Black Chalk

Two fans spin beneath the pressed tin ceiling but don’t disperse the heat. The damp crowd quenches its thirst greedily. I notice there are fewer women than men, younger also. They wear early tans and tissuey dresses that hang from thin straps. My eyes settle on them one by one. But I don’t recognise a single face.

I miss the intimacy of women. I miss their warmth, their snakes of orchard scents.

The noise rises and falls. The pitch and roll of the place makes me feel seasick and I hold on tight to the edge of the bar.

The barmaid brings my beer and I have to shout to make myself heard. And a Scotch as well, I say. The cheapest, no ice.

XXXVII(iv)

After an hour I drink a fourth or fifth whisky, a fourth or fifth beer, and I warm to the world. I look at the crowd and take to the rhythm of its chatter, like listening to crickets while the campfire crackles. And then through the crowd’s chinks I notice red numbers spinning on an LED. I stand taller at the bar. One of the displays spins zeros while a second rises, 50, 70, 170. I see a head bobbing up and down. Sometimes there follows the sound of cheers, sometimes groans. I sway from side to side and peer through the crowd. And then I see the source of everyone’s amusement. A skee-ball alley. Two skee-ball alleys and only one of them occupied.

I think of my training, of shadow boxing, sparring. Yes, if I don’t get back into the ring before Chad arrives, what hope do I have of beating him? I must keep climbing, keep on running those steps.

I down my whisky, stand up and push my way through the crowd. The man at the skee-ball alley throws his last ball. He has scored 480 points. His friends pat him on the back in an appreciative way.

I approach him and tap his shoulder. You want a game? I say, yelling to make myself heard.

XXXVII(v) And it is here that my memory of the night ends. I know only that I woke up alone and in my own bed, my head being hammered from inside to out.

Hangovers lend to me the most acute sense of my atomic structure. I feel the spaces in me, the lack of matter. I am particles and I hum, my whole body set in a gentle vibrato.

I lie in bed too long, until there remains barely enough time to complete my morning routine before noon arrives. I drink two of the day’s three allocated glasses of water and take almost my entire allotment of pills. I pull on my sneakers.

XXXVII(vi) Oh, Jolyon. I’m so wholeheartedly happy you came. You came back to find me. And you didn’t see me but that doesn’t matter. You were there, you made the effort, and that means something special to me.

You seemed to be having such a ball last night. You were rather the spectacle before the doorman threw you out. Up there on the pool table, calling out my name and declaring your everlasting love. It quite made a girl blush.

The declarations of love I will take (again) as drunken hyperbole. And although I see you have forgotten the pool table incident, I hope sincerely you still remember who I am. This cannot have slipped your mind a second time. To forget once may be regarded as a misfortune; to forget twice looks like carelessness!

Can we start all over again, Jolyon? I would love for our friendship to flourish afresh. Let us begin again as friends and take it from there. Hooray in anticipation of YES.

But first, however, I do have one teeny-weeny thing to ask of you. Just a few itsy-bitsy rules, no more mad rushing in. If you want me to finish your story there are just a few things I would ask of you. To read about what we did is already enough of a discomfiting experience. And some bare bones of structure might be good for us. Every friendship requires a structure, don’t you think? Even if most of the rules remain forever unseen.

So here are my rules.

(Is RULES a silly word? Perhaps, yes. OK, let’s call it a framework then. Yes, FRAMEWORK sounds so much nicer, something to which our fresh shoots might be able to cling.)

Jolyon will leave his apartment at 12 noon every day.

Jolyon will not then return until 2 p.m. or later.

Jolyon will ensure that the blind over the apartment’s kitchen window is lowered before he leaves.

All clocks in the apartment will always tell the time accurately.

The fridge will at all times remain reasonably stocked with French mineral water and Dr Pepper soda.

Jolyon will knock and then wait 30 seconds before entering his apartment at or after 2 p.m.

The temperature in the apartment will be no greater than 75° Fahrenheit at or soon after 12 noon. (You have an air conditioner, Jolyon. USE it, please!)

OK, I must scurry now, Jolyon. If you believe, as you appear to, that I will never return then you may come home any minute. And we cannot meet again so soon. Reading your story is stirring up so many unpleasant memories, things I have tried to forget. But how could we ever forget what we did? So if you must confess – and you must, I can see that now – then confess for us all. We were all to blame for what happened.