Lurid & Cute Read Free Page A

bathroom contained two hand towels, two bath towels, a bathrobe and a bath mat. In the toilet bowl some paper from the night before had inflated like a parachute or squid. On the wall there was another velvet painting: the naked torso of a black woman, with shiny breasts and sunglasses, against a turquoise background. While outside, my car was parked, oh outside where there was also sunlight and the sky and everything was ordinary. Clouds gathered. Clouds melted. If I’d turned on the radio I would have heard a voice explaining the effects of the weather system in our city, but I didn’t, because I was running the hot tap, washing my hands. And I was thinking about Romy. For to think comprehensively has always been my genius. I had checked out without mentioning that there was a woman in my bed; I had sat in the restaurant unnoticed for over ten minutes. The neutral observer might therefore, I was thinking, draw the wrong conclusions. And although of course it was possible to do the ordinary thing, the legal thing, to go back to a man called Osman for help and explain, in abject supplication, that I’d found the body of my friend comatose in my bed, but that I was nothing to do with this situation, or only in the most minor way: yes I suppose I could have returned to Osman to discuss the problem of hospitals and police, but the voices in my head were not so normal. The voices in my head, they did their own thing. They tended to prefer I should keep this to myself.
    which creates small traps and impasses
    Her left arm was behind her back and her left cheek was squashed softly against the pillow. It was like a Kodachrome of a kid sleeping or a cherub but it also wasn’t. First, I needed to mop up the blood on the pillow beside her, because it seemed the tender thing to do, and I always try to do the tender things. I don’t think at this point I had finally decided on my total project. I took a bath towel and laid it on the blood. The white terry cloth became maroon. And I was thinking that maybe this was the first time I had ever seen another person’s blood, I mean blood that wasn’t a minor wound or a girl’s period but proper flowing gore. I didn’t want to touch it but I knew I had to. I had this fear of someone else’s blood, like I had the vaporous fear of coming inside a girl without a condom. I don’t think that’s unusual. I took the towel up and tried to rinse it in the bathtub – which meant that I was leaving a tiny trail of blood on the bathroom floor which was tiny, sure, but also gruesome and repulsive. Then, kneeling on the side of the bed, I gathered Romy in my arms, from behind, and gently lifted her chest and it felt wrong, touching her breasts like this, and the paradox was momentarily intriguing but then a cry of horror overtook me. I couldn’t help it. It came out of my mouth much quicker than I knew. I was trembling. I held her there, as if I were performing some slow-motion Heimlich manoeuvre: first gazing at the pillow, which was a mess of polyester and vomit and possibly more blood, a total horror show, then gazing sideways at what once was Romy’s entire expression, but all the expression was gone. I held her there. I bent to her face and her mouth smelled like vomit but also it was warm and that, I had to admit, was a very good sign. If I concentrated very hard I thought that also she was still breathing and I wanted to concentrate on this more, but I couldn’t. Because, to return to you, Mr Chat Show Host, if you want to know what Fate feels like, it feels like this. You are holding a body in your arms, and then you hear a brisk knock, followed by a key card being slotted into place. That’s how it feels. I would possibly argue that maybe it would be nice if just one time Fate used a more original ringtone. So I dropped Romy, gently, to the pillow again, and ran to the door. The maid was facing me, with her headphones in, and