Love Me (2 page)

I finally look up at him and his face surrenders nothing. Not even a stray bit of beard or a pimple.

‘Oy,' I say in greeting. His eyes are coloured like Pepsi with ice. Glossy eyebrows, full lips.

‘Hey,' he says to me, watching Max clatter up the street in her suicide heels. I curdle. I could beat her up in less than a minute even if I had stumps for legs and was sporting a blindfold. Swallowing would burn more calories. But I can't jump ahead. Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe this is not . . . that.

I go to hug him and for the first time I notice that his left arm is in a sling. Bruises and scratches climb his shoulder, his stance more concave than usual, his face drawn.

‘Shit! What happened, Zed?'

He shrugs and pulls me into a brief, one-armed embrace.

‘Nothing. I just got in a little accident,' he says. ‘How you doing?' I pull away from his firm body, inhaling, memorising. Salt, smoke and musk.

‘I'm fine,' I say. ‘I wish you could say the same, though. Bloody hell.'

‘The fuck you do to your hair?'

‘I really don't know. I woke up and it was red. It's a miracle . . .'

‘Uh-huh,' he laughs and doesn't mention my dress or even look at it. ‘You funny.'

‘It was that blasted motorbike, wasn't it?'

Zed sighs. ‘Some idiot ran into me and didn't even stop. And of course I have no goddamned insurance,' he shakes his head. ‘I got the bike cheap and all but still . . .'

‘I bloody told you! I told you!' I say, images flashing through my head. The bike gone one way, and Zed the other. Sun glinting off the collision, helmet split like a nutshell, Zed's perfect face smashed. I come over all hot and shaky just thinking about it. ‘I don't know why you bought it in the first place.'

‘Well,' he says. I stare at his profile but he won't give me the benefit of his Pepsi-coloured gaze. ‘It doesn't matter now.'

‘Of course it bloody does, Zed! Were you badly hurt?'

‘No more than usual,' he smiles crookedly and scratches the side of his head.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Look, it ain't nothing serious, ma. I just pulled a ligament in my leg. My arm ain't broken, just bruised real bad.'

I shake my head, vexed beyond words. I'm not sure if my anger is aimed at him or at the fool who ran him over. Just drove off and left him there! What if he'd been dying?

‘I can't believe you didn't tell me! Did you go to hospital? I would have come with you! I would have come to visit . . .'

‘It's fine. Max was around to help out,' he says. ‘But enough about me. What you been up to?'

‘This and that. Maybe you'd know that if you took my calls, Evel Knievel.'

‘Sorry. You know how it gets . . .'

‘Yep,' I reply, fuming. I look down into the concrete, afraid he'll see the addict's gleam I get trapped in my eye whenever he's around. Gratefully, I read the back of a flyer that's been thrust between my fingers, though I might as well try and read a chair leg. I think I've got the title for my next art project: it'll be called
Zed. Likes. White. Girls.
I can write it with a stiletto heel on a chalkboard. In Morse code. Really, really hard. Or I could write it on the back of his stupid head.

He was showing off, I bet. He almost bit the dust showing off for
her.

‘Why you so late getting down here?' he says.

‘What?'
How can I be late when you didn't invite me
, I don't say. ‘Has it even started yet?'

‘I just thought that since you came all this way, you might have wanted to check the rhymes. As unworthy as I am of a discerning audience member like yourself. But I got off stage an hour ago—'

‘Zed! You're not going back on?'

‘No.'

‘That's so typical. I can't believe it. I checked the time on the flyer before I left and I thought that—'

‘I'm kidding.'

‘What?'

‘I was just fuckin' wit you.'

I hit him as hard as I can and then I remember about the accident and say ‘Oh God, sorry!' but he just laughs.

‘You ain't tough.'

‘Whatever,' I say, but he's right. I'm really not. He didn't even flinch. ‘So . . . what are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be getting ready for your set?'

He shakes his head, irritation flitting across his features. ‘The mics ain't here yet. Can you believe it? Dude says he's on his way.'

‘But it's cool though, right? You'll still get to perform?'

‘Yeah, it's no problem. They wanted to wait for it to fill up anyway and people are just about getting here now.'

He runs his tongue nervously over his lips and the insane locomotive in my chest picks up speed, rattling the tracks and sending off sparks.

‘Since when do you smoke cigarettes?' I blurt.

‘What?'

‘I
said
, what's with the cancer sticks? That's a new one.'

He fiddles with his lighter. ‘What are you? Like, the Health Secretary of Great Britain or something?'

‘No, I'm just curious about all these new ways you've been finding lately to put yourself on permanent leave.'

He sneezes, adjusts the leather cuff on his arm. ‘Eden . . .'

‘Oy, SEXY!' Max is back and hugging my face. ‘I still can't believe you're here! I'm so glad you came down.'

And I wish she'd shut up. All over. She has the loudest, most wicked little angel face you've ever seen. And she sounds like a cockney wench who's been on a forty-a-day nicotine habit since Thatcher was prime minister. Heels, bangles, face glitter. So noisy even when her blow-up doll mouth is closed. Which is never.

‘I've been trying to call you about this event!' she continues. ‘You been bloody avoiding me or somefing?'

‘No.' Yes. So that's what the five voicemails were about. Imagine. I've been too depressed about Zed to bother answering all the useless calls that weren't him, while she was calling to invite
me
to
his
gig. The world's gone mad. And the twenty-pack of Marlboro Lights poking out of her designer clutch is another reason to wipe her off the chalkboard. Pretty little coincidence, isn't it? Zed's usually into
herbs
, not chemicals.

‘So,' I say, lips tight, voice shaking, ‘am I missing something here, kids?'

Zed looks at me quizzically, blows air out between his lips, raises his eyebrows at the ground. Max has the sheer blind complacency to giggle and grab his good hand.

‘I don't know
what
you're talking about,' she says conspiratorially. Winking at me. I close my eyes and everything spins for a minute.

Brooklyn, 23 May

Cherry Pepper,

Had a dream last night you were stuck at the bottom of a well trying to burrow your way out with your fingernails like a little rodent instead of climbing like you should have. Trying to scratch your way through cement! So I thought to myself, putting my hand on my hip just so, I thought, this little creature is my niece? My little warrior woman who belted out a sound like opera when she was born (and that look you gave us, so indignant! As if you were snatched from the unseen right in the middle of an important conversation)? I shouted out. I said, Love, where you going? You gonna get nowhere but dead with them tactics! You didn't answer. I don't know if that's because you couldn't hear me or because you were pretending, but whatever the blockage was in your earholes my voice was dust and you kept on tunnelling. You've always had a head harder than calabash.

Anyway, I woke up from the dream thirsty, with a pen in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other and your mother at my shoulder telling me to tell you to relax. As I write this, she's leaning over and blowing the ink dry. (I'm always telling her how that makes me vexed!) She says you need to let in a breeze, girl. Crack the blinds, throw open the windows, let fresh air sing through the house and smash all the junk on the mantel. The head should always remain cool, you hear me? Cool.

Tell me all about your young life, Cherry Pepper. Write me page upon page. I wonder about you often, whether you're still taking your pictures, whether you're married or have children. Did your father ever drag you into that woman-hating, happy-clappy church of his?

And you know what? In that dream, I should have told you to stand up in that well because if you did I bet you would have been able to see over the side of the damn thing!

Return to us in Brooklyn one day, my dear. Come for J'Ouvert?

Soon,

Aunt K.

WHEN I REOPEN
my hazel-brights my tormentors are so fresh, so
clean
, while I stand here unravelling. I am a peasant. I do a last-minute check in my compact mirror and my face looks like one of those ‘kick me' signs you get stuck on your back in school. Plus my eyeshadow is clearly a mistake. If you should pass me in the street, just give me a box of Kleenex, cab money and tell me to go home right now and stop this. You can even throw in that kick if you like, but it might be useless since I seem to be in love with pain.

‘
Cease
with the bimbo act, bitch!' I say.

And Max just thinks I'm kidding, so she laughs.

‘Dave!' Zed bellows and shakes his head in relief. ‘Where you been, kid?'

I look behind me and there's an irritated little guy with a nose-ring, lugging a bag of equipment. The mics.

‘Drama,' Dave says simply. Zed mumbles at the bouncer and Dave scuttles into the club.

‘Let's go in,' says Zed.

‘Yeah, let's,' I say, wearing a smile faker than a six-pound note.

CAN'T BELIEVE IT
was only three weeks ago that grown-up Zed and I were hanging almost daily. I'd appointed myself his guide and that was my excuse, but the truth is that within a week of being in the LDN he was already leading me down streets I'd never heard of. I went quickly from being a guide to a spy. I wanted to unpick the mystery of him, how he'd become as powerful and crisp as money.

‘Those are hideous,' I said, watching him handle a pair of black and gold Nikes.

‘What?'

‘Those,' I said louder, all gnarled up and couldn't help it, ‘are so gaudy it's ridiculous. You'd wear those?'

One of the last places we hung out before he became so hard to reach was a trainer shop in the West End, bright-lit and teeming with youngsters. He was trying on a pair of the freshest available and the hem of his carefully cared-for jeans draped over the clean leather was an eyeful. My digital camera tickled me from inside my jacket pocket, whirring silently. My blue metal pet, my most expensive possession. I bought it as a little consolation prize for myself a year ago, a prize for non-achievement. But it doesn't know that. It's always full of
joie de vivre
, winking and blushing, and it has a thing for Zed almost as bad as I do. I could have sworn it shivered as I finally freed it from its case and snapped pics of his fingers, his feet and the perfect line-up at the nape of his neck.

‘Maybe,' he said, ignoring the clicker, ‘you should be focusing on your own footwear, sweetie.'

‘My kicks are old, that's all.
Those
ones are grotesque right out the box.'

‘Old? The Chucks you got on must have been rescued from the Flood!' He paused, looked at the Nikes. ‘But maybe you right about these. Damn.'

Eventually he picked out a pair of all-grey sneaks that I had to admit were perfect.
Click, click.
The girl at the till flirted with him as she rang up his purchase, trying to entice him – unsuccessfully – with matching socks and leather protector. He gave her a credit card and I wondered idly if I'd ever qualify to even physically handle a credit card
application
without gloves on.

Finally we walked back out into the muggy blueish day, the Saturday crush of Oxford Street. I had to struggle through all the tourists and budget fashionistas. For him, they moved. I asked if he was Moses and he laughed, oblivious to the women and men who cut eyes at me, coveting him. I suppose they weren't to know that I didn't have him either.

We stopped and walked into the Plaza mall opposite Wardour Street, up to the top floor for eats. I got some fried chicken and chips, he got a sandwich, and we sat at one of those white tables that are probably identical in food courts all over the world.

‘I can't believe you spent that much,' I said when we sat down. ‘You could probably have got about four pairs of brand-new Chucks for that price.'

‘I
could
have,' he replied, ‘but that's your style, not mine.'

‘What? Not high-end enough for you?'

‘I didn't say all o' that. When you get so insecure?'

‘Insecure?' I sucked my teeth, felt like I'd been slapped. ‘You're the one trying to look like a rap video and I'm the one who's insecure? Please.'

I ate some chicken.

‘Yeah, well I know that compared to you I make a lot of effort. But that's probably true of most people.'

‘Asshole!'

‘You brought it on yourself.'

I gave him the look of death but my hand went to my thick, knotty hair before I could stop it, to the stretched neck of my second-favourite T-shirt.

‘What's wrong with the way I dress?' I asked, trying to sound like I didn't care about the answer. Eating more chicken.

‘Come on. Look at you . . .' he said, brushing his neat fingers over the jagged holes in my jeans. ‘Are you kidding? Why are you so afraid to be pretty? If you ever wore a wedding dress you'd probably have to go jump in a puddle. You couldn't help yourself.'

‘At least I'm not some clichéd brand-worshipping B.E.T. lookin' caricature of myself like you! What's the big deal, anyway? Are you saying you've never seen ripped jeans before?'