Emma Unsworth - Animals

I’d had a laugh with Jacqueline. The club had a regular fetish night and one night I’d almost swept up a gimp on the mezzanine. There was all sorts to clean up after those nights. They turned the downstairs area into a dungeon complete with nets, chains and a corrugated cardboard ‘rock’ wall we put up with a staple gun. The interesting thing to me was that hardly anyone drank there; all we really sold was diet coke. I guess you have better aim when you’re… anyway. I was sweeping away, stacking chairs, dragging tables, working my way from the steps to the back corner. As I tried to sweep the broom into the corner it struck against something hard. I pulled the broom back and peered into the darkness, thinking it would be an upturned chair or forgotten handbag. It was a shoe. Or rather, a patent leather socklike thing. Up from the shoe was an ankle, and, following on, ankle bone connecting to leg bone, leg bone connecting to knee bone, etcetera, etcetera, until the shape of a whole adult person was discernible, crouched like a frog. I screamed. The gimp scurried out from the corner, and this was someone who had gone full-gimp, zipped up to the chops, and ran down the stairs and almost through the glass front door. The door was locked and the gimp began bashing the glass with its fists and Jacqueline had to abandon her dishwashing duties to release it. The gimp scarpered down the street, patent leather flashing orange under the streetlamps. I wondered what that gimp was doing for nights out, now that Red Room had become a cocktail bar. Suburbia, I concluded. Suburbia would offer gimps something. And what about Jacqueline — what was she doing now? We’d always got on. I still had her number in my phone. I’d scrolled past it a few times when I was drunk and thought about her for a moment. If I was on Facebook I wouldn’t have to wonder about these things. But then, if I was on Facebook I wouldn’t have to wonder about these things.

Where the dual carriageway began there was a series of roundabouts over which a small viaduct split the sky. At the side of the viaduct were a few outcrops of green — fast-growing trees, spiky bushes that had ensnared windswept litter, scrubby defiant grass — elevated from the street on tilting brick embankments. Almost impossible to climb. Almost.

I jumped and grabbed the top of the sloping wall, put my trainers flat on the bricks and slid down a little. The wall was slippy. I gripped tighter with my fingers. One foot found purchase on a cracked brick. I nipped the toe of my other trainer into a gap in the mortar. Tested it with a little bounce. It would bear my weight for a few seconds while I found my next foothold. I moved my other foot, lost my balance, ended up scraping my knee and hurled myself upwards, laddering my tights and nicking my shin. At the top of the wall I rolled onto my back and lay there, panting. Above me leaves, just leaves. I got onto all fours and crawled under a bush, out of sight of the pavement and passing traffic. Wide, flat ivy covered the ground in a sea of tongues. Between the ivy, skeletons of sycamore seeds lay pale and brittle like moth wings. I heard footfalls and a man’s low laughter. I turned onto my side like I did in bed, into the foetal position that was slowly eroding my left shoulder. I closed my eyes and listened to the tidal ebb and flow of traffic.

Where were my allies? My sad captains? Those moonsick girls I drank with over long winters behind the bowling alley, driven there in cars we didn’t know. Those times when we were all strangers and everything was so far away but all we needed to do was run towards it. I had not grown much. I had not reached anywhere. I was still running. When I wasn’t lying down.

I opened my eyes and saw leaves above me, flickering in the wind.

Something slimy by my hand. I threw back the duvet (my duvet, my room) to see a chicken carcass, grey and sunken-ribbed, crouched on a dinner plate. Chicken jelly had gathered around it. I retched. A sound in the hallway.

‘Hello?’

The door opened and hit the clothes rail. ‘Fuck!’ Tyler’s arm appeared round the door and shunted the rail over.

‘Is it morning or night?’

‘Night.’

It all came back as it always did: in shards and splinters and burning arrows. I remembered waking under the bush and walking and buying a hot roast chicken, getting back to the flat and getting into bed with the chicken.

‘How are you?’

‘ My mouth has been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night. How are you?’

‘Pretty stoked actually. The talk was amazing.’

‘Can’t have been that amazing if you’re using the word “amazing”.’

I lifted the plate off the bedsheet and held it steady. Tyler peeled the end of a nail off with her teeth and spat it onto the floor.

‘Jim says he wants to cook you dinner,’ I said.

‘Are you getting me in practice for seeing you in situ ?’

‘Oh, just come and have some fucking spaghetti.’

‘But will he let us drink in there?’

‘ He’ s buying the wine.’

He bought good wine, too. Rioja. Two bottles. I saw Tyler glance at them in the middle of the dining table when she came in and then look away. I wondered whether we should have asked her to bring a date to even things out. Jim poured two glasses of wine and a pint of lime and soda for himself. We sat down.

‘I almost came in your place for a coffee yesterday,’ he said to Tyler.

She was loosely blowing on a Medusa-like forkful of spaghetti. She stopped blowing. ‘ My place?’

‘The coffee shop.’

Personally I think it’s insane that people ever try to eat and talk at the same time but this is the situation you often find yourself in at dinner parties and restaurants. Not that this situation was either, of course: we were just three friends sitting together having dinner. Still, I wished we were on the couch watching TV with our bowls on our knees.

‘You should come in sometime,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a free shot. Of syrup.’ She raised her glass of red wine. ‘I’ve got the decorators in!’

‘You know that means you’re on your period,’ said Jim.

She looked at me and tipped the glass into her mouth.

All things considered, they did a reasonably good job of barbed civility until dessert, when Tyler said: ‘I haven’t asked you, but are you two having a first dance?’

It was an odd thing to hear her say. I haven’t asked you. Like she was a stranger or a not very good friend. I looked at the table. The red cloth was splodged with cream where Jim had spilled the trifle.

‘We’ve discussed this,’ Jim said. ‘We talked about having lessons at one point, put on a bit of a show.’

‘A show.’ Tyler’s teeth were dark and grainy from the wine. We were halfway through the second bottle.

‘We decided against it,’ I said, getting up to smoke out of the kitchen window. ‘I’d bottle it on the day, I know I would.’

‘Just get some drugs in you,’ said Tyler.

I was afraid that if I went to the bathroom they might kill each other. I turned the lever on the window and pushed the pane open. Cold air whirled in. I got up on the counter and pulled over the ramekin I used as an ashtray at Jim’s.

‘It’s a drug-free occasion,’ Jim said. ‘Has Laura not mentioned that?’

‘I was just kidding,’ said Tyler.

‘Just so you know. Charlie’s not invited. Or any of his illegal friends.’

Silence. I exhaled. I thought, They’re actually going to leave it there. Thank fuck.

‘Weeeelllllll, of course you know they shouldn’t be illegal in my opinion. But for the sake of what this pathetic government deems “legal” for tax purposes, I’ll respect your frankly patronising request.’