Love Me (3 page)

‘Those are not ripped jeans, mama.' He laughed. ‘They just given up on life. If denim abuse was a crime you'd be locked up right now.'

‘Well you know what? Maybe I don't wanna look like the rest of these hoes!' I told him, and he laughed harder, right into my eyes. ‘You can tell me what to wear when you're the one buying it, OK? You can't tell me shit unless you're the one who has to—'

‘Fine. I will.'

‘What?'

‘Let's go.' He wiped his face and hands decisively with a napkin. ‘I'll buy you one outfit. If you don't love it, keep the receipt, return it and take the money.'

‘Are you serious?' I smirked. ‘You're buying me clothes now?'

‘No. I'm buying you one outfit.'

I watched him carefully for motives. Went into fight/flight mode thinking about it.

‘Why?'

‘It'll be fun.'

‘Why, Zed?'

‘Because you look like hell.'

‘Fuck off!'

‘But you got potential.'

‘For what?'

‘Look. Is it a deal or not?'

Slowly I nodded. I wanted to know what would make him like me.

Zed smiled and waggled his eyebrows.

An unfamiliar voice called my name from outside the little half-door. ‘Your friend has asked me to ask you if you're gonna be ready soon. He wants to see!'

I stared in the mirror at my big legs and voluminous bosoms, my sudden waist. I couldn't go outside like that. I could barely even stay in the changing room like that. I felt more naked in the tight blue dress he'd given me to try on than I had in my bra and pants. A paradox emerged in my head. Naked, that's how they want you, but flawless. How can they expect both?

I wondered again why he'd done this and felt a sudden jolt of anger.

‘Eden?'

Jesus. Didn't she have shelves to stock or something?

‘I'll be two seconds.' I breathed deep and tugged at the flimsy hem of the dress. When I got outside his demeanour went from cocky to spontaneous-combustion-level shocked. I don't think he even really knew what nasty tricks a measure of lycra could pull off on my body.

‘What?' I said aggressively, like an unprovoked act of violence in the school playground.

His look swept from the picky ends of my hair to the tips of my bare, unpedicured toes. ‘Wow . . . Eden! You like it?'

‘I suppose.' My face was hot. My hands itched to cover every inch of exposed or over-emphasised flesh. I took an extremely tentative twirl. ‘What do you think?'

‘Is that a trick question?' he said, cockiness returning. ‘
Damn
, girl!'

‘Thanks, I . . . erm. Thanks.'

‘You gonna . . .?'

‘Yeah, I'll take it, definitely.'

I returned swiftly to the changing room to get back into my big, mostly shapeless clothes, but the deal was done and a few moments later my new dress was stuffed in a bag and paid for. The Middle Eastern man who took the money winked at us and made heavily accented jokes about Zed buying an outfit for his woman. Zed didn't even correct him.

I was inspired, walking back up toward Oxford Circus. Wearing something so different made me wonder who else I could be. Tentatively I went into a couple of the big chains and dented my already quite negligible paycheck buying some bangles, earrings and a pair of very skinny jeans. I fantasised about how I was going to feel in my sexed-up wardrobe, with Zed on my arm. I could finally do something about my hair. People would think I was pretty. They'd be envious of us.

‘Now all you need is a little facial surgery and you'll be supermodel material.'

I stopped, letting my bags fall on the ground.

‘What?' he said. ‘I was kidding.'

I said nothing.

‘Damn, it was a
joke.
'

I FOLLOW ZED
and Max sheep-like into the club, a high-concept affair in blinding white with low ceilings and lighted floors, and booths designed to look like bedrooms. Everywhere there are throw cushions, canopies, fur and feathers. It's not any cooler inside than it was outside in the filthy summer streets and I'm sweat-slicked without taking a single dance step. My Afro is shrinking at a rate that's likely to make my skull implode sometime around three a.m.

All I want to do is run home and sleep deep into Sunday with a duvet pulled over my head, because absolutely no good can come from this night. But that would be an admission of defeat.

Max asks me if I want a drink and I say, like a robot, ‘Rum and Coke thanks.'

I don't look at Zed as he introduces me to Lisa, a black girl draped in a nine-foot hair-weave. Shocking. At her scalp you can see the places where kink meets fakery.

‘Hey,' she says, cutting me a look. Maybe I'm just sensitive right now, but I could swear it's the same look my mum used to direct at my head Sunday nights before she'd had a chance to attack it with the pressing comb. ‘How ya doing?'

‘Cool,' I lie. ‘Your hair,' I tell her, ‘is truly unbelievable.'

When the drink comes, I swallow it so fast it should make my head spin, but it doesn't. I'm introduced to a couple more people but instantly forget their names. When a girl with an enthusiastic ponytail offers to buy drinks,
I have a rum and Coke. And when Nine-Foot Weave offers to buy drinks, I have yet another. The world starts to swim, lengthen and stretch. All the edges stand out: my hand resting on my bare thigh, Max's red mouth and white face, my empty glass dizzy with flashing lights.

My body floats up and my head is a lump of brick.

‘Hey Eden, you ready for another one?'

‘Yes, please. Whisky and Coke.'

Blondie matches me drink for drink, but she's on vodka.

When it's time for Zed to go on stage I have to muscle my way to the front of the room just to get to him, through a forest of carelessly waving limbs. The DJ fades out the record, and a tiny woman in red introduces the entertainment. She says his name. I grip my drink. There he is, looking even bigger than usual. Shiny. I take down a sip, grateful for the burn.

Zed raps with his chin tilted up, generous lips curled in a faint snarl. His flow is seamless. He doesn't dance. One hand is in its sling and the other lightly cradles the mic. He drops one sharply delivered punch line after another, battle rhymes and boasts, women and money. He's agile in the lips and tongue and brain. There's barely any space to breathe in between lines and no story to speak of and no glimpse of flesh through the cleverness. This is hip-hop for ADD sufferers. But he is a master. Look at all the faces, all the bobbing bodies. They love it and I hate them for putting their greasy gaze all over his talent. Especially Max. By the end of the twenty-minute set she's wearing this proprietary grin like this show was for her personal amusement.

After fierce applause all the vultures turn to each other and begin their appraisals before he's even completely melted from view.
That was alright innit? – Yeah, not bad!
–
He
sounds a bit like Rakim . . .?
–
You reckon?
–
Yeah definitely!
–
Nah, not at all, mate! Are you deaf? Sounds more like . . .!
A guy in a tilted newsboy cap waves his beer around and spills half of it on my Chucks.

‘Sorry!'

‘Fuck off.'

Max goes to the bar. I threaten, cajole and lie my way to the tiny backstage area with beer-wet feet and when I get there, Zed's sitting on a wooden chair with his head cradled by one hand, body shirtless and slick. He's spotlighted by a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

‘Zed.' I have to say it twice before he lifts his face, his red eyes. He doesn't look surprised to see me. I reach into my knapsack for my digital and snap him a few times, so I remember.

‘Stop it, Eden. You ever stop doing that?'

I put it away. His irritation excites me. He's so cool usually. Laughing . . . closed. I instantly soften. I haven't the heart for banter.

‘That was really,' I tell him eventually, trying not to sway, ‘really good.'

‘Yeah? Well that's odd coming from you.'

‘It's not.' I speak quietly and slowly without quite knowing why, like I'm talking him down from the ledge. ‘Nobody could dispute your talent. Everyone had fun and they were . . . They were impressed. I watched their faces.'

He nods and smiles opaquely, throwing a white towel around his neck.

‘Didn't you like it?' I ask.

‘It was OK,' he says at length, scratching his head. ‘But not good enough.'

‘What do you mean? They loved you out there.'

He wipes his face with the towel and says: ‘Trust me. The
only thing they really love is fashion, and fashion's a painted whore who sleeps around with everyone and loves nobody but her damned self.'

I don't know what to say so I just stand there blurry-eyed with alcohol and hormones. I thought he was a fan of fashion. He looks so sincere. Maybe all is not lost after all.

‘Zed . . .'

But before I can begin the speech I planned in my bedroom mirror, he says he needs a minute and will catch me outside. And then Dave the technician guy comes in.

So I go back out into the club where the music batters my senses and sit back down in the booth with my whisky and Coke. I watch when he emerges with a closed smile and not a single visible trace of his angst. People keep coming up to him, patting his back and slipping him pieces of paper. On comes the mask again and I can't bear it, how flash he is in every line of his body. Women thrust their tits up at him and flick their hair in his face until Max sidles up and that's when I give my drink more attention. She touches him like he's discovered country. They've done it. They've definitely done it.

Suddenly, it reaches me that the hand on my thigh is no longer my own. Instead it belongs to this fool who's been trying to chat me up since I got in here.

‘It's
Adrian
, right?'

‘Yeah, babes.'

And Zed is dancing. Every movement is packed with irony. He does characters that are never himself. His mouth is open with laughter I can't hear over the music. His face and body say,
look at me
(but not too close)!

‘You alright, love?' says Adrian.

‘Yeah.'

Zed won't even dance without masks! He jokes around
with the Ponytail and the Nine-Foot Weave, doing The Bump. They adore him.

Is that all he wants – to be adored? Does he prefer that to being a real person? What happened to the backstage Zed? And what about his bad arm – doesn't it hurt too much for him to dance? Maybe it's wrong to think this but I prefer him when the pain shows.

‘I work for Sony Records,' says Adrian, wetly into my ear, without any prompting or curiosity on my part. ‘Are you a singer?'

‘No. I'm tone deaf.'

‘Well you look like one,' he says, in a version of Mockney. ‘You're fuckin' gorgeous. Love your 'air.'

‘Yeah thanks,' I say, and my speech is wobbly. ‘I've got to. Um. Gotta say hello to someone.'

I push him off me – realising a few large, uncontrollable steps later that I've also pushed my way onto the dance floor. I can barely feel my legs and the dimness swirls around me. The music is hip-hop. The bass-line goes right through the soles of my All Stars.

I want to be lost between beats, lost in the melodies with my eyes closed. Not here anymore. The ground tips and I feel like a kid in a playground, spinning round and round until she loses her balance.

Max comes up close with her dolly lips and tiny outfit, starts dancing like a stripper. Off-beat. What is it with blondes and the stripper dance? I laugh soggily. I can feel Max's breath on my face, she's trying to rap along with the track but getting it wrong. I do the stripper dance too.

She cracks up, falling about. I catch it like a bug and it shakes me from the ground up. We both scream with it. Max's hair is coming free of the pins, she's sweaty and her cheeks are aflame. She still looks bloody perfect.

I trip over my laces and the view is the pure white ceiling.

‘Eden!'

Zed's face is so big all of a sudden! No, it's just close. I can't stop laughing. I shake all the way through. My abdominals hurt, my head pounds, I can't breathe but I can't stop laughing. And I know I can't get up.

I touch my crazy hair and laugh. I think about my trainers and ache with laughter. I think about this man, close enough to kiss. I think about how lonely I am. That's it: lonely! I think the word,
lonely
, and laugh so hard I almost wet my knickers.

‘Zed!' I yell back at him, unable to stand. He puts a hand in my left armpit and helps me up. I slump against him and his Cool Water-smelling body. See? He's always there when I need him. He cares about me. Even with his bad arm he's prepared to pick me up.

The DJ announces one more set from an acoustic act, Cody Chesnutt. Everyone is shouting and clapping. I try to clap but miss.

And the problem with alcohol is that after the initial buzz is gone everything starts to get really serious.

Even while your knees still won't support you and you're flopping about like an empty plastic bag in a supermarket car park. Even while your head weighs ten times what your body does and you're still drinking to keep it at bay, it comes down like a Monday morning—

The truth. You're making an ass of yourself in public. You're alone. The truth is your face in the mirror, eyes and lips melted and smearing, your skin with all the blemishes reappearing beneath your make-up.

The truth is that you are
not
having fun.

I started the day with such high expectations, but soon I've made a wobbly dash for the toilets and found myself bowed over some under-disinfected latrine throwing up.
Plop-plop-plop-plop.
My body won't tolerate all the crap I've poured into it and has decided to stage a revolt.