Eye of the Beholder

She was a tasty piece, and it'd been a long day. Exhausting and fetid with Sergei beside me in the passenger seat, troffing cheese and onion crisps, smelling like hell's own armpit. I wanted a smile, that's all. Midweek night, and work again in the a.m. But clocked off and headed for the pub to meet the guys. Looked to be a solid night, beers, friends, maybe a bird or two. I wanted a smile, that's all.

"What about that one, Mikey? Nice pair."

I followed his greasy fingertip to a woman on the far pavement. “Nah, those’re fake. Bony arse gives it away. Who'd want that in their lap? This one's got a nice set of legs on 'er, though, wouldn't mind them wrapped round me.” I nodded in the direction of my choice, and Sergei made a humming, chewing sound of approval.

"I prefer 'em small. She's tall as a fella,” he said. "Now this one. This one’ll do just perfect." He stuck his head out the window, aiming a swooping, leering whistle at the woman. Thinking back on it, she was still almost a girl.

A blast of car horns recalled my mind to the road. The jam had rolled forward. I caught up, and that's when I saw her.

A tasty piece, as I said. Though... I forget the details. Blonde hair, I know that. It's what snagged my eye, swinging with her strut like a gold rope, side to side across her back. Made me think of wrapping it around my hand like a boxer’s bandage. I leaned out my window.

“Hey, love, show us that pretty smile,” I said. Sergei laughed at my back, crunching chips and laughing. "Hey! I said smile for me, gorgeous."

She stopped. She turned.

"Oi oi," Sergei jeered. I looked over my shoulder to grin at him, and when I turned back, she was framed in the eye of my window. What I remember then is her lips. Red, like the guts of a cherry pie. Red like the films of my eyelids, closed against the sun. Red like the bands in a milk snake's skin. She didn't use them to smile. She used them to shape the words she spoke.

"Please," she said. "Don't look at me."

"What—"

She'd already walked away.

"What'd she say?" Sergei's elbow landed in my ribs as I reached for the gearshift.

"Nothin'."

---

Most of the guys were already at the pub by the time we got there, so we banged in a few rounds to catch up. Boys on good form, full of steam and keen to blow it off. Thought I caught a couple of them eyeing me, though. When my round came again, I headed for the bar, leaning on the tacky varnish, holding my wallet where the barman could see it. I turned my eyes to the soundless football on the TV. My mind filled with glistening white teeth sheathed by a pair of red lips.

"Please. Don't look at me."

I spun round, sure the breath of her voice caressed my ear. I scanned the people packed in at my elbows. Stocky, paint-marked guys like me. Stringy, Lycrad cyclists. Rumpled, tie-loosened office guys and melted-makeup office girls. Chubby girls in strappy tops and sunburned guys in dorky sandals. Tourists. Londoners. Blue collar, white collar, no collar. None of them looking at me. None of them her.

"Don't look at me."

I turned back to the bar.

“What'd you say?"

"£47.50 mate," the barman said. I didn't remember ordering, but a neat row of pints stood rank and file before me.

"Yeah," I slid over five tens, rechecked the crowd, "right." A guy in a red polo had his eyes on me, didn’t he?

No. None of them looking at me. None of them her.

---

Her voice drifted off to sleep with me, several pints' worth of spin in the room and not enough energy even to change out of my clothes. Her voice woke up with me; a summer morning cruel in my eyes and the smell of a flatmate's bacon queasy in my nose.

"Don't look at me.” It breathed through the window, shifting the curtain. I rolled over, her whisper tickling the back of my neck. "Please. Don't look at me."

"Shut up."

I saw her lips blow the words to me like kisses, "don't look at me."

I crawled off the bed. Sloughed off my clothes. Met my eyes in the bathroom mirror.

“Please.” Bloodshot. "Don't look at me."

I brushed my teeth, spitting grease and stale beer. Showered off the sweat. Steam billowed through the bathroom, cooled on the walls to run down cracked tiles like drool over broken teeth. Pooled on the floor. I dried on a clammy towel, dressed and checked my watch: almost midday. Morning had swilled down the drain with the soap and water, and somehow I was late.

"Don't look at me."

I whirled, but the hallway behind me was empty. A clack of cutlery on plates and a familiar hum of flatmate banter from the kitchen, but the corridor, the stairs and the landing above were dark. A text alert on my phone almost flayed me alive.

U cming, or wht?

I turned back to the door, reached for the handle.

"Don't look at me."

My spine rattled, my palms tingled. I shook my head and opened the door.

An old man stared at me. Behind the low wall between our splintered square of concrete and the road. No, only walking past, not looking at me. I made for the tube, head on a swivel. A young mum nodded thanks as I stepped out of the path of her buggy on the narrow pavement. The kid’s owl eyes tracked me as he cruised by. Three teenagers propped against a wall like bits of spare timber threw me hooded glares.

"Don't look at me."

I jolted, turned. No one behind me. I scanned the street. Tall old man with cane. Nondescript middle-aged guy. Two pre-teen girls. Woman with black dog. Woman with little boy in baseball cap. I conjured the sweeping beams of their sight lines like searchlights combing the speckled pavements, flinching when they neared me, my teeth beginning to grind. I found, when I tried to start walking, that I had to force myself.

Rounding the corner, I crashed into a slender woman in running clothes. She stumbled, caught herself. Hooked an earphone out of one ear.

"Watch it!" She glared at me, danced around me and resumed her run, casting a last high-beam halogen glance over her shoulder. I rolled on belowground, shoulders high.

---

There were more people underground. More eyes. Two for each human. More embedded in the tiled sky; cyclops eyes, black and unblinking, all-seeing. The oily brush of their attention felt like ants crawling in my hair. A pulse of warm air foretold the train, which followed behind like a monstrous steel centipede, huffing and panting and jostling with the effort and thrill of carrying so many people so far and so fast.

We hearded aboard, and I sank into a seat, reaching gratefully for the hushed anonymity of trains. But the primordial creature opposite me gazed straight at my face through a pearly film of age. In one vulture’s claw, she clutched a striped plastic bag, and despite the boiler room subway heat, she wore so many layers they obscured her entire figure. I was struck by the sudden fancy that she sat cross-legged on the seat like an unruly child; a secret from all but me, and I almost laughed. As if hearing my thoughts, she grinned. Red lips, like the bands in a milk snake’s skin. My world spiralled inward to the single point of those lips, the wet ivory keys of her teeth behind them. The stark, black space of a missing canine stared like the blown pupil of a drunken third eye. She cackled. The sound brought the world roaring back, and I looked up. Every single eye in the carriage was fixed on me.

The lights flickered and died as the train slowed for a station. I searched the darkness, after-images of staring eyes hovering in the air like the retina-burn of quenched fireworks. Our centipede skittered and rattled into the stop, wheezed to a halt. The lights burst back to life. No one was looking at me. I studied every face. Nothing. Vague, sanitary politeness, everyone shielded by a phone or a book or a blank stare. I sat back, breathed deep, then looked up. Red lips, like the films of my eyelids closed against the sun, but the rest of the face? Not old anymore. Young. Blonde hair, a gold rope lying over her shoulder. The muscles in my legs seized against my will, punching me to my feet at the same instant our train coughed, jumped into motion and threw me sideways into a pole. I grabbed for it, caught it, crutched myself on it. The lights stuttered and died again. One second, two seconds, three. I stared at the place I knew she sat, hidden from me by the velvet black. Four seconds, five. The light above her flared. She was unchanged. Unmoved. She didn’t smile. One by one, the other lights in the train came on.

"Please. Don’t look at me." It was me who said it, the words dripping from me as, spiked through the chest with dread, I turned back to the carriage. Every single gaze was fixed on me. The weight of them pressed in like groping hands, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it. The grinding clank of the machine’s turning-wheel heartbeat pulsed in my head. A screech and a tilt told of a bend. The mellow voice of the announcer named a station I didn’t catch over the low sound of myself pleading with the train to hurry. I listened for the two-tone chime that would tell me the doors were opening, and the nightmare was over. I dragged myself up the pole. Waiting, poised, like a quaking horse in the stalls. We stopped. The doors opened. The human tide shifted and surged as the train vomited passengers. I opened my eyes. I ran.

"Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me," I muttered, over and over, as I carved a path through the swarming people.

I felt her before I saw her; felt her eyes on me. Before me, facing me, stood the young woman, exempt from the flow of bodies like a standing rock in a river bed.

"Hey, love. Show us that pretty smile," she said. Red lips, like the guts of a cherry pie. As one, the people filling the station stopped walking and turned their eyes on me. Twitching, scratchy unease rose up, flooding me with fever from the inside. Sweat pricked my skin. Exhausted, ashamed, I began to cry.

"Oh God," I said, on a sigh that whistled between my clenched teeth, "I’m sorry. Alright. I’m sorry." My eyes drifted shut, I bent my head, I sank to my knees. "I’m sorry."

"I believe you," she whispered, her breath cold on my forehead. My head snapped up. The station was empty. She pressed an icy kiss between my brows, in the place where the third eye is said to be.

---

Monday saw Sergei and me back in the cab of the van. Prawn cocktail on his fingertips this time. Women, as always, on his mind.

"That one? Bet you all the money in my pockets there's nothin' under that." He aimed a corner of the pink foil packet at a woman in a tight skirt, laughing crumbs into the air. The words rose up in my throat, took form in my mouth, waited on my tongue.

Hey, love, show us that pretty smile.