"Don't... worry about it," he said weakly.
Her eyes closed again. "You wouldn't get the wrong idea if I asked you to put that light out, would you?" she asked. "My eyes hurt."
"Sure," he said softly, and went to the door.
With the light off, cold yellow bands of light spread from the window. She was a black pool of shadow on the bed, a space of darkness. He sat down by her, and she raised one of her arms; he sat down beside her, muscles trembling. Her arm pulled him gently down. Her face was opposite his; close, indistinct.
This is terrible, Graham," she said, almost too softly for him to catch. "You've been lovely and I'm leading you on but I can't deliver at the moment. You'll hate me."
"I - " he began, but gulped that precipitous, too instinctive and glib statement back. Too soon. "No," he insisted, "not at all." He put one of his hands out and took both of hers in his. They were warm. "Just this is..." he shook his head, not knowing if she could see, or maybe feel the bed bounce slightly,'... it's really nice," he gave a tiny, self-depreciating laugh on the last word, acknowledging its inadequacy. She squeezed his hands.
"Thanks," she whispered.
They lay like that for a long time. His thoughts were in a strangely distant turmoil, as though they were no more the workings of his own mind than the far-below hubbub of the party was his own voice. In the end he gave up trying to analyse his own feelings, or even totally understand them, and lay there relaxed, listening for the slow, regular breathing of sleep, and wasn't sure if he detected it or not. The door opened briefly at one point and a young man's voice said "Shit," but Graham didn't even turn to look; he knew it could be nothing which would disturb them.
He held her in his arms, still and warm, and after a while in that darkness he felt as though he held nothing at all; it was like when a limb, having been left in the same position for too long a time, somehow loses all reference to the body, and for those instants before some willed movement the very location and attitude of that arm or leg is quite unknown. He held her, but he felt nothing; she was there, and in his consciousness distinctly other and different, but she was also like some relaxed part of himself; a silent mix of identities cancelled out, like the pale skin, white scar, dark clothes and black hair being equated and combined, and the resulting coalescence being clear, invisible... nothing.
Eventually she stirred, kissed him quickly on the forehead, and levered herself up, sitting on the side of the bed. "I feel better now," she said. She turned to look at him in the darkness; he stayed looking at her. "I'd better go home," she continued. "Could you ring for a taxi? Come; we'll go back down."
"Yeah," he smiled.
The light was very bright when he switched it back on. She yawned and scratched her head, messing her hair still further.
In the hallway he called for a cab for her, going to Islington.
"Where are you going?" she asked him. "Can you come as far as Islington, do you want to take the cab after that?" The party was slightly quieter, but there were still plenty of people about. A man and woman in punk gear lay asleep in each other's arms on the couch in the hall. Graham shrugged.
"Islington's a bit closer, I think," he said. Was she inviting him back? Probably not. She looked pained.
"I can't invite you in or anything, I'm sorry." He hadn't thought so, but his insides still ached briefly.
"That's all right," he said brightly. "Yeah, Islington's a bit closer. I'll pay half."
She didn't let him pay half; he didn't protest too much. They got to the place where she was staying, a quiet cul-de-sac. The taxi drove off; he couldn't afford taxis. She looked at a big BMW bike parked by the kerb, then up at a darkened row of tall houses. In the yellow light, her face was like a ghost's. "I keep saying I'm sorry this evening," she said, coming closer to him. He shrugged. Would they kiss? It seemed impossible. "I wish I could invite you in."
"Not to worry," he said, grinning. His breath made a cloud between them.
"Thanks, Graham. For staying with me, I mean. I'm such a bore; do you forgive me? I'm not always like this."
"Nothing to forgive. It's been great," She laughed quietly when he said it. He shrugged again, smiling hopelessly. She came to him, put her gloved hand behind his neck.
"You're lovely," she said, and brought her face to his, kissing him; putting her lips to his just like that, soft and warm and wet, better than any kiss, better than his first real kiss, making him dizzy with the feel of it. He hardly knew what he was doing. His mouth opened slightly, her tongue touched his upper lip once, then slipped away again; she kissed him quickly on the cheek and turned, walked to a doorway, fumbling for a key in a small purse she took from her old fur coat.
"Can I see you again?" he croaked.
"Of course," she said, as though it was a silly question. The key slipped in, she opened the door. "I can't remember the telephone number here yet; Slater's got it. Ciao." She blew him a kiss; her last few words, with the door open, had been whispered. The door closed quietly. He watched a light go on above, go out again.
It took him five hours to walk back to Leyton, where he had a bed-sit. It was cold, it rained once, lightly, then turned to sleet, but he didn't care. That kiss! That "Of course'!
The walk had been an epic. Something he would never, ever forget. One day, or night, he would do that walk again, retrace his steps for the sake of nostalgia. One day, when they were together and he had a good career, when he had his own house and a car and didn't need to walk and could afford taxis if he wanted them; he'd take that same route just for old times" sake, try to recapture the uncertain ecstasies of that dark, early morning trek.
Nearly half a year later, in the summer heat, he could still recall the feeling of the cold air on his skin, the way his ears became numb with the freezing cold, the way he kept bursting out laughing, holding up his arms to the cloudy dark orange sky.
He could smile at it now. He'd had more time to think, to get used to this slightly absurd rapture. He could accept it now. He still couldn't entirely believe it, in the sense that he could not believe that it was happening to him, that he was so vulnerable to such a common, almost hackneyed feeling. But it was there; he could not - in any sense - deny it.
Graham passed an abandoned workshop on Rosebery Avenue; posters advertised bands and their singles and albums. The traffic roared and the sun beat, but he remembered January, and shivered with the memory of that long walk.
Half Moon Crescent, he had repeated and repeated to himself as he'd walked that night. She lived in Half Moon Crescent (he had checked the number and the street before he'd started out on his trek, so that even if Slater had lost or forgotten her number, she would not be lost to him). It became like a chant, a mantra for him; Half Moon Crescent, Half-Moon-Crescent, Halfmooncrescent...
A chant.
A litany.
CLERK STARKE
Unemployed!
He sat in a plastic chair in a Job Centre. The chairs were all the same in these places; in every Social Security office and Job Centre he'd ever been in. Not exactly the same as each other; he'd seen different types, but they were all the same types. He wondered if any of the chairs provided protection against microwaves.
A woman had been talking to him, but she had gone away. She didn't seem to be able to cope with him. Probably they hadn't expected this. They hadn't prepared properly.
He had decided not to go straight home, or to go to the pub yet. That was what they would expect him to do. Just sacked, or rather resigned, with all that money; of course, the obvious thing to do would be go home to his room or to have a drink. They wouldn't expect him to go to a Job Centre and sign on. So when he had seen the sign ahead of him in the street, he'd walked right in and sat down and demanded to be attended to.