This weekend - from my new collection Kill Me Now - obsessive love and madness unleashed in:
For months you clamp yourself to her life, until eventually she relents and lets you be her boyfriend.
For years you tell her how important it is to travel.
She goes travelling.
Now she’s on a beach in Los Angeles, and you're in a piss-stinking public phone box in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
You ask the woman on the end of the phone three times: is she sure there were no letters waiting for your girlfriend when she arrived.
Three times she answers with increasing impatience.
“There were no letters for her, and right now she’s down at the beach.”
None of the many long letters you wrote arrived. She doesn’t know what you wrote.
You can’t even remember what you wrote, because ever since she left, you’ve been out of your tiny fragile mind.
Without her there to obsess over, your madness has no outlet.
You tuck your chin into your coat, push open the door of the phone box, and step into the freezing cold rain exploding over the Pennines.
You walk against the wind, and stumble back to your little terraced house, where you sit on the sofa in your soaking wet coat.
You drink scotch. Famous Grouse.
You smoke some hash.
Then drink more scotch.
Eight hours later Malcolm comes home from work at the Student Union bars and finds you still in your damp coat.
Full length tweed, with a large collar that you keep flipped up around your neck, exposing only your face to the outside world.
Since she left you wear this coat everywhere, even during university lectures.
It’s being talked about, but you know it’s better this way. You are safely cocooned, and they are protected from you.
Mind you it stinks a bit, when it’s soaked through and body-warmed from the inside.
Malcolm is not an effusive man. Long silences and few words are his way, yet tonight he sits next to you and puts his arm around you.
“This can’t go on, Charlie.”
“My letters didn’t arrive."
Long silence.
“If it can’t go on, what do I do?”
“Go and pack Blue Bag.”
“Okay.”
You head upstairs, somewhat surprised to find Malcolm following you. Evidently he’s reached a level of concern that requires you to be supervised.
“What am I packing for? How long?
“As long as it takes.”
“And am I going somewhere hot or cold?”
“Pack as if you’re never coming back."
This is a man you trust. Your inability to act rationally makes taking instruction easy; pleasurable.
Somebody else has taken control.
Thank fuck for that.
Packing Blue Bag is simple when you’re going forever.
One set of clothes for hot.
One set for cold.
One set to stay dry when it’s wet.
Washbag.
Boots on the foot and trainers in the bag.
Everything stuffed into a plastic orange survival bag, which keeps it all dry, and if you’re ever stuck, you sleep in that bag. Orange bag rolled into a sausage, slid into Blue Bag and zip.
“Done.”
“Well done Charlie. Now, am I right in thinking you’ve still got an American Express card? I seem to remember you saying you’d kept it from your marketing days.”
“Yep. Paid the bloody membership fee each year for some reason, but never use it. It’s a charge card, not a credit card. You have to pay the full bill each month. Who does that?”
“Perfect. Put it in your wallet.”
You follow Malcolm out of the house and walk through the silent darkness of sleeping Bradford.
Malcolm unlocks the door of the bar he closed only an hour earlier.
You sit together in the pale light of beer pump heads.
Absorbing Malcolm’s calm and the stillness of a closed bar, you drink whisky through the night.
Malcolm looks at his watch.
“First train leaves for London in 20 minutes. Time to get to the Interchange.”
“Am I going to London?”
“No Charlie. You’re going after her.”
“Am I? Oooerr. Not sure she’ll like me muscling in on her trip.”
“You don’t have to muscle in on anything. Just see her, say what you need to and take it from there.”
“Okay.”
Malcolm walks you through Bradford’s ashen dawn, down to the station, and sees you onto the train.
You’re heading south at sunrise.
Blue Bag is by your side.
Relief and a sense of purpose flood your frayed worn out systems.
From London’s Kings Cross you jump onto the Northern Line, and head straight to Kentish Town, to wake up Chris.
You tell him that you need him by your side for the day.
“Okay Chas, but I’m going nowhere without a coffee and a rolly. What’s going on this time?”
“Right mate, here’s the story. Got to be on a plane to LA by sundown, or else I might start to think."
Chris takes you to the USIT travel agency in the West End, where you show a young brunette your student card.
You explain to her that you have to be on a flight to LA by nightfall.
Her fingers whirl over her keyboard.
“Okay, there’s a flight with BA to JFK, leaving Heathrow at 5pm today, and then a connecting flight to LA six hours later, but … if you wait until morning, there’s a much cheaper fare on a direct flight, without that long layover.”
“No. I need to go now.”
“Okay. How long would you like to spend in LA?”
“24 hours. And the following day I need a flight on to New Zealand.”
She looks up at you for a second and returns to her keyboard.
“Hmm, yes, I can do that. Air New Zealand have two daily fights. Any preference for times?”
“No.”
Chris bounces nervously from one foot to the other.
“And onward from New Zealand?”
Shit. You haven’t got that far yet.
“I’ll sort that when I’m there.”
“So it’s a one way from here to Aukland with a stopover in LA."
“You could say that.”
She looks at you and smiles.
“Do this a lot, do you? Get me to the other side of the world right now type of thing?”
You smile and ask if they accept American Express.
“That’ll do nicely!” she says.
You both turn your heads as Chris chuckles at the absurdity of it all, and then all three of you laugh together.
“Oh and I need a hotel room in LA. What time do I get in?”
“Erm, 1:20 am local time.”
“Shit. Okay, I definitely need a room. Nice place, please.”
“I’ve a room at the Wilshere for $250.”
“That’ll do. Book that too.”
You hug Chris and climb onto the bus to Heathrow.
You’re on the plane to JFK.
You wind your watch back 5 hours.
Sleep is out of the question. You’re buzzed to fuck on adrenaline and off your tits on sleep deprivation.
Six hours layover in JFK, immobile with a thousand yard stare,
Now you’re on the plane to LA.
You wind your watch back three hours.
This is the longest fucking day the universe has ever seen.
It started three days ago.
You asked Chris to call her, to tell her Charlie is on his way.
Chris didn’t thank you for that. What a bastard call to make for your mate.
She’ll be there.
Will she be safe at the airport?
Get a grip. She volunteered to help the victims of the Loma Prieta earthquake.
She’ll be able to handle a fucking airport.
Will she be furious?
You encourage her to travel and then, soon as she does, you implode, go bananas and chase after her.
Pathetic.
You hate yourself but you love her.
Staring into the night outside the airplane window you see her dark blonde hair, those rounded cheekbones, her clear English Rose blue eyes and that perfect petite nose.
Through the veil of your madness this middle class woman from the Midlands appears to have a soul that’s pure, a heart that’s open, an admirably powerful sense of social justice and a mind-blowing body.
You’re not muscling in on her trip.
You’ll be gone the day after you arrive.
You just need to hold her.
She needs to know how much you love her, and then you can let her go.
Hang on! She’s heading to New Zealand in December.
Before she left, while you were still sane, she suggested you might fly out and meet her there for Christmas.
She actually said that, months ago, and you laughed and said
“No, this is your time my love. The last thing you need is me. This is about you.”
Now, maybe, this one night in LA might be followed by Christmas together in New Zealand.
How long is it since Bradford?
How long is it since sleep, since food or anything but winding back your watch?
Off the plane in LAX, you race to Arrivals, and
there
there she is
waiting for you.
She tries to look angry.
Your eyes pump excitement as you stride towards her, yet she refuses to smile.
You go for a hug but she stands back.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Came to see you, didn’t I?”
She can’t resist the power of your crazed enthusiasm, and now you hug her and she lingers just long enough to let you know.
She smells so good.
You grab a cab to the hotel and you both sit on the floor in your room, swigging a bottle of vodka from the neck.
She feeds off your madness, the excitement of it, and then you make love, frantic wonderful sex on rough hotel carpet, and then you pass out on the bed.
Two hours later the Californian sun drills into your head through your eyes.
When you try to check out of the hotel, the guy on reception says if you don’t mind, please wait a moment. He has to call American Express.
Apparently there’s been a recent flurry of activity on this card, and he simply needs to reassure them you presented full ID, and the card has not been stolen.
Outside the hotel you stretch out your arm, flick on your lighter and set fire to your American Express card.
The melting plastic drips onto the sidewalk.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?”
“It was getting too hot, so I made it hotter. I’d never be able to use it again anyway.”
You hug her and armed with her scent in your nostrils, you finally summon up the courage to ask
“New Zealand for Christmas? I can rent us a beach hut near Abel Tasman?”
She looks you in the eye, shakes her head and sighs.
“I’ll be there.”
You turn and walk into downtown LA, find a local bus that creeps slowly towards LAX, via some extremely dodgy neighbourhoods, board your flight to New Zealand and wind your watch back …
… how long?
Hang on, you’ll cross the International Dateline, so isn’t it tomorrow there already?
You have no idea what time
or even what day it is.
You’ve completely lost your own dateline
your brain bouncing around a timeless lifeline.
24 hours later you walk up Queen Street in Auckland.
You have no money.
You have no place to stay.
You have no ticket out.
You might never go back.
You might live here forever.
You might not.
She’s coming for Christmas.
©Charlie Adley
11.02.2023
No comments:
Post a Comment