The words in the letters were never threatening in any way, and it didn’t seem that the writer wished me any harm, but those damned envelopes spooked the hell out of me. Eve laughed when I told her about them, she was sure I was overreacting. She accused me often of injecting more drama into situations than was strictly necessary, which goes without saying, I thought, taking my profession into account. She was sure it was just an ex of mine, having a laugh, or an overenthusiastic fan. Through the gap in the bedroom curtains I can see the sun is rising and the blue morning light comforts me.
I have an arm around Denise’s naked waist but I am thinking of Eve.
29
I AM MISSING A HAND
I feel as though I am coming back to life, but it is a different life. I feel as if I have stopped chasing whatever it was that I was chasing. Not because I found what I was looking for but because I have given up. I see with absolute clarity that life is, ultimately, pointless, and this knowledge makes me feel like I am drowning. Not fighting the current that takes my warmth and my air but instead, letting it pull me down.
I no longer feel the need to travel, to find people’s secrets, to risk my safety. Day to day is dull. I don’t know why Denise stays. Without writing I am a shell. Gwendolyn MacEwan said that authors have the Jekyll hand and the Hyde hand. The idea is that a writer has one hand for their mundane existence, like walking the dog, jerking off, or flipping a pancake, and the other for creating. In my case it’s about creating havoc. The inseparable twins: Havoc and Harmony. I am missing a hand.
30
NIGHTS ARE QUICK
I begin to worry about Denise. How my psychological vacuum is affecting her. She hardly eats, hardly goes out. Has she always worn this much black? I wonder if she has contracted my emptiness. When we are together we are still alone. Is this love?
We don’t talk about it. I spend time in my den, trying to get words on paper, giving up, then drinking enough whisky to fell a small elephant and generally wallowing in my existential angst. She disappears into the garden. I have stopped cooking. Even grocery stores seem out of bounds to me now. When I think I am being overtly paranoid I look at the rock that was thrown through my front window. I keep it in the lounge near the jagged window frame. It’s a warning. ‘Stay on your toes,’ it breathes, ‘there are people who mean you harm.’
I want to write to Denise, tell her she is crisp and honeyed but that makes me think of apples and fruit-juicers and Eve. I want to type words about the corrugated silk on the inside of her body but my fingers just hover, impotent, above the keyboard, thinking of the pink pills, the mind map, the porcelain knife. I want to scribble that without her, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the mornings, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t shower. The days are everlasting but the nights are quick. She wraps me up in her molten body till I fall through the floor.
31
RED ISLANDS ON HER NECK
I find myself outside in the weak morning sunshine. I sip coffee and walk barefoot on the cool dewdamp grass, looking at how the plants have swelled and multiplied. Yellow arums, peach incas, and lavender grown wild and spindly. Their proliferation makes me feel shrunken. I hear the dog barking next door and, as I turn to look in the direction of the noise, I see movement behind the wall. I duck behind a shrub. I think it was the dog, but one can never be too safe. I inch my head around the leaves to get a better look and that is when I see her: Munchkin is back. She slithers easily through the drainage holes at the bottom of the wall and rattles her wiry tail at me. I wonder to whom she belongs, if anyone. She has me well trained and I crouch down and rub my fingers together to beckon her towards me. This time she comes. She drags her body along my knee, then chin-cheeks my outstretched hand. Her purr is too loud for her delicate build.
“Denise,” I call softly to the house, “come and look.”
When I don’t hear her coming, I call a little louder but this spooks the cat and she dashes back through the wall. Shinyblacklightning. Denise comes to the door.
“Did you call me?” she asks, “what is it?”
I stand up and dust my hands off. Pick up my cold cup of coffee.
“Nothing,” I say.
After checking the peephole for Edgar and his cunning associates, I slip out to the letterbox to get my newspaper. The post goes straight into my wastepaper basket. I delete all the messages on my phone. After the obligatory few hours in the den, scratching a hole in my notebook, I give up and read instead. I have always found it difficult to find enough time to read all the books I want, all the books that would help me become the writer I was meant to be. The writing usually takes over, but not now. Now I read at least a book a day. I am finally demolishing the swaying pillars of books I have piled up in my house. When I bought this place I thought I’d turn one of the rooms into a library but I never got around to it. They lie around the house in great toppling stacks, impatient to be read. Truthfully, I like that they invade every room in the house; it seems right, somehow.
Denise wakes me up with her tongue in my mouth. The den is dark and I can hardly make her out. I must have dozed off. She kisses the scar on my cheek, then pulls up my shirt and eats my nipples. I don’t know how long I have been hard. I put my hands on her head but she shakes them off. She straddles me on the chesterfield, lowering herself onto me. She is not wearing panties. I gasp at the suddenness of her hot crush. She rides me in slow arcs and I dream I am in a new bright place. She gets me to the top and just before she lets me slide down the other side, she raises herself off me, turns around, lifts up her skirt to show me what she’s got. I grab her butt cheeks; try to pull her towards me. I want to taste her, but she resists. Something buzzes through my body and I can’t take it; I wrestle her to the floor, pinning her down. She resists, breathing fast, like an animal, and tries to bite me. I hold down both her wrists with my left hand, and use my right to slip myself into her. Then I put my fingers around her neck, as if to strangle her, and she groans. I can feel her excitement grow as I apply more pressure. Her breathing is laboured. I start to move inside her. This is good. So good. I can write about this.
More weight on her throat and her back arches. I can feel her pulse in my palm. My body is electric with power; I build up and up until my mind dissolves and I fly out of my body for a sublime second. Denise stops resisting and I think she has come too until I get back to myself, and her, and see she is not moving.
I shake her still shoulders. I try to make out her face in the dark.
“Denise!” I yell. “Denise!”
Oh my God, oh fuck. Jesus Christ. I turn on the lamp near her head.
Her face is bloodless. Red islands on her neck.
A mental flash of light: Eve.
Eve, dead. Blue and leached of all goodness. Flash, flash, flash, till I can’t see what is in front of me.
“Eve!” I cry.
And then her chest is moving and I hear her breathing. I touch her chest and feel her strong heart racing. A laugh bubbles up from her; she takes my hand and kisses my fingers.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I say, taking my hand back and running it through my hair. She laughs again but there is sadness in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask, touching her neck. She nods and pulls me down so that we are lying together. I am extra gentle with her as I rub her back, kiss her spine. I wait for her to go to sleep before I carry her to bed.