Alex and Dolores

The children’s laughter echo through the park. There is an extravagant birthday 100 feet from me, a primary coloured bouncy house, balloons on strings and mother’s clucking and gawking like stunned hens keeping up with the joneses. I chuckle at the irony, a child’s 9th birthday and I am semi standing on Finch’s grave. He was fat. Takes up the entire patch, keeping him restrained with a thin iron fence and a plywood box. The children scream and giggle. 
“They’re laughing at you Finch.”

There is whistling and a slender woman in a sunhat brings out the cake with candles struggling to stay lit. Watching attentively, the wind passes through me and blows out the 9 candles. I look back down at the gravestone and see the words “Effort passes all.” I am so confused by the meaning and sigh disdainfully at Finch’s hypocrisy. I remember telling an ex-partner about my childhood and them being overly, almost grotesquely understanding and it made me cringe and feel disgusted. Of course I didn’t want people’s sympathy, I wasn’t the only fucker with an absentee father. I figured, one should focus on the mother that raised me and the two fiends I call brothers, deserved more praise and admiration than the lazy sperm donor who didn’t even bother to send birthday cards. Effort my ass.

My gaze wanders to the grave sight next to us and I can’t help but notice the contrast between gravestone quotations. Out loud I read “He does not forget you, Nor is the king of death unaware.” I then look to Finch and scoff, he sure took his time remembering you.

I remain in the graveyard for a moment thinking, perhaps I spent more time than I realised, graveyards are terrible and superfluously greedy. I hate the cemetery. Think of the morbidity of death, the laughter of the children next to me and my mother.

I love my mother. Her perfume lingers on the jumper of hers I packed, reminds me of a play called Shoreditch Madonna by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. I recall a moment well into Act 1 when the characters are discussing the faint noise that is scratching at the walls, the actor says it’s the whines of lost children that have been sealed behind the plaster. I remember such lyricism spoken by the old man actor, how juxtaposed the visual was. For some odd and rather unexpected reason, the man reminded me of my now dead dad. I breathe out and look down at the grass squelched between my saddle shoes. I was standing on wild flowers too. I wiped my feet, as if the cruel action would punish my father and the decorative beauty of regrowth around decay. Irritated, I grunt and rub harder, feeling rather precarious. The syrphid flies crawled and tickled my hands like a faint stray thread, by shaking my arm vigorously it caused the flower petals to detach and scatter across the grave. This greatly antagonised me as I did not want now, what looks like confetti, to be sprawled across Finch’s grave. My intentions with the flowers were to hold onto them tightly, then toss them carelessly into the bins outside the cemetery gate. Met with great comfort as I realised I was not the only person who did this. Briefly considering reaching for the begonias, I cross the street without looking.

It is wet, dewy and the smell moistened my nose. Sniffling, I strode down the street enjoying the clacking of my shoe heels as if followed by a shire horse. I was thoroughly enjoying the feeling of freedom and apprehension in this new city. Walking parallel to the park the fog shrouded over the trees and the street lights had a surrounding hue, reminded me of fireflies. Fortunately, it starts to rain and my strides become increasingly paced to finally make it under cover, back pressed against an old brick building. Perfect time for a dart. I reach into my green coat and pull out the paper carton, their packages are so peculiar here. So easily squashed like sitting on origami, very unconventional. It sticks to my moist lips and I flip open my lighter. The door next to my left opens and out steps a figure, they line the opposite wall performing the same ritual as myself. Except their lighter actually works, and doesn’t die on me in a less than convenient, dire moment. I hesitantly look to them, and try again with my lighter but to no avail, it’s empty and with frustration I throw it at the ground.

“Need a light?” Says the person. I look over at them, He is smiling with his hand extended towards me, hesitantly I walk over. “Thanks.” I say, as he holds his brass lighter up to my dart. He flicks his thumb vigorously in an attempt to light the spark, he cups his hand around the lighter to create a wall, instinctively I do the same. It is a rather unexpected, awkward and intimate moment, here I am centimetres away from this man’s face, collectively as a team trying to light this darn stubborn cigarette.

I pull away and inhale the smoke, “Thanks again.” He chuckles at the situation. It takes a moment for me to look at him again and there is this itching feeling at the back of my mind that I can’t help but know this person? We stare at each other now rather intently, which makes me terribly uncomfortable. “Can you not do that?” I snap. He rubs his face and says, “I know you, I’m certain I know you.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I have the same feeling.”

“Derek!” He shouts, “Derek! You know Derek. You were a bridesmaid at his wedding.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s true, you were there too?” I pull my head back, surprised at my stupidity, “Obviously.” I correct myself. Idiot.

“Its been a while then.”

“3 years?” I gawk at the time that has passed, “I can’t believe I remember you, or well you remember me first I suppose.” It stops for no-one I guess. I pause, dwelling, “Well, it’s terrific to see you anyway.”

“Thats so surreal. They’re coming to my apartment for a dinner thing tonight.”

“Really? Funny that, I was going to see his partner Marion tomorrow for coffee.”

“Then that’s a definite yes.” He takes a drag from his cigarette and really faces me, “You join us.”

I am surprised, “Well, you certainly don’t hold back to impulsivity.”

He extends his hand for me to shake, “No Ma’am I do not.” I shake it, he offers me another cigarette, I accept. We walk. I was sceptical, sure, as would be expected. I trusted him certainly, but felt wary of his everything, as if there was something slightly impetuous or unstable about him. About his proposition asked so freely like it posed no compromise or interruption at all. To anything. I didn’t like that feeling, I enjoyed causing a ruckus.

I must have been pulling back subconsciously because his hand moves to my shoulder blade and he pushes lightly forwards to keep up, our strides in a synchronised harmony. Clacking together obnoxiously. Scepticism didn’t kill the cat you know.

We reach the front door of what I assume to be his apartment, it is painted a slick shiny black with gold embellishments. Tacky looking. He turns to me promptly before unlocking the door, “You know sometimes you have a losing personality.”

I grin at this and shrug with my numb hands in their pockets, “Well, I don’t know what to say to you Alex, I severely like who I am. I’m pessimistic and I take great pride in my arrogance.” I pause, he unlocks the door. “Also, I think you look strange.”

“That makes two of us.” He walks up the steps inside. “Excuse the mess.”

“Wow.”

“Our kitchen has rats.” He announces, I watch the back of his head, he hears me recoil, “Oh no don’t let that deter you from staying for dinner.” I’d never seen a brighter red flag. “I meant our pantry, plus they’re mice, plus we’re getting providoor tonight so it’s okay.”

*

We are seated in his drawing room, Alex is pouring us each a glass of Chianti. I stare at him without remorse. Here is a man so certain within himself, so calm and contained and outspoken. Here is a man that I had met really that evening for the first time, on numerous occasions we were in each others company, but tonight was the first night really I’d met somebody in a while.

It’s exciting and exceptionally rare to have someone feel so energetically and spiritually open on a whim, as if it comes at ease for them, their hurt and blockages are clean. It seeps out of me like a broken sewage pipe, gluey gluggy sludge slowly dripping down my arm, splattering on the pavement in front of me. It smells, he knows it, I knows it. And yet, here we are. Our glasses clink together softly and I swirl my wine.

“What are those?” I notion to the wall that has several pieces of parchment paper thumbtacked to the plaster.

“It’s my wall of words.” I instinctively raise my eyebrow, perhaps he is authentically pretentious and not fake like myself. I hoist myself off the sofa and walk slowly past him, towards the wall. He wants to grab my leg by my thigh. Hands are clasped in his lap.

I flick my nose with my fingers and point to the centre piece of paper, run my fingers along the dry parchment. Reading out loud, “There is a spider in your drink, my hands are green?” I turn and meet his ripe gaze, “Mind explaining?”

He uncrosses his legs and balances his glass on the stern leather armchair, creeping next to me I sip my wine and look at the polaroids next to the ‘wall of words’.

He clears his throat, “I was with Ronald, who is a buddy of mine I work with at the studio,” He cuts across me with his arm ripping one of the polaroids off the wall and hands it to me, the photograph is cold on my fingers. “We were stringing random sentences together one night after taking shrooms and came up with half of these,” Smiling, “they inspire me because they are so random yet so delicately put together.”

“Well, aren’t you just a niche little poet.”

The door bell rings. Its Marion because I can hear her laughing through the walls.