story
She allowed her insecurities to be read by those around her so that they might not be insecurities any longer, but badges of achievement. Achievement of fractured memories, of singular survival, of something unsure yet won fairly and squarely in the world of elastic pleasurepain. This, in turn, was misinterpreted as strength, as bolshie defiance, not as accomplished endurance. Not as a means of getting from a to b.
‘The trouble with some people is’, she explained, ‘the trouble with some people is they want an easy pocket to lock their cash away. Lose it. Spend it. What’s the difference?’
The yellow hat she wore was not a beacon to have her stand out, but a cover, she felt, to distract. ‘I must hide you see’, she told him. ‘It’s the only way to make myself heard in my own thoughts, you know?’
His window was always open; it allowed the street to speak to him and in turn, his noises filtered down through the tree outside his window to the railing along the wall, buzzing its metallic om. The lone kid, genderless under a mop of straggled hair, pouting and picking at something in a small hand, occasionally glancing to see if he was noticing someone was there. At least someone.
He waited for her, as always, waiting. Not minding but anxious all the same, fearing one day her arrival wouldn’t reach its conclusion of her tumble, stumble, fumble and moan. A million demons lurking beneath the wordless grabbing, a world of pawing past. But each fresh incident was like a new skin to him, although the relief he felt for himself was a new failure for his comprehension of her.
Today, there was a new tune from the street. Today he heard a vaguely familiar rumbling and an unfamiliar thin whine. Lifting a spoon to mouth, he gazed out and down to see her leaning against the meditative rail and staring out onto the road. The child as sullen as always, to her side, head down & emitting a sound. The sound might have been talk as it may well have been a chant to counterpoint the railing’s dirge. It was only when this was mirrored by her own deep murmurings that he realised there was the possibility of a conversation occurring between these two disparate yet connected-by-him misfits, overcoming apparent incongruence to discover a recognizable truth.
Fascination, yet fear of destroying a fragile moment pulled at him as he leaned further out to attempt the capture of a stray word or even phrase. But it was too low, too flat, too intimate.
He placed bowel and spoon on the counter and wandered to the bed, laying down and pulling the sheet up over his face. Occasionally a slight hint of the exchange floated in, but he let it sift through the air with the loud sigh of the passing cars, the exclamations, the sounds of the street. Soon it became a drone, a buzz, a purr as consistent as the railing’s song, lulling him into somnambulistic reverie. He wouldn’t ask her. She wouldn’t tell him. If so, it was all he would need to know.
(copyright corinna tomrley 2005)