Lies

It is necessary to feel every last jolting moment of your own existence. From those moments in the darkness, when your head pays no attention to your body’s need for sleep, to the seconds of silence when you remember that you hate him.

She, at least, is convinced of this, standing as she does at a crossroads in the rain. His hand is at her waist, drawing her to him; her hand a barrier between them, touching but not feeling; pushing him away; preventing him from drawing her too close.

Jack and Angi, standing again at this crossroads. The rain is something new. So is her determination. The rain weighs her hair down; her determination roots her firmly where she stands. Resisting.

“I promise I’ll call you a cab,” he’s saying.

A moment she has to experience; repeatedly, it seems. The promised phone call never made until a lifetime has gone by in the seven hours between last orders and dawn.

“I need to go home. To sleep,” she tells him.

“You can sleep at mine.”

“Fully clothed? On top of the bed? Between the blanket and the quilt?” She laughs shortly. “And then what? You give me money on the doorstep in front of the cab driver? Make me look like a prostitute?”

She stares at him. He’s silent, unapologetic. He doesn’t even have the sense not to smile.

“I hate you,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, “but you’ll still come back, won’t you?”

It’s not a question. It’s cocky self-assurance.

Angi’s face is pale, framed by dark hair. The moon is large and round in the sky. Its silver reflection of the sun’s rays from the other side of the planet is lost in the yellow glow from the street lights. Her eyes seem black and stare out at him from the pale orb of her face, challenging him. Jack stares back. More moments experienced as time seems to grind to a halt to watch the stupidity of their behaviour.

Angi knows that she could step away, step off the pavement at this corner. She could cross the road and walk up to the taxi rank, without once looking back at him. She knows that, if she did, it would be the last time. And yet she still stands there, meeting his gaze.

Something in this two penny opera that hasn’t been said yet keeps them both centre stage. Something in this story that has yet to be told.

I hate you isn’t it; that didn’t need to be said. His hand is still at her waist. Angi relaxes her own hand’s resistant pressure, allowing him to draw her closer to him. They kiss.

“I could fuck you right here,” he says into her ear, his breath moist against her hair, mixing with the rain water there. She smiles, then laughs, then steps away from him. Angi steps out into the road just as a car drives too fast through the traffic lights turned red, catching her up, throwing her across its bonnet, and carrying her forward as it tries to brake.

When the car comes to a halt, her inert body slides down onto the road. She is still smiling, her eyes still staring, her face a pale orb in the mass of her dark hair.

Jack has been frozen in time from the moment she left his embrace. It isn’t even clear to him whether he has registered what has just happened.

He can’t move. The driver of the car has left his door open, and the chime of the alarm is all that Jack can hear. The driver is crouched over Angi’s body, shouting back over his shoulder to Jack.

The street is deserted but for the two of them and her silent form.

Jack starts to move. He walks the 300 yards from the crossroads to his house, under drops of rain that fall from the trees lining the road. The car driver’s head follows him as he walks past; the head rotates slowly like that of an owl. There’s something strained in the man’s face, as though he is shouting. Jack sees it, but he doesn’t respond.

He sits in his house. The silence is broken momentarily by sirens passing in the street outside. He starts to build the lies he will tell, the lies he must tell, if the police come knocking.

Every moment was a dangerous game in this dance they started together. He would have fucked her tonight. There and then in the street, when he told her he would. There was hate enough between them to do it. He would have fucked her and made her laugh, but it’s too late for that now.

He wonders whether he does have to think up any lies. There is only the car driver’s word that he was there. No other witnesses.

Then he remembers.

She will have a last number received in her phone. It will be his. It will lead them straight to him, and he won’t be able to deny that he knew her.

He begins to construct his lies.

© J R Hargreaves August 2006