Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

She took a long pull, watching the skaters roll down ramps and jump up to skid across rails. ‘Seriously, take the pizza, give it to your mates. I’ll give money to the homeless people instead. I’m going to sit here for a bit and smoke and watch. You’re all really good, aren’t you?’

‘They’re all right, ’ he said. ‘They’re OK,’ and he gestured towards them with his head. ‘Why don’t you come over and share it with us?’

So she did. The boys were gentlemanly.

‘Why do you have all this pizza, miss?’ asked one of them.

She told them.

‘And he just left you there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What a total jerk.’

‘Thank you. Do you think everyone there thought I was a racist?’

‘You’re too nice looking to be a racist.’ That was her boy.

‘I think there are many beautiful racists, actually.’

‘Maybe in photos. But when they move, they move racistly. You can see it.’

‘I bet he moves racistly, miss. We can spot a racist a mile off.’

‘Call me Claire. How do racists move?’

‘They scuttle. Like crabs. Not like us, miss. You never saw a racist who knew how to skate.’

They were a mix of ages, these boys, but the youngest was probably at least seventeen, and her boy might be twenty-three, twenty-four. The ‘miss’ they used was cheeky, flirty rather than serious.

Once the pizza was gone her boy offered her another cigarette. He took his hat off and shook his hair out, rolled the cigarette and handed it to her.

‘You’ve been very kind,’ she said. ‘But I’m in your way.’

He lit the cigarette for her. ‘You’re not in the way.’

‘I am. You get on with it. I’m going to smoke this over there and watch for a bit. Then I’m heading off. Thank you. You’ve made me much calmer.’

‘No worries, miss. It was good pizza.’

She walked back to the railing by the Thames and leaned against it, watching her boy as he rolled down a slope, flipped his board up so he turned and rode its edge along a platform. As she smoked she caught his eye after every trick he made. He was good, though his movements on the board, all of the boys’ movements, were not graceful. The way they contorted their bodies before landing, the balancing act so strenuous and fragile, the tiny distances their boards jumped that took so much effort to recover from. Reckless boys, so clamouring – she wanted to see them scrape against the concrete, get to their knees and pick themselves up. She could help. Her boy kept looking at her after each stunt he pulled. Every squeak and scuff. Perhaps, if he came over again, she would ask him if he wanted to come for a drink, she would take him for a bottle of champagne in one of the theatre bars. Could she do what they did, risk that leap, should she lean over and whisper something in his ear to make him lose his balance? Could she ever land that trick herself?

Nudibranch: soft-bodied, marine gastropod molluscs which shed their shells after their larval stage. They are noted for their often extraordinary colours and striking forms.

When the goddess Kiru emerges from the shoreline on the small Island of St Simeran, the third hand in her stomach lining contracts, steering her towards the sounds of the eunuchs surrounding a large fire on the beach, shrouded in an orange glow from the flames. The eunuchs are hollering, mating calls that are like war cries. Privates exposed, they stand in a loose circle rushing back towards the fire, beating their chests while the carrier pigeons fluttering above shed feathers on their bare skin. Kiru waits patiently on the sidelines. Her third hand drops soft-bodied, lightning-coloured seeds in the space between their heartbeats. It is Haribas, the festival of love for eunuchs. Every five years, eunuchs gather to celebrate, maybe find someone special, slits from their lost or dysfunctional penises tumbling in the dark corners of the heavens. Kiru steadies her breathing, watching. Salt water in her mouth leaves a tangy taste. Pressed against the night, she has already changed its shape into a mountain face that travels when white water lapping its lines evaporates. Fragmented moonlight gives proceedings an ethereal appearance. Mist curls and uncurls to reveal things seductively, slowly. Squashed Guinness cans sink into the sand. A gentle breeze passing through makes them hollow, unexpected instruments punctuating the main event. There are jagged mountains in the distance with handfuls of uranium inside, rumbling quietly. A bloodstained scroll is planted in the sand before Kiru at an angle. Huts dotted around the island on stilts have orbs of orange light piercing through tiny holes. Slick, moist fossils languish amidst stones, in moss-carpeted pockets, on cool rocks that anchor the flailing hands of a dawn. The eunuchs have clouds in their mouths; their motions are erratic, as though they’ll fall into the fire one by one backwards. Then soften each other’s injuries with white puffs of breath. They are burning the clothes they arrived in. The sound of fire races to meet bright molluscs in a space that expands and shrinks as things unfold. The carrier pigeons squawk, producing a din that sounds like black rain falling at an angle on the heads of stillborns, like a crow beak tapping against the entrance of Kiru’s cold womb, like the screeching from going blind temporarily travelling through a tortoise shell in the sky, then falling into the water with shell markings that cause flurries, breaches and an undulating silence. They mimic the sound of a lung sinking, chasing an echo thinking it can catch it.

The mating cries of the eunuchs rise, travelling across the island to soft-bodied women emerging through the soil, the whites in their eye sockets morphing into irises of every hue. Mist bleeds red at the edges, seeping into a rough-hewn mountain that will use a sarong as a bandage over its mouth at some point.

The soft-bodied women uproot from all corners of the island bearing drunken tongues from wine spilled in the island’s earth for seven days before proceedings. They rush towards the mating cries, nipples puckered, mouths softened, momentarily curbed by night dew. They are of the earth. Kiru has an advantage, being of the water. She bends down to lick blood off the scroll, blows her breath inside it to see how the cream-coloured paper will interpret it. Small orange blobs shaped like tiny micro-organisms shimmer on the scroll. She smiles; she has come to fall in love.

swishing down her back and an easy, charming smile. She is wearing a black bikini. The blue shift over it is damp at the bottom, occasionally clinging to her thighs, bearing small trails of sand.

After the burning ceremony, she picks up Matthew, a scientist from a makeshift bar on the beach; light off the huts casts a warm glow on their skin. The soft-bodied women pair off with men who are still high from their ritual. There is alcohol flowing, a social lubricant that makes any gathering less awkward. Kiru assesses these women clinically, knowing their flaws will rise to the surface of clear water before breaking through. She listens for it. Matthew is talkative, eager. They laugh, carrying their drinks to the back end of the beach, deep into the belly of trees and land that feels joyously remote. There is the occasional rare white orchid and empty bottles of alcohol containing formations of past nights. Music from a stage at the far end of the beach filters through. Gulping rum, they are joined by iguanas eating sap from the pale trees that makes them dazed, and one-eyed water crickets from a tale man forgot to include in the Bible.

I’m so happy I burned the clothes I arrived in! Matthew flicks a petal from his Hawaiian-patterned shorts. Oh yes! It’s liberating, as if a shackle’s been broken. There is something in the air here. I feel like another version of myself. And the women fuck!