Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

Our soundtrack was an instrumental version of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ played by robots in tuxedos. The girl could have only been twenty-five at a push. Complicit eyes sharpened to a merchant’s point and hair tied in a ponytail. The back of her neck was exposed as she turned away from me to guard the lift buttons and to dwell on whatever happy consolations she needed reminding of to pull her through the next hours. I watched her neck and wished the both of us animals, unthinking things unstalked by death that did what we did only because the rules of being alive compelled us to.

She checked my money under a UV lamp that she carried in her handbag. The rupees passed her inspection and she went to the bathroom to undress. She took her bag with her. I scanned the room for things I could defend myself with in case she came back with a pistol. I put a glass on the bedside table, half an arm’s length from my side of the bed. I stood on the Egyptian cotton sheets and examined the smoke alarm for a hidden camera. I sat on the bed with my shoes still on and listened to my heart charging.

Outside, hammers and horns rained down. The city was rebuilding itself for the benefit of those who’d come after me. Sewer lids were being driven down against the hazards of the coming storm.

The girl came back in red underwear. She stood at the foot of the bed and let me take her in. Her flat stomach and soft limbs drew from me a gasp that sounded loud in the room. She smoothed herself down, as if to remove the static or shame from her skin. She knelt down and untied my shoes, slipped them off and dropped them on the carpet. All the while looking me in the eyes with a fabricated understanding of what it was I needed to smother my pain. I wanted to press myself very gently against her and feel her warmth, the strong heartbeat that quivered in her neck and pushed clean blood around her body, and the dreams tarnished and advanced by the likes of me.

She opened the wine I’d won and filled two glasses, put one on each bedside table. She got on the bed, on all fours.

‘I can start now?’ she asked.

‘Yes please.’

She hesitated, poised to turn and sit down but unsure of herself.

‘I’m dying,’ I said as an inducement. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’

‘You really are dying?’

‘It’s alright, it’s nothing you can catch. I won’t ask for anything else, I promise.’

The girl did something sympathetic with her eyebrows and sat down beside me. I plumped the pillows to make her more comfortable. We almost touched. My mouth went dry. I took a drink. The wine was claggy and I felt it stain my teeth.

‘You can get in if you want,’ I said.

‘You don’t want to see me?’

‘It’s up to you. Only if you don’t mind.’

‘I will stay here,’ she said.

‘Do you know Tom and Jerry?’

‘Yes I know them.’

‘You know what you have to do?’

‘Of course.’

I gave her the colouring book. She opened it and flicked slowly through its pages, introducing herself to the pictures. Her lips curled into a belittling smile and I stirred in spite of it.

The hammers stopped for the night. In the quiet they left I was monstrous.

I opened the packet of felt-tips and offered her the first selection, a boy sharing stolen cigarettes. She shuffled closer to me and picked the brown. She made a start on Jerry, resting the book on her thighs. She held the pen lightly. Her face set into enchanting concentration. I chose a blue and took it to Tom where he gave chase. She opened the book out wider for me.

Ellen was half a world away and had probably stopped mourning me by now. I’d never stop mourning her. The feeling came back to me of being alone beside her in a bed too small to kick out in. Her body immovable and unwilling to be played, a piano with the lid nailed down. Sometimes I’d deliberately touch her and feel her shrink under my fingertips. Sometimes I’d go a lifetime without touching her at all. Hearing her frightened breath catch on the air between us I’d marvel at her patience and my own. Both of us waiting for something to break, or for the darkness to spread wide enough for us to disappear into it for as long as it took to be forgotten. Our former selves were ghosts that came back to sniff at us whenever a tender song played or a need for relief prickled our clammy skin. Our youth was dead and buried in a hole dug with care and lined with wool for softness.

The girl asked if she was doing it right and I said she was. I let myself believe that I was showing her a kindness, by giving her a break from the things she was usually made to do. Her skin on mine where our thighs touched was softer than the air around us. The silence drifted over me and settled into the places where papercuts had languished unsealed for years. Watching her hands roam the page I shrank back to a boy catching bees in a jam jar.

When the morning came she was still beside me. On top of the sheet, still stripped to her underwear and watching me closely, reflecting on ageing and what it might do to her as it had done to me.

She asked if she could pleasure me with her hand and I declined as gently as I could. Instead she took me to the bathroom and washed the grape must off my feet. She had to scrub to get the stains off and she apologised for hurting me. I told her it was alright. I offered to buy her breakfast but she said she didn’t eat breakfast. Hammers and horns. She pulled the blackout drape open a crack and light came lancing in to unhide my vulgar flesh. I folded my arms. She looked out on the day. There was jealousy in her eyes. The world wasn’t yet as she’d instructed it. Some people still had it all and some still had nothing. She still had all her proving to do.

Between the hammer blows came drums, away in the distance. The girl took in the day and made her plans for the future.

I looked at my watch. It was gone twelve. I felt like I’d slept for days.

‘You could have gone,’ I told the girl. ‘It’s late.’

‘I am staying. This is the agreement. You have late checkout, you told me this? I will go when you go.’

She ploughed a hand into her knickers and scratched herself lavishly. The colouring book lay open on the bed. I picked it up and flicked through the pages all now living in the colours we’d applied. The cat chased the mouse around. The cat played the piano. The dog snapped at the cat’s heels and the mouse bent his back under a piece of cheese as big as a house.

The drums sounded louder. I thought I heard trumpets among them. The girl beckoned me to the window. Her brow was knotted in deep thought. I stood behind her and peered out through the gap she’d made in the curtains.

‘Do you hear it?’ she asked.

‘Music?’

‘It is a wedding.’

I looked down onto the street below. I couldn’t see where the music was coming from. Louder and louder it came, trumpets thickening and drums beating at a festive rhythm. People started gathering outside the hotel, looking off in the direction of the music. Beggar children stood meerkat to attention, pulling in excitement at their private parts. The streetdogs barked in anger at the rival noise.

The band turned the corner and the children ran to greet them. They trailed them to a spot in front of the hotel where they stopped and struck up a new song. A corps of dancing revellers fell in around them, brightly dressed and beaming. They surrounded the happy couple, who were young and scared and dripping gold. They were lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd and bounced in time with the music. Sweets in colourful wrappers spilled from their elders’ hands to be fought over by the street kids with thrilling animosity.

The girl watched all this and wiped a tear from her cheek.