A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Meg looked at the glass and the glass looked back.

I can’t stop.

The everything slides and I can’t stop.

It was a tall drink in front of her: cool, no ice, but still cool and still the dapper little drops of moisture were sleeking down with quiet purpose, just as they should.

I asked for it specially.

And fuck him.

Fuck him.

Although I won’t.

And I never would have.

This glass, this drink, which was closer than any person to her.

I would have made love.

I would have tried to do what I never have.

This glass contained a liquid of a complicated colour which was made up of blended pineapple and melon, banana, mango, beetroot, and when she drank it down in one, down in one, this thick and sweet drink, it tasted like not dying and like being very so tired.

And everyone in here is lucky and they don’t know it. They have no idea how I might have spoiled their evening, who I might have been.

Meg feeling that she could grin because of this good secret. They haven’t got a clue and I won’t give one and I won’t be anyone’s accident tonight — not even my own.

And if I don’t save me, then no one else can.

And I didn’t expect Jon to try, but also — fuck him — I didn’t expect him to make things worse.

Her mouth was sweet just now and she was still thirsty — only simply and innocently thirsty — but the drinks here were expensive and it was late and really she should go.

And I didn’t expect him to hurt and be a coward and unimpressive and not himself.

Fuck him.

Fuck him so very much.

And I wouldn’t drink for him if he paid me, I wouldn’t drink for anyone, I wouldn’t fucking drink if somebody came in here with a gun and set it right to my head — I don’t fucking do that any more. I am sober. He can’t fucking touch that. I am sober.

Meg allowed herself to glance across at the mirror and see what looked like herself — this smallish, dullish person in bad clothes that would disappoint a sensitive observer — and she had anticipated that she’d have this triumphant expression and some kind of a brave grin, so now she was disappointed, as a sensitive observer would be.

I look like a kid who’s lost and out too late.

There was no grin, no smile.

She looked sad, in fact.

She was crying, in fact. She did have to admit that.

And her crying made one of the waitresses come over — friendly gesture — and offer another juice on the house, because perhaps there was nothing to be done, but someone of decency could give you a little something that might cheer you — you were a guest — or maybe a few sweets could help you, honeysweet kindness.

Don’t take sweets from strangers.

A coffee?

And Meg was shaking her head and leaving unsteadily and being a spectacle, sniggered at, just exactly as she’d hoped she wouldn’t be.

‘EXCUSE ME.’ JON was — now that he considered himself — pushing and pushing his hands up away from his forehead and through his hair. ‘Excuse me.’ The cab driver paid no heed and Jon pushed and clawed at his hair again. He cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, but I think I would like it if you could take me to London Bridge.’

‘That’s not where you said.’

It seemed Jon had found a driver of the less helpful type. ‘Yes, I know that’s not where I said, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve had a call and — that is — I will be making a call … ’ Jon could feel hair actually coming loose and adhering to his fingers, then dropping off softly like insect wings or tendrils or some such against his face. ‘Which is … I just need to be at London Bridge.’ He had — it would appear — sticky fingers and was hauling out his own hair by the roots.

‘It’ll cost you.’

‘I don’t mind. I have to be at London Bridge. Getting to Coldharbour Lane was going to cost me, anyway.’ Jon not intending to snap, or to sound like an arsehole in a pricey coat, but there it was — he managed anyway. ‘It’s all going to cost me.’

‘All right.’The cab driver sounded aggrieved in the way bullying men seemed bound to when confronted. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’ His head shook visibly in an expression of passive-aggressive exasperation. ‘I can get you there. What time’s your train?’

I swear to God, they get a phrase book they have to learn, along with the Knowledge: fastest route from Mayfair to Loughborough Junction and clichés to recite as we plough ahead.

Jon focused on being glad that the taxi’s radio was only playing pallid semi-pop, rather than some kind of pretend election phone-in, or a preacher.

I couldn’t stand it, not tonight. The amateur approach now indistinguishable from the professional: the magisterial generalisations, the scared mythologising, the shrill defence of whatever, whatever, whatever … ideology, faith, obsession … with fragments of last week’s headlines and fragments of next week’s hate …

Actually, just …

Fuck it.

‘I’m not catching a train. Is London Bridge a problem?’

‘No, no, not a problem.’

‘Then if we could do that, thanks.’

‘Yeah, we’re doing that — I can’t just turn here, though. I gotta wait until those lights, you know?’

‘Change of plans, you know? Change of plans.’ And Jon’s hands fell to his sides, resting ungracefully on the seat, this sensation about them which gave the impression they might be emptying, letting something drain away from them, something a little like sand in texture. He felt also that his shins and torso were being emptied — socks overflowing with sand, like a POW dumping excavated earth, like a corpse being mobile, shoes dirty with grave traces. He imagined that if he unbuttoned his coat and jacket there would be a tumble of grains — perhaps grey — which would seethe down and away from him and leave him only … He wasn’t sure of what this process might achieve, how it would leave him.

Even more empty.

Light.

I could be light.

I feel …

And, of course, this was the moment when he reached his absolute zero and there was nothing left to feel. His awareness bumped and jolted inside his vacated body, responding to the motion of the cab, and it found not a spark of any emotion.

I’m all done, absolutely — I’ve wasted myself away.

He’d expected some form of terror — galloping pulse — but he might as well have been sitting and planning to do nothing much, quiet night on his little futon sofa, back in his bedsit — the futon that he didn’t always bother making up into a bed, because a bedsit looks much bigger without a bed and because he could sleep anywhere and sheets and pillows didn’t matter, did they? No, they didn’t matter.

It’s quite likely that nothing matters.

So it is pressingly important to do what is necessary, anyway. One does — in the end — what one understands to be right. One does this whether it makes any difference and whether it alters anything and whether it’s possible, or not.

One does this because one has to.

One does it.

And Jon raised his hand — such a weightless extremity now, it drifted up almost without him — and reached it into his inside pocket and brought out his phone and dialled a number and listened to it ring and felt as still as water, as still as the soul of water somewhere deep, as still as one 3 a.m. moment when his infant daughter had stopped crying, had been awake but settled in his arms and been alive and with him and from him, but better than him.