Eat My Heart Out (20 page)

‘Do you have to be buried in quicksand though?' said Dave. ‘Don't you just fall in, and that's that.'

‘Yeah. Like falling in love. You put one toe in and then bang, before you know it, you're fully submerged and you can't breathe. It's terrifying.'

Dave laughed.

‘You laugh a lot,' I said. ‘You're always laughing.'

He stopped laughing.

‘No,' I said. ‘I like it.' I must have been getting drunk on the sake.

‘So anyway I just always had this mad passion for Japan,' he said. ‘Like the goddamn horn for the place.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘What?'

‘It's just that expression – it's quite distasteful. Some of the things you come out with are a bit not up my street.'

‘What is up your street then?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Go on.'

‘So I went travelling there – Japan – for like six months.'

‘Did you discover your Zen?'

‘Yeah.' He put down his chopsticks. ‘Yeah. Totally. There was this one festival in a place called Kumamoto. They get all the horses really drunk on sake and blindfold them and parade them through the streets like totally pissed out of their minds. It's worse than a fucking Saturday night in Leicester Square.'

‘I was in Leicester Square on Saturday night,' I said. ‘Were you following me?'

‘No!'

‘Because I've got a stalker called Vic. He's properly psycho.'

‘Anyway, the horses are like totally humiliated. They've lost control – against their will.'

The waiter appeared with the
pièce de résistance
– a cauldron of fish-head soup, boiling over a gas ring. ‘The eyes are a delicacy,' said the waiter. He looked like he would throw up. ‘If lovers eat an eye each, they stay conjoined forever. So the ancient Japanese saying goes.' He placed the eyes on a little dish.

‘In that case,' I said. ‘I'm not eating it.' I shook my eye into the ditch; the fish devoured it.

Dave ate his eye with relish.

‘You're going to stay conjoined forever with one of those fish then,' I said.

‘I don't care,' he said. ‘The fish will remind me of you.'

‘Thanks. Do I look like a fish?'

‘No, you look like a gazelle.'

‘What's that again?'

‘Something graceful.'

I stared into my bowl.

Soon another lucky diner caught a fish and the electro-pop started again.

‘Tell me about your art,' I said.

‘It's like … based on the phenomenological turn? Like Merleau-Ponty's concept of being embodied in the world?'

‘Yeah, he got that from Heidegger. I've been reading all about Heidegger. How we're just thrust into the world and it's not our choice so we've got to make the best of it.'

‘That sounds like self-help. And he didn't get it from Heidegger. He got it from Husserl.'

‘Whatever.'

Our plates were cleared away.

‘This date is so cringe-worthy,' I said. ‘I hate myself, I hate Heidegger, whatever. I hate fish. I don't like England. I don't like you. Or your teeth.'

He covered his mouth. ‘Hey. I'm really self-conscious about my teeth.'

‘No.' The room was starting to spin. ‘I do like your teeth. I love them. And I love you. There, I said it. I've fallen madly in love with you so now you can just fuck me up so just get it over and done with, would you?'

Dave pushed me against the betting shop next to the restaurant.

We were kissing, he was stroking my hair, he was telling me that I was beautiful. I didn't kick him in the nuts or even bite very hard.

‘One day I'll take you home with me,' he was saying. ‘I'll take you back to Devon with me. You'd love it there. I'll introduce you to my mum and dad. There's just miles and miles of fields and the sky is endless. You'll feel free.'

‘I don't want to feel free,' I said. ‘I want to feel constrained by something that's not evil, something that I can trust. Dave, how old are you?'

‘Twenty-seven.' He took my hand and we walked to the bus stop.

‘I suffer from anxiety,' I told him, as we sat down on the top deck.

‘That's OK. I've got loads of downers.'

I rested my head on his shoulder.

In front, there was another couple, and a man sitting alone, wearing a red woolly hat.

‘Can I tell you a story?' said Dave.

I kissed him again. ‘I like kissing you,' I said.

The man in the red hat jerked.

‘Go on,' I said.

‘There was this one time that me and my mates went down to this little cove, called Mill Cove, near where I live. We stayed up all night doing shrooms.'

I was watching the red hat.

‘It was way intense. The world looked so beautiful, I almost couldn't bear it. That's when I decided to be an artist.'

‘That's a nice story,' I said.

‘No. That's not it. I started getting all these stones and stuff that were lying around on the beach and organising them in these circles. They were totally random, but kind of complete in themselves. You know what I mean?'

The man in the hat stood up; he sat down again.

‘I felt like I was creating order for the first time in my life,' Dave went on. ‘Not artificial, hostile order, but true, pure, natural order. And I looked at my friends and they were just as they were – complete.'

‘Yeah, it's like that when you're high.'

‘No.' He pulled his hand away.

I took it back. ‘Sorry,' I said. ‘Go on.'

‘We were all sitting round this fire and the night sky looked so beautiful, and then, as dawn was coming, we saw this ship on the horizon. At least, we thought it was a ship.' He paused. ‘The ship's lights seemed to be blinking on and off but it wasn't coming any closer. The sky was insane – just amazing, open, falling colour. Then the girls started to cry. They said the light was blinking because the ship was in trouble and it wanted us to help. They said the ship was sinking, but it was too far away and we couldn't swim that far out to help so we better run to the village but the village was too far away so …'

‘What happened?'

‘The sun came up. They said the ship wanted to be seen for just an instant before it disappeared entirely—'

The man in the red hat twisted his head round.

It was Vic.

He seemed to be flinching from an imaginary threat. His lips were horribly elongated.

‘Don't listen to a word that comes out of her mouth,' Vic told Dave. ‘She'll tell you she's not an actress, but she is. She'll tell you she's not acting, but she is.' He stood up. The parka that I had lent him flopped open to reveal his gnarled nakedness. His penis began to stand up. His nipples looked like blind eyes. Hair crawled over his shoulders from his back like a monster trying to throttle him to death.

‘Do you know this man?' said Dave.

The couple had stood up too. They were backed against the front window.

‘A is for all's well that ends well,' said Vic. ‘M is for murder on the bus. Murder on the Dance Floor.' He laughed. His tongue was scabrous. ‘I see you in all the scenes of all the films that you said I should never watch. With that woman. That Hispanic woman, eating her out, licking her out.'

‘Vic,' I said. ‘Porn's not real.' I turned to Dave. ‘I swear I've never been in a porno.'

An empty bottle of Lucozade rolled across the floor, knocking into the metal legs of chairs.

‘I saw you with your schoolgirl uniform and then you were in the woods with Jeremy and Jeremy told you that you'd been a very bad girl.'

The bus had stopped.

The driver was coming up the stairs.

Vic picked up the Lucozade bottle and smashed it over the railing that ran along the backs of the seats. Orange-tinted glass flew everywhere. The driver moved to restrain Vic, but he brandished a shard of glass and started laughing again.

‘Do you know that Ann-Marie is a Dutch name?' said Vic. ‘I looked it up on the internet. Are you Dutch?'

I said nothing.

‘Are you fucking Dutch?'

‘No!' I said. ‘No. Vic, I'm not Dutch.'

‘Ann-Marie means bitter grace in Dutch,' he mumbled. Then he used the sharpest end of the shard to engrave into the skin of his stomach:
A.M
.

My initials were a pink line then a running red gash.

Seventeen

As soon as the driver opened the doors of the bus, I began to run, hysterically.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

God is love, god is light. Light is Dave, the light-maker!

Where is he?

I looked back. I had left him attending to Vic, who had collapsed on the floor of the top deck. I had expected Dave to run after me; he hadn't.

I ran into Tesco on Clapham High Street.

I grabbed a basket and skipped down the florescent meat aisle. I swung the basket as though it were a holy thurible able to bless the packets and packets of gleaming red ruby meat, rippled with a fat so white it hurt. There was purity in the world. There was passion in the world. I was alive. Hallelujah!

I stopped, entranced, at the offal section. The hearts, ripe and obscene, seemed to morph into Dave's pendulous testicles – I was sure they would be pendulous – blood-bursting and full of the promise of future generations. We would mate! We would mate!

I clawed at the hearts with love streaming through my veins. There would be twenty, thirty children! There would be eternal children! Dave and I would move in with his parents in Devon and I would waddle about the rose-covered cottage, as happy as a fat pregnant duck. His kindly mother with twinkling eyes and flour on her hands from making so much bread would pat my stomach and possibly perform an age-old family ritual of swinging a locket around my stretch-marked belly in order to tell whether I would be gushing forth a little Dave or a little Ann-Marie. If I had a boy, I would call it Sebastian.

I put the packet in my mouth and tore at it with my teeth. The watery blood that swirled around the edges of the meat ran straight into my throat. I bit down on the heart with urgency. It crunched like a hard peach. Dense, slaughter-heavy scents overwhelmed me. I had an urgent need to masturbate. I put the brown and messy meat between my legs, crouching awkwardly on the floor. The florescent lights became gamma ray bursts.

‘Ann-Marie!' Dave was running down the aisle towards me. He stopped, sweating. ‘What are you doing?'

I threw the packet back on the shelf. ‘It should be perfectly obvious what I'm doing, Dave.' I stood up. ‘You've ruined it now.'

‘Ruined what?'

‘I was having a wonderful time – remembering you.'

‘Well, here I am!'

‘No, Dave. You don't understand. It's better if we skip this part. If we fast-forward to the beginning and the middle and the end and let the tragic chorus begin and let me feel sad and maybe I'll even write a poem about it. Maybe I was close to writing then – with the meat.' I gestured to the hearts, which looked as though they had been mauled by a pack of wolves.

A Tesco worker came striding down the aisle with a mop. She was irate. ‘Didn't you hear the announcement?' she was saying.

I ran out of the supermarket, grabbing a copy of
Grazia
on the way. I didn't stop until I reached the tube. I hid behind the public toilets. There were no police cars. Then I saw Dave, panting. He was looking for me. I watched his discomfort for a while, then, when his back was turned, I ran and jumped him from behind, just as I had jumped Vic on our first date. Dave didn't fall though; he was stronger. He held onto the park railings, saying nothing, until I began to feel foolish. I got down.

‘You're playing games,' he said. ‘You're always playing games. What about that poor guy, Vic? You didn't even wait for the ambulance. He was on a stretcher—'

‘Was he strapped down?'

‘They said he'd lost a lot of blood, that he had hypothermia as well. They said he was homeless.'

‘He's not homeless. He lives with a whole load of operators – as long as he's not dead, that's the main thing.'

Dave stared at me.

‘I hope they put Vic in a secure enough straitjacket,' I said. ‘Because I can't imagine the lengths he will go to if he's allowed to roam the streets as a free man.'

I explained to Dave on the tube that I had run to the meat aisle for protection because Vic was terrified of meat. Dave said he wished he'd bought me a packet of pork chops as protection, like garlic is protection against vampires. I was thrilled that he was entering into the spirit of things. People were staring at us in the carriage; probably because we looked like a couple from a romantic comedy, totally made for each other, both appearance-wise and personality-wise.

I got out
Heidegger: An Intro
and said: ‘I won't be needing this any more.' I offered it to the man sitting opposite; he had a bushy beard and looked vaguely like a philosopher himself.

‘Who needs knowledge and even education at all when you have love?' I said. ‘I was only getting an education anyway because that's what you're supposed to do. And I never really understood any of it. All I ever really wanted was someone to love, who loves me. The rest of – all of it – just seems like a waste of time.'

‘Really?' said the man opposite. He was holding the book as though it were a bomb.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘See.' I snatched it back and flipped to a random page. ‘
Concept of Authentic Life: My existence is owned by me
.' I gave it back to the man. ‘I mean, who needs authenticity when you've got romance?'

Dave laughed uncertainly.

We were nearly two hours late for the Samuel Johnson Prize, but the winner hadn't yet been announced.

Steph went completely ape-shit when she saw Dave and told me that under no circumstances was he coming into the ceremony. I told her that under no circumstances was I coming in without him and so she better make sure an extra place was set at our table. She had brought the Lanvin contrast dress in a zip-up sack, carried by Marge, who was wearing a steel-grey fishtail dress. Raegan was wearing an early '90s grunge ensemble of floral dress, DMs, and plastic jewellery bearing the letter R. Steph was stunning in a man's brown suit and trilby.

I changed in the toilet. Raegan did my hair and told me that I was pretty and that she'd fallen in love with my new boyfriend Dave because he was totally hot. She told me all about a documentary that she'd watched on YouTube about Drew Barrymore becoming a coke addict at the age of nine and how she couldn't believe it because
E.T.
was one of her favourite films and if Gertie could be a coke addict then why couldn't she?

I told her I didn't think that was a very good attitude because Drew Barrymore was already an extremely highgrossing star by the age of nine so she could no doubt afford to spend millions of dollars on rehab.

Raegan pulled out a sachet of white powder and a £20 note and told me that she'd bought it off Steph's cleaner Ilka, who'd been rehired. She racked up a few, very fat lines on the toilet seat and I told her that I didn't think she should be doing that seeing as she was only twelve but she said it was a rite of passage for all pre-teens with broken homes.

‘I come from a broken home too,' I told her. ‘My father left when I was born. I never knew him. I only ever knew my mother.'

‘Cool,' she said.

She did a line with deftness, pinched the bridge of her delicate American nose, and threw her head back. She offered the note to me.

‘You look at least sixteen in that outfit,' I told her. ‘Maybe you are sixteen. Maybe you're eighteen.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I'm twelve.'

She blocked the cubicle door so that I had no choice but to do a line too.

Nothing happened.

‘I think Ilka was getting her revenge on Steph for sacking her,' I said. ‘This is like paracetamol or something.'

But Raegan's pupils had dilated to dots; she was gurning. She kept on tucking her hair behind her ears.

‘OK!' I said.

Dave was waiting in the corridor. ‘You look beautiful,' he told me.

‘Do I look beautiful?' stuttered Raegan. ‘You look like Justin Bieber. Or Justin Timberlake. Or a blond Justin Bieber. I mean Justin Bieber after he dyed his hair blond.'

Our table was laden with flowers and stacked with copies of
Falling Out of Fate
. Steph and Marge were already seated. Dave was not dressed for the occasion at all; he was wearing a pair of red jeans and high-tops.

‘Didn't you get my texts?' Steph hissed at me.

I checked my phone:

Why have you run away again after everything I've done for you? Steph

Come back, darling, I'm sorry. Steph

If you come back, I'll tell you the story, the whole story, whether I like it or not. Steph

I guess this is karma. Erzulie must be punishing me. Steph.

When will the badness flourish to its fullness and die? Steph

‘Steph,' I whispered. ‘I told you I was going for a walk on the Heath. I was gone for like two hours.'

‘You were gone for five hours.' She looked at Dave. ‘Who is he?'

‘I met him on the Heath,' I said.

‘But wasn't he in the BBC cafeteria this afternoon—' She shook her head. ‘You missed the dinner.' She looked distraught. ‘There was a dinner before.'

Dave leaned across me and told Steph: ‘My ex-girlfriend was a big fan of your work. She did an MA in Gender Studies. Never stopped talking about your rereading of Deleuzean de-stratification. She said it was important as a woman to retain a small amount of the strata, to not let go of the strata entirely.'

‘Yes,' nodded Steph. ‘Don't burn all your bridges, not all at once.' She looked at me.

‘Victoria said that was why she was going out with me,' said Dave. ‘I was the strata.'

Steph smiled at Dave warmly.

The waiters were pouring champagne.

Raegan reached for a flute.

Marge slapped her arm. ‘What's wrong with you, honey?' she was saying. ‘I know it's exciting but it's not that exciting.'

Raegan gripped the edge of the white-clothed table. ‘It's exciting,' she was saying, over and over, her eyes whorls of black. She leapt up. ‘I've got a trick.' She attempted to pull the tablecloth out from under the miscellaneous flutes and ice buckets.

‘No,' said Marge. ‘No. We'll have to talk to Dr Garrison when we get home about increasing your Ritalin prescription.'

‘See?' I said to Dave. ‘Americans are
obsessed
with prescription drugs.'

The chatter of liberals at leisure was silenced by the appearance on the stage of a round woman who looked like an opera singer. She was wearing a blue velvet tent. The blue seemed outrageously vivid to me.

Dave put his hand on mine. He asked if he could have some of whatever I had had; I said there was none left.

‘Where's Vic?' I was saying. ‘I'm so scared that Vic will come, please don't let him come.'

‘Don't worry,' said Dave. ‘I'll protect you.'

‘You see?' I said. ‘I don't need knowledge if I've got love.' I turned to Steph. ‘There's nothing else you can do to me. More than what you've done. The future is uncertain.'

‘The future is always uncertain,' said Raegan.

The opera singer went on and on about the state of nonfiction and the state of publishing and the threat of the internet and the exciting possibilities of e-books and the danger that e-books were deregulating the world. ‘In the words of David Lynch,' she quipped. ‘We take our screens to bed.'

Everyone laughed.

Raegan bashed her fork too hard against her empty flute; it cracked. Marge tried to escort her outside for a telling off. Raegan held onto the edge of the table again, but Marge prised her fingers away. They disappeared.

A tall man in a bow tie appeared on the podium and read out the nominees. He described
Falling Out of Fate
as the culmination of a life spent in women's letters.

Steph snorted. ‘Or just
letters
.'

Along with the cultural history of ceruse, the other nominated books included a history of the London sewer system in the Victorian times, a biography of the butler of Lord Douglas-Home, an account of the demise of ash trees, and a recently discovered account of the Boer War from the perspective of a man who had been shot for desertion.