Page 12 of Little Wing
Just one more pint, then.
So there sat Dougie and Michelle, not chatting, not in awkward silence, just in a downbeat acceptance of why they were there and where they’d be going.
‘Another?’ Dougie went to the bar.
He also bought crisps.
She could fold the empty packets into small triangular purses. Dougie told her that it was cool. She just shrugged.
‘It’s not like there’s any purpose,’ she said, ‘still gets chucked in a bin. It’s just something to do with an empty crisp packet.’
Just something to do.
And Dougie told himself to get that bloody Tube and still have a good portion of evening at home to wind down. Takeaway curry, perhaps.
‘Shall we go back to mine, then?’ Michelle said.
Dougie had not expected the bluntness, certainly not so soon. There had been no preamble, no dancing towards and away from the topic. Is this how it’s done now, then? He’d only been out of the loop for two years – was this progress?
‘OK,’ he said.
‘You can’t stay—’
He nodded before she had time to qualify it.
She went to the loo. He went to the loo. They put on their coats and left, leaving the empty glasses and the crisp packets in the little triangles and the crumbs and the four men still silent at the bar, pleading with their pints to dilute their woes. Out in the bite of cold air, it felt as if the rush of the traffic shoved him in the chest and Dougie wanted to be anywhere but here. But then he wondered if it would be too complicated, too insensitive now, to change his mind and get that train. It occurred to him that he was going to do the wrong thing, whichever direction he took. So he decided fuck it – I’ll just go along for the ride, all the while thinking Jesus this is a bit grim.
Michelle shared a flat with two others who were nowhere to be seen. Her bedroom was cramped, mostly bed; a clothes rail, ill-fitting curtains, a fractured mirror similar to the one in the pub toilets. Brad Pitt inThelma and Louisepulled from a magazine and put in a clip frame. And three stunning watercolour paintings, pastoral and halcyon, delicate and intricately observed, unceremoniously Blu-Tacked to the wall.
‘Ilovethese,’ said Dougie.
‘Oh.’ She was nonplussed. ‘I did them.’
It took a moment for Dougie to compute. ‘They’re amazing,’ he said. ‘Where are they of?’
She shrugged. ‘I made them up.’ She regarded Dougie’s fuddled expression and presumed he didn’t understand. ‘You know, like you see on TV – lovely countryside places with stone bridges and streams and hills with those walls made out of rocks. Archways into secret gardens. That kind of thing.’
Dougie was transfixed. ‘But Michelle – they’rereallygood.’
‘You think? Thanks!’
She was running her hand up his back now, across his shoulders.
He didn’t want to have sex with her at the moment. If at all. But as he gazed at her paintings, it struck him that if he didn’t have sex with her she’d feel shit and he’d feel crap about that. She’d refreshed her lipstick already. When they’d arrived back at her flat, she’d gone to the bathroom and reappeared slicked with fresh make-up.
‘I really like your hair,’ she said, tugging gently. ‘You’re really cute.’
And then Dougie thought to himself just close your eyes. Just close your eyes and feel lips against lips. Tongues. Find breasts to squeeze, feel hands around your cock, perhaps a mouth too, if you’re lucky. Go for the warm and the wet. What she wants and what you can have. The escapism and release of coming – knowing you won’t be coming back. Coming and going. And after this you can just keep on going with your life. Just sex, that’s all it is. People do it all the time with no need for it to be meaningful. Just a mutual chase-down of physical pleasure. Consensual and inconsequential. It’s fine.
But.
Fuck.
How can it feel so isolating, so lonely?
Dougie was back at his flat at just gone midnight. Dumped his kit on the sofa and lay on his back on the floor of his sitting room, hands behind his head, feeling his body lengthen and unwind. His place; its unique scent, its warmth, the sound of the boiler. In the next room his bed, his sheets, his laundry hanging to dry. In his peripheral vision, the flashing of the answering machine.
It was his dad; loudly and with those annoying pauses.
