I never got to know what real love feels like. Not in the empiric, soul-bonding way some of us do. I never fell in love, never threw myself into the emotion with hunger and abandon Shakespeare would want to describe, nor did I find my other half, and my appreciation of physical beauty had never developed into the admiration of a soul, not really. But I got to know what it looks like.
I watched it simmer like a small coal in the slowly dying fire, blazing like the wild fires of Mount Olympus, engulfing but at the same time strangely warming. Heating smiles and cheeks, glimmering in the throwaway glances. Or blooming slowly, spreading its soft, petals, blushing delightfully in the warm array of feelings that fertilised it.
I saw it in the pale hands conjoined, twisted, one inside of the other, when their proprietaries thought no one was looking. I saw it in the soft, quick pecks on lips, on cheeks, on foreheads, and in the rushed adjustment of crooked glasses by a hand too small and too slim to be their owner.
I heard it in the hushed giggles, soft and melodic like the thawing creaks of Parnassus, and the murmurous baritone going lazily through the passages of Argonautica Orphica.
I knew it was love, despite never experiencing it myself. How could I not? One look at those tangled hands, flushed cheeks, relaxed figures… one note of those soft laughs… one glance at the creatures of my interest, children of Helios, dreadful idols with lovely hair and human voices, and there was no denying it. No matter how deep down they pushed it, how well they thought they were covering their tracks. I was the hound thirsty for all that, feral for just the slightest morsel of that warmth, seeking them and constantly on the look-out.
And what I had discovered is that L-O-V-E is not an emotion in itself, rather it is a state one might find themselves in. A complicated arras of emotions, behaviours and interactions woven larger and tighter by those tangled in its threads. It is happiness, elation, impatient expectancy, worry, idyllic calm. And that is the good part of love. After all, all good cannot exist in its purest form alone. To every good notion, there is its bad counterpart. Even in love. Dialectical monism, some may call it. I call it life. So, soon enough, the other emotions – wrath, anger, despair, hurt – they all followed suit. After those, I discovered that love, this crystal pure tapestry I admired so, can get ugly, and that to love truly, and most ardently is to endure this engulfing darkness and stop your loved ones from crossing one too many lines. It is the worry for them that keeps the flame of love alive, that gives it the gas-stained, blue tint. To let the fire completely consume you and be wholly miserable afterwards. My two friends unfortunately taught me that. Their love soured, rotted, bitten and diminished by the things Henry had done to keep it alive. It was not my pain to hold, and yet the hurt that comes with the thought of that sorrowful affair, drabs me with tiresome regularity. It died, that love, the second Henry decided what to do with Bunny. But for some time, for those few blessed weeks I was content to watch and soak in the exuberant light of purest, most delicate kind of love.
In the weeks following our excursion to the beach I witnessed some secretive behaviour from both Henry and her. Suddenly, the two of them were too busy to do anything. Sunday dinners at Charles and Camilla’s? No can do. Studying together at the library? Sorry. Quick visit at Francis’? We’re preoccupied. And always that damned ‘We’. Never singular ‘I’ from those two, always plural and unified.
It had become so excessive that we, as the whole class, saw them only during the lessons with Julian. And even then, they seemed quizzically distant. They kept to themselves, going as far as to cunningly changing places, Forcing Francis out to the back of the class, and only working with each other. Inseparable, the two of them seemed even more unachievable, unapproachable for us than ever before. There was this unexplainable glow about them, as if their hair became lighter, their eyes brighter, minds clearer. As if for hundred generations they had been walking the world, drowsy and dull, idle and at their ease, until they stumbled upon that beach and suddenly, like in Symposium, they came to be one, humans before they became humans. Four arms, four legs, and no faces for us to see, for they always stayed turned towards the other.
One time, when I was walking to the class, I saw them. Two dark blurs against the backdrop of white. Rare, in those weeks, the sight of them. Like a pair of white ravens glimmering amongst trunks of a forest. So, I had to stop, take a look at them. Safe in the cover of arches of loggia I was strolling through, I hid myself amongst the shadows, an undetectable spectator.
The weather was harsh. The biting cold ready to freeze off any uncovered parts of human body. In my case, it was the nose that suffered the most. Red, furiously maroon, only after a couple of minutes on free air. Not even the sharp, white light of the winter sun offered any respite from all that cold. It seemed to be mocking all the people beneath it, it shined, brighter and stronger that in any other day. And the sky was clear, a sharp blue of a polished sapphire, not a cloud staining its Persian tile. In the parabolic curves of the outside corridor’s arches, it might’ve looked like a silky fabric spread flat between the darkened stones. The ground beneath it seemed to be moving, as the sun flexed in the white, waved surface, bejewelling the snow with a trembling spark of diamonds. The beauty of that landscape, the wonderful colours of regal jewels and the absolute, charming waviness of it all should indicate a temperature fitting for such a charming view, closer in its degrees to the feeling it evoked in the chest of an observer. But no. the cold bit with a ferociousness comparable to the ninth circle of hell.
But Henry and she, they did not seem to be bothered at all by all that. Neither the cold nor the ascetic landscape reigning over them could ever scare them away, discourage from doing whatever they were doing. Not when heat came off their bodies in heaps of white vapour, swirling around their bodies, their breaths mingling as one in the still air. The fume coming off her lit cigarette almost indistinguishable amongst the white haze of their delighted whispers.
They were hopping over ice ridges, swift and agile, cutting through the white plain of the field, kicking up the powdery snow. She led the two-man procession, dragging Henry behind her, black, thick scarf hanging from her extended hand. I could not see Henry’s face, but judging by his swooping, resilient walk, every fibre of his body was hell-bent on catching up to her. He shouted, out of breath in his pursuit after her. Oddly enough, I could not hear any trace of contempt or irritation that would usually accompany him. More than anything, the words that came out of his mouth flew in a clear tone of amusement.
‘Oh, you little minx! How stubborn can you be? Come, put it on this instant!’
‘Like hell you’ll force me to do that!’
Volatile as ever, she jumped out of his grasp and right into a frozen cap of snow. White powder flew up and glimmered in the noon sun like thousands of tiny diamonds, though I could swear on my life, that her feet had never touched the ground. It must’ve amused her, because she carried on through the knee-high, white barrier, kicking her feet high, high to her chest, giggling deliriously while doing so. Soon enough, the floating snow settled onto her, clung to her loose hair and the dark wool of her coat, and if anyone cared to look her way in that moment, they would probably think that a small yeti somehow got onto the perimeters of Hampden and the tall, limping fellow chasing after it was some kind of crazed scientist, persistent to drag the creature to his laboratory.
And far from crazed Henry wasn’t. Covered in a thin sheet of snow as well, he tore through the infinite white after her with a mad grin on his lips. His teeth shined dangerously as he screamed after her in Spanish, profanities, even I do not feel comfortable sharing. Finally, he caught up to her, after all it was not as if she really tried her hardest to get away from him, and with a ferocious, triumphal yelp he threw himself at her, tackling her to the plush hills of snow. The tackle was in every bit of it, professional. Not like I would see on the small field stretched before my old high school, no. It carried impact, stile, technique. The way he tensed before the jump, and then loosened when hitting her body with his, not to hurt her too much. Or the way his arm wrapped skilfully around her waist, and then the other, just around her neck, the palm of his hand cautiously protecting her cranium, as if he had done that move a hundred times before. Oh, and the fall! How he landed not on her, but rather chose to lighten the fall with his knees, ending the whole sequence hovering over her. It all screamed effortless beauty. Well, it would, if moments after, she wouldn’t manage to tilt him over, and onto his back. Now she howled in victory, saddling his chest like an experienced jockey. Henry huffed and leaned back into the snow, resigned, as she waved the scarf, still in her hand, before him, its fringes teasing his nose.
‘Never gonna win with me! Never gonna win! Never, ever!’ She laughed in a sing-song voice. Henry only rolled his eyes, like one might roll their eyes at a petulant child, and with no effort he sprung up, sending her once again to the ground. ‘Oh, come on, you brute!’
And then, with a terribly delighted shriek, she disappeared underneath the dark folds of Henry’s coat. He covered her with his whole body, engulfing her shrill form into himself as if to introduce her into his system. Henry made sure that she didn’t lay in snow for too long, wrapping the flaps of his coat around her, cocooning her further. Laughter shook this newfound dual species of man, as her legs kicked the tail of his coat up in a miserably unspectacular show of defiance. Only her hand managed to slip out of that smothering mass of Henry and like the last wave that a man drowning throws into the air, she swung the wool scarf far away from them. It swayed in the air and then plopped on the snow, not even disturbing its white, parabolic surface. But that only made him laugh even harder. Sliding down the twisted spiral of giggles, his arms snaked around her torso and with one hard push he sent them both sliding up, and forward. His nimble hand swiped it right out of the reach of her outstretched fingers. Quick and precise like the hand that deals with cards he wrapped one end around his wrist and then proceeded to swirl it around her neck. She never left the safe confines of the cocoon, nor did a singular snowflake fall on her, that’s how he was careful with her.
‘Listen here to me! I’ve just heard that someone died in the city! A student! Frozen to death during the night! If you’re not careful you might end up just like him!’
One, two, three loops around her neck he spun, until the scarf covered completely and tightly all off her neck and a part of her mouth, so her screams of protest came out inaudible and muffled.
She tossed and turned as if possessed, and to be honest, they made a brilliant match in that department, because he as well, giggled like a madman.
‘Better to be scratched a bit than to freeze to death, now don’t be stupid and keep it on! Or do you want Khione to bite your ears off?’
She struggled then some more but with no certain conviction.
‘No, no. Stop, ahhh, you scooped in snow with it.’
His nose, mindlessly circling her cheek and temple, drafting small arches over her brow seemed to make her docile, good. Frost kissed their faces and glossed them, over with shimmering, rosy colours.
‘I, personally, like you better alive.’ His boyish, thin lips lingered for a while on her brow. ‘And warm.’ Then on her nose. The motion of that mouth was languid, decelerated, sure of possessing all the time in the world, not even bothered to purse and grace her skin with a full-fledged kiss, just with slow feline nudges. ‘And healthy.’ His arms travelled up to her head. They encased her from above and successfully shielded her face as he, and I was sure of it, dipped down to capture her mouth with his. ‘With ears.’ She giggled slightly into the kiss, as did he, their lips smoothing over each other, gazes bore into the depth of the other.
I stared at them from my agreeable distance. My mind completely numb, soaking in that dreamy imaginary. I studied their bodies, their hands, the subtle play of light and shadows breaking over Henry’s coat. The giggle that his fingers elicited from her when he rubbed her earlobes between index and the thumb was like the purest symphony to me. Carmen of all laughs.
But I was too scared, or maybe too timid to come even an inch closer. That was an intimate, although a public moment, and watching it like that, from deep within the shadows gave me a strange, unnerving feeling. It settled on my nape like dew and dripped from my pits, down my arms in cold streaks of sweat. I backed away, one step after the other, very slowly, not to make any noise. I found out, more than a week before, that stealth was my biggest asset and greatest friend. I managed to escape without a hitch, blended back into my solitary, murky reality, to my arches and cold stone. But as soon as I averted my gaze I instantly longed for their light. For the warmth they shared between each other, and the smiles dedicated only to the other, impossible to see for an outsider. So even though I felt ashamed of snooping on them like that, spying even, for nothing more than my own pleasure, there was this pathological need, burrowed deep inside of me to continue my, as she called it many times before, Tom-peeping, or peep-tomming, I forget. I just needed to… I don’t know… see them, I guess.
From that moment on the thoughts of them plagued me day and night like an infection, inflamed, festering wounds in my soul they kept me up, sweaty, with my brows furrowed as I laid tangled in my bedding. It physically hurt to long for them so, even when they did not long for me at all.
There was no remedy for my strange illness. No antidote, but them.
Them, them, them. That plural, inseparable pronoun rattled about my skull all the time. And I couldn’t help myself. I started following them.
Once I had spent close to forty minutes lurking outside of her lecture halls, hunched over, tucked into myself on one of the benches like a hen perched in her coop, anxious with the anticipation of my foxy executor. Not once in the span of those forty minutes did I question my actions, not once had the thought occurred to me that what I was doing bordered on insane or stalkish. In all truth, I hadn’t thought at all. Without them, without their proximity, their stark image together, I was non-existent, vacuous in my whole demeanour. Suspension overtook me in detail and overview. And only when she emerged from the building, a gemstone in the grey, muddy mass of other, rather dim-looking students, and he, right behind her, a shadow, I let out a breath I had no apparent idea I was holding in. I sunk into the darkness of the eve, as they passed me by and then followed their careful steps with a longing stare. Sunken into the shadows I was invisible to them.
Contrary to that snowy morning, on which I spotted them in the commons, the evening was gloomy and dark, covered with an ashen layer of drizzle. The day before was quite warm, at least in the general perception of winter, and some of the snow happened to melt. In the night the temperatures dropped drastically, and the thaw froze over the cobble-stoned paths of Hampden. The thick, misty shell of ice held on strong throughout the day and when the drizzle came, the already slippery surface turned murderous. I had already seen a few people trip and fall on the section of the pavement. I had heard many shrieks of pain and unflattering nosegays of curses already, but it never occurred to me that one of them could ever succumb to the fate similar to our peers. After all, in my mind, the both of them, at all times glided at least half an inch over the surface of the earth. All that conviction crumbled to the ground with a singular slip of her feet. Suddenly, the air broke with a miserable squint of her soles on the ice. With face frozen in utter surprise and a scream half-dead on her tongue she swung back, her body bending as if boneless. Horror befell me, but before I could do anything, anything at all, Henry stepped in. The unmovable force that he was, he caught her elbow half-swing and yanked her up, into a standing position. He didn’t even look in her direction, as if what he did just then was but a non-emphatic activity, a slip of a mind. A natural, almost tired gesture. She slid towards him with the forced of his pull and stopped just at his side. His hand fell from her elbow to tether into hers.
‘Videte,’ I heard him huffing a small laugh. She just shook her head at that, but I could see the relief slowly blooming on her features. The whole affair, short and in that shortness, terrifyingly dangerous, seemed to have no effect on them whatsoever, as if the act – of her slipping, falling to the ground, and him catching her without a hitch – was a simple regularity in their lives. That made me think, her limpness when she fell stood as a testament of her sure helplessness in that situation, or rather pure sureness that no matter what happened, he was there to catch her. Maybe it was not something practiced between them, but a natural reaction in the closeness they shared. The trust that they build and felt allowed her to fall like that, unpreoccupied and carefree, as well as it forced him to react. I was sure, if he was the one to slip, she would sure as hell try and uphold his towering figure.
‘It’s those new shoes. God damn it, I need to finally break them in.’
Henry did not let go of her hand as they went on, clearly unsure of his footing as well now, he opted on anchoring himself on her, as she did on him, and supporting one another like that they carried on forward with tiny, penguin steps. Their hands joined together pulsed slowly one in the other, swayed to the rhythm of their steps like a little, pale heart.
There is this painting – Nighthawks – if I remember correctly. Edward Hopper was the painter’s name, I think. I don’t remember much from the modern art class I took in high school. Truth be told, I only attended that particular lecture, simply for the fact that, as I had heard from someone, the professor handed out credits as if they were fresh buns. And that was true. All you had to do, was attend the class, and bam! – a credit. I never paid much attention to the classes having no deeper interest in contemporary art as presented, I usually took the extra hour as an opportunity to do my overdue homework, or study for upcoming quizzes. But during one of those dull lectures, the professor showed us that painting. Nighthawks. I remember raising my head then, disoriented and compelled to do so by some foreign, unknown force, and zeroing in on the old, yellow wall, on which he was projecting his presentation. Dark mass of bottle green and copper red stared back at me, illuminated with a strange, fluorescent beam of light coming from the presented diner. The light in that painting was sharp, man-made, but did nothing to swallow the overwhelming darkness swarming in the corners of the canvas. The diner stood out from that obscure scenery like the last stand of hope amongst the waves of anguish. Four people sat inside: two men, a woman in red and a waiter. I think one of the men, the one sat beside the woman was barely stroking her hand. The woman might’ve been smoking or talking to the bent-over waiter. the latter man sat alone, surrounded by empty bottles and glasses. The painting was so utterly gloomy and strangely lonesome, yet I could not bring myself to tear my eyes off it. Beaconed to it, like a seafarer seduced by a siren, I stared and stared completely disconnected from whatever facts and history was the professor gracing the class with. All I could focus on were those four figures. How together, and yet, strangely lonesome they seemed. The maybe’s and perhaps’s that my brain created while looking at them – ‘they might be holding hands’, ‘maybe they know each other, maybe not’, ‘they might leave the diner together, and never speak to each other again’. The series of near misses and suppositions got me so hypnotised, that it was only after a good chunk of the lectured passed by, and I noticed that the oil diner had no way of entry… and I thought how strange it was how we, the viewer, were left alone, in the dark, wholly cut off from the saving grace of the diner, with no way to enter. How we could only observe, never interact. I remember walking out of that class numb and disoriented, a foreign craving forming somewhere deep inside of me, right next to the pancreas. I had forgotten about that lonesome, swallowing feeling, right up to that point. But when I saw the two of them – tall and lithe, surprisingly standing out against the background of the grey mass of our peers, them, the only two figures reached by the warm light of campus lanterns I felt that craving nudging at me anew.
I waited a bit before getting up. I figured it would be best not to bump into them on my way to the dorm. I much preferred the solitary designation of an observer, to a distasteful intruder. But the air was getting colder, and my nose more and more red. Finally, I had no other choice but to get up and go, especially because a few other students started to throw concerned looks my way. I thought I had perfected the art of invisibility, but no. I think there must’ve been something in my face, in my eyes that alerted them so of my existence, a certain wetness. But it felt uncomfortable to be like that, seen, judged, so I scrammed.
On my way down to the dorms I walked past by a particularly pretty blonde. She walked with a furious verve, a warrior’s glint in her eyes. I think it was Camilla, but I couldn’t say for sure. It was dark out, and the girl’s face was so scrunched up with anger, it could’ve been anyone. In the distance swayed two figures, hand still together, despite the fact they reached the more frequently used, iceless path.
I tried dabbling into sketching. Something I had never done before, seeing as I possessed no artistic spark, nor presented any inclinations of a hidden talent in that department. But I found it hard to force words out of myself and onto the paper, as I did many a time before, and I had to find some kind of an outlet, otherwise I felt I would combust. The then ever-present memory of the Nighthawks sparked an idea in me, one I could not forget or ignore. The subject of the dreaded ‘them’ pushed at my guts terribly now with every breath that I took. Where before words flooded my notebooks, now an array of hasty, shaky scratches appeared. Black little blurbs, primitive depictions of trees and little silhouettes pacing underneath them and blank surfaces imitating snow appeared, as did crooked walls of library and miniature books with random titles squeezed into their outlines. And as a centrepiece of every sketch – two people. A woman, sometimes with curly, other times with straight or frizzy hair, and a man, never changing, constantly clad in a dark, long coat. Drawing Henry was quite simple, elementary even. But with her I always struggled. It was improper in my mind to capture her likeness, so no matter how many times I tried, and what I intended to draw, she always appeared as a faceless woman, back turned to the frame of the sketch. I found my drawings cathartic.
Still, I sometimes gave them titles, or scribbled something on the margin, there was no method to it. But I had never sketched alone. Never, ever. Only when I could see them, under no other circumstances. Otherwise, the drawings would come out soulless, boring and ugly.
One day I followed them into the campus library. As they sat in the window niche and pulled out their books and notes, I situated myself strategically almost opposite to them, slightly to the right. Crammed between the bookshelves I stalked them through the gaps left by rented books and with the greatest abandon I scratched with a rough image of them. First, the window, large, arched and a bit yellowed with age. Its shape on my paper was simple, angular, and so was the concrete frame of it. Then the shelves on both sides of it. Dark oak appeared as nervous jagged strokes of black, and the books were just a bunch of vertical rectangles, although their edges appeared so wobbly, I doubt anyone would have the courage of calling them that. The checked floor and a few lamps witch glossy-green domes, the light coming from them accentuated as, again, mostly straight rays, like the ones presented in imagines of sun oh so often seen in kids’ drawings. And then, enter them. Sat on the windowsill, books in their hands, ancient scripts threatening to fall apart and turn into dust at any given moment. Henry sat with his back against the wall of the niche, one leg outstretched on the windowsill, the other hanging freely from it, slightly bent at the knee. His pant leg hitched a bit and I could see the impeccably white sock peaking slightly above his Oxfords. His chin resting idly on her head as he gazed to the side, where he held his book with one hand. Dark ring shimmered on his middle finger. His face, sharp, and stern as always lost its marble hardness, when her silky hair framed it in a gilded halo. Lost in thought, then, even more than in any other situation, he looked strangely alive. That was easy to draw. One straight line here, the other there. The perspective might’ve been a little bit off, but it didn’t bother me much, as I knew I was no skilled artesian. Problems came about when I moved on to her. Lodged between his legs, I could not tell where she began, and he ended. Her dress bunched somewhere around her raised knees and fell over his thighs. His hand resting on her stomach brought to my mind a faint memory of a smell – a delicate, sweet fragrance that spun around my skull, something like home, or even more domestic. And yet there was something so inherently lewd, so breathtaking in her pose that I found my breath coming short and all the blood in my body flowing to my head with a constant, roaring contentment.
Lightheaded I studied the curve of her nose, the dome of her forehead and the attentive glare she tasked the book resting on her knees. She held the pages with her thumbs, while the rest of her palms supported the cover from the back and her head angled slightly downwards to gaze into the contents of the book. Her slender hands so white against the crimson cover. Every fold of her dress was like discovering a new world to me. Subtle greys and blues, the tones hidden in its delicate white seemed like folds, pocket dimensions to the blurry outline of her legs when the sun shined through them. In my picture it appeared much cruder. While drafting those long, doe legs I pressed my pen a bit lighter to the paper, keen on giving them that ghostly pseudo-presence. But nothing could compare to the original. It was then, when my gaze fell onto her face, soft, thoughtful, and cloudy between her pulled brows, that I realised I could never be an artist. Breath escaped me as I tasked the slight curve of her nose, the round edge of her rose cheek, and even though she was not looking my way, even though I was the one who first had cast my gaze, I was struck dumb, like deer in headlights I fell victim of those swirling irises. Like the first time she looked my way, I found myself unable to tear myself from them, skimming quickly from left to right along the text. Seeping, indirect light hypnotised me and I fell deaf to my surroundings. Next few seconds, or minutes, or even a century passed me unnoticed, because what little sunlight peaked into the niche seemed to cross her eye directly, encasing it in pure, liquid silver.
I was so completely immersed into her, that I did not even hear the swooping, murmurous steps progressing behind me. A new, sharp, manly smell replaced that sweet fragrance I had been smelling, and I haven’t noticed that either. She turned to henry, intentionally tracing her nose against his neck. A pale smile graced his lips when she whispered something into his ear. He shook his head, as if disappointed, but reluctantly pushed off the precipice of the windowsill and jumped to the floor with her still in his arms. Red with withheld laughter they stumbled forward and then broke apart. She reached into one of his pockets, Henry did not protest, despite his slightly gloomy expression. There must’ve been something saddening in the way she dug up some tabaco from a white-green bag with her nimble fingers and sprinkled it onto a rectangular piece of paper. Or in how quickly had she rolled it – three steps and the ciggy was rolled and done. What saddened me most, was the loose of my subjects, for my drawing had not yet come into completion. I intended on following them outside, and maybe finishing my sketch based on what I saw there, or starting a new one, but then, a slim hand surrounded with that masculine, strong smell caught my shoulder and held me in place with an unexpected force. That newfound, seemingly immovable force made me quiver in my steps, filled my throat with a blood-chilling scream, that died out once the copper main swung over my field of vision. Soft lips pressed onto mine swallowing what was left of my panic. Stunned I froze. That was a kiss. Filled with a smell of a man, grace with soft frills of white cuffs on my cheeks. ‘Francis,’ I mustered. The redhead laughed with his whole chest, unconcerned with the general rules of the library. I cringed towards the bookcase, to check if that fit of laughter attracted the attention of my subjects, but to my relief, the were already gone. The only evidence of their presence – the abandoned bags and books abandoned on the windowsill. relief washed over me, immediately chased with venomous irritation. ‘Francis! What are you… You can’t just go around kissing people!’ Francis, still holding onto me with a desperate grip, lunged into another fit. Through his giggles he managed to cough up a simple ‘You’re not supposed to go around stalking people…’ another giggle and then a final stab ‘And yet you do.’ I shrugged his hand off, infuriated with that accurate observation, as I had nothing to say in my defence. I just stared at him, offensively happy in his fits, with my hand pressed protectively to my lips, as if scared that he might try and kiss me again. And he did, that crazy ginger bastard leaned in again, clutching onto my shoulders and pulled me closer, terrible grin still gracing his pales lips. I wretched myself out of his confines and jumped away as quickly and as far as possible, which gained me another salve of laughter from him.
‘Oh, come one Richard,’ he’d said once he managed to push through the unimaginable barrier of amusement. ‘Richard, darling, come on, don’t walk away! You’re packing already? I thought you had a sketch to finish! They’re going to be back any minute, you don’t want to pass that opportunity!’
I pushed my notebook close to my chest, suddenly very anxious and protective of its contents. I did not bother to wonder how did he know what I was doing, just scared he might pull it out of my grasp and start going through each and every pathetic excuse for a drawing, studying them and finally, arriving at the terrifying conclusion of the scope of my mania. Red-faced, with my gaze pinned onto the creaking floor I pushed right through him, bumping my shoulder into his. Francis, however, did not seem to be bothered by my ostentatious show of disrespect in the least bit. Eagerly he followed my footsteps, meandering through an endless labyrinth of bookshelves and racks. Never had I imagined the library to be so endless and hard to get out of.
‘Why are you following me, Francis?’
Finally, I had reached the point of irritation that was too much to bear for my jittering body. A crease of annoyance scared my forehead as I spat at him over my shoulder.
‘I’m not following you at all, Richard Papen, dearest.’
That made me stop right in my tracks. Francis, as agile and graceful as ever, didn’t even stutter in his steps, lightly passing me by and spinning around so that he could face me, a foxy grin plastered onto his pinkish lips. His arms swayed around his waist as if weightless and completely independent from the rest of his body when he spun.
The sight of my raised brown, as high up as possible, mixed with the grimace of discomfort must’ve amused him to no end, because he gave up the rest of the information without his usual mockings and jests.
‘I was actually looking for them, you know. Henry and that devil-woman. But then I saw you, creeping around the corner, and I could not help myself! You know? Had to scare you a little!’
I scoffed, irritated more than ever.
‘And? You had already found them. Go, get them. And leave me alone.’
‘So you could creep some more one innocent bystanders?’
There was something so utterly amused in his foxy face, that even in my state of highest vexation, I could not help but crack a little smile. My voice came out squished and bubbly, not sharp and authoritative, as I meant it.
‘Don’t you at least want to know, why I was looking for them?’
I rolled my eyes at his relaxed stance, the easy flex of is arms, when he bound them behind his back, surely bending his palm backwards in the other hand.
‘Come on. Shoot,’ I mused.
‘I was to ask them for an outing. A small gathering of all of us, you know. In that bar, what’s it called, Cherry, or something like that. The winter break is coming in and I thought it would be fun to just let loose for a bit. You should come as well. Actually, you should definitely come. Be there at nine. Sharp.’
And then, with another swirl and a short giggle, he was off, running, skipping, along the bookcases, his pale, long fingers skimming along those backs of the books. I was once again left alone, just as I wished, and suddenly, the grave trench opened in me at the sight of the Nighthawks so many years ago felt so, so much deeper than ever before.
I went to that bar. Cherry flavour was the name, but I found it, no problem. It was not the murky directions that Francis had given me a few hours before that had led me to be there half an hour late, but my desperate need not to seem… well, desperate. In all truth, I shouldn’t have even bothered, because as is crossed the threshold, the sorry imagine of only Francis and Bunny staring silently at their pints greeted me in full swing of sadness. I walked towards their table, every step ringing in my head loud and clear like a church bell. The air there was muffled, silvery with smoke, just like in her apartment, although the space felt solemnly impassive, even with the music booming from the jukebox, and the chatter of the many patrons. Without her, there was no point in squinting my eyes and flaring my nostrils at the unpleasant smell, fore there was no one in my surrounding who would even notice my ministrations. No one to point them out and poke fun at me for them.
Through the thick veil of it I could see how Bunny nursed, with utmost carefulness and greed, the piss-coloured pint, and the orange-red curve of Francis’ cigarette, as he explained something to the other boy, swinging his arms around with a gusto. They did not notice me however in all that awful racket, and I was lucky enough to her a snippet from their conversation, or rather, Francis’ monologue. His voice soared over the idle chatter of crowd mixed with music and the clang of glass hitting glass, somewhere in the background, as a group of rather young fellows raised a toast to something one of their friends just did.
‘You see, it is not the matter of whether you’re prepared for it, or not my friend, it’s just that the things of this kind of nature always come biting you in the arse. It’s just the way it is. You bet on a wrong horse, now it’s time to choose another. Like that Shelly girl from my French poetry class, you know the one…’
His cigarette soared up to his temple, very carelessly, and some of his short coppery hair sizzled away from the butt.
The floor boards squeaked beneath my feet, and I bit my lip, anxious not to make too much noise. My ears twitched eagerly, to hear the rest of the conversation uninterrupted. While strutting through the bar I tasked it with a more detailed glance now that I was closer to it’s centre than in the first minutes of my entry. My eyes slid over the faces of the patrons, some of which I knew from Hampden, some completely new. There were old and young people alike, all of them swarming around the bar squeezed into the back of the locum, old and kind of dirty looking with a single bar tender flexing and running behind the counter, swaying back and forth, confused as to what he was supposed to put his hands into first. Copper handles and crystal glasses shimmered in the dim light of the bar. The many bottles filled my vision with an array of colours and blur before my eyes into a kaleidoscopic mirage. They turned and swirled in the unsteady grip of the bartender, sweating profusely when the hot air breathed from the many a gorge of the patrons settled on their cool surface. Carlsberg, Heineken, Budweiser, and a few other, oval icons sat perched on the edge of the counter beaconing me to them with their moist and cool glint. I sensed that my mouth was going dry but the sight of the swirling perpetually forming and curving queue successfully deterred me from the bar.
‘I’ve already introduced the two of you, I’m sure of that. She’s the sappy one, she likes Sapho.’ Francis laughed at his own words, gaining no response from his partner.
Bunny stared at him blankly, no thought behind his glossy eyes. His hands wandered up and down the glass filled with, what I could only assume, was beer, his mouth agape, mind clearly someplace else, as if it was not a glass, his hands had been exploring, but completely something else. It was clear, that nothing more was going to come out of that one-sided exchange, as Francis dipped his head down, into his glass and rested his cheeks on the rim, exhaling a pathetic sigh, as if it was not the first time he has been ignored by Bunny like that. I cleared my throat, just to be polite and warn them of my presence and put on a slight smile.
‘I see how it is gentlemen. But correct me of I’m wrong, Bunny already has his dark horse, doesn’t he? Marion is the name?’
The boys jumped as if poked with white-hot rake.
‘Jesus Christ, you scared the crap outta me!’ Were the first words that Bunny has spoken to me, and judging by the offended look Francis threw him, first words of the evening. His voice was raspy, slurred with the kind of drunken tune you hear at dodgy gas stations in the middle of the night, when you should be safe and sound asleep in your bead, but instead you’re desperately trying to convince the acne-riddled clerk that yes, you are indeed twenty-one, and yes, those two six packs of beer are indeed, just for you and no one else.
‘Not Jesus, just Richard,’ I pulled my lips into a thin, awkward line, as Francis’ laugh roared over the vocals of some sorry fellow whining from the jukebox. A few patrons of the bar turned to us, that’s how loud he laughed, but quickly they averted their gaze, maybe because of Bunny, who stared daggers back at them. That night, he seemed more in a mood for brawl than any other, his usual sunny disposition gone completely and replaced with something more spiky, unpleasant. Strangely gloomy and dark, with his back hunched and a grimace plastered on his face he looked almost serious, almost adult, and almost dangerous. Almost. And I recognized that frown on his face. Deformed, softer and lacking, but if expressed by someone else, let’s say a bit taller, more stoic and with a frame of hair and eyes a few tones darker than his, the look would be deadly. And then a realisation came through my mind, the scope of which made my hair stand on end and blood to run cold. Bunny was mimicking Henry.
‘Oh, you see Richard Papen, the thing with our dear Edmund is that he always seems to want whatever he cannot have.’
The blonde’s head snapped back to him, face twisted in a parody of what Henry sometimes threw his way, when he thought that Bunny deserved a reprimand.
‘Will you ever shut up; you ginger cu- ‘
But before he could finish, Francis interrupted his in a very timely fashion. With a holler he jumped out of the booth the boys had been sitting in and waved his arms like a madman. I could hear a sharp exhale coming from my right, where the frustrated blonde sat. I could not be bothered to check, what kind of expression did he make this time, because, as I heard a small, honeydew voice resounding right behind my back, I was completely torn from reality. It was the voice of Charles that came to me first, but something in the back of my mind, something very slimy and cunning told me that right where that melodic, soft voice appeared, another, a bit more nasal and deeper, but still a twin to it would follow. I spined around just to see Charles draft a deep bow.
‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’
And Francis responded with the same curtsy, his fox-like face widened and elongated by a sly smirk.
‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’
Somewhere behind Charles a melodic snort announced the arrival of my soft-lipped goddess. Her hair was like always combed thoroughly and kept from her high, white forehead with a black bow. Her eyes squinted most magnificently in the dim light of the bar, and I could see something like crow’s feet forming right at the line of her cheekbones, something like the thin veins running on the surface of otherwise impeccably milky marble. Her clothes were neat, although a bit too big for her, the shirt she was wearing clearly had seen better days and I thought that it was an item she either snugged from her brother or was gifted it by him. But no matter what she was wearing, she looked heavenly to me. Her cheeks bore a slight tint of pink, as if she was walking for a while in the snow, and automatically, like a chameleon, my own cheeks tried replicating that shade on my skin, only slightly more furious, and burning.
‘You two are so unserious…’ she said it like it was a reprimand, but the crack of her lips betrayed her amusement. Her lashes fluttered gracefully, like the wings of a butterfly, when she rolled her eyes deep into her skull.
‘I’m here to serve, my queen.’
Francis huffed a laugh at her and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips.
‘Hi Richard,’ she greeted me, although with slightly less enthusiasm she had with the redhead. Her brother just nodded my way and then squeezed right past me to sit down in the booth with the boys. I followed him and Camilla, too embarrassed to excuse myself, and to enticed by the small lady’s beauty to even speak.
‘By the way…’ Francis lit another cigarette, I didn’t even see when he rolled it, I guess on that, that is chain smoking, he agreed with my Diogenes wholeheartedly. ‘Have you seen the two hell spawns on your way here?’
Charles snorted, clearly entertained by that nickname, Camilla just scrunched her nose and let her head fall a bit forward. Her smile was now strained, as if she was trying to swallow something, a bone stuck in her throat, as she was speaking.
‘Yeah, we saw them. Right outside the bar. They run into a bit of a scuffle, but they should be here any second.’
It was as if with those words Bunny suddenly came back to life.
‘Scuffle? What scuffle?’ Charles waved his hand dismissively.
‘Nothing really, just a bit of a shoe problem.’
The white, almost translucent brows soared high on Bunny’s forehead. The ex-jock opened his mouth, likely to question the poor twins further on the matter that interested him the most, but right then, as if on que, the door opened, and Henry stepped through. His dark hair flopped around his face, partially covering his wet, fogged-up spectacles. Snow fell from it, as well as his shoulders with every crooked, wobbly step he took. His cheeks were red with effort, and his pale slender hands kept and unnatural shade of almost cold mauve. But there would not be anything different or weird in that dishevelled look. In all honesty, sometimes I would encounter him in the campus library, hunched over some old book looking a thousand times worse than that. What made his entry stand out was the girl he was carrying in his arms. Small, in comparison to him, red-faced as well, with her feet, clad only in white socks, dangling right from the crook of his arm – her. She was grinning wildly, sparks coming from her eyes like little flexes of stars, and a pair of dark leathery boots had been dangling from her stretched out hand leaking onto the floor before them generously with residues of snow, marking, where Henry’s next step was going to fall. It seemed as if he was whispering something to her, something soothing, or humorous judging, by the slow movement of his index hinger on her arm. Like he was calming her down or indulging her slightly. I had never though Henry to be a person with an exceptional sense of humour, but in her case, it seemed to be working. Her eyes, big like saucers kept digging into his jaw, the only thig in her field of vision, as he squeezed her hard into his chest, sparkled and glimmered with a feeling I could not read properly. All I knew is that the way she looked at him, in that moment, when he crossed the squeaky floor in his swooping steps, clogged my airways and crushed my chest with a force of thousand suns.
‘What are they doing, what’s happened?’ Bunny’s face turned equally red at the sight of the two of them, locked in an embrace. For the first time this evening he had risen his head fully, right to the point of strain in his neck, and suddenly I saw that his eyes were sunken, circled with dark shadows and rimmed with a wet, red frame. He must’ve fought with Maron over some stupid little thing again, so no wonder that the sight of Henry and her, snarking amiably at each other, aggravated him to no end.
‘Beats me.’ Camilla scoffed, rather impassive that impressive entry. It seemed to me, like the temperature in the bar had dropped drastically, while the two of them exchanged those little remarks. Goosebumps climbed up my spine and my stomach swirled in an uneasy feeling, that forebode that nothing positive could come out of that evening.
But they came up to the table unbothered and giddy, as if there was nothing strange or enigmatic in their arrival, and the knot that has tied itself in the pit of my stomach suddenly loosened by the magic glint of her sharp teeth. Their presence, their proximity hit me like the fanfares in the 94. Symphonia G-dur. Soft steps crept up on me like the slight tugs of strings at the beginning of the piece. Isolated and slow, deep with their lightness, beautiful on their own, even if those were just steps, just the rhythm, just the beginning of a symphony. But then the clarinettist came, high-pitched, joyous in how she dangled her feet in the air, how she tilted her head up to gaze into his eyes. Him – steady and slow, careful with the type of tune he carried, and her – rather sprinkled across his melodic line, but oh so needed to bring the stave out of a standstill. My whole body buzzed in anticipation, not yet sure for what and why but my feet, hidden under the table, tapped unconsciously to the melody of pure steps and the hum of clothing. The composition overtook me. I didn’t even notice the key changing and getting slightly louder. Only when they came closer, when I could smell the warm, domestic scent that filled my heart with longing and pain, when I felt the tail of a dark coat brushing against my knee, I felt the music explode in me, slash me across the face with an abrupt bang! of every instrument suddenly coming into a synchronized crescendo.
‘What on the sweet feet of baby Jesus happened to you? Have you lost the feeling in your legs?’
As soon as they reached the table, the shoes she was holding dropped to the floor with a miserable smack, and, as if to complete their misery, got kicked away, under the table, by the exceptionally vigorous feet clad in black Oxfords. The air absolutely knocked out of my lungs, I stared at them in what I could only assume, was the most wide-eyed, incredulous expression of awe.
She poked her tongue at Francis, as Henry carefully set her on the edge of the couch. His pulled brows, the true, unfabricated grimace, so, so different from which Bunny tried to pull, bared an alarming dose of worry, despite the slight curve of his lips, as if he was trying to mask a heavy, foggy block of anxiousness resting on his shoulders with a bit of humour. He kneeled, not without a struggle to inspect the, what I now could see clearly were, blood spots on her socks. They climbed up her heals and came blossoming down on the side of her feet where the big toe started, giving the socks an artistic, flattering look of a freshly sprouted carnation. While he was hunched over, ducking under the table she tried to lighten the atmosphere with a lough and a cheeky response to Francis.
‘You wish, red. Nothing of the sort, it’s just those damn shoes! I can’t seem to break them in, and now they had chaffed me to the bone it seems.’
Charles ducked under the table with an interested whine but could see nothing beyond Henry’s hands. He covered the object of Charles’ interest as soon as the twin announced his fascination to us with a delighted squeal. The blonde boy hissed in disappointment, but Henry ignored him, his eyes steady on her legs, studying the red rim of blood. His slim fingers run carefully over the fabric, pealed it off, just to throw a glance, at the skin beneath it, and then exhaled a breath through his teeth. What he saw must not have been as bad as he let on in the first place, because his only response was a grim huff of laugh.
‘Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a minor graze nothing more. If you had listened to me and bought a bigger size, nothing like that would have happened.’
Her eyes skipped around landing on each and every of our faces, seeking refuge in any of us from the stern, disappointed tone of Henry, but no one was brave enough to stand up to the stormy cloud of a human that he had turned into. Finally, after some strained small talk, Henry emerged from beneath the table, his face slightly looser.
Somehow I felt the pair of pale blue eyes staring at me, no at them, from across the table. I looked around to seek the source of the discomfort poking at my neck. I did not have to deal long, for it was obvious, who the proprietary of the biting stare was. Bunny wasn’t discreet, I don’t think he minded if anyone saw how he clean he’d his teeth so hard that a small vein popped out on the side of his jaw, or how he could not tear his eyes, his hateful, red rimmed eyes, from the ethereal mirage that was the two people hanging on the edge of couch right beside me.
‘It should be fine, the blood stopped running. It should be fine now, okay?’ He smoothed her hair with a quick swipe of his hand and then scooted over on the edge of couch. Everyone moved to the side in a synchronised clockwise move, not even thinking about mentioning all the space that had been left vacant on the opposite side of the table. Francis chose to ignore all the swooning over her that henry seemed to be revelling in and came smoothly to recommending what types of beer we should pick for the night.
‘I think that we should start with beer. Me and Bunny are already ahead of you, so, we’re going to skip the first round. But after that I think we should go more into tonics. Oh, and don’t order any sorts of fancy cocktails here!’ He threw accusatory look towards Camilla. ‘They’re awfully pricy and don’t taste half as good as you’d expect them to.’
What seemed like useful information to me, was obviously something redundant and boring to Henry. We all knew, what he was going to order, whiskey, most certainly not whisky, on the rocks, and there was no coaxing him out of that decision, so it hasn’t surprised me much to see him lean over to her and start whispering in her ear. I was the closest one to them, her sitting on my right, and him squeezed into her, the length of her body being our only border, so I did not have to struggle much to hear what he was mumbling into her ear. I focused my eyes on whatever seemed most natural and listened in, thirsty for information like never before. I watched Bunny’s fingers running up and down his pint, smearing the swat of the glass all over his palms. His fingers run taunt, almost mechanic, as if pulled by great pain or fury. In the corner of my eye swayed the real object of my interest.
‘Are you cold? Are your feet cold?’ His voice returned to the stoic preoccupation I had heard some time ago, when they were leaving the lecture hall. He swayed forward, as if to embrace her, or better yet, scoop her into his arms and run out of the bar as soon, as he manages to hoist her up, but he stopped himself midway and just stared at her with deep thoughtfulness.
‘No, Henry it’s really all right. Thank you though.’
Henry, despite her clearly cutting the subject short, simply shook his head and continued with his hushed monologue.
‘Your feet are cold. We sit here long enough, and you’re going to catch something.’ And then, before she could react in any sort of way, he kicked his boots off.
‘Henry what are you doing?’
My eyes jumped, just for a second, beneath the table, to be greeted with the sight of his slightly less deft fingers, now rose with the heat of the bar, tying neat little bows with the shoelaces of his own shoes, now on her feet. The dark leathery Oxfords were fat too big for her, and so he had to tie them really hard, so they would not fall onto the floor the second he pulled out his knee from beneath her heal, that now served her as some kind of purchase.
‘They might be too big for you, but at least, your feet won’t freeze off. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Now, straighten that face.’
‘What is it with you and frostbites?’
She scoffed and folded her arms on her chest, but did not oppose further, when He once again ducked beneath the table and slipped his shoes onto her feet. His voice came from down below, a splash of humour resounding in it, filling her cheeks with the brightest shade of pink.
‘It’s not just frostbites. I’m simply worried about you, in general. I should not have let you walk around in those ill-fitting shoes in the first place, I feel responsible.’
I could swear, that at the sound of those words, she melted into the back of the cough and kicked her feet, making the all-too-big shoes flap around her ankles. And in turn, I can swear I saw him cracking a smile at that, when he took back his seat right next to her.
Personally, squished between Camilla and her I felt like I was going to suffocate. Disoriented and scared to the bone I stared into my palms placed neatly on my thighs, not knowing whose warmth to absorb, who’s smell to inhale and who’s heartbeat to sync to. I was dazed, speechless, overstimulated.
‘And how is your leg, Henry? Does it hurt?’ I think he shrugged, but I couldn’t tell, because at that point I tore my eyes from the wet drops sliding down Bunny’s glass and onto Camilla’s side profile. She was chatting with Charles, I could see her mouth move, but all I could think of were those few strands of hair that slipped from beneath her ribbon and curled neatly on her forehead. All I wanted to do was to push them back, tuck them behind her ear.
‘Nothing that I can’t handle, so don’t preoccupy yourself with that, little dove.’
Every move they made, every little shrug, or laugh they huffed soared through me with the untamed power of lightning. I jumped every time one of them breathed. And I must’ve been so consumed by that dual anguish of my position, that I had tuned out the conversation that had barely started, even the little, intimate conversation playing on my right. A nudge of an elbow to my ribs woke me up from my stupor.
‘Richard Papen! Hello! Earth to Richard!’
‘What will you be drinking?’ Her bright eyes stared at me, so, so close, that I could feel her breath fanning my cheeks. With that proximity, an image flashed before my eyes, a sketch that I drew a few days before, the only one in which I did not use her as a live model, rather drafted her from my memory. A quick sketch of her bent over backwards over the table, eyes shut, mouth agape with a silent scream of pleasure frozen on her mouth. Blood rushed to my head with a steady but abrupt pump. Acutely aware of the still purple with cold hand resting on her shoulder I did not find the words right away, so they came out in a disarranged stutter. I blabbered some incoherent phrases, before finding my voice.
‘I’m not drinking tonight… I don’t have any money.’ She let out a pearly laugh.
‘Don’t be ridiculous Richard. It’s on Francis! He dragged us all out here, so he’s buying!’
‘That’s the first time I hear about it.’
She threw him one of her deadliest looks, as if saying – come one, don’t be a twat – and I heard no further protests from him. Encouraged and coaxed by all the people around the table, I finally decided on Guinness, the same as her. Francis got up with a resigned sigh, repeated everyone’s orders and then he disappeared for almost forty minutes. And when he came back, carrying two trays stocked with pints and meandering amongst the drunken crown with no problem, he was greeted with round of applause and whistles of approval. He distributed the beers equally and then sat with the look of absolute agony on his face.
‘Oh, I’m never going back out there, sorry but there is no way I can stand in that queue alone and pushed around by those twats for one more second.’
She giggled when he passed her the designated Guinness.
‘How much was it? I’m not planning on paying you back, just curious.’
Francis shrugged, rather not bothered by her blatant declaration.
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not really good with money, so long I have it.’ He took a long pause to gulp down some of his old beer, truthful to his previous words, he had not bought himself a new one. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t get money at all.’
Charles cleared his throat, uneasy, as if that topic was one of a constant concern in their circle, Francis continued, nonetheless.
‘I simply cannot understand, what is so special about it. It’s just paper! It’s imaginary! If I wanted to, or if I needed, I could just get myself a machine and print out some more! Better yet, we all could. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.’
My eyes darted to the side to meet the same perplexed look in her eyes. Her jaw tilted to the side, but she kept silent, and so did I, taking it for a sign, that if we let Francis talk, soon he’d be out of his brilliant ideas, and we would be free from that topic. Well, Bunny clearly didn’t get the memo.
‘We can’t print more money, idiot, how many times do I have to tell you?’
Francis threw him a wounded look and pressed a fisted palm to his chest. But the sly smile on his lips betrayed that in all truth, he enjoyed that someone, especially Bunny, had indulged him.
Bunny’s so far hooded and glossy eyes, now popped out dangerously, coming to resemble in their shape and size a pair of saucers. His lips pulled downwards in an ugly, angry grimace.
‘That would cause and inflation, a hyperinflation, if you’d be really lucky, and soon you, mister Bretton Woods, would be able to buy matches, for the same price you would buy a home a few days earlier.’
‘Yeah, sure, inflation but why though?’
The twins did not bother to pay attention to that ridiculous exchange of words, surely because they had heard it already, in a myriad of variations, many a times before, nor did Henry, but she was surprisingly enticed by how exasperated Bunny got. She stared at him with utmost fascination, a thing, that did not escape him, and in turn seemed to spur him on further.
‘There is a certain amount of gold- ‘
‘Gold? Where from? What?’
‘It is stored in the treasury of every country… Don’t change the subject you ginger minx! We have the gold which value must cover the amount of money we distribute. If we don’t have the gold, and we start printing more money the total value of the gold would have to be divided amongst the amount of the money distributed equally, hence devaluating it.’
‘Okayy…’ Francis’ hand soared up to his lips pushing another roll-up into it, as he stared into the ceiling, as if he was processing Bunny’s words. Mindlessly, he passed another one to her, and she nodded her head in a quiet show of thanks. ‘Why gold?’
Bunny growled, a real-life growl, and smoothed his hand over his face. I noticed, that on my right, she had pushed her hand against her lips and now she was shaking uncontrollably at the performance taking place right before her. I cracked a smile as well.
‘Because it is a r a r e material.’
He’d said, the drunken, slurry undertone more prominent in his voice, now more than ever.
How beautiful did Francis pronounce that ‘rarer’. Every ‘r’ resounded sharply and rattly over his tongue. But his interlocutor did not seem to be impressed by his logopedic skills.
Bunny jumped suddenly onto his feet, slamming his palm into the table with a deafening bang, that made Camilla squeak in her seat. Bunny, making nothing of it pointed and accusatory finger at Francis.
‘I’ve got half a mind to beat you into a pulp right now.’
Bunny’s face turned bright red, and for the first time ever I could see his brows clearly drafted, like two clear, solid white arches, on his forehead. And for the first time, his fury bore water. I had never seen him so aggravated, so serious and straightforward with his announcements. Sure, he tackled me once or twice to the ground, and his threats were nothing new to us, especially after he had something to drink, but those were just harmless jests, stupid jokes we tied to weight to. However, in that bar, a new sheet of peril mixed with anger had wrapped himself around him, giving him, and his irrational outburst depth and dimension. His feverishly jumpy eyes added to the whole picture a deranged readiness to harm, and that scared me to no end. I looked to my right, past her and at Henry, the only person, concluding from the stories I heard about him, capable of restraining the ex-jock if the push came to shove. I expected Henry to come out as a hero, as always. Instead, I was greeted with the sharp glint of her malicious smile and his indifferent, passive frown.
‘Well, you’ve got half a mind, that would be about right.’
She snarled at him, empty glass tipping dangerously in her hand, ready for any sort of action. A deep chill run up my spine at the sight of the strained muscles of her neck, of the pulsing vein running in parallel to her larynx. What scared me more, was the calmly placed hand of Henry, her supposed protector, hanging on the backrest of the couch, not even bothered to assume a defensive stance. Maybe he knew that Bunny wasn’t half the man he portrayed himself to be. Or in that moment, he already knew that he would never harm her. In the conventional way, at least, Henry seemed so sure that no harm would be done to her, either by her own resourcefulness and skill, or Bunny’s incapability and unwillingness to damage her in any sort of way. Why he had believed that I couldn’t tell. In retrospect, that was the moment we all should have banded together against Bunny. Berate his pathetic attitude, his utterly senseless reasoning, rage against him, his nature, fall into a trans and reap him to shreds, limb by limb, no mercy, and when all would settle down, bash his head in, so it could not mutter another word. Maybe that would stop him from drafting the line that would soon cross out the 94. Symphony out of existence.
My eyes soared back to the emotional bundle of fury and helplessness that was Bunny in that moment. His eyes squinted in an expression of utter betrayal at her words. That was the look that should have uncovered it all to me, help me connect the dots scattered amongst the quiet conversations I listened in on, and finally see the bigger picture. But at that point, I was halfway down my pint, and my brain had already lost most of it’s sharpness.
‘Et tu Brute? You are defending… You are defending that deft son of a bitch? How can you? Does it not bother you how oblivious to the world he is? You out of all people should understand my frustration with him! He wouldn’t know the rational state of current things even if they hit him in the face!’
She shrugged, not seeming to be bothered at all, although she had not let go of the glass yet. The white ash at the end of her ciggy became longer than the factual cigarette.
‘So what? He doesn’t understand money. Big deal.’ Her hand drafted a neat circle in the air with the glass. ‘It’s not like you know everything Bunny. Bah, I don’t think I know everything. Nor does Henry. For gods’ sake, you heard him the other day, interrogating Richard about the moon landing and whatnot.’ Charles giggled at the reminder of our first dinner together, but quickly slotted his hand over his mouth, chastised by the scorning glare of his sister. ‘Matter of fact, you could not conjugate a simple verb two classes ago. Please, don’t frown like that. Audiverim instead of audivissem? I beg you pardon?’
The tips of Bunny’s ears turned a few shades darker, but he no longer looked furious. Under her never-missing, dry delivery of criticism, he shrunk slightly, hung his head down and tucked his chin, as if trying to hide his head between his shoulders.
‘Frankly, it wasn’t your best performance and yet I did not beat you into a pulp. What’s more, I’ve never threatened you, never, especially over something so small and insignificant.’
No one dared to interrupt the steady flow of her words. Not even Camilla had attempted to roll her eyes, simply mesmerised, just like the rest of us, with how unbothered, almost lazy and unwilling she seemed while delivering her soul-crushing, humbling truths to Bunny.
‘It is beneath us, to treat and speak to another person, a friend, like you just did. Now stop frowning and marding, just sit, have a drink, cool down.’
‘Yes, Bun, sit down. We’re not without a flaw, after all. It’s not a big deal.’
Camilla sent a warm smile across the table, not towards Bunny but his assailant. She responded with the same kind of grin, a warm, sunny stretch of mouth that would melt the strongest and coldest man.
‘Remember when Charles said that the French Revolution wasn’t that big a deal and she nearly lost her mind?’
Then she snorted, and my accomplice gasped in exasperated shock. A quick, playful smack on the hand of the blonde, little lady was dealt as she exclaimed ‘Cami! Now’s not the time to bring up past mistakes!’ The girl giggled, although her pearly laugh was overwhelmed by Francis’ snort.
‘Oh god! I remember that! I really though she was going to kill him! Jesus, I really believed that on that day we were going to say grace over the cold corpse of Charles Macnally.’ As the ginger boy wrapped his arms around his midriff, to somehow ease the sudden throws of unadulterated joy that shook his body, Bunny slid quietly into his previous seat, relief, that he was no longer the subject of the discussion painted on his face.
‘Come on guys! It was so long ago! I would never do anything like that now…’
She stirred in her place beside me, pouting like a displease child, which roused Francis even more. Camilla too, wasn’t immune to the giddy atmosphere.
‘Oh honey, I know you never wished any real harm onto Charlie. It’s just so funny to recall you screaming bloody murder at him…’ Camilla did not finish her thought, instead, overtaken by laughter, splayed herself across the table trying to catch the quickly regressing fingers of the other girl. Her arm brushed right past mine, but she didn’t notice that, totally absorbed with the vigorous battle at grabbing and tugging away of hands, she was conducting, and clearly loosing, due to the constant spasm of laughter that shook her body, tossing her unregularly across the wooden surface. Her opponent wasn’t much better, trying to disguise her laugh as furious puffs of hot air and scrunching her whole face up, not to let a single pressing smile pass. That frown she made, with much effort and a raised chin that help her in keeping the giggles deep in her stomach, gave her an uncanny likeness to non-other that Mussolini.
‘I don’t know… it felt real to me, when you chased me around the kitchen, swinging a knife around and screaming’ Charles began his sentence and paused dramatically, tilting his head up and spreading his arms over his head like a preacher in a cathedral, only to be joined by everyone at the table, spare for me and Bunny, in an unison, theatrical chant ‘How about I take away you privileges and basic human rights, let’s see, how unimportant the French Revolution was then!’
The whole table fell into laughter, a shimmering cascade of giggles and snorts, surprisingly, dominated by the baritone hum of Henry. My friend turned beetroot-red and, just like Bunny before her, strained her shoulders up to hopefully hide herself between them. First to break off was the violine-led light motif in the person of Henry.
‘Cut her some slack! It’s not like she almost killed a professor, whose name I shall not evoke, with her car and then proceeded to try and charm him out of suspending her with the, what was it, ah, yes! The hypnotic sway of her luscious hips.’
A unison protest of Charles and Camilla overtook whatever Henry intended on saying next, as they recoiled in mock horror. Camilla shielded herself with the coat of her brother as he latched onto her head, trying to close her ears to that slander.
‘Why must you all recall all of my most painful memories.’ Charles screamed over the roaring crowd of the bar. ‘It’s not like I did anything to you! You’re all monsters, monsters, I say, not people!’
Then Francis, dangerously maroon on his face chimed in, bringing forth another story, one of botched boeuf de Bourgogne and Julian, politely munching on it’s charred remains. Since that moment, it came down like and avalanche. Stories, insults, and ashamed protests along with some foreign profanities thrown in together begun swishing over our heads like heavy ammunition, all in a delightful halo of barked laughter and whistles. In the meanwhile, the poor bartender must’ve called in for help, because the crowd of patrons started to loosen around the bar area, and a new, visibly taunt and tired looking waiter became roaming the floor and picking up the orders from table to table. Strangely enough, he came around our space more than the others and soon enough pints and glasses, the martini, vine, red and white, gin and whiskey even the dreaded cocktail glasses piled over our table. Slowly but steady, once again the floor swooped from beneath my feet and my head turned heavy, sprouting with a thick sheet of wool. I did not realize I had been dangerously tilting to the right, arching my whole body to bend it into an almost horseshoe shape until I felt her arm slipping from underneath mine, and slowly smoothing over the wrinkles of my shirt. My world tilted alongside me and then straightened right after when hot breath fanned my ear, a tint of sun and hop carried with it.
‘You made my hand fall asleep.’
I jumped, because the voice tore through the featherbed of alcohol induced confusion, like hot knife cuts through butter.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, making a bubbly laughter erupt from her lips.
‘It’s no problem at all dummy, none at all. But you need to let go off my wrist right now.’ I followed her gaze down to our laps, where I saw my hand wrapped just around her pulse, my fingers so, so unremarkable against her silky-smooth skin. Jumping once again I let go, a huge block of ice mixed with something utterly pathetic dropped into my stomach. A terrible stutter befell me and I struggled through a handful of rushed apologies, but she only swatted her asleep hand at me. ‘Told you already, it’s no problem! I just need to go.’ And then she leaned in and added, in a hushed conspiratorial tone, ‘To the ladies room.’
A dumb smile sprouted on my face as I watched her drunkenly unwrap herself from Henrys half-limp embrace and then clumsily step off the booth couch and onto the packed middle ground of the bar. Stunning, it was, to watch her manoeuvre between a bunch of people so much drunker and less coordinated than her. Her steps, although wobbly and off her usual light rhythm, coveted a lightness of a ballerina, as she ducked and avoided all the swishing hands and swirling bodies.
Henry watched her go as well, his eyes deep and dark like two black holes, hungrily swallowing the small sway of her steps. They slid down, right to the base of the column of her spine, her thighs, calves, and then a tiny, almost satisfied smile cracked his rigid lips, the eyes, mine and his, took in the stupidly cute way she raised her feet a little too high, placed them on the ground a bit too far apart, like a little duck to accommodate the comically big Oxfords. And Henry seemed almost proud of that. I wanted to open my mouth, speak to him, comment somehow on the sparks circling his irises, but my train of thought was interrupted by Bunny’s ostentatious grunt.
The blonde boy looked absolutely horrible, with red spots and blemishes blooming on his cheeks from the excess of alcohol and his eyes, puffy, even more swollen than when we started drinking. He still bore that ridiculous frown, which by that point gave into more damage, got watered down with every gulp of beer he had forced into himself, only to become a reduced cadaver of gloom floating in his murky, blue eyes.
‘Excuse me ladies, imma get me some beer,’ He slurred.
Camilla pouted, extending her arms towards him simultaneously closing and opening her palms, as if to rope him into hugging her and then anchoring him to stay at the table. Something in the way he stood up, I don’t know, maybe a stray button of his shirt that reflected the light in the wrong way, or the horizontal blue-and-white straps on his blazer, now waving hypnotically around his bulky form, made my gut churn and all that I drank and ate during the day came up my throat in waves of nausea. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times.
‘Come on Bun, the waiter is going to be here any minute, why go to the bar, all the way there. Sit, come, just sit.’
Another grunt and then a series of clumsily misguided moves echoed my brain. On the camera obscura of my eyelids my imagination showed a pretty hilarious picture of Bunny struggling to get out of the booth over the wasted, folded body of Francis.
‘No can do. I feel like I have the Sahara Desert in my mouth. I ain’t waiting for no waiter.’
However humorous the remark, his voice resounded strangely gloomy and hollow, but I could not care for that much at that point. Too busy counting from hundred to zero, I used all the mindpower I had left not to bend over and puke right onto the table. On my right Henry swayed softly and hummed alongside the tune somehow still getting through him all the way from de jukebox.
I must’ve gotten around to negative seven hundred fifty, when it finally dawned on me that something was wrong. Our area of the table suddenly got quiet, too quiet and I couldn’t shake the unpleasant, fuzzy feeling creeping up my spine. With no small fit of effort, I managed to glue open one of my eyes, then the other.
Hellish landscape of decadence greeted me with a sharp toothy smile. Francis laid passed out face first on the table, Camilla leaned over him with the full weight of her body, swishing a glass of gin in her hand, the liquid swirling in it like a miniature whirlwind, and Charles, always the one to get utterly pissed, perched himself on the couch, and with an absent stare, followed the infinity signs drafted in the air by his sister’s glass. Every now and the he’d add a small ‘swoooosh’, when she took a particularly sharp turn in the trajectory of the drink. I tore myself from that image, my head rolled over to the right, guided by the wooden, polished headrest. Henry was there. Slightly decomposed, but holding up better than the rest of us, nursing a small, steaming cup – tea? No, coffee. Black and sugarless.
‘Hey, Henry?’ My mouth burned as I opened it, chapped, dried up skin tore at that unusual activity and if I were any bit more sober, I would wince at the pain it had brought me to speak. He turned halfway towards me and raised one brow in a silent question. I stayed silent for a second, trying to accumulate all the ideas swirling around my disoriented head, arrange and put them into words, to somehow explain my sudden uneasiness to him. ‘Where do you think they went? They’d been gone for quite a while, don’t you think?’ A slight frown, then a look across the table, and finally a bright spark of understanding sparked across his face. ‘Bunny and…’ However anxious I felt, I think it was nothing, compared to the chill expression of pure horror that slid over his taunt features. Henry lunged himself up before I could even finish my slowly processed concern, and sprung forth, towards the bar, towards the toilets cramped right next to it, as he was, barefoot, limping and thoroughly terrified. I raced right after him, all of a sudden, sober as if not a drop of alcohol had entered my blood stream during that night. His fright climbing and latching onto me like a parasite, sucking all the air from my lungs, urging my blood to flow faster, stronger in order to keep my brain alive. I did not know, I could not comprehend what made him so… stressed, so pressed, but the look on his face, the half of it I saw while struggling to equal oust pastes, forebode nothing pleasant. And that image, of Henry totally panicked, mixed with my previous remark on her…
Getting through the crowd of the drunken, screaming people was no easy fit and I wonder how she had made it look so effortless. And Henry, he as well got through the thicket with no problem, although not thanks for his natural grace, but rather the utter disrespect and disregard of anyone that stepped in his way. He pushed through people, stepped on their feet, swatted away their arms, not even looking back when they screamed after him, and I followed his trail to that warzone, squeezing through the narrow he had cut up for himself. Henry kept himself composed through all of that, not a single scream, not even a word or a twitch. He was cold, a stalker, a wolf bound on the hunt for his prey. The scared frown on his face reforged into something more sharp and determined. And I was hot, fuming, the heatwave of alcohol mixed with anxiety rushed to my head heating me up like a furnace. I felt my pulse quickening, heart straining in a hopeless effort to keep me up. Yet, I put all of my effort into keeping up with him, as he seemed to have had connected the dots I did not have the skill, or correct disposition to connect, and he did not seem to notice me. Not even at all. It looked like, in that moment there was only one thought going through his mind, preoccupying him, mandating him his actions and goals. Only one thought that willed his heart into a steady beat – finding her. Finally, we got out of the worst cluster of now whining and crying out in pain students, when the door to the woman’s bathroom burst open and Bunny emerged from the forbidden depths. He was slightly crouching, as he paced with small, careful, but overall, quite rushed steps onward, pressing a hand to his face. But nothing, not even his big hand of a seasoned quarterback, could cover the red imprint cutting across his face, likely a result of something, or someone, hitting him in the face with full force. His eyes darted across the room, scattered and skittish. When they came to task us with their gaze, Bunny squealed and rushed right past us, drafting a big, round arch, only to push against the exit with the full force of his body and run into the cold night outside. He did not even take his coat with him. He just run away.
I stopped, partially to the shock I just had experienced due to that bizarre occurrence, but mostly because of Henry’s sudden indecision. If it were up to me, I would carry on straight forward, where my legs desired to bring me, until I’d have had reached the unpassable barrier of the door dividing the room and the women’s restroom. But he was not as drunk, or as disoriented as I was, because for a second, he halted, leaned to the direction of the exit, as if eager to chase down the runaway bunny, then swayed back, as if torn apart by some inner dilemma I was not privy to. Thankfully, he had not have to choose, for from the bathroom emerged another person. She was similarly to Bunny red on her face, although when his red seemed to root itself in a valiant assault, hers was a deep shade of effort and distress. Now, the direction was clear to Henry, he rushed towards her, opening his arms as if to gather her into them, but no, to my biggest surprised she jumped to the side and slid right past him, only to mix into the crowd. She threw him a rather strained ‘I’m leaving.’ And then dove into the swarm of bodies. Henry wasted no time and lunged back into the already irritated with him people. Only this time, he seemed to care about them even less, and seeing that they stopped screaming at him, and just opened themselves before him, like the red sea. But he was screaming, beaconing, calling her name, only for it to hit and bounce off her turned back. She was fast, even in those too-big shoes, Henry had trouble keeping up with her, least to say I, who out of us three, was probably the drunkest and the least athletic. After that quick cavalcade through the terrified flock, we arrived at our starting point, the table. In the far looser space, Henry caught up to her and yanked her small body towards him. She was feisty and full of fire, but in an open struggle, not in a play-pretend, she had no chance against him. The sheer force of his arms pulled her forward, as if she was but a rag doll. Her whole body shook, but not with the impact of his body engulfing hers, or shock that came with the sudden contact, but something far more pressing, something she tried to, with all her might, to push down and keep inside of herself. But her lower lip wobbled. A sorrowful display of utter helplessness, that little wobble, paired with the tears evoked the memory of the ‘Nighthawks’ in me. I balled my fists by my sides, now not only overtaken by sadness and the feel of disunity, but also fear. Gut-wrenching, blood-chilling, hair-standing fear. Because, when Henry pulled her in and caged her between his arm, when he brought her to him despite the slight resistance of her trembling arms against his chest, I saw her neck, craning upwards. And the four furious smudges running horizontally on her throat, pinkish imprint of fingers coming together into a palm just about where here larynx should start. That’s going to become a bruise, give it a few hours, I thought. Her jaw unclenched and, as Henry submerged her into himself, I saw her stutter something out. Her voice too small for me to hear over the booming of the bar, but I did not have to, least to say, the murderous tilt of Henry’s head confirmed to me what I already had suspected. He did not move, but I saw his reflection in the window placed right above out booth. The lines around his mouth deep like scars, appeared to deform his face, elongate like sabre teeth when he spoke to me, commanded.
‘Richard, go outside, find Edmund.’
Without thinking or sparing a single more glance I rushed to the exit, spurred on by the sharpness of his tone. All of my, my being, my soul, by body, they screamed in furious agony, in rage and in guilt. I let him go, I heard, I felt that something was off when Bunny stepped away from the booth and yet I let him go, too intoxicated to do anything. But what tore at me the worst was the fact, that when I run out, the last image that flashed before me were her eyes, those usually bright, intelligent orbs, now dusted with silver moist, dimmed, and lifeless.
The night air hit me in the face the second I stepped out of the bar, sudden realisation of how stuffy and hot the interior was coming onto me in a sobering wave. Everything before me, the neon signboards of other dodgy bars, the lanterns, the cars parked in the driveway, blurred before me and I had to cross my eyes to focus. My feet stumbled across the uneven pavement as I searched the perimeter like a starved coyote, teeth bared looking for the slightest hint of blonde hair swishing in the dark. But I saw nothing, no one. The street was quiet and desolate, blinking at me in utter bewilderment with her yellow lanterns. The spins came back to me with a doubled force, I had to support myself against one of the cars. The air was filled with a strange kind of glow, a tension that I could not explain, and when I looked up, I saw a full moon, hanging directly above the curve of the street.
Behind me, the door to the bar opened, swung, and then opened again, only to shut behind the exiting people with a thundering smack. Two pairs of feet crunched on the virgin snow, one pasted light and quick, like the crescendo of flutes, the other, long and deep, similar to the drag of a bow against the string of a violin.
‘Come on, baby, come back inside, I’ll take care of this, please, it’s so cold out, you’ll catch a cold.’
Henry begged as he desperately tried to hold onto her hand. Once again I observed how they mixed together, two dark spots against the backdrop of the luminescent snow, from the side-lines. But she broke off, shook her head, as if unable to muster any words. Her face shined in the natural light of the night, but not as I was used to, not with the internal, sweet, warm, internal glow, but the reflected light of the surroundings. Her face was wet, pulled and cold.
‘Don’t. Just don’t. Stop it Henry, I need to go. I need to go alone.’ Her voice was shaky, packed with emotions I could not untangle and determine. ‘Stop it, don’t touch me right now.’
She pulled her arm from his embrace, pushed at him to stay in place and strode off. His fingers floated in the space she had occupied just seconds before, mindlessly grabbing at the phantom threads of material. The coat she had on, flapped as she strode away, quicker, and quicker, swooshing in the cold air with no particular rhythm like the broken wings of a bird, so desperate to take into the skies. He stopped, obedient to her wishes, but I could see the worry painted in his face.
‘At least change back into my shoes, those will hurt you!’
She waved at him, her back steadily turned towards him, head hung low, but she gave no response.
As she walked away, up the street, her silhouette came against the gargantuan moon and suddenly I had this feeling of solemn loneliness gripping at my heart, convincing me that she was not walking, but floating up, alone far away and straight up the silver strands of moonlight into the unknown Space. Henry stood there, leaning forward as if fighting with his thoughts, his urges, until she was too small and too far away for him to see.
We styed there for a second longer, in silence, until he pulled out a red pack of cigarettes out of his coat and lit one. His eyes bore mindlessly into the ground and the lighter he held illuminated his ghostly, foreign face with an orange glow.
‘Don’t worry Richard. He’s going to show up sooner or later.’ Hoarse screech was all that came out of his mouth, vicious, venomous, sure. ‘And then, we’re going to deal with that swine accordingly.’
His eyes darted to me, and a shiver run down my spine, for I hand never seen such cold and biting rage frozen into a steady, calm face like that. Fear crossed me, when he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette and not a single muscle on his face moved.
