Love Me (21 page)

Finally I can't help myself any longer and rap hard on Brandy's bedroom door.

‘Hey! Are you in?'
Knock, knock, knock.
‘Brandy?'

Pause.

Knock, knock, knock.

‘Yeah, come on in.'

‘Brandy! I . . .' I push the door open, and for a moment I don't know who I'm looking at. Pause. ‘Brandon.'

‘Eden,' he replies, and gives me a clouded smile.

‘I . . . um. Nice to meet you,' I say, completely lost, failing at a friendly chuckle. His voice is different, his posture, his presence. ‘Wow.'

‘You can say it.'

‘Say what?'

‘I'm not as cute as a boy, huh?'

His face looks slimmer and shaded, longer, harder. His
eyes are weary. His hair is a cap of short, black waves that start further back on his head than the lace front wig. He wears a T-shirt and a pair of long shorts. There is no theatre to him. He's not an event. ‘You . . .' I struggle, ‘you're just a different person. I'd have to look at you for a while.'

He smiles, nods. He looks more like Brandy when he smiles.

I look around his room. It's simple and neat in shades of pale green and white. The bed is made. There's barely a sign of girlhood anywhere, aside from his make-up bag and the wig on a stand, his big, fake hair. There's a picture on his dresser of Violet, laughing. I didn't even know they were close like that. I've barely even seen them together at all.

‘What's up,' he says. ‘You look a few layers' worth of freaked out right now.'

‘Um. Have you seen Zed at all? I'm just wondering, you know, because I haven't seen him for a few days.'

‘Sorry, I haven't,' he says. And I feel stranded between panic at Zed's disappearance and the shock of Brandon's bare face. They intertwine. ‘Not since Monday I don't think.'

‘Alright. OK. Cool. So . . . you're alright, though, yeah?'

‘I'm good,' he says quietly. ‘I'm gonna go visit some family in New Jersey for a couple days.' Even his legs are crossed the mannish way, with one calf crossed over his knee. It makes me feel lonely, like he's a stranger. ‘Are you?'

‘What, going to New Jersey?'

‘No,' he laughs. ‘I meant are you good?'

‘Yeah. I'm . . . yeah. I'm gonna go. I'll see you later.'

Another day and still no sign. Not a single shiny blink from my mobile phone either. From anybody. And I thought Spanish and I would be allies. The bond seemed almost blood-thick between us, sitting in the closet together, singing the theme from
M.A.S.H.

But then it's not simple. I don't even know if Spanish wants to see me again. Everything was different when I woke up the morning after. He was staring into my face with those uncanny golden eyes of his, unblinking as a cat's. Before he'd said a word I could see he'd dried up sober as a Monday morning.

‘Hey,' he said huskily, then cleared his throat. Despite the heat, he'd pulled a sheet right up to my neck and was lying as far away from me as he possibly could without falling off the bed.

‘Morning, Spanish,' I said, careful to direct my morning breath away from him.

‘I'm sorry if . . . if I scared you or anything. You know, last night?'

‘It's alright.'

‘Eight o'clock. I gotta get my day started.'

A couple of cars blasted hip-hop outside.

‘Right.' I stretched out. The bed was comfortable and the day ahead was uninviting.

‘Eden, you gotta go. I don't really do this.'

‘What?' I asked, my body sparking with all manner of impulses. He was trying to kill something between us. But him trying to kill it meant it existed.

‘This.'

‘I don't understand.'

Spanish closed his eyes and opened them. ‘Thanks for staying with me last night.'

I shrugged, pretending not to be tense. ‘I was stranded,' I told him. It felt like a confession. How long had I been stranded? For much longer than a night, I think.

‘Thanks anyway. It was nice you being here. I usually like to be alone.'

‘Look, it's not even a big deal, Spanish.'

‘That's what you think?' Our gazes collided and ricocheted. His honesty disarmed me, his unfashionable gravity.

‘Nothing even happened.'

‘What? Sex? That's the only thing that can happen, right?'

‘Spanish . . .'

‘Really, Eden,' he jumped up in that sudden way he has, gave me a towel and pointed me to the bathroom. ‘When you're ready I'll take you to the subway, alright?'

We walked to the station in complete silence. A forcefield had sprung up around him but I pressed my phone number on him anyway. I shouldn't have bothered. Now he's yet another man who won't use it.

I unpack The Woman from my bag, safe in her little clip frame. ‘You have it all figured out, don't you?' I say to her and wish she could talk back, though I'm pretty sure that even if she could, she wouldn't. Sigh.

Our lives are so tenuous, built around other people who may or may not have even built their lives around us. These random blood sacs poised to spill any moment and be lost to the earth.

I remember when I was a little kid in primary school, we'd make papier maché balloons. We'd blow up real ones and paste them over with dollops of thick glue and newspaper. When they'd dried and hardened, we'd paint them in bright colours and we'd pop the balloon inside with a pin. It reminds me of all the layers we paste onto the people we love, the memories and expectations. Those things last longer than people do and go on for ever, holding the shape of a ghost.

‘Hey . . . Violet!' Me on the second floor, gripping the banister.

‘Eden.' She comes out of her living room with a giggling Eko on her hip. ‘You alright? What's up?'

‘I'm fine. You know I just wondered if, um, you've seen Zed at all in the past couple of days?'

‘Zed? You mean that dude who moved in downstairs?'

‘Right.'

‘No, sorry, I ain't seen him, girl. Actually I was gon' ask you to bring him up for dinner one of these nights! I've barely had a chance to talk to him.'

‘Yeah, definitely. I'll tell him.'

OUTSIDE THE NEW
York sun is a yellow shout. I can't see until I put my shades on. I walk up Flatbush Avenue, lazily in search of Zed's stride, not really expecting to see it. The sky is scummy; there's a veil of wispy cloud and smog muddying the blue. And I'm sick of sunshine. I'm sick of heat. What I wouldn't do for a cool and gentle grey day in London. I feel like I'm melting, fusing. I'm hungry, but I walk past the Chinese and the Mexican and the Italian and the West Indian buffet and even Papa's Fried Chicken. I walk into clothes shops and listlessly finger the clothes. I ignore the shop assistants. I don't like my face in the mirror.

I imagine how it would feel to smash the sky with a gargantuan hammer or to blow the trees over, or to sweep buildings away with one fist. I wish I was that powerful. I wish I had any power.

I don't catch the eyes of the hungry men on the street corners; they look at my legs and at my breasts and they make corny overtures. But right now I'm fed up of all that. I want to be a tree. I want to be a bowl of water, or a length of fabric or a bar of soap or a fucking bedside lamp. Not anything they can look at in that way.

They're all the same. If they had a chance to mean something to me, they'd either stick me on some pedestal so high it gives me a nosebleed or they'd use me like toilet paper. And that's all I see in every one of those gazes, from the skinny boys and the buff ones, and the tall ones and the munchkins and the ones older than God; I see only two tribes.

Wolves and lambs.

I walk up past Prospect Park, over Atlantic Avenue and near that big Target Mall I went to with Brandy, take a right on Hanson Place. It's a long, long walk. He has to be somewhere, I think.

Inside Fort Greene Park, I look around for Zed's friends, but that was a Sunday thing. They're probably at work now. I don't know what I expected to see. There's no one but a few strangers with their dogs, and a few smaller strangers playing football. I finally crack and try his mobile again.

And it's always like the first time, calling him. Fifteen-year-old me sitting at the telephone, deaf with nerves, full of a pleasant terror like just before a really big plunge on a rollercoaster when time itself seems to pause. The phone rang in his dad's apartment and I wondered what the sound would catch him doing and if he'd be thinking about me. That first time I called he answered ‘Hello?' and my gut flipped. ‘It's Eden,' I managed without a waver. In my pocket were three folded twenty-dollar notes from the pawn shop. I was quite victoriously without jewellery. ‘Let's go out,' I said, feeling liberated and wicked. ‘I've got money.' He laughed. ‘Whoa . . . it's like that? I'm on my way, girl!'

But that was then. Now my call goes through to voicemail. No dice.

I consume my pizza and Snapple. I do a circuit of the park. I try the mobile. I stare at the clouds. I try the mobile.

I sit down on the dry grass and cry. I'm exhausted.

Then I ignore a concerned look on a passing face and go home.

AND I KNOW
right away that he's back. I click the door open and smell weed. Plus there's an open box of juice and his keys sitting on the coffee table.

So after a very short time wondering if I should just play it cool and go down to the basement I decide against it and take the few steps it takes to get to his bedroom. The door is slightly ajar. There are sounds.

I push his room open and Zed is thrusting languidly into some jiggle-breasted stranger. Dark-haired, red-cheeked, making dents in his skin with her stubby fingers. His face is turned away so I can't see, but hers is unremarkable. Not stunning like Max. She's not Max. She's just anyone and you shouldn't be able to fuck in a room like this. Under the weed and the body fluids it still smells faintly of old lady. He's almost fully dressed, the skin of his ass barely visible between his tank top and the waistband of his jeans.

‘Zed!' she screeches, making a pathetic attempt to cover herself. ‘Zed!' I watch his uninspired moves while the stranger keeps yelling his name until eventually he realises that it's not a reaction to his prowess. She pushes him off of her.

‘Fuck,' he says.

‘Zed! There's someone here. Stop.'

When he finally turns around I'm suddenly mobilised. I don't wait for anything to register in his eyes but walk blindly through the dark house, face hot, head full of white
noise. A sound like speaker interference. I can hear them really tinny through all the buzzing.

‘Oh shit!'

‘Is that your girlfriend or something?' Squeak, squeak her little voice goes.

‘Oh shit.'

‘You didn't tell me you had a girlfriend! You didn't fucking—'

Movement, cloth, zippers.

‘Look, I can't deal with this right now.'

‘You want me to leave?'

‘Yes.'

‘I can't believe—'

‘I'll call you.'

‘Zed!'

‘I'll call you, OK?'

I make it to the basement door underwater, and I lock it behind me.

I put my headphones in as loud as they can go and lay there with a pillow over my head until Zed has given up knocking on the door.

Behind my eyelids, Zed has armies marching through me unchecked, burning and pillaging. Zed in a million and one poses. Zed the first time I saw him, shining clean and boxfresh in his new gear, Zed quiet in black, eyes leaking softly, Zed tickling me when I was fifteen to make me let go of the TV remote, Zed cooking me breakfast that time I got drunk, Zed in jeans, Zed in a suit, Zed in Hackney, Zed in Notting Hill, Zed in New York, Zed's mouth and spiky lashes and fuzzy chin and smooth body and firm bum and voice and laugh and smile and sigh and all those half-cut looks and all that anger and fakeness and pain and arrogance. Zed kissing his white girl and his slim fingers and big feet, his
favourite songs, his cologne, his limp hugs, his tight grins, his weed, his style, his elusive soul.

Decolonisation will require an act of violence against myself comparable to the revolutions of France and Haiti. I'll cut him away like the tumour he is.

So eventually the severe need of a drink finally drives me upstairs into a house quiet enough that I assume he's left again. But I was wrong. I can hear the TV on in the living room.

I go straight into the kitchen where I know I have a bottle of something hot that's not coffee. I drink it straight – no ice – at the crooked table, nibbling dejectedly at a packet of crisps. I pour out some more Jack and pretend I don't hear when Zed walks up and stands in the doorway.

‘What's up?' he says.

‘You tell me, Casanova.'

‘Eden, I . . .'

‘I guess it's kind of serious with her too, hey Zed? Nice to see you have no problem getting serious with girls. Max is lucky you get so much practice.'

Without answering, he pours himself a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and sits at the table. I refill. ‘I just . . .' He shakes his head. ‘It was just a thing. You know what I mean?'

‘Not really. Why don't you explain?'

‘What's the point? Would anything I say make a difference to you, right now?' I shrug. He takes a bite of cereal. ‘So how was that show the other night?' I hate when people speak with their mouths full. It's disgusting. ‘Spanish and his guys?'

‘He's a genius.'

‘Indubitably.'

‘We didn't fuck.'

He stops chewing for a second and I look up from my glass. He stares.

‘I didn't ask you that.'

So I put the empty glass in the sink and take the bottle with me.

‘Good night, Zed,' I say.