Fifty Pounds an Hour and Eighty Pounds for Extras

“And what if you disappear?” he asks.

Well, and, what if I do? Is it any concern of his? I suppose he’s thinking I have a habit of. I can sit in a room and disappear entirely. But that’s not actually what he means. He means, what if I really disappear?

I could. Take off. Buy that camper van. Leave it all behind. Pick up casual jobs and do the thing I want to do. Which is live, breathe, exist.

So what if I disappear? He is a comfort zone for me, and what am I to him? The same? Or more? Then that’s his look out if it is. I won’t be here to see him disintegrate. I won’t need to be here to see it, because it won’t happen.

I do not love him, and you can say that I’m hard, but it’s only the truth. He’s a cornershop boyfriend. The sort you pick up because you can’t be bothered going all the way to the supermarket and getting what you really want.

He’s a Happy Shopper boyfriend. Value pack. Comes with extra added loyalty.

I can still smell the one who was the bespoke tailored boyfriend. Even after all these years. He fitted me like the best cut cloth. And shame I never fitted him.

Am I supposed to say that I won’t disappear? Am I supposed to play the game according to the rules? He’s varnishing the table. I’ve watched him do it so methodically over the last couple of days. Sanding, varnishing, sanding, varnishing. I think he’s on the fifth coat now. It’s as glossy and as rich as a horse chestnut, freshly popped from its green spiked shell. The brush leaves no marks, and I hope that it will dry like this. Like a layer of amber on the surface of the wood.

We are out in the sunshine. It is perfectly still. No breeze, nothing to disturb the air. It’s like being paused. I sit on the doorstep with my chin on my knees, my skirt tucked around my legs, my bare feet peeping out, toes free to waggle if I so choose to exercise them.

Today I read, in one of those glossy women’s magazines that tell you what to wear and what to smear on your face and what colour eyeshadow to paint on your face, about a woman, younger than me, who paid a male escort for sex. I wonder what that would be like. No feeling. No engagement. I might know that I don’t love him, but there is feeling and engagement there. There is companionship. And is that better, or worse? Than no feeling, I mean. Is that hopeless half sense of knowing any better, or slightly worse, than just the pure febrile sex of not knowing? Fifty pounds an hour and eighty pounds for extras, is what I have learned. And is her name really Vanessa?

He has stopped working and is looking at me. I am crouched, still, on this doorstep, and I almost want a breeze to pick up, to blow some speck of dust into the impossible smoothness of the varnish. Trapped like a bug in sap, making amber a million years later.

I would have the breeze blow some life into this sterility, this ambient perfection. I would have a satellite crash out of the sky. I would call this what it was, if it only wasn’t what it is.

He won’t speak. He has asked his question and received no answer. He will bide his time now and hope. Tiny little in the scheme of things. Deserving of what he has. And what he gives falls short.

I’m not nice, am I?

I stretch out my legs, stretch up my arms, balance on the cusp of my behind, my arse, my derrière. I gather myself back together and then stand, turn, and walk into the shade of the house. Leaving him there, brush poised, staring at the space I used to fill.

And what if I disappeared?

His answer there. Nothing would change. His heart would still pump blood around his body. His lungs would still deliver oxygen to that blood.

I know this to be true. I am still breathing, aren’t I?


© J R Hargreaves 2006

Superman Saves The World

He spins the miniature globe that is a pencil sharpener really. Cheap, made from tin, bought from that shop in town where us girls used to hyperventilate over erasers, pencils, notebooks.

“Look,” he says. “I’m Superman. I’m saving the world.”

He thinks he’s turning back time. Perhaps he is. Perhaps there are miniature people on that tiny globe, suddenly having their lives reversed to a point where some, one, none of them can make new decisions, change the path their life took.

He is bored. I can tell. He is going through motions, spinning the globe, now fast, now slow. He reverses the reverse thrust, batting the edge of the sphere with one finger. I love that finger. The globe spins the right way, the way we all spin.

“Are you Superman now?” I ask him.

“Nah,” he says. “I’m just bored.”

I knew that. I want to tell him that I knew that, but instead I just watch him, across the room, across a lifetime of knowing him.

He isn’t here at all, really. I’m not watching him spin that globe in anything other than memory. I’m sitting here, alone, and hallucinating the past. But a past that never happened. We never had that pencil sharpener globe. That was something of mine when I was 14, and I don’t think he ever spun it. It’s a construct. My mind telling me something about regret.

I have done a stupid thing. I can feel it. I forgot the colours of the pills that popped out of the blister pack. Six hours ago. Or more. I don’t remember. I forgot the colours, and I poured in alcohol on top of them, and now I feel my heart skipping beats and then racing to catch up.

I remember a conversation, about rates of heart beats. The thought that we all have the same number of beats in a lifetime. A mouse’s heartbeat feels like something fluttering, it ticks so fast. Counting down the beats it is allowed until the last beat brings it to death.

I am sinking and watching him over the table, across the room, looking like he did the last time I saw him. I am watching him spin that globe, now this way, now that. He isn’t Superman. Nobody is.

I am thick with it tonight. My head, my eyes, my mouth, my body. Heavy and thick with its weight.

The world is a whisper that is a circle. A globe, spinning relentlessly. We might as well be static. Would that work?

“Would that work?” I ask him, but he isn’t listening. He has stopped spinning the globe. It slows to a rest. He is humming some melody to himself.

I think about all the things I haven’t done today. I haven’t done the dishes. I haven’t cleaned out the cat’s litter tray. I haven’t done my laundry. I haven’t left the house.

What have I done? I have breathed. In and out. I have stood still in my small part of the world, not knowing what the earth spinning beneath me feels like. Hand around my near-empty glass, I close my eyes for just a minute.

When I open them again, it is morning, and I have been sitting here all night. The cat is asleep on the table in front of me, one paw stretched out. I stretch, and she opens her eyes. She stretches with me. I get up and look in the small mirror that hangs where I can check that my hair is straight and my face isn’t slipping each morning before I go to work.

We have cheese for breakfast, the cat and I, and I remember that he never sat in this kitchen. Just like I never sat in the last kitchen he knew. Pieces of each other that we never knew are scattered through the air. Books in a library that have never been read and lodge among the best sellers, waiting to be discovered, waiting for their untouched pages to be opened and savoured.

I should greet the day, or I should sleep. Spend another 24 hours hiding from the world.

I would like one last touch. I would like my hand to be held, my body embraced, some human comfort with no other meaning than I care. I would like the world to stop spinning in that moment. I would like that to be the last beginning’s end.

I put a load in the washing machine. I fill the yellow plastic bowl that sits in the sink with hot water, washing up liquid and dirty dishes. I do not greet the day. I move through it.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Clean

"It isn't you," he said. "It's me. I don't want you to ever think it was you."

Now isn't really the time for this conversation. We're working flat out as it is. He's short of breath with the effort he has to put in to cut the pieces up small enough to get them into the bags. He has to do that first, before I can start to clean. I'm holding things down so that his job is easier.

He's wrong, of course. It is me. Or rather, it's about me. All of it. It always has been.

"I don't think it's me," I tell him. "Of course not. Now shut up and concentrate, will you?"

We need to be out within the next half hour. We have to have it cleaned before the morning shift starts.

He's struggling with one piece, struggling to get the saw through the density. It's a big piece. Thick and knotted like a lump of wood. My dad could teach him a thing or two about sawing. So could I, in all fairness. I don't know why I pander to his male ego. Letting him make a mess of the sawing; letting him assume it's not me, it's him.

He likes to think he's in control. He isn't. None of us is in control.

He seems to think he's ready to move on. He's ready because I've been withdrawing for the past few weeks. It's easy to do. You follow the routine. You make the right noises. But you do it in a way that feels dead. You hollow it out. Playing along; wearing the mufti. It's self-protection and it's an indirect attack. Rejection is an attack, you see.

He's making a mess of this one piece. It should have been the first piece. I think the saw might be blunted now. I hold it down with one hand and take a starlight mint from my pocket. Souvenir of a recent trip, peppermint cool and swirled with red, it looks like raspberry ripple ice-cream.

I want to tell him to finish off the smaller pieces, get them out of the way at least, then we can make one big effort, together, to get this last one done. Put it in the bag as it is, if we need to. I'm just conscious of the time.

"You see," he says, pausing to wipe the sweat from his eyes. His eyebrows aren't doing their job properly, he's perspiring so much. "I've started to wonder if I even know what I want any more. Not this." He motions around the room, the separate black sacks. "This is fine. Us, maybe. Do I want us?"

He's looking at me as if I'll give him some sort of answer.

I'm not going to commit to this conversation. Not here. Not while there's work to be done.

I pick up the saw from the floor, where he's left it, and I finish sawing through this piece he's been struggling with. I'm strong. I don't know what his problem has been, other than that he wasn't holding the saw right.

I put the two pieces into two bags, and then set to work on what's left. He kneels on the floor. He looks knackered. I try to remember how much older than me he is. Is it four years, or is it five? One of the two. I crunch into the mint. I instantly hate myself for doing it, then decide to relish destroying its circular form with the pressure from my teeth. If it's four or five years, he's starting now to be too old to stay ahead of the game. Maybe it's time he got out.

I'm done. It's all bagged up, and we start the process of taking the bags out to the van. He does the lifting and the carrying out of the building, I help by moving the bags closer to the door. While he's taking them out, I set to on the floor, cleaning up the blood and fragments of bone. It has to be spotless, or as spotless as can be. Forensics means it will never be spotless. But if I can leave it so it doesn't seem like anything has happened, then it buys some time, and leaves the trail free to go cold. Until these bags of body parts pop up unexpectedly somewhere.

I snap off the latex gloves when I'm done, and replace them with a clean pair, so I won't leave any fingerprints anywhere. The discarded pair I put into a bag to be incinerated later. The clothes we are wearing will be incinerated too.

"It really isn't you, you know."

He's standing in the doorway, pulling off his own gloves. I open the bag and hold it out towards him. He drops them in. He's so busy trying to reassure me that he doesn't even ask for a replacement pair. I don't prompt him.

I leave the room before him, and he closes the door behind us, making sure that the lock is engaged first. He grips the door handle and pushes firmly against the door with the flat of his other hand.

I walk down to the van and get in on the passenger side. The plastic sheeting covering the seats, which will also get incinerated later, crackles as I sit down. It crackles more when he sits in the driver's seat.

He starts the engine and we move off. I look out of the window and smile to myself.

I feel clean already.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Blackbird

“It’s dead.”

We’re both looking down at it. He wants to hold my hand, he’s that frightened of it. Only young. He’s blinking back tears and the sunlight is making his hair seem golden. I won’t take his hand. He has to learn. You stand on your own two feet in this world. Only young, but he needs to know it.

He sniffs away his running nose. One tear escapes; rolls slowly down his cheek, all surface tension, glistening in the sunlight. It almost seems magnified, I can see it that clearly. It’s a fat one, rolling slowly over the sand dune curve of his cheek and down; breaking when it meets the corner of his mouth. His tongue flicks out instinctively and laps up the salt water of his sorrow.

“Are you sure it’s dead?” he whispers.

“I’m sure. It’s dead.” The perfect beauty of that tear falling is forgotten in the snap of irritation.

He wants to stand there staring at it forever. I half expect him to ask if we can conduct a funeral for it. I don’t know if he understands what a funeral is, though. He’s paying homage, though, in his own way. What’s that if it’s not a funeral?

I move away. There’s only so long you can spend looking at something like that before you start to feel that there’s nothing left to learn. He’ll get used to it. He’ll absorb everything about this one, then the next one will seem less important, and the next, until he’ll get to a point where all he needs to do is look and say, “It’s dead,” then walk away.

He’ll be a man then.

After I’ve gone a few steps, I turn to look at him. Still standing there, head bowed, short blonde hair slightly ruffled. If I were still standing close next to him, and he were to look up now, he’d look like his mother.

I shout of him, and he starts; awakens from whatever reverie he was lost in.

I think of that solitary escaping tear, and the way his tongue flicked out to catch it, flicked back in to take it back inside him again. He walks towards me, his head turned back to keep it in sight. It must have been imprinted on his retina a thousand times by now.

“Come on,” I say. “Time to go. Got to get back.”

“Grandma?” He makes a question of my name, my title, whatever it is. “Where fo things go when they’re dead?”

He’s walking beside me now, twice as many of his steps to keep up with mine. Every so often a skip, or a hop, or a short necessary run. His hand flies up every so often, as though it’s going to seek out mine.

“I don’t know,” I say. I’m not going to lie to him any more than that. It’s a sufficient lie for now.

Nothing prepares you for death. Nothing except death. The more you know of it, the more you know what to expect. Or you think you do. Sometimes it still manages to shock.

There’s always at least one in this park. Older lads with their air rifles, taking pot shots, getting lucky. They usually bring one down, and it lies in the grass somewhere for a day or two, until a cat or a fox or some other feral creature takes it. If the grass is long enough, sometimes one of them can lie there for weeks, until it grows maggoty and you can smell it faintly on the air.

Blackbird this time. More often a pigeon. This one had glossy feathers, lying there.

He’s caught hold of my hand at last, and he’s happy now, swinging my arm as we walk out of the park, passing the spot where, nearly six years ago, she was bending over the pushchair, tucking him in more closely to protect him from the chill. It was only her body falling onto his that saved him from anything more than a bit of bruising when that car smashed into her.

I remember the phone call. The boy’s frantic dad making her dad frantic too, and then the rush to the hospital where she was already laid out.

Somebody needed to say it to him, then. “She’s dead.” Him, the husband, the father, the man no older in that moment than this boy beside me is now.

He hadn’t got used to it. He wasn’t a man yet.

We cross the road, and I grip his hand tighter. Only young, and needs to know, but not like that. He doesn’t need to learn it that way. So I grip his hand tightly while we cross over the road, and I keep it gripped until we’re safely on our street.

“Grandma?” Turning me into a question again. “Will that bird be there again tomorrow, do you think?”

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Scratch

I am scared of myself and what we've done. Can you tell? As we're standing here, looking down on the result of our actions. I am scared of what I find I have within me.

This tableau could be a scale model of one from years ago, do you remember? No, of course you don't remember. It wasn't me and you then. It was me and another, looking down on the result of our play.

Something bright and shiny, something I loved and cherished from the day it was given to me. A thing I played with, taking care not to damage the shininess of its surface. No scuffs, no grazes, no scratches. We looked down on it, where it lay. He was oblivious. Just a lad, invited over to play, attracted like a magpie to my favourite toy. I was staring at the scratch that let the bright metal bleed through the shiny paint like some obscenely haemorrhaging gash.

It was a tiny thing, a minute scratch, no other damage done, and I felt bruised by its existence.

It isn't fair to apportion blame when these things happen. It wasn't his fault, it wasn't mine. We had only been doing what you are supposed to do with a Matchbox car. We had only been playing with it. It was just that he had played with it so roughly, and I had let him. All those weeks of playing cautiously, taking care of it, loving its perfection, the smoothness of the paintwork, the glory of its sheen; all of that effort then was suddenly gone, wiped out by that one tiny scratch.

It wasn't irreparable, my dad told us, as I continued to stand there, holding the car, my ten year old self trying not to cry. I was as brave as you can be when the best thing you had from Christmas, implausibly better than the other toys because it was so shiny and beautiful and perfect, seemed broken. It wasn't irreparable, dad was right. He took it away and did the things to it that dads with workshops do. The car came back; the scratch was gone, as good as new. Almost. I knew, though. I could see where the scratch had appeared, see the trace left behind where dad had covered it over with a lick of paint. And somehow I didn't love it any more. Somehow it became just another thing, something to be played with, handled as roughly as you like.

Not true of course. It could never be just something. It became a reminder of how we had played too roughly, how I hadn't taken more care, and eventually it became ignored. Pushed away, left behind; not even in a cupboard or on a shelf. Under a bed somewhere, or a bookcase. Abandoned.

We stand here side by side and look at the result of our actions. I want to hold your hand, feel some assurance that what we have done isn't irreparable. I want to feel your skin against mine in that simple gesture, the warmth, the pulse beneath your touch. I want to feel your hand squeeze mine and tell me that a lick of paint will sort this out.

It won't. The gash is bright, bleeding out in slick red against the whiteness of her skin. This isn't a Matchbox car. This is irreparable. I am scared that I have this within me, this ability to take. I stand by and watch. Something, someone that we have made can be broken like this, and I stand by and let it happen.

I have no idea what you're thinking, what words are forming in your head. We made this thing together. We created something bright and shiny and beautiful.

It isn't the gash. It's not even the stillness of her body lying there. It's that we made this thing, nurtured it and loved it, and in one moment of not thinking clearly, it is broken and will not be repaired.

We will, in the next few seconds, pick her up and take her to the hospital. We will answer questions, be interrogated as to how this happened. Will either of us know for sure?

We will bring her home, her gash stitched together, the bone re-set. We will be watched and monitored to make sure this doesn't happen again, that we can be trusted with her care.

It's not the trust of other people, though, is it? It's the trust we have in ourselves, in each other. It's the scratch that lies just beneath the surface now, covered over by a nifty paint job; the thing that will drive us and mean that holding your hand won't be a reassurance any more. You didn't take mine quickly enough, and I held back from seeking yours, and now I am scared of myself and what we are capable of. The myriad hurts that we can inflict, that will follow on from this.

You scoop her up into your arms and carry her out of the house. I follow, securing the door behind us, opening the car for you to sit inside. I drive.

She isn't dead, but maybe we are.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Stories

The sky threatens rain. There is a pre-ordained prick at the back of your eyes, threatening tears in light showers later. Or maybe sobs. It depends on the particular hormone mix. But you know some sort of precipitation will occur.

An aeroplane passes overhead with a noise like wind, and you wonder who there is on board; someone who might be starting an adventure, maybe.

A memory hits: someone running one word into another to form a third, nonsense word; a word that makes an impossible sense, and made you laugh once. But the muscles in your face are all set to down and no impulse, electrical or otherwise, can persuade them to change position.

You've stumbled on a truth defined by its absence. Life in its impossible colours and cadences stopped racing through your veins when you tripped over the obvious. Childhood is gone forever.

One week, reminding you of how it felt to be young and full of possibility, book-ended by weeks either side where you had a clear sense of adulthood having begun. Now, after all this time, it decides to begin in earnest with choices and desires finally embraced, in spite of (because of) their ferocity and rawness.

A truth that shocks you and strips you of your meaning for seconds that are ticking on into forever, with you rendered immobile.

You were always one step removed; the oblivious protagonist, backed by a Greek Chorus, pointing fingers and telling your story in their terms. People observing. People, with their hints and looks, their questions. Your story one part of a song-cycle: yours joined to theirs in ever expanding circles from a single point of disturbance. 'No harm done', you would have thought at the moment of impact. Had you thought or even realised what you were doing. You didn't think. You acted, oblivious to the Chorus' wail of observation behind you. Ever expanding ripples, an extended network of stories built and building around specific themes: pain, loss, betrayal; desire; Judas fulfilling his destiny; funerals, wakes, and flowers dancing in a breeze. Stories spreading out to a far distant horizon where the silent observers sit.

And you at the centre. Not paying attention, not considering that this is a pool, and was a still pool at that when the impact fell. Anything dropped (not just by you, by anyone) was bound to ripple out and out and never seemingly reach an end.

You were just unlucky, or unknowingly (unconsciously?) calculating. And there was an end, but you were one step removed, oblivious, until (as in a pantomime) you heard a voice from the outermost reaches yell, "Behind You!!"

You look, and you see, and the Chorus puts its collective hands in its mass of pockets and whistles as though there is nothing going on. Their chattering discourse on all things You drops to a hum, a murmur of contamination, seeping into your awareness. You look, and you see, on the far off horizon, a bank of observers waiting for the moment when their currency will be withdrawn and they will be allowed to join the fray, passing from hand to hand in exchange for goods and services. Bit players in the expanding story of You.

Here the truth, defined by its absence. That one voice, yelling from the remotest horizon its simple but effective word-pair, tells the truth. You are not alone in a secret world of your own construction. Your observers are drawing their own conclusions, and dropping them into a thousand different ponds to ripple out to other horizons you cannot even begin to comprehend. Ripples begetting ripples. One simple action that you thought was unobserved, the seam for all this mining. Motherlode of creativity and destruction.

So childhood is gone forever, and the spotlight's glare, that you now see is trained on you, will blind you if you do not move. The spotlight of performance and interrogation. That burning disc that focuses attention directly onto you. You look, and you see, that the beam is directed by you. Your choices and desires exposed for all to see by your own fair hand.

The Chorus asks of you two questions, both of which assume the answer 'No'.

Are you proud of yourself now?

Would you do it again?

You buck the trend, though. Answer 'Yes'.

Childhood not quite over yet.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Howl (2)

She gets on a train, because she can’t think of the words to write down in an email. She doesn’t even think about picking up the phone. She needs to say it to his face.

She sits on the train, the train sits at the platform, the strain of waiting tells and pulls and forces her out of her seat a few times.

She is wild with it. She is sweating with it. She sits down again each time sense tells her to leave.

She would take hold of great handfuls of her hair and tear it out if she thought it would do any good.

The train still doesn’t move.

She chews at her lip and thinks of the words she needs to have ready. She rehearses her point, the theme of her address. She prepares, revises, edits her monologue, without any thought that he might have something to say about her sudden appearance on his doorstep.

If he regrets anything about having got to know her, he isn’t allowed to say, because that will feed the flames. If he gives even the slightest hint of how little he wants any of this attention, she will see it as invitation to continue. And if he ignores her, she will continue anyway. There is no way around it.

She is insane with impatience. The train continues to wait at the platform. She counts her heartbeats, the swooshing pulse that is in her ears. She jolts from her seat; she rushes out onto the platform, looking for a guard, someone to ask why the train isn’t moving.

She steps further away from the train, looking up and down the station, and the doors swish closed behind her, with the beep of warning. She twists and lunges, but she’s too late to get a hand through the gap, too late to force the doors back open, and she’s forced to watch as the train pulls away from the station.

She is wild with it, and she sinks to her knees, right there on the platform. She does not plot to wait. She does not plot to do anything. She is wild, and the blood is rushing to her head, the pulse she can hear in her ears so loud that she thinks she is about to explode.

And maybe it would be a good thing if she did explode. Maybe that way, madness would leave her. Or she would leave madness. Then all of this wild fucking mess of her own inventing would be done.

People sit on the bent metal benches painted red and look around the space she occupies. People stand further down the platform and stare in the opposite direction. People have an allergy to courting trouble and inconvenience.

She kneels on the platform and begins to howl. She kneels, and the world doesn’t listen.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Howl (1)

He gets on a train, because he can’t think of the words to write down in an email. He doesn’t even think about picking up the phone. He needs to say it to her face.

He sits on the train, the train sits at the platform, the strain of waiting tells and pulls and forces him out of his seat a few times.

He is wild with it. He is sweating with it. He sits down again each time sense tells him to leave.

He would take hold of great handfuls of his hair and tear it out if he thought it would do any good.

The train still doesn’t move.

He chews at his lip and thinks of the words he needs to have ready. He rehearses his point, the theme of his address. He prepares, revises, edits his monologue, without any thought that she might have something to say about his sudden appearance on her doorstep.

If she regrets anything about having got to know him, she isn’t allowed to say, because that will feed the flames. If she gives even the slightest hint of how little she wants any of this attention, he will see it as invitation to continue. And if she ignores him, he will continue anyway. There is no way around it.

He is insane with impatience. The train continues to wait at the platform. He counts his heartbeats, the swooshing pulse that is in his ears. He jolts from his seat; he rushes out onto the platform, looking for a guard, someone to ask why the train isn’t moving.

He steps further away from the train, looking up and down the station, and the doors swish closed behind him, with the beep of warning. He twists and lunges, but he’s too late to get a hand through the gap, too late to force the doors back open, and he’s forced to watch as the train pulls away from the station.

He is wild with it, and he sinks to his knees, right there on the platform. He does not plot to wait. He does not plot to do anything. He is wild, and the blood is rushing to his head, the pulse he can hear in his ears so loud that he thinks he is about to explode.

And maybe it would be a good thing if he did explode. Maybe that way, madness would leave him. Or he would leave madness. Then all of this wild fucking mess of his own inventing would be done.

People sit on the bent metal benches painted red and look around the space he occupies. People stand further down the platform and stare in the opposite direction. People have an allergy to courting trouble and inconvenience.

He kneels on the platform and begins to howl. He kneels, and the world doesn’t listen.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

I Know The Score

The lines of music sit on the page in front of her, the notes jumping up and down. Up and down. Three Movements (For Jack Brymer and Henry Bronkhurst) written in 1955 by Norman Fulton. The notes jump, the key signature is C major, no sharps, no flats. The time signature is three crotchets to the bar, a waltz, of sorts. A waltz. She stands still, while he walks around her. He tries to catch her eye, while she doesn’t know what to do. She gives no clues, and even if he tries to reach and touch her, the waltz (of sorts) is on. The notes rise and fall, poco a poco crescendo. She stands still, while he walks around her.

I know what the score is. I am she, and he is whoever. Insignificant, irrelevant, inconsequential. I know what the score is, and though he thinks he might win, he won’t. Glissando. Poco a poco crescendo. Rallentando. Poco rallentando. Slide. Gradually get louder. Slow down. Gradually slow down. It’s all like fucking. But the sharps and flats and syncopations make it dirty fucking. Not love, not romance, just fucking.

It’s a waltz of sorts. Dip and weave. No touching, though. Never any touching. God forbid that this should become real.

She reads the lines of music on the page in front of her. She remembers those lessons, long ago. Embouchure; mouth on mouthpiece. Breathe from diaphragm; his excuse to touch her belly. Not this him; another. An older, much older, much more dangerous him. Touching her belly in ways inappropriate; telling a sob story to her mother. Years later, an arrest. Years later, a realisation. Touching her belly was inappropriate.

Embouchure, then. Mouth creating a seal. Mouth sealing in kisses hot and fervent. I wish. She wishes. Yesterday she (I) would have been a good lay. Not tonight. Not any night now. Yesterday I (she) was in the right place.

I know the score. I’m no fool. Enlightened self-interest. Take what you can from it. Wring it out. The creative urge, the impulse, the fucking that is not fucking.

It’s not like she (I) hasn’t (haven’t) done this before.

She sits and stares at the Allegretto and the Lento and the Allegro vigoroso. She sits and stares at the signature change from 3/4 to 4/4 and there it remains. A waltz (of sorts) begins this. Common time wins in the end.

Pochissimo rallentando. Tenerezza. Slow down as little as possible. Then tenderness.

She sits and stares at the page in front of her. She (I) knows (know) the score.

It’s like fucking. There is no other word for it.

© J R Hargreaves 2006