Hymenoptera
by Adam Parry
‘Who are
you talking to?’
‘Talking?
I was just muttering to myself.’
‘Call that
muttering? If you mutter any louder you’ll wake the dead.’
‘Aye. And
they probably haven’t slept for days with you going on all the time.’
‘Oh, shut
up and put the telly on.’
She
settles back pointing at the TV remote. Alex sat on the edge of the sofa’s arm
rest, perched almost on thin air, flicking channels.
‘What do
you want?’ he snapped.
‘Three.’
He left
the remote on the arm rest on his way out onto the street. The cat followed him
out. He almost forgot about the rotten plank at the front door, at the last
second he stepped over it, telling himself to remember to fix it, and walked
into the path of a figure. Tom. Tom had a couple of apartments on the other
side of the house. One for his large collection of mirrors, the other for his
two Alsatians. Alex guessed Tom was back from the pub. It didn’t take Sherlock
Holmes to deduce Tom was back from the pub. He wondered, anxiously, if they’d
talk.
‘Cath in?’
‘Fraid so.
I’m off out.’
‘Nice to
see the bonds of marriage are so easily torn asunder.’
‘I’m just
going to the shop, Tom.’
‘Yeah
right.’ He passed him down the steps. ‘See ya.’ At the gate at the end of the
weed-encroached path, with its two green painted posts, the cat waited
patiently for him. She hid her disappointment that instead of going to the
left, to shops and cat food, away from the shops towards, towards, he didn’t
know where towards. Or maybe he was going away. His footsteps echoed loudly on
the otherwise quiet street, amber lit, streetlights spaced as regularly as his
footfall.
Maybe
after all he would go back the way to the shops, but he didn’t stop, nor turn
around, not yet as the cat raced ahead of him in and out of the light urging
him to turn back. Mentally he made a shopping list as he moved out of the
orange haze into the main body of the darkness and into her arms.
‘You took
your time,’ she admonished him as he held her, their lips brushing each other
into faint smiles. She wasn’t warmly dressed in only a thin jacket, it’s black
hood covering her blonde hair like a cowl. She huddled into him, almost
inserting herself into his warm aura, the cold in her melting into him. She
sheltered there and he held her until she stopped shivering.
His smile
slipped as he whispered to her. ‘I can’t go back there.’
She would
say there was nowhere else to go or that he had to be patient so he took her
hand so she wouldn’t speak and walked out of the darkness. Unnoticed, a web of
blue light held their hands together.
After a
minute she said. ‘Let’s just walk.’
‘And
talk.’
‘Talk
too.’ She looked up at him, her eyes questioning. He had never seen eyes quite
like hers, not merely blue, but cerulean.
‘What
about?’
‘Let’s not
think about that just yet.’
‘Just
walk.’
‘Yeah.’
They
walked to the University Buildings. They heard raucous sounds of a band in the
Union. She turned him towards the sounds. ‘Let’s go in.’
They
needed a student union card to get into the gig he was about to turn away,
thinking of other places they could go, when she magically produced a card, and
the bouncers let them in. She wanted to dance and dragged him onto the dance
floor before they’d even ordered a drink. After the first track, he was
exhausted by the jerking and jigging about that he called dancing. She would
not let him go, and they danced then as if levels of energy and time itself
didn’t exist, the power of the music, twisting them with pleasure, kept him on
his feet, with her face before his. She is so rare, he thought. I just realised
at this moment I am truly alive and that is because of her.
The music
was ceaseless, he wavers slightly on the waves and crescendos of the music, she
takes his hand and mercifully out into the bright lit stairwell, with a
refreshing breeze coming in the Union entrance and washing over them. There was
no-one else about and he reached hold of her and they began kissing, their
hands instinctively clutching into clothes and flesh. With his touch he remade
her and with her eyes she spun fire into him, each re-exploring the strangers
they had become to one another in the time they had spent apart.
He would
tell her he loved her, but she would probably tell him to shut up. They were
one being in the stark stairwell in the cold, oblivious of the invading wind
and the drunken students, kissing as if it were a thing newly invented. He told
her he loved her, and her blue eyes opened inches from his own, About them the
sound of music diminished and the wind dissipated.
‘I have to
show you,’ she said.
In a
second they were standing at the front of Alex’s house, standing in the
flower-bed staring into the room through one of the wide bay windows. In the
candle-light, the only light in the room, beside the bed Alex could see Tom on
top of his wife Cath. Before rage took him over she grabbed his hand again and
they found themselves back in the Union, once more dancing, dancing, she would
not let him go.
As he
stood still and she danced around him, all he could think about was that Cath
was pregnant, and the endless image of Tom rutting into her pale flesh, pricked
his head and his stomach with nausea. Alex managed to escape from her to the
bar and ordered some vodka, and then again she was at his arm.
‘We need
to get out of this city, now, right now. We’ll just get a taxi, fuck what it
costs at least I don’t have to buy baby clothes now. You know I didn’t want
her.’
In his
bitterness, his eyes pleaded with her, but hers were closed, her body rocking
attuned to the music. It seemed to Alex she was shutting herself off from him,
like some ride in a fun-fair he had just got off, with the exit bar locked
behind him. And Alex suddenly terrified saw that at any moment she was going to
move off, through him to someone else.
So if this
was the last time he decided to grab her, and he forced his lips onto hers and
forced her lips open with his tongue and jaw, his hands squeezing her breasts
as he forced her up against the bar. She didn’t stop him, no-one stopped them
as he fucked Jackie in the Union’s half darkness with such frenzied desperation
knowing that she would be gone from him, like a ghost slipping away before
dawn.
Later he
was walking back home in the amber lights electric flicker he was alone again,
Jackie lost in his fumble for students, groping his half limpness, Jackie
forgotten again in the haze of kissed faces, smeared lipstick, endless
eyeliner. At the gate his cat awaited him, he noticed Tom’s light was off, Cath
still had the TV on and in the blue glow looked made her look like a rather
scary Pictish warrior.
He tripped
up the stair narrowly avoiding breaking his leg in the hole by the front door.
He smiled as he came in and said, ‘What’s on love?’
‘You were
a long time. You missed your programme.’
‘Never
mind. I went to Jac’s grave.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was
cold, give us a cuddle.’
‘I’ll come
with you next time.’
‘Yes,’ he
kissed her. ‘That would be nice,’
