Eat My Heart Out (22 page)

Blood came out of its ears.

Eventually, the bunny floated to the surface.

Sue manoeuvred her squat body into a position of attack. She pulled out a butcher's knife; a departure from the movie, in which Michael Douglas's wife is a model of harmlessness. But Allegra had no intention of remaining faithful to the movie or to anything else for that matter because now she grabbed the knife out of Sue's hands, scooped her up, and dropped her too in the boiling bath. Sue flailed next to the bunny corpse. I could tell by the expression of pure panic on her face that this had not been part of rehearsals.

Sue begged Allegra to get her out.

‘I guess this is what they call the sublime,' said Allegra.

There was only one artwork in the second gallery. It was very small and low down on the floor. Our view was blocked by the crowd.

Samuel was garbling about being so proud of his sister because she was going to get like loads of kale. Dave seemed to know what Samuel was talking about; he agreed that Allegra was tubular but was she doing a carpet?

Samuel shook his head vehemently.

‘My debut is dedicated to you,' Samuel told me. ‘For bringing me back to Freddie.' He led us through the crowd.

The artwork was a mangled balloon polyp, freshly inflated.

‘It's a lark!' said Samuel. ‘Like having a lark!'

‘Man, I wish I'd met you sooner,' Dave told me. ‘Your contacts are beyond. You could have totally put me in this show.'

I let go of his hand.

Allegra was talking to a man with a thin face and a flamboyant tie.

‘That's Der Santo,' said Dave. ‘He's a significant collector. I can't believe he's interested in her.'

‘I can't believe it either,' I said. ‘That performance was terrible.'

‘What are you talking about?!' said Dave. ‘It was arresting.'

The third gallery had nothing in it but a beehive in a glass box.

The fourth gallery contained a series of black and white films called
Shine Me
. Each showed a different boy, first bending to polish Jasper's shoes, then being kicked in the face. The boys' fear was
visceral
, as Dave put it. Jasper's face had been censored.

One wall of the fifth gallery was covered in a screen that showed me, ludicrous in canary yellow, going under. The magnolia bubbles in the vast martini glass drenched my feathers, got in my eyes. Flack's ‘The First Time' was playing. That rancid ballad. In the centre of the gallery, a normal-sized martini glass stood on a plinth. There was a single yellow feather inside.

‘I'm going to kill Freddie,' I said. ‘He must have – how the fuck did he get that footage?'

‘The found-object really enhances the Bergsonian sense of duration,' said a redhead.

‘Yes,' said her friend. ‘The glass functions almost like a visual madeleine.'

People were sitting on the circular leather sofas of a private members' club in London Bridge, holding jars containing limited edition dead bees, thrilled that they had had the opportunity to fork out £500. The bees had been killed and jarred by the bee man's assistants. He still hadn't turned up. The after-party was supposed to be sponsored by Grey Goose, but Jasper had forgotten to get in touch with them or any other drinks manufacturer. Jasper had paid for all the vodka himself. ‘Still, it looks better if people think brands are willing to invest,' he told Dave and I. ‘Investment being a kind of belief.'

‘This is an investment,' said Dave, brandishing his own dead bee. ‘This could be worth like £5 million in five years.'

‘Or nothing,' I said.

‘Fred told the bee man not to show up,' said Jasper. ‘It just looks better if he doesn't show up. Someone already offered to buy the hive and the glass box and the racquets. It's like absence as presence.'

‘Yeah.' Dave nodded, earnestly.

Jasper addressed Dave: ‘You know what, Sebastian?'

Dave didn't correct him.

‘I remember this one time that I was sucking your girlfriend's cunt. And I suddenly had the unmistakable impression that I was eating a sea urchin.'

‘Shut up, Jasper!' I said.

‘Don't get me wrong,' Jasper went on. ‘She is a delicacy. But she won't let you do it unless you make her feel that you really like her personality.' He shuddered. ‘See, Allegra knew that she had no personality to like, so everything was much easier.'

‘How can you let him talk about me like that?' I said to Dave.

‘Relax,' said Jasper. ‘I'll let you sit on my face any time you want. Urchins are among my favourite crustaceans.'

The art people had been overwhelmed in numbers by Freddie's 2,000 Facebook friends: old-Etonians and people from Cambridge who I had hoped to avoid for the rest of my life. One girl with a double-barrelled surname had broken into the Bank of England and managed to stage a protest for thirty seconds. She had posted the video online, which went viral before she was put in solitary confinement and her laptop was confiscated. Another girl had already starred in a BBC period drama; she was set for Hollywood. Yet another had already inherited the family property business and lost it.

Samuel came over, clutching his lark. He sat down between Dave and I.

‘Aren't you supposed to leave that in the gallery?' said Dave.

‘Oopsy daisy!' Samuel covered his mouth. ‘Freddie's going to be mad at me.' He asked Dave to look after the lark and pulled me onto the dance floor.

‘I feel like Ariel waving to her father from the shore right now,' Samuel shouted. ‘Like right at the end when King Neptune gets surrounded by golden light and accepts her for what she is. I always wished my parents would accept me like that. But I guess I don't need them to accept me any more because I've got you and Freddie as my family.'

‘I still see you as you were when Freddie and I first met you,' I shouted. ‘When you were into chess.'

‘That wasn't the first time we met,' shouted Samuel.

Public school boys around us were pogoing up and down, straining against gravity to soar as high as possible. A girl to the right was attempting to bogle.

‘When did we meet?' I shouted.

‘Freddie and I met at school when I was thirteen. We saw each other once when I first started, then I only ever saw him from afar.' Samuel looked ecstatic. ‘That's where he got the idea for the shoe polish films. I was a lower boy and he was in pop – a prefect. I was a chug. I deserved it.'

I pushed Samuel away.

The bogling girl was doing the butterfly now.

‘So he kicked you in the face?' I shouted.

‘Yeah!' Samuel held me close. ‘I was never the same after that.' He whispered in my ear: ‘I think that's when I fell in love with him.'

It was five in the morning. I was backed against the fire escape. Dave was trying to hold the attention of Der Santo, who was coked out of his mind and talking non-stop about how he'd bought Allegra's bunny-boiler piece and how he wanted to buy every other goddamn piece that she would ever make. He said he was particularly fascinated by her plans to extract hearts at the top of pyramids in Mexico but that he had forbade her from going. He wanted to fly her out to LA instead, where he said they could construct a goddamn pyramid from scratch.

I smiled.

Dave went on about his light fixtures until Der Santo growled: ‘Tell me how your concept of barren rooms is any different from Dan Flavin's concept – nay, celebration – of barren rooms back in the goddamn 1960s?'

I slid out from under them.

Public school girls and boys had melted into and mated with the art people. The scene looked like a Hieronymus Bosch: body parts had been unscrewed and screwed afresh into uncanny orifices. The circular sofas seemed to swirl and rise. Sebastian was sitting on the far end of one, staring into his glass of water.

I staggered over, and fell across him. ‘I've got a confession to make too, to you,' I slurred. ‘I need to tell you what I couldn't tell you on Skype.'

He was sober.

‘It never really ended between you and me because of Jasper. Or her.' I pointed to Allegra. She was doing an avantgarde waltz with Sue, whose face and arms had blistered.

‘Why did we break up then?' said Sebastian.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn't. ‘Because of that time we were watching TV.'

‘Oh, yeah.
That
time.'

‘I know we watched TV a lot of times but there was this one time we were watching it and
Flashdance
came on. Do you remember?'

He shook his head.

‘The girl was dancing and dancing in front of the judges,' I said. ‘They were judging her. There was so much at stake. And she fell over – she couldn't do it.'

‘Yeah.'

‘And I looked at you, watching it. You looked so handsome. You always looked so handsome.' I tried to stroke his face but my hand missed. ‘You look handsome now.'

‘You're drunk.'

‘I'm high.'

He stood up.

‘Wait,' I slurred. ‘Wait.' I dragged him back down by his shirt. I tried to hold his hand, but he wouldn't let me. ‘But then the girl got up. She started dancing again. The song started:
Once, there was nothing
… but I can't remember what. A dream, I think it was. There was nothing but a dream.'

‘You always were sentimental.'

‘What else is there to be, let me ask you that question? Freddie believes things just decay, but I don't believe that. I believe that things become – but you've got to make them become.' I sat up. ‘Stephanie taught me that.'

‘Weird,' said Sebastian.

‘Wait!' I shouted. ‘I'm trying to confess to you. I need you to understand.' I tried to hold his hand again. He let me this time. ‘I need you, Sebastian.' I paused. ‘I love you.'

He waited.

‘The second time, the woman could do it! She could really do it! And I looked at you, watching her do it, and I thought to myself:
If I stay with Sebastian, then I'll never do anything
.'

Nineteen

The following morning, I got a call from Emma, the manager of the diner in Covent Garden. She wanted me to do a trial shift as a promo girl. It was Sunday.

After three hours of traipsing around in the snow in a miniskirt and a tank top bearing the slogan
All the Way
above an image of a hot wiener topped with mustard, celery salt, meat sauce, and onions, Emma conceded that yes, I was allowed to run into Boots and buy a pair of flesh-coloured tights. They didn't have any flesh-coloured tights, so I bought black, twenty denier. My skin still showed through. I continued to hand out flyers to angry, snow-covered shoppers, promising 2-4-1 on all bun pups and black cows.

‘You're selling a black cow?' said one backpacker from New Zealand who couldn't find his hostel. I knew he was from New Zealand and not Australia because of the flag stitched onto his bum bag.

‘Yeah, it's a chocolate soda with a scoop of chocolate ice cream in it!' I said, excitedly.

‘You wouldn't be allowed to call it that in Auckland,' he said.

‘It's from Minneapolis!!'

‘Where are you from?' he asked me.

I looked around at this desecrated, white death sentence of a city and said: ‘I'm from here.'

Two hours later, Emma the manager stomped towards me in her
All the Way
bomber jacket, which was white. She looked like the abominable snowwoman.

‘How come you get to wear that and I don't?' I said.

We were outside Paperchase.

She told me that my trial was not going well. She said that unless I pulled my finger out, I would not be joining the team. She said the black tights were the last straw – how the hell was anybody going to be enticed to eat a stack of blowout patches if they couldn't see at least part of the way up my skirt?

‘What's a blowout patch?' I asked her.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and escorted me back down the dirty old stairs into the diner. It was warm. The blue of my skin blossomed into a broken-vein red.

‘This,' she said, positioning me in front of a smiling picture of a pancake. ‘Is a blowout patch.'

A girl who looked like a gorilla sidled up to Emma and said: ‘Can I go on my ciggie break now?'

Emma nodded. She whipped the waitress pouch off the gorilla and strapped it around my waist. ‘You can work the floor,' she said. ‘See if you can survive.'

Five minutes later, I was balancing four plates of surf 'n' turf on my forearms, trying not to look at the way the microwaved prawns were defrosting into the liquid collected around the microwaved bun pup. I remembered to smile as I slid the plates onto the table but some of the steak liquid splashed onto the Juicy Couture tracksuit of a Chinese woman with very thin pencilled eyebrows. Emma didn't see, but the Chinese woman complained. I went and hid in the changing room. The gorilla was reapplying her raspberry lip gloss in the mirror and regaling a kitchen porter about how she couldn't wait to get back to Dubai and dance in that cage, just as soon as the season started.

I checked my phone:

Do you want to come with me to an alumni dinner at your alma mater tonight? I can pick you up from wherever you are in an hour. Steph

Steph had parked her car between the rows of people pretending to be statues. They were waiting for money, despite the snow. She seemed oblivious to the fact that Covent Garden was a pedestrianised zone. Shoppers flowed around the car. I got in. She demanded to know why I was dressed like a roller-skating Hooters girl. I said that I wasn't wearing roller skates and didn't Hooters girls go topless?

‘You know what I mean.' She lit a cigarette and reversed at speed. ‘What about that money I gave you?'

I told her that I'd put it in an ISA.

‘You're crazy,' she laughed, crazily. She looked out of the window to her right as she drove, ignoring the front view entirely. ‘It's such a picturesque thing when something comes back that you thought had gone away.'

‘Who me? Stephanie, please can you watch the road.'

‘No,' she said. ‘Not you. The snow. It makes me think of my childhood in Alhambra, Illinois. Oh, how we used to kick it about, my brother and I! Mother would throw her hands up at us so!'

‘Weren't you born in Bermondsey?'

She looked at me with alarm. ‘Bermondsey, yes. But father was a travelling salesman. We travelled.'

‘I thought you owned a sweet shop?'

‘Yes.' She fiddled with the radio and turned the air conditioning on. ‘Fuck.' A jet of freezing air blew in our faces. She banged the vent until the air turned hot. ‘He sold sweets.' She placed both hands on the steering wheel, calmly.

We were leaving the city's outer suburbs, when she said: ‘Do you know your alma mater is giving me a lifetime achievement award? Which just goes to show that spring must follow winter. Because I've been so downhearted since that terribly disappointing loss – to a man that I know for sure is a monster.' Her tone became wistful. ‘Greg seduced me, you see. It was terribly humiliating for Marge. She was at a postnatal yoga class one day and I went round to see if she wanted to come with me to a book reading. At a bookshop. I can't remember what it was. Raegan had just been born.' Steph wound down the window; snow blew in. She wound it up again. ‘He used coercive tactics to get me where I didn't want to be – that is, horribly in love with him. It's a terrible curse to be in love. Did I ever tell you that?'

‘Words to that effect.' I pulled my leather jacket tighter around myself and sunk lower in the seat.

‘I wanted to stop it, but he persisted. He wouldn't let me go. We were together – off and on – for years. For most of Raegan's life so far. You see, I
had
to leave New York.' She paused. ‘And then of course Greg moved over here and got a job at the LSE not long after.' She laughed. ‘What a surprise.'

‘I think I must have failed my trial for the diner. Emma won't have me back after I ran out.'

Steph was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘Oh, but you can do so much better.' Her face tightened. ‘Haven't you absorbed one goddamn thing that I've tried and clearly failed to drum into you?'

I looked out the window.

‘Did you ever get round to reading the fiftieth anniversary edition of
The Second Sex
that I bought for you especially?'

‘No.'

The green fields of England raced away from us.

‘But I'm thinking of doing an MA,' I said. ‘In poetry. Yeah, that's what I might do.'

Stephanie slammed her foot down on the brake. We were on the motorway. The car behind us braked too, and the car behind that. I heard nothing crash. Horns blared. Steph revved the engine and swung into a Little Chef.

She turned off the engine and stared straight ahead.

A little girl was screaming in the snow. She was holding a purple furry alien. ‘I didn't want this one!' she repeated again and again, until her father strode over, and smacked the girl so hard round the face that she staggered sideways. Stunned, she stopped crying. I tried to open the car door to help the little girl, but it was locked.

Steph seemed not have seen what happened.

The girl continued to lean to one side, paralysed. Her father bent down and kissed her. She followed him to the car.

Steph turned to me. She had the Erzulie look. ‘What do you think a creative writing
class
will teach you, may I ask?'

‘Er – to write.'

She exhaled. ‘And do you think that the vocation of the creative writer can be learned in a
class
? Do you not think that that vocation has a sacrosanct, a sacredly transgressive quality that is anathema by its very nature to the structure of an institution?'

‘I just want some direction, Stephanie.'

‘Some direction.' Steph honked the horn. ‘Have I or have I not been trying tooth and nail to implant some direction in you? Did you read the master/slave dialectic part of my book yet?'

I shook my head.

She fumbled with the glove compartment. I thought she might pull out a gun, but she pulled out her book instead. ‘Here. Read it now. Page 267.'

My eyes moved across the page.

‘Aloud.'

She thinks she is alone in the world and that all the others have died. Then she sees another she. She is of the same sex. But this other she is different: she is quiet, docile, obedient. This other she is prepared to bat her lashes and pucker her lips to find a way through the darkness. Because there is darkness all around.

Steph lit a cigarette; the car filled slowly and totally with smoke. ‘Go on,' she said.

You and she fight to the death because only one of you can survive. It will be the one who is prepared to risk death to gain life. To gain meaning in life. It cannot be both of you.

‘I don't really agree with this,' I said. ‘Why does it always have to be one or the other? Why can't both survive? I mean, Stephanie – are you master or are you slave?'

‘I'm both,' said Steph, sucking ravenously on her fag. ‘We're all both. Go on.'

You want it more. You triumph. But instead of killing her when you can, you enslave her. You put her in bondage and make her work for you.

Steph opened the window; the freezing air sucked the smoke out.

Now the slave-girl toils night and day while you, masterwoman – shall we call you mistress? – sit back and relax. You delegate. She does it all.

More children were streaming out of the Little Chef, clutching purple aliens.

But as she works, a change occurs. It is
her
work, even if it belongs to you. After all, she is the one
doing
. You are just
being
. She is the one breaking her back, making her eyes water with the effort of getting where you want her to go – that is, nowhere.

You are doing nothing, living off the spoils of her labour. She is learning.

As she learns, she plans. She gets better.

By now, you are fat and slow. She is strong and quick.

‘Stop there,' said Steph. ‘I fucked this bit up. I couldn't figure out if there was another fight to the death or the princessslave simply overthrows her mistress through a process of evolution.'

‘So is it like a fairy story?' I said.

‘No,' said Steph. ‘Skip ahead to the unhappy consciousness.'

Now the former slave is herself a master-woman. She is a mistress. Only, she has no subjects. Her only subject is herself. She wants to be rid of hierarchy once and for all, rid of all the forces of domination and submission. Her former mistress is dead. She is alone.

‘Now,' said Steph. ‘Listen to yourself.'

The former slave now feels a presence within her. She misses her mistress. She has internalised her mistress. The slave was ruled over for so long that she has no idea how to be free in the world. She has no idea how to live without a ruler.

Steph revved the engine and rejoined the flow of traffic.

After a long silence, I said: ‘I meant that I wanted to study poetry as in analyse poems and write essays about them, not do creative writing classes. Just so you know.'

There was no one to meet us in the front entrance of my college, and the porters didn't have Steph's name down on the list for the dinner. They were all ex-policemen, refined in their peaked caps, pleased to polish the souvenirs on sale in the special glass cabinet, next to the Bops & Ents noticeboard. Their ties were branded with a ewe: the college insignia. Everything was branded with that bloody ewe.

I was beginning to feel both dread and angst. There was my old pigeonhole, in which I had received numerous notifications that I was late, behind, wrong, bad, or just inadequate. In that hole, hand-scrawled letters from the Christian Society had begged to save my soul. I had been invited to audition for numerous Patrick Marber plays via that hole. It was in that hole that I finally received notification that I was no longer permitted to live in college accommodation.