Читать книгу Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017 - Jonathan Lyon, Jonathan Lyon - Страница 14

I woke in a man’s arms.

‘No,’ I tried to say, but my teeth turned to brass and unscrewed me back into ultramarine.

I woke as a car door closed on my face. I couldn’t differentiate between words and textures. But I knew that a man was in the driver’s seat beside me.

‘Not to hospital,’ I said.

‘You have to.’

‘No… to 24 Orgrave Road, SE5… something. SE5.’

‘Is someone there?’

‘My… girlfriend,’ I managed, and blacked out again.

I woke in a man’s arms. He was holding me against a column of names.

‘Ravel,’ I told him.

The door buzzed open, he dragged me into the lift. As it rose, charcoal covered my eyes.

I woke in a woman’s arms.

‘What happened to him?’ she asked.

They carried me onto a sofa.

‘How much was the journey? Take it!’ she said.

His protestations dissolved into glue.

I woke as a woman pulled off my jeans. My wet coat was already gone.

‘Eva!’ I said.

‘What happened to you?’

‘I’m… cold.’

‘Not for much longer. Shit!’

She drew the jeans off over my feet and tucked me into a blanket.

‘You need to go to hospital.’

‘I need whisky.’

‘You need that treated.’

‘Then treat it.’

‘I’m not a nurse.’

‘Please?’

‘Ok, I probably have antiseptic, but you need more than that. Shit, you’re bleeding.’

‘Surface wounds. Decorative.’

‘Shit,’ she said, and left.

Eva returned with a tray of three tall glasses – one gold, one white, one green.

‘Drink all of these. You can’t talk to me till you’ve drunk all of them.’

I obeyed, shifting onto my un-stabbed side to drink first the milk, and then the whisky, and then the juice.

‘What was in that?’ I asked, tipping the last glass’s leftover algae along its side.

‘Protein shake with spinach.’

‘I’ve never felt so virtuous.’ I sat up a little.

‘Get back down.’ She took away the tray and lifted up the blanket to apply antiseptic to my cuts. ‘Turn over.’

I did so and she yelped. ‘Shit, were you whipped? You’ve been stabbed. What the fuck?’

‘I went swimming,’ I said, warming to the attention of her hands.

‘The taxi guy said you’d been in a canal?’

‘I went swimming,’ I said again.

‘Who did this?’

‘A blue-ringed octopus.’

She sighed in irritation. ‘So you were attacked and thrown into a canal. Why? And why did you come to me?’

‘You were the first person who came to mind. I remembered your address from last night. Were you not expecting me?’

‘I’m supposed to hate you. Did you forget that when you drowned?’

‘Do you hate me?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe not. This afternoon I was… angry.’

‘I remember.’

‘Your eye is so fucked up.’ She squeezed more ointment onto her fingers.

‘Is that Savlon?’ I smiled.

‘What? Yeah. Why’s that funny?’

‘Nothing. It’s a good parallel.’

‘With what?’

‘Nothing.’

She sighed. ‘I was crying all afternoon.’

‘Same.’

‘I don’t think you’ve cried for centuries.’

‘My body cries in other ways.’

‘I can see that. But why would you come to me?’

‘I like you.’

Her hand twitched to her face, unsure of its response. In the shadows behind her I saw the outline of the taxi that had taken me here – and this shadow changed into a coach from a fairy tale – and then into a pumpkin – and then into a hearse – and I imagined myself inside the hearse, driving across a moor in the middle of England at night – and the moon was looming over me like a mother offering her breast to a child – and we sank.

‘I threw out Francis’ clothes,’ she said eventually. ‘I hate him. He lied to me. But I don’t know what to think about you. You didn’t actually lie to me. Or even if you did… yesterday, you were…’

‘I like you,’ I said again. ‘I came back with you yesterday because I wanted to come back with you. Why does everything have to have an agenda?’

I thought of how slowly yesterday she’d pulled off my trousers and kissed the inside of my thighs – and of how, later, a helicopter had passed overhead and she’d woken and told me she was burying herself with her own hands and I’d said I was cutting open her stomach and pulling out a snail-coloured snake and taking it into my mouth – and then we’d fallen back asleep.

‘You like being confusing, don’t you?’

‘Am I confusing you?’ I asked, lifting my head till my lips were at hers. ‘I wanted to see you.’

She did not move. I relaxed back, smiling, as her instincts wrestled with each other. With her long neck and loose black hair and long loose white dress, she looked like a goddess painted on the walls of a pyramid.

‘Your pockets are empty,’ she said.

‘No phone, no money, no shoes, no keys,’ I gestured at my naked body. ‘Just this.’

‘Do you want to wear a dress?’ she asked.

‘Do you want to kiss me?’

Her gaze paused, I met it. She hesitated as I rose, but again did not pull away. Her lips parted, I kissed her. Briefly, the taste passed into the sound of a plucked string. I fell back.

‘You should have drunk the whisky last,’ she winced.

‘I’ll have some more.’

She retrieved the bottle, filled a third of my glass with whisky, and handed it to me. The contact of her finger on mine repeated the sound of a plucked string in my mind – but more clearly now – a viola treated with reverb. She filled the emptied milk glass with the same amount for herself and drank it in two gulps.

‘Do you have any water?’ I asked.

She stood to fetch some, coughing from the whisky.

My body was a muted growl. Her absence felt like an impression on a pillow – and I longed instantly for her return. She had less certainty than she’d had earlier today; out of costume, she could no longer simplify herself into a stock character, so she could not speak or think in the clichés that had given her courage. My costume, meanwhile, had become more elaborate – these injuries had advanced my performance.

She returned with a pitcher of water and a scarlet dress. As she set them down, I gripped her wrist with an urgency I had no words for and pulled her to me until she knelt either side of my hips, close enough to kiss. I pressed my fingers into her shoulders so that their blood turned white. She kissed me back almost in panic. I lifted her dress to lift myself into her – and we fucked, her nails cutting across my bruises, her knee against my stab wound. Each shock rose into pleasure as the endorphins and alcohol overruled the pains of my body’s surface and its deeper myalgia – until briefly she seemed like their antidote.

Her eyes were closed, my eyes were covered by her hair. I slid my hands down her arms to her elbows, and came as she did.

I untensed and let my head fall backwards. She lay across me, reaching over the side of the sofa to sip from the water jug.

‘Is there cum on my dress?’ she asked, smiling.

‘You can’t see anything, it’s white.’

‘What about blood?’

‘It’s quite stylish blood.’

‘Shit.’

She stood up quickly, dabbing at the stains – confused by herself but not annoyed. ‘What was that?’

‘It was quick,’ I said. ‘Do you have any painkillers?’

‘I’ve got you paracetamol and ibuprofen. They’re just there.’ She reached to the table behind my head, and as her perfumed wrist passed my nose, it trailed lily of the valley.

I listened to four foil pockets perforate. She fed me the tablets one by one, between sips of water.

‘Anything stronger?’ I asked.

‘Are you being ungrateful?’

‘This is like… trying to mop up the ocean with a tea towel,’ I said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself, you’re not the ocean. You’re a paddling pool at best.’

‘Alright, I’m a paddling pool, but I still need better means to mop it up.’

‘Well sorry – I’ve run out of whale tranquiliser, or whatever class of chemical you’re accustomed to. Iris will have something stronger at the gallery.’

I sat up to repress a smile. ‘Are we going to the gallery?’

‘If you won’t go to hospital.’

‘Even though you hate Francis?’

‘It’s not just photos of him. There’s photos of me as well.’

‘Who’s Iris?’

‘An ally.’

‘Are you going to get revenge on Francis?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’

‘You should. The best revenge is always erotic.’

‘I was thinking that.’ She drank again from the whisky.

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I have an idea – but I’m not telling you. Aren’t you on his team? You can’t be trusted.’

‘Obviously not,’ I said. ‘I don’t work well in teams. Do you have any shoes that could fit me?’

She laughed. ‘You’re most likely to fit into sling-backs. I’ve already chosen them.’ She pointed to a pair of black suede high heels whose straps curved behind the ankle. ‘But if we’re going down that route then we need to sort out your face.’

‘How dare you? I’m beautiful.’

‘But you can look more beautiful.’ She kissed me, tasting of whisky – her proximity again twisting in my mind into the sound of a reverberating string. ‘I haven’t done a boy’s make-up since I was a teenager.’

‘Can you bring out the best in me?’

‘I can’t perform miracles.’

She left for another room. I began to climb into the dress. My sense of space seemed to be stabilising as the fluids retrieved me to competence. But when I tried to stand, I wobbled, and dropped back onto the cushions. Eva saw me fall as she reentered, and cried ‘Ah!’ in pity.

‘Ah!’ I echoed, mockingly.

From a quilted bag she took out a bottle, and from its dispenser she pumped a puddle of foundation onto the back of her hand.

‘This can hide tattoos,’ she said. ‘So it should hide your bruises.’

She dabbed some on her index finger – but then hesitated.

‘No – I’m doing this wrong. We should colour-correct first.’

‘Yeah, I want a full actor’s mask,’ I said. ‘Don’t skip any steps.’

She took another pot from her bag – a wheel of five creams. And with her ring finger, she rubbed at the salmon cream – and then applied it over my bruises, cancelling out their bluish colour. Again I breathed in the scent of lily of the valley at her wrist.

‘Ok that’s better,’ she said. ‘Now we can do foundation.’

She returned to the beige puddle – and dotted it over my face, methodically, delicately. And then with an ovoid tickling sponge, she blended this into a mask.

‘I want to do more,’ she said.

‘Some eyeliner?’ I suggested.

‘A subtle cat eye,’ she said. ‘Some mascara.’

She held back my forehead with her thumb and lined my lids with thin black wings.

‘Blink,’ she instructed, holding up a stick of mascara.

I closed my upper lashes over its brush, twice for each eye – and let her stroke the lower two until they too were dyed.

‘You’re ready.’

‘Thank you.’ I kissed her – but she quickly retracted, to admire further the new artifice of my face.

‘You can be the red queen, and I’ll be the white,’ she said.

‘Did you bring out the best in me?’

‘Check,’ she gave me a folded mirror.

I looked at myself. My skin glistened oddly in this consistency – my eyes seemed more devious in their darkening, and the bruising of the left one was well concealed.

‘You bring out… something in me,’ she said. ‘Not the best… but you bring out the me in me. What just happened was… I don’t know. But it’s worked. And this afternoon I was… it was refreshing, to be able to let it out, you know? And I can even say I liked last night, however fucked up it was for you to not tell me about you and Francis.’

‘How could I have told you? It had nothing to do with why I came back with you, or why I came to you now.’

‘You’re lying but I don’t mind. I’m going to let you play on. At least you’re committed to your role,’ she laughed, indicating my hip wound as its blood blotched her gown towards a sicklier red.

I tried to kiss her again but she stood up, taking out her phone.

‘The taxi’s here,’ she said. ‘And so you’re my date. The boy who stole my boyfriend. This makes no sense.’

‘I didn’t steal anyone. And things don’t need to make sense, they just need to be charming.’

‘I don’t know if I’m charmed, but I’m – still listening.’

She wrapped a cape of scarlet mink around my shoulders. I leaned against her as she escorted me into the lift and down into the waiting taxi.

We shared the back seat. I fell asleep in her lap as she played with my hair. The viola plucks bled together into a single note.