Ani had to reach over to her phone. The girl in the bed had been there a week. Returning from work, there she'd be, in some new lingerie, in eager await. She was less appealing sleeping face down like this, however, with a spot of drool on the pillow the size of a sweat patch. Her hair, the dark, reddish and wiry sort, curled about itself in the air like arthritic hands. She mumbled to the vibrations on the wood surface by her head, but the girl could sleep through anything.
'Who is it?'
'Ani,' said the voice on the other end. There was an affectation of casual about the voice. 'It's just me, Marti. Had a day off. Here at home with Jeremy Kyle and thought I'd give you a ring. I can't remember if I was supposed to call you or if you were supposed to call me. Sorry.'
Gulp. 'Hey, I've been meaning to call you.' In truth, she really had been meaning to. Her voice went up an octave, a signal to drop pretences. We can let ourselves be excited, can't we? "I'm so sorry, I've just been' - her eyes fixed on the back of the girl's head, the wiry hair reaching onto infinity - 'a bit preoccupied.'
She slipped out of the bed, wedging the phone between her shoulder and her right ear, sweeping her legs out from under the white sheets and letting the bed slowly adjust. The weight shifted ever so slowly; she watched the girl's face twitch, her nose fidgeting about, near lips which look so much more beautiful in moonlight. A strip of sun broke through the blinds, straight across the mouth, down the middle as if teasing. Crapola. In a cosmic sense.
While they talked about the date, the quays, how the new jeans fit, she flitted her legs gently down the stairs in fluffy slippers. Every step was a performed move, to herself, revelling in the femininity she could assert when no one was looking. The private woman just the same as the outer one; whether this was true worried Ani somewhat from time to time, the careful dance of girliness was a never-ending waltz, afraid to stop and change the nature of her mannerisms forever by forgetting the moves. Being is seeing, or seeing is believing, or believing is seeing what you're being. It isn't important.
'Ani,'
'Marti,'
'Is it weird to say I've missed you?'
Of course not. Of course not. Of course it's weird. Of course it isn't. 'No, I've missed you too.' That she had. She tried to perceive the pretty, ginger-haired lady on the other side, straining her eyes through the cables and across the charcoal barrier and conjure up a woman in mens' pyjamas, with an empty bowl of cereal balanced on her lap. Without lipstick, they looked just the same, just as red; this was imagination, she was sure. The same little waltz, in a sort.
'Thank god,' (exasperated with relief, it seemed), 'You don't have work either today, do you?'
The bedroom was just above her now, looking into the TV, into Jeremy Kyle's soulless face. Craggy like the moon. In the movies, lovers looked into the moon at the same time, as if their longing could reach up to the satellite and back. Stellar love networks mapped through the heavens in ribbons and bows and knots of invisible cables reaching out from earth and back. Such a time may have never existed; now, whether in emulation of tradition or fiction, we simulate this with televisions and text messages. The bedroom, directly above her. There was the girl. The other beautiful girl. The betrothed, lying, unawares. One must be good about these things.
'I'm busy today, actually,' she said, at once hating and congratulating herself. Swallowing down a fingernail.
'Oh!' The insufferable 'oh', the one word, the one sound, a letter O, a single letter which reaches up to Heaven 'O Lord' and into Ani to stab at her with guilt, with pangs of longing, the desire to reward herself. To bite the apple.
'But I'm free Saturday.' The fireworks wanted to go off, but they just scorched the ground and burnt out slowly.
'It's a date.'
