Nicola Barker - Wide Open

Total commitment? Fucked but not intimate? Lost?

Luke stared disconsolately, squinting slightly, at the small, dark negative of Sara’s favourite cup and its saucer. Isn’t this the same thing? he asked himself; exactly the same thing, in fact, as the dreaded dot-to-dots? Isn’t the single most significant element in this image the very one which is absent?

In the first instance, sex, plain and simple. In the second — here, with the cup and its saucer — it was the lips that drank, the hand that held. It was Sara. Missing. The whole. And if she really did, truly consider this image to contain, in some crazy way, a significant part of herself, then she was simply deluded.

I long to see the lips, Luke thought, and the tongue and the mouth and the throat and the tits, in the same way that I long to see the people in the dot-to-dots just fucking. Not merely numbers on the page waiting to be joined in a rough approximation. I want everything clear and clean and open. Not just bits and pieces. Is that wrong of me?

A real pornographer . What did it mean? All surface? Nothing under? Was that truly anything to be so ashamed of?

I have a big heart, Luke decided, and a small imagination. But women craved an imagination. They needed one. They wanted pretence and pseudo and phoney and rubbish. Women were after Polyfilla. They didn’t want the real thing, the solid wall, non-porous. They didn’t want your average fella. Not really.

I need a fag, Luke thought. I’m alive, for God’s sake. I’m all here and all now and all ready and all able. I’m alive! He walked to the door and threw it open. The sea, the sea. Grey and brown. It would rain soon. It was bleak out, bleaker, if possible, than it had ever seemed before.

What a view. Luke grimaced. What a bloody landscape! And then, straight after, Screw the landscape, I want more . He needed a smoke.

♦

Nathan tried to contact Margery at work, but she couldn’t be located so he decided, on a spur, since this was practically an emergency, to write her a note, stick it through her door and then borrow her car without asking. He possessed his own set of keys. It would be fine. Even so, he dwelled carefully over the note’s wording. But Lily was loitering. She was obtrusive. She kept butting in. She was dripping and mopping, in his small kitchen, while simultaneously preparing herself a sandwich. With endearing gusto she hunted down the various components in cupboard and drawer and fridge.

♦

Margery ,

I’ve borrowed the car. An old friend turned up…

♦

“Where’s the bin? Is it hidden?”

“Pardon?”

“I need the bin.”

“There’s a kind of bag, in the cupboard, under the sink.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.”

♦

and I wanted…

He crossed this bit out.

and he needed to get to…

Lily peered over Nathan’s shoulder while sipping on a glass of milk. He saw two dark drops of blood splash into its whiteness and then a brief, pale halo of strawberry appear in their wake.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m writing a note. I’m borrowing someone’s car.”

“Well you’d better get a wriggle on or we’ll hit the rush hour.”

A wriggle? Nathan tried not to smile.

New piece of paper.

♦

Dear Margery ,

I needed to borrow the car. It’s not a real crisis or anything .

Nathan .

♦

He folded the note in half. Lily was now devouring a honey sandwich.

“It was the runny stuff,” she said, “but all crystallized. I had to chip away at it. You should’ve chucked it out already.”

“I will.”

He moved the junk off the top of the box, piling it on to the floor close by. Then he bent over to pick it up, but Lily interrupted him.

“Let me,” she said, passing him her sandwich and squatting down to grab it herself.

“You’ll have to lug it a fair old distance,” Nathan observed, watching her strain at the unexpected weight of it.

“I’m great,” Lily managed, releasing a small milk and honey burp which sweetened the air in her immediate vicinity. Nathan carefully placed the rest of her sandwich into his shirt pocket and then felt around for his keys. He took nothing else with him except his art book, which he tucked under his right arm with as much gentle care as if it had been a precious but rather wriggly little pup.

♦

“What’s got into him?”

Luke spoke under his breath to Jim who was back at his old post on the sofa. He’d been sitting there for a while, all heavy and crushed up inside, struggling to remain upright.

“I don’t know. I think he’s just cheerful.”

But there was more to it than that. Jim knew. It wasn’t real cheer, but an approximation. It was an intricate emotion composed out of equivalent substances.

“Cheerful?” Luke scratched his breast.

Ronny was whistling tunelessly in the kitchen and clattering.

“What a strange man.”

Jim smiled quietly. Luke stared. “You look different.”

“Do I?”

“Bigger.”

Jim paused. “Can I do anything for you?”

Luke seemed sheepish. “I need a cigarette.”

Jim shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

“Yes. I know. But I want one anyway.”

Luke slapped a rhythmical tattoo of expectant impatience out on to his wide belly. Jim watched, hypnotized by the sight of his brown skin juddering.

“Unfortunately,” Jim hesitated, feeling his smooth cheek with his right hand, “I threw them away.”

Luke stopped his tattoo. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. I thought it would be the best way of stopping you if your will collapsed.”

Luke tried to digest this information, nodding slowly. Jim half-expected him to charge off, to leap into his car and make a dash for civilization. But no. Instead he threw himself down on to the sofa.

“Of all my vices,” Luke declamed expansively, “I consider women my worst. Cigarettes come second. Then food. Then booze.”

Jim said nothing. Luke shifted. He reached down and removed Ronny’s cardigan from under him.

“My car’s still over at Sara’s farm, otherwise I’d be off in a flash to buy some. Hey !” He rubbed his thigh. “Something just poked into me.”

Luke turned the cardigan around by its neck. Protruding from the left pocket was the silver tip of a knife.

“Dear Lordy.”

He plucked the knife from the pocket. As he removed it, something else fell out too; a plastic sheet of tablets. The knife had a large non-retractable blade. It looked big, even inside his sizeable palm. Luke whistled. “Is this thing yours?”

Jim bent down to retrieve the tablets. He slid the half-empty packet into his pocket. Luke was still inspecting the knife. He hadn’t noticed.

“It’s not mine. It must be Ronny’s.” Jim’s skin prickled at the sight of the blade. “I don’t like knives.”

“That’s a proper hunting knife.”

“Yes.”

Luke continued to handle the knife. It seemed to be giving him pleasure. Eventually he said, “So what shall I do with it?”

Jim held out his right hand. “Give it here. I’ll put it somewhere safe.”

He took the knife and placed it underneath the sofa. Luke was still holding the cardigan. He gave it a further shake.

“What’s this?” He removed a letter from the other pocket.

“Oh. It’s just a letter.”

He put it straight back again. The absolute soul of propriety.

♦

Ronny had so much energy. So much that he didn’t know quite where or how to direct it. It was flying out of him. The energy. It had been uncorked. Unplugged. It was everywhere. Reverberating off the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the windows.