Black Vodka Read Free

chalk. Now Lisa bends down and opens the door of the taxi. As she slides her long legs into the back seat, she shouts her destination to the driver.
    ‘Tower Bridge.’
    He nods and adjusts the meter.
    When she smiles I can see her sharp white teeth.
    ‘Look, you know that Richard is my boyfriend – but why don’t you come home with me and compare notes on those vodkas?’
    I don’t need any persuading. I jump in beside her and slam the door extra hard. As the cab pulls out, Lisa leans forwards and starts to kiss me. Does she want to know more about my habits and beliefs and how I live? Or is she curious to find out if her sketch of Homo sapiens was an accurate representation of my body?
    The meter is going berserk like my heartbeat while the moon drifts over the wildlife gardens of the Natural History Museum. Somewhere inside it, pressed under glass, are twelve ghost moths ( Hepialus humuli ), of earliest evolutionary lineage. These ghosts once flew in pastures, dropped their eggs to the ground and slept through the day. There is so much of the world to record and classify, it’s hard to know how to find a language for it. So I am going to start exactly where I am now. Life is beautiful! Vodka is black! Pears are naked! Rain is horizontal! Moths are ghosts. Only some of this is true, but you should know that this does not scare me as much as the promise of love.

Shining a Light
    It is the last Saturday in August. Alice is waiting in baggage reclaim at Prague airport, and she knows before it is completely certain that her bag will not appear. For twenty minutes the luggage belt has looped along its tracks in a slow mesmerising circle, a dead grey river. Her bag is not on it. Yes, she can fill in a form. She can give the official her mobile number and the address of her hotel near Malá Strana, but she tells herself to accept that she has lost everything. The cheerfully vague official in charge of missing luggage (her name is Petra) understands that filling in the form is a waste of both their time but she takes the trouble to guide Alice through the procedure. Petra’s breath smells of aniseed or something like that. Alice isn’t really bothering; she can barely read her own hurried writing. The worst thing is that her mobile-phone charger is in the bag that has gone missing. Even if the airline does find it and calls her to collect it, her phone will be out of charge.
    Petra has a system in place to process loss – and she has other information too. She warns Alice about dishonest cab drivers; the minibus shuttle will drive her to her destination for a cheaper price than a private cab. Also, given that Alice has lost her bag with her mobile charger in it, she should use a public telephone box and buy a phone card. The emergency number is 112. And then she tells her there will be a screening of a film in the park on Tuesday night. It’s free but everyone dresses up.
    It is Tuesday night and Alice is dancing in a park in central Prague in the blue dress she has worn for three days.
    The film Petra referred to turns out to be an outdoor screening of Martin Scorsese’s documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert. Midges are biting her arms, it is eleven at night and the moon is shining on the crowd. Two Serbian women, Jasna and Adrijana, dance with her while Mick Jagger sings ‘Yeah, you light up my life’. Alice has only just met them but she is pleased to have their company. She tells Jasna that when Mick walks away from the microphone to change his costume, the stage goes dead because he is not on it. Like the luggage belt at the airport when she realised her bag was not there.
    Jasna’s and Adrijana’s boyfriends are queuing for beers. They wave to a man selling frankfurters and shout, ‘Hot dogs!’ Adrijana insists on buying one for Alice too. They smother the hot dogs in ketchup and drink beer and watch the swans sleeping on the black water of the Vltava. When the film ends they all invite Alice to join