Page 33 of Glitterland
“Of course.”
“Come ’ere.”
He kissed the smug right off my lips, like a cat licking cream. And I let him, smiling against his mouth, leaning into him only a little, as if today had been nothing at all. As if everything had always been all right.
***
Before
Don’t panic, don’t panic, breathe, it’s fine, it’s fine. God, have these places always been so bright? Is it hot in here?I was suffocating on light. Lost in a maze of wire and geometry. The aisles were radiating away from me, endless, white and bright and silver, like a three-dimensional crossword puzzle, white space and a black abyss, and nothing, and nothing, and nothing. People roaring past me like cars down a motorway, their eyes like headlights, glaring through me. Thundering away in a rush of feet and a swoosh of breath. Strangers, and the loudness of their living, battering me on all sides, the whole world, crashing too loud, too bright against me. Wire-crowned waves, scraping my skin, fingernails in my eyes.Why can’t I find anything? A fucking carrot, where are the fucking carrots?Why was this simple thing impossible?Breathe. It’s fine. Breathe, fuck it, breathe. Fucking basic. Okay, just rest, it’s fine, just stare at this row of olives, nobody is looking, nobody knows.Heart racing like a rabbit. Half-dried sweat seared my palms. But nobody knew. That’s all that mattered. My sweaty, fearful little world: population, me. The pit of my stomach, where terror gathered, a cold iron snake coiled around my heart. I think I hated everything. All my words were whirling away into animal panic, thick as mud. This wild awareness of too much that was its own dislocation. Its own separation. Reality was peeling like a grape. I think I could hear my synapses.Where are the fucking carrots?
***
After
“So what is this culinary masterpiece?” I asked, following Darian into the kitchen.
“Well, Gregg,” said Darian, “tonight Darian Taylor will be preparing a menu of ’is Nanny Dot’s cottage pie wif…well…that’s it, actually.”
“What? Who the fuck is Gregg?”
“The one wif the dimples offMasterChef.”
“I do not watchMasterChef.”
“Aw, babes, you’re missing out big time. It’s amazin’. The stuff they make on there…amazin’. And there’s this voice-over what’s all like—” Darian dropped his voice into a low purr. “—‘Barry has prepared a filo of poutine wif a glazed salmon jus, pan-seared girolles, celeriac mash, and a basil and honey cream glaze.’ And, mate, I gotta say I don’t know what they’re on abaht ’alf the time but I feel like I really wanna know, janarwhatamean?”
“I do know that if you try to pan-sear my girolles, I’ll be throwing you out.”
He laughed. “But, yeah, you should totally watch it, babes. Just not the celebrity version cos that’s rubbish cos they can’t cook. And it’s always like MC Hammer ’as made beans on toast and you’re sitting at ’ome finking like, oi, I can do that, fank you very much.”
“It’s on my to-do list,” I said. “Right after ‘stick a fork in my eye.’”
Darian dumped a large, leather-bound book onto my kitchen table and started rummaging through the Sainsbury’s bags I’d left on the counter because I hadn’t been able to face unpacking them. The orange plastic had kept glaring at me like it was mocking me for having nearly succumbed to a panic attack in a supermarket. The too-fresh memory of those strip-lit, labyrinthine aisles seared my mind like acid.
“You wanna look?” said Darian over his shoulder.
I snapped back to the present, safe in my own flat. “Pardon?”
He gestured at the book. “It’s my portfolio, innit. Wanna look?”
Not really. I wanted him to do his cooking so we could fuck, and I could forget, forget everything in fleeting, physical pleasure. “Do you want me to?”
“Course.”
I suppressed a sigh, pulled his portfolio towards me, and flipped it open. Darian’s face, starkly, shockingly beautiful in its artificial stillness, gleamed up at me. His hair was platinum blond, his eyes a deep and steady grey. The generous mouth was stripped of its mirth, though not its sensuality. It was Darian, but not Darian. Some quintessence of Darian, laid bare by the photographer’s art. Loveliness refined like a sharpened blade.
He’d come to stand behind me as I stared.
“Whadyafink?”
I cleared my throat. “You…yes, you’re certainly, photogenic.”
“Ha-ha, you just take millions of ’em. Bound to be one or two what don’t make you look a right minger.”
I turned the pages—his profile, a smile, a couple of fashion shoots, followed by an advertisement for a local college with the sloganStand Out, Be Yourself, which seemed to involve Darian jumping in the air, mostly naked, through a splash of multicoloured paint.
“I would certainly enrol,” I said. The pose, the tension in his uplifted arms and outstretched legs, had brought into definition all the sleek muscles I had felt shaking against me while we fucked.
