. Faux boyfriend: not as reliable, luxurious or long lasting as the real thing. Looks good initially but soon wears out. Faux: not genuine – a fancy looking lie.

In the mirror,
my eyes not yet fully functioning, I see only tempestuous hair around a grimacing expression as I command my lids, heavy with yesterday’s makeup, to attention. On the dressing table, my perfumes, ornaments and brushes stand before a bevelled mirror; I have them arranged just as one would expect them to be in a shop display. And from the mirror, as I lean forward, my eyes coming to focus, stares back the image of what looks to be an Alice Cooper fan who’s woken in the wrong room.

T
he cause of the breakup is scattered across the floor. The photographs. Tears begin to roll, adding to the mascara tracks on my cheeks. Torn into pieces, is the image that caused my fury and led to me kicking Steve out and downing two bottles of Barolo – well almost two. The carpet has absorbed the last half-glass of the second bottle. Ivory-velvet-plush with a splash of burgundy blush!
It’s the latest trend madam, produced with only the finest vintage and guaranteed not to fade.
Faux-spillarge.
Lends a certain decadence to the room in which it is fitted, therein demonstrating a kind of devil-may-care disregard for convention, no?
I almost laugh.

Almost.

“Shit!” I snap at the carpet, and, “shit, you shit,” to the section of the photograph that captured Steve’s image – him in the background, his lips melting into the bridesmaid’s face, his hand attached to her bottom, the pale blue satin reflecting light around his fingers demonstrating the depth of his grope.

I
had been taking a photograph of my young nieces, innocently oblivious to Steve’s skulduggery in the back-of-the-room-shadows. Bad things happen in shadows, I think, before recollecting the fun I’ve had in them too.

It had been a good night.
I’d envisaged my own wedding; I often do when attending someone else’s. My heart had actually fluttered while imagining the day Steve would ask me to marry him. How would he do it?
w
here?
This might come as a shock
, he had said, back in Florence the month before. This is it I’d thought, as he sat there, gently taking hold of my hand.
Don’t be mad
, he’d continued. Odd! I recalled thinking, as I carefully adjusted my posture into the perfect pose for accepting.
But, the thing is…
I know we said we were going to be a bit more careful with money, but… the thing is, I’ve ordered a case of that Barolo we liked
. What! I’d yelled.
The guy said it would store well. Ten or even twenty years. A bargain at the price
.
An investment really.

An investment!

Yes, I should have said,
so are diamonds
! I hadn’t even liked the Barolo. I found it rather heavy. Too rich. I would have preferred something more subtle, like a chianti. Or something stronger. Like, a
diamond
. I’d fumed inside, but smiled accommodatingly, demurely, as I always did when he disappointed me.

A scratch at the door pulls
me back from the bustling street in Florence to the present near empty silence of the house, back to the half-warm, half-empty bed. I swing my legs from the mattress, and for a moment I sit there, motionless, letting my toes sink into the plush pile of the carpet.

The scratch at the door becomes more demanding.

“Alright, Sukie,” I grumble with impatience before adding in a softer tone, “I’m coming.”

Placing a hand to the mattress
, I steady myself before walking across the room and opening the door. Sukie, my parents’ West-highland terrier, rushes in. Her kinked tail wagging eagerly, she scampers around the room, sniffing at the carpet while looking nervously up at the bed. “Go on Sukie,” I say, “sniff all you like, that nasty man has gone.”

A q
uick glance through the curtain shows the park in darkness. Through skeletal tree-fingers a fringe of light grey tinged blue indicates the approach of another new day, the first day of my new life as a single woman
.
I’ve had enough of fakes, I determine, no matter how good they may look, no matter how enticing their sales patter.