4For GK, who I forced to read it, and for Kit, who will probably never read it.
SYMPHONY IN GREEN
His name is Gavin. "From Gawain," he tells her with a smile. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
"I've heard of it," but that was a long time ago, in the freshness of a degree when she did all her readings. He isn't how she'd imagined Sir Gawain, too dark, too rough, too much leather. And too old; the Gawain of her mind was pink-cheeked and boyish.
Her name is ... unimportant. He calls her 'babe' almost from the first. "I'll be there at eight, babe." She never keeps him waiting, but she gets the impression he wouldn't mind, ferreting around her house with those quick fingers and sharp eyes.
Old, older than her, but still she feels older. No lines around the eyes, only a slight darkness there that hints at late nights and later mornings.
"I don't get enough sun," and she has to agree, but sallow suits him, oddly. A tan would age him worse, she thinks, and says so.
"No-one tans these days, babe. It's uncool," and his grin makes 'uncool' sound cool.
Does she love him? It's a stupid question, reeking of stupidity because, when all is said and done, a woman can't help but love a man when he is so near and so perpetually unavailable.
He dances under the blacklight, to anything. Even disco, singing to her, "You've got the best of my love," and somehow he doesn't look faggy, even in leather pants. Jim Morrison? Bono? Michael Hutchence? A young Elvis, just after the puppy-fat was stripped from his cheeks.
They eat fried sausage and lemon ice on the terrazzo. He feeds her spoonfuls of granita, making her stretch her neck to catch it, and laughs when a dollop ends up in her cleavage. He spoons it out and eats it, leaving a stickiness for her to mop up. Somehow it isn't as embarrassing as it should be.
She buys him a shirt one time, green silk. It's a kind of test; she isn't sure if he'll wear it. But he does, stripping off his own and trying on hers right there in the cafe. Again, camp-factor zero. The waitress tells him it looks "real nice". He thanks her politely but makes a face when she's gone.
"Can't she see I'm with someone?" he mutters, snaking a hand across the table.
That sort of thing happens all too often. Girls seem to chase him, even when he has one arm around her shoulders. One time a blonde chippie in a too-tight skirt runs up and tucks a card into his pocket. "Call me," she chirps and runs off giggling. He throws the card away.
"I hate it when they do that," he smiles.
"Isn't it flattering?" But he shakes his head.
"Is it flattering when men wolf-whistle at you?" She wouldn't know; men don't whistle at her, not even on building-sites.
And sometimes the girls know him. They purr when they see him; "Gavin, you sly dog," flirts a redhead. "Why don't you ever call?"
"Because I don't have to," he grins.
And one time the girl is her. She meets him at a uni bash. He has a tall drink of water on his arm, cool and dispassionate and not quite the right accessory for this party.
"Hey, babe," he says. She smiles, trying not to look at the other girl.
"Didn't expect to see you here."
He grins. "Me neither. You two want a drink?" He sends someone for beers, three of them. It's strange, seeing him with someone else. Jealousy flares, and dies.
The girl confides in her. "I don't get him. He never even tries to come in for coffee." The girl is drunk. "Why won't he sleep with me?"
"Maybe you're trying too hard."
He shows up on her doorstep with tiger-lilies one ordinary day. "How did you know?"
"Everyone likes tigers," he grins. Which is true.
She has to hunt for a vase and comes up blank. He empties instant coffee into a mug and washes out the jar. She is surprised to see him do something so domestic, and ashamed that she had assumed maleness precluded domesticity.
He has a habit of buying her things, small, spontaneous gifts that really cannot be refused. A scarf. Chocolate truffles. Sterling silver earrings like flattened cubes. A book of Buddhist meditative sayings. Paper butterflies. Cacti.
She doesn't know how to respond to these offerings, but tries to be gracious.
A mutual friend asks her if they're going out. "We're dating," she says.
"Is it exclusive?"
"No. Why?" The friend has seen him having coffee with a dyed blonde, who turns out not to be a cousin or sister.
She invites him over for dinner. Between panicking and dialling out for Indian she realises he's never even tried to steal a kiss. The inevitable thought tugs at her but she chases it away. Surely she'd be able to tell.
He brings two bottles of wine, a white and a red. "I figured one of them would match," he admits, putting the red to bed and the white in the fridge.
They eat. They eat on the roof, with the thin stars overhead. "Odin," he points.
"Don't you mean Orion?"
He shrugs. "Odin sounds better." And he's right, as usual.
He has a brother he never talks to. There was an incident with money. He tells her frankly that it wasn't the money but the attitude that caused trouble.
"The worst bad blood is between brothers," she says, trying to be sympathetic.
"I thought bad blood was a mother-daughter thing."
She thinks of her own mother, a woman she has not seen since she was old enough to move out. Her mother's face is blurred, obliterated by time and resentment. "I suppose so."
"My life is a symphony," he states profoundly. She doesn't know what to say to that. He sounds serious. "In C minor."
"Why C minor?"
He lights a cigarette. The smell of smoke is large in the warm night air, tickling her throat. He doesn't answer. "We're lucky," he says instead. "Think of it; we could be living in the US."
She isn't sure if she should ask why that's lucky but he tells her anyway.
"This isn't paradise, I know, but at least we know what we've done and who suffered for it. It's very catholic, this country. Not in terms of religion, but because of the guilt. The guilty country."
She sips her wine and watches him outlined against the black sky. The wind is running hot fingers through his hair and she realises how much a part of his surroundings he is, how connected. It strikes her as rather neopagan and she says so.
He laughs. "I'm an urban druid."
When he leaves she tries to kiss him goodnight. At the last moment her resolve fails and she settles for his cheek. He grins, "Lucky me," and gives her a quick, cousinly hug.
They go to see a band one frenetic evening when the air is shimmering with heat haze and has a smell like wormwood and sugar. The band isn't anything special but somebody knows somebody who knows the bass player, and so it goes.
They dance. They dance for hours, and the music gets better as the beer settles in.
She is never sure afterwards how it begins. They are dancing; there's a man in a red and yellow shirt. She remembers thinking of the Pied Piper. And then there's a confused moment full of fists and anger. It seems to happen in silence, the music pouring over everything else and drowning them all.
There are too many people and she can't move, scared to interfere and shocked by the blossoming violence. He's yelling something but the music washes it out to sea.
Finally it's over and she manages to catch his arm. He wrenches himself away, lurching to a table. Stupid details fix in her mind. There is a spreading patch on his shirt; it is the shirt she bought for him. The air smells sharp, rusty. Her feet are hot and sweaty and sore.
She doesn't quite catch what he's saying but he repeats it savagely.
"The blood ... don't touch me."
She tries to mop him up but he snatches the hanky out of her hand and backs away. "Bastard," but he's not talking about her.
They burst out into the alleyway behind the club and the air is clear if no cooler. He sits on the ledge of a bricked in window, holding the hanky to his face.
She takes a step toward him but he flings out a hand to warn her off. The bones of his hand are large under the skin, strong and broad, but the shape they make is helpless.
"Don't."
The taxi-driver doesn't want to take them. "Please," she begs, shame and uncertainty making her feel somehow exposed.
"This look like an ambulance?" She has no argument for that, nothing to say at all.
The next driver seems more sympathetic. He has one eye on the road and the other on the neck of her dress. "You two boyfriend-girlfriend?" he leers.
"No," she says just as Gavin mumbles, "Yes," through the hanky.
On the other side of her front door she feels safe again. He won't let her clean him up, not talking, just painfully going through the motions. She has to help him out of his shirt. There's a band of angry marks down his side. "That'll bruise," she says, and it's too loud in the still, sticky air.
He showers. He showers cold, and wraps himself up in her bathrobe, red terry-towelling with a daisy on the pocket. She is struck by how diminished he is, his face swollen, wrists and ankles bared by too-short hems.
She makes a pot of tea. He smokes half-cigarettes at short intervals, sitting in the dark under the broken porch light.
The silence fills her head like wine or rum, dizzying. She wants to scream. To save her sanity she puts on some suitably neutral music and the relief is immediate.
"Why did you say that, in the taxi?"
There's a moment where she isn't sure what he means, and then, "I didn't know what else to say."
He lights another cigarette. "I hate fighting."
"You obliterated that guy." It comes out wrong and he winces.
"Beer and testosterone ... they should give people licences to drink. His should have been revoked."
"What started it?" She asks more to keep him talking than for an answer and he knows it.
"I'm sorry." He stubs out the rest of his cigarette.
"It wasn't your fault."
"Not for that."
Impulsively she reaches for his hand and tugs it gently. "Things suck," she says sagely.
He laughs. He laughs ruefully, but it's still a laugh, and she's glad.
She sits up til dawn with his head in her lap. He wakes up apologetic and confused, but she makes another pot of tea and then leaves him to his own devices while she sleeps.
She resurfaces in the afternoon, feeling strange and surreal. There is a jar of stolen roses next to the bed, no two the same, yellow and red and white and pink-veined and lavender and magenta, and one tiny green tea-rose like a baby's fist.
They meet for dinner. He is himself again, coolly confidant, but there's something behind his eyes that makes her feel less self-conscious.
"You understand why we can't be ... more." It is half a question.
"Yes." And she does.
"I should have told you." That too is a half-question.
"Yes. But I can live with it."
He has brought her a present. It's a ring, silver, with a crown and a heart.
"It's Celtic," he explains. "If you wear it with the heart pointing away from you it means you're available." What he doesn't say is louder than what he does.
She puts it on. He smiles. "I feel like a Midori, how about you?"
~~~~~THE END~~~~~
Feel free to speculate. ~Jing