Monday, 25 February 2008

Three and a penthouse

A grey throbbing landscape, growing higher with every tick of the clock. The buildings giving birth to one another, and shot so full of steroids that they nearly take off.
It was at the top of one of these new sky-rise apartments that she held his heart out over the balcony of her penthouse and threatened to let it fall.
Greasily squidging in her paws the entrails seemed to writhe and grasp to be reconnected with a body, perhaps yearning a direct link with the radial or ulnar arteries of her wrist.
I’m not sure what he agreed to, out there on the ledge, but she threw him back his heart with a full laugh: eyes closed, head rocking.
He grasped it firmly and thankfully. I was worried he would not hold it and it would slide silently from his grip into the cold dawn, now breaking. Stephen was poor at catching.
But hold on, he did, quite easily. It was amazing watching the difference in his complexion and demeanour as the heart re-attached itself and the gaping hole in his chest sewed and meshed itself back together.
His hands released their death grip on the safety rail, out there on the roof terrace, and he was able to enjoy the red dawn as if from the tranquillity of a hot air balloon.
Angela sidled over to him and blew a soft kiss into his ear. His entire body relaxed. I fancied that he wanted to cry with relief. She slid open the adjoining door, smiled sweetly to me on the couch, then span dramatically to close it behind her as if it were a curtain hiding a corpse.
Then she strolled smoothly across the room, the dress she’d been wearing all night still pristine and maintaining its purpose of hoovering in greedy male eyes.
As she approached her bedroom she turned so that her gaze struck my head like it had been punched and beckoned me with a short sharp snap of the finger.
“Come on,” she said and entered the room, leaving her door tantalisingly ajar. I stood slowly and moved on gingerly, as if I usually used four legs. At the door, I could hear clothes being shed.
I took a deep excited breath before entering; eyes closed, head rocking.

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