transmitted the vital, instantaneous information that indicates you will become involved . It is written in the fixed stars. Unavoidable. An a priori union. A fact waiting to become fact.
Finally, I found the power of speech.
‘You’d better sling it in the rehearsal room, then.’
It took five minutes of bluff and quackery to even get the back off, but, with her waiting patiently amid the stale fragrances of male sweat and spent testosterone, I managed to nurse her ageing amplifier into some semblance of signal-carrying utility.
‘You’re very brown,’ I ventured, after I’d finished; coiling leads like hangman’s ropes over my left arm. ‘Just been on holiday?’ The white and scarlet ruff of her knickers was showing over her waistband, and I tried helplessly not to focus on it as I spoke to her.
‘It’s my natural colour,’ she said, and turned the full force of her Medusa smile towards my pale, diminishing face. ‘I’m Spanish.’
There was something in her aura, her gait, that held great forcefulness—an assertive brightness that attracted and repelled at the same time. I would later learn that this mysterious anima held the key to why she never kept any friends. The strength of attraction inevitably led to an equal and opposite repulsion. As she stood there, waiting for the bill, or God knows what, I looked her up and down admiringly; and she, incredibly, did the same to me, a playful grin fixed on her thin, propulsive lips. Under the peacockery of her fresh-smelling clothes she was somehow unevenly proportioned—long-femured, but with fine angular bones in her upper torso; her buttercup breasts fixed high and happily on her ribcage. Very early twenties, I supposed. Spanish, she claims. Why didn’t I believe her? Very definitely Mediterranean; her eyes shoeshine brown. Yet there was something about her attitude to the whole package—her body, her projectile personality—that said she wasn’t in total possession of it, or found it a burden. An uneasy vibration.
She surveyed the tatty room, and I knew she was going to ask a question that gave her an excuse to make a return visit.
‘How much does this place go out for? The rehearsal?’
I was just about to answer when Martin craned his head around the door. Instead of uttering my name he looked at Mandy and said:
‘Mandy!’
‘Martin!’ yelled the girl, her nutritious voice at full throttle. ‘How’s it going? Byron’s been fiddling with his screwdriver for me.’
They embraced, and I saw then how tall she was at full stretch, Martin being about as dwarfish as I am. Of course, they knew each other. Martin knew every musician in north London. Most of them owed him money. I watched them there, the old rocker advanced enough in years to be her father, and thought how much Mandy comported herself like his elder, his mother, even. I also felt another immediate emotion: jealousy—so unexpected, so debilitating, like an infusion of icy mercury into the emotional bloodstream, that I almost lost my balance. I examined myself briefly for its cause. It was her fully engaged, hyperactive interaction with Martin, moments after extending the same treatment to me, that rankled. Some people just make you yearn to be their favourite. I later discovered that she dished this treatment out to everyone whom she didn’t consider a threat . She radiated a certain freedom, or at least equally conferred charm; right down to flirtations she didn’t intend.
Mandy and Martin noisily descended the uneven steps to the ground floor. I listened to the sound of the pinging till and their boisterous goodbyes.
And that was that.
That was the extent of it for a couple of weeks, until she returned to use the rehearsal room with Fellatrix, the all-girl Stooges-soundalike band with which she was captain, organiser and all-round glamorous mascot. In those two weeks I pumped Martin for every conceivable detail about her band, her life, her inevitable boyfriend. I lost
Finally, I found the power of speech.
‘You’d better sling it in the rehearsal room, then.’
It took five minutes of bluff and quackery to even get the back off, but, with her waiting patiently amid the stale fragrances of male sweat and spent testosterone, I managed to nurse her ageing amplifier into some semblance of signal-carrying utility.
‘You’re very brown,’ I ventured, after I’d finished; coiling leads like hangman’s ropes over my left arm. ‘Just been on holiday?’ The white and scarlet ruff of her knickers was showing over her waistband, and I tried helplessly not to focus on it as I spoke to her.
‘It’s my natural colour,’ she said, and turned the full force of her Medusa smile towards my pale, diminishing face. ‘I’m Spanish.’
There was something in her aura, her gait, that held great forcefulness—an assertive brightness that attracted and repelled at the same time. I would later learn that this mysterious anima held the key to why she never kept any friends. The strength of attraction inevitably led to an equal and opposite repulsion. As she stood there, waiting for the bill, or God knows what, I looked her up and down admiringly; and she, incredibly, did the same to me, a playful grin fixed on her thin, propulsive lips. Under the peacockery of her fresh-smelling clothes she was somehow unevenly proportioned—long-femured, but with fine angular bones in her upper torso; her buttercup breasts fixed high and happily on her ribcage. Very early twenties, I supposed. Spanish, she claims. Why didn’t I believe her? Very definitely Mediterranean; her eyes shoeshine brown. Yet there was something about her attitude to the whole package—her body, her projectile personality—that said she wasn’t in total possession of it, or found it a burden. An uneasy vibration.
She surveyed the tatty room, and I knew she was going to ask a question that gave her an excuse to make a return visit.
‘How much does this place go out for? The rehearsal?’
I was just about to answer when Martin craned his head around the door. Instead of uttering my name he looked at Mandy and said:
‘Mandy!’
‘Martin!’ yelled the girl, her nutritious voice at full throttle. ‘How’s it going? Byron’s been fiddling with his screwdriver for me.’
They embraced, and I saw then how tall she was at full stretch, Martin being about as dwarfish as I am. Of course, they knew each other. Martin knew every musician in north London. Most of them owed him money. I watched them there, the old rocker advanced enough in years to be her father, and thought how much Mandy comported herself like his elder, his mother, even. I also felt another immediate emotion: jealousy—so unexpected, so debilitating, like an infusion of icy mercury into the emotional bloodstream, that I almost lost my balance. I examined myself briefly for its cause. It was her fully engaged, hyperactive interaction with Martin, moments after extending the same treatment to me, that rankled. Some people just make you yearn to be their favourite. I later discovered that she dished this treatment out to everyone whom she didn’t consider a threat . She radiated a certain freedom, or at least equally conferred charm; right down to flirtations she didn’t intend.
Mandy and Martin noisily descended the uneven steps to the ground floor. I listened to the sound of the pinging till and their boisterous goodbyes.
And that was that.
That was the extent of it for a couple of weeks, until she returned to use the rehearsal room with Fellatrix, the all-girl Stooges-soundalike band with which she was captain, organiser and all-round glamorous mascot. In those two weeks I pumped Martin for every conceivable detail about her band, her life, her inevitable boyfriend. I lost
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