“I heard someone
climbing the ladder to the top bunk, which was where I slept. It was my sister,
Hilary. She’s four years older than me as you know, so at that time I guess
she’d have been about nine. I was about five, obviously. Anyway, I couldn’t
even tell it was Hilary yet. I remember being half asleep, and turning over to
the side of the bed with the ladder. There were quite a lot of bite marks on
the wooden railings; it was this really soft cheap IKEA wood and I used to gnaw
on it as a toddler. When I was teething it was my favourite thing to gnaw on
because I liked how the wood grain was porous…and how I could suck my spit back
up through it…the sound it made, the way it felt, the woody taste my spit
picked up in the process. I still have this vivid memory of holding onto the
railings to prop myself up and my hand being right on one of the deepest bite
marks, the grain of the wood, the little fragments of stuff breaking away at my
touch. On the rare occasions when I think about that moment it’s almost as if
the nerve endings in my fingers do too, because they start, you know, transmitting the sensation of the wood
to my brain, to the point where I’ve even had to check my fingers to make sure
there isn’t a whole heap of splinters in them”.
·
A man and woman
of middle age, definitely married, got to the door, which my chair was facing. They
looked ostentatious but poor. It was a double door made of glass, with a menu
and a couple of old Cheap Eats stickers blu-tacked to one side at chest height.
The opening hours and the proprietor’s name – C. Hamet – were written in cream
coloured vinyl on the other side, at a similar height. Only one of the doors
was unlocked; the man chose the wrong one and, being thus denied, laughed and
turned to the woman for a sort of acknowledgement that it was an amusing thing
to have happened, that there was amusement in their lives yet, which she
provided in the form of even more frivolous laughter. She had on a dreamcatcher
necklace, no earrings, and a lot of turquoise eyeliner. I didn’t pay the man’s
appearance much attention except to note that he was bald on top and that he
wore a waistcoat but no jacket. Taking hold of the other door handle, he used
the outside of his forearm to push. The door rattled but didn’t open. He looked
at the woman again. She’d put one hand on her chest and was practically wetting
herself with laughter. By this time our waiter and another waiter were eyeing
one another off from across the crowded dining room, considering letting them
in. A much younger man and woman had also arrived at the door. Noticing them,
the first man finally pulled it open, exchanging mirthful glances with his wife;
then he said something to the tune of ta-da!,
then he looked at the others and beckoned them inside and said something else
to which they responded with courteous laughter, and gave thanks, before the
faintest of smiles settled on all their faces like rock residue over rocks of a
different colour. Had any of the laughter been genuine, I thought, the
transitions would’ve taken more time.
The man let
everybody in before him. He and the woman commented on the warmth and beauty of
the interior, pointing at the Buddhist shrine in one corner, the crystal
chandelier, the gunmetal feature wall with a big Bacopa hanging from it, the fresh coriander growing in gutter-width
wooden planter boxes along both sidewalls (which were beige), the open kitchen,
the Mexican-made Bose speakers; pointing at and complimenting everything,
basically. The male floor manager leading them to their table seemed
appreciative but also somewhat lost for words. No longer flattered by the glass,
I realised that the man and woman were older, by decades, than I’d supposed. The
hair on the back and sides of the man’s head was dyed a ridiculous shade of
dark brown.
Sarah wiped her
mouth. She put the single-use serviette on her plate, arranged her cutlery, and
then nudged it all forwards an inch or so. I reached over and nudged it back.
She nudged it forwards again; I left the plate alone and took her hand and
kissed it. She laughed and dropped her hands under the table and both raised
and put back her shoulders. Then she took a deep breath. Her side of the
tablecloth, even the edge, was clean. There was a smile on her face. From the
scant amount of food she’d eaten, and the way her eyes shone, I inferred that
she was hoping to fuck when we got home; from the way I felt I knew we
wouldn’t.
“So,” she said
through a yawn, “what happened then?”
“What happened
when?”
As I helped
myself to the last of the tamarind braised chicken and the last piece of roti,
I told her about the incident I’d just witnessed at the door. I must have
worded it harshly or something, because despite my laughter she looked at me
with an unimpressed visage and said, I don’t know why you’re always working
yourself up into a lather about weird things like that”.
The waiter came
to take her plate away. He also asked if she was finished with her glass of
wine, which had a drop or two of liquid left in it, and she surprised me by
answering that she wasn’t. Maybe, though, it was just that the surprise I’d
felt at being rebuked by her, at being given a hint as to her dissatisfaction with
some element, any element, of how I thought and behaved, even it was the
gentlest hint possible, had carried over into my processing of her next
statement, because not once in our relationship, I later realised, had Sarah spoken
to me like that. Not once had I heard her say, I don’t know why you’re always: the consequences of this moment
would be good at first, liberating even, before becoming kind of good but also
very bad.
“I’m not in a
lather about anything,” I composed myself enough to insist. “It was right in
front of me, that’s all”
“I meant nothing by it, babe. But aren’t
you going to finish the other story? The one about your sister? You seemed so
excited to start it”. One of her hands gently gripped my right kneecap like a
tennis ball about to be tossed for service.
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