Page 148 of Rhymes with Metaphor
Chapter 36: Martin
The loft looked andsmelled unfamiliar, as places do after a long absence.The note Reg had left for Joel on the kitchen counter in case he returned was still there.Reg crumpled it and threw it away.He switched on every light and opened the blinds, but the loft still looked grey and washed out.When Joel had lived here, the loft had had a golden quality, and a hum of life had filled its hollows and corners.But Reg had no switch he could press to bring that back.
He slid open the door to Joel’s old room.Joel had left his bed neatly made.Reg knelt beside it and smelled the bedsheets where Joel spent his last night.But whatever trace they had held of Joel was long gone.
He picked up one of the storage boxes Joel had filed Reg’s papers in.He opened and upended it over the floor and kicked the pages apart, then he pulled open and tipped over another box and another until the floor was covered with papers.He pulled the books, neatly arranged in the bookcase and dropped them onto the empty desk.He tipped over a cup of pens, spilling them everywhere.There was still too much unfilled space.How could Joel stand all that empty space?
He grabbed a bottle from the liquor cabinet, carried his suitcase upstairs and left it on the floor.He didn’t have the energy or the will to unpack.He fell onto the empty bed, still dressed, and lay there, listening to nothing.In all this time since he’d left, he hadn’t dealt with losing Joel.He’d just been putting it off.Even now, it felt like he didn’t have the right to mourn someone still alive, particularly when he had let him walk out of his life.
He swigged from the bottle again and again, until it was empty.But nothing filled him up.
He slept when weariness overcame him and woke to the pain of loss, ate when he could stomach it, didn’t when he couldn’t.He started sleeping on the settee because his bed felt too empty.
––––––––
He woke to quiet darknessand the bittersweet smell of oranges.Reg blinked his eyes into focus.He was badly hung-over.He clawed himself upright, aching everywhere.He tripped over something squeamishly yielding, slipped on something vaguely organic, then stepped in something definitively organic before he reached the kitchen.He drank water straight from the tap, spraying most of it all over himself.It streamed off his face into the sink, which was half full of murky, fetid water and rancid dishes.A gradually increasing sense of dread crept over him.Images flashed when he blinked.A dream?Standing on the beach in Wales with the tide receding, tracing a poem in the sand ending at a white foot—Joel’s—standing naked in the moonlight, a glint of pre-come at the end of his cock, body covered in Reg’s poetry.Turning away from Reg and wading into the waves, deeper and deeper, and as he went, each word dissolving away, until he dove under the water, and all that remained were moonlit, multicoloured pools of colour floating on the waves and the sound of an animal crying in anguish.
Another sound pierced his malaise, like a mouse nudging an empty glass, or a bumblebee thudding against the window.His phone, wherever it was, buzzed with a text notification.
He’d left it on the kitchen counter when he’d come back from the award ceremony, however long ago that was.
Reg snatched up the phone, thinking, perhaps on the heels of his dream, that it was Joel.
It wasn’t:
Chez Livres, two o’clock?M.
He hadn’t heard from Martin since their bitter parting at Tate’s Coffee Shop.
What had prompted this sudden contact?Why now?Joel had left him months ago.
Normally, when Martin summoned him, Reg came running, but at the moment, he was feeling peevish.According to Reg’s phone, it was currently 1:30 p.m.
He texted back:
Filboid Studge.2:30.R.
A certain symmetry existed in losing Joel and gaining Martin.So, why did things still feel unbalanced, and moreover, unfair?Reg felt he was owed something.Something a little more than ice cream and forgiveness.
The appeal of Filboid Studge, for Reg at least, was that it was easy stumbling distance from his loft.The café in question was situated in the basement of a stone heritage house, and it catered heavily to the hung-over student body.It was furnished with beanbag chairs, battered couches, and camp beds for those disinclined to sit upright.Random aluminium pails festooned the floor, and everything was draped in multicoloured throw rugs (dubbed “throw-up rugs” by the staff), which hid stains where people being sick had missed the pails.In another century, the place could have doubled as an opium den.Translucent windows took the bite out of the sunlight.The place served fifty-two varieties of cold cereal, including cold porridge (the eponymous “Filboid Studge”), for the ravenously stoned, and blander fare for the conventionally hung-over.
The only solid food Reg could face was a packet of saltines.The coffee, at least, was serviceable.While he waited for the server to prepare it, he looked around for Martin.
Reg almost didn’t recognize him.His hair had been cut in an obscenely conventional short back and sides.And he was wearing a suit—not an overly formal one, granted, and he wasn’t wearing a tie, but still.He was only lacking elbow patches and a pipe to complete the picture of middle-aged surrender.He looked ridiculously out of place at Filboid Studge.
“Jesus, Reg, you look appalling,” said Martin.
Admittedly, Reg couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a haircut, and, though he’d showered before coming here, he hadn’t bothered to dress up.
Reg sank into one of the squashy chairs opposite Martin.“Lovely to see you too.”
“Got your Christmas present,” said Martin.“Thanks.”
“Congratulations on theNew Yorkersale.”
