“Come here,” she says, her voice a raw husk, the echoes corvid dreams cast like corn-fed larvae over panoramic fields.
Sullen, you think.
Bitch, you decide.
She’s forgotten who she is, but she knows the river churns below, a cascading foam of milk, of frothing milk, of chocolate incursions. How is she able to sit, to let this unfold, while the angry faraway men gather in Armani to strike?
“Is my presence in your life becoming oppressive?” That’s Roxy. She’s from Dumfries. Her words never err. She once considered escape but now prefers the yanking of chains.
“It always was. And for that your glimmering skin will fetch top dollar.”
I can never match her.
“You’re funny.”
Dutifully I nod, but I’m not that funny.
The sun sets on a season, leaves like brittle cuticles crunched underfoot. Parched unread cataracted pages.
Another turn of the creaking world, another and another.
The wintry scrape of a dry bow across catgut. The sound of a glacier withdrawing into its own tears. A full-on retreat. A place so cold your eyelashes think they’re weapons. Serious men on a serious stage, you seriously might think. But this isn’t serious. It’s the final laugh of the last good girl stationed on a headland over the last tumescent tide. It’s a hankering. An ache. A flash of loss. A bafflement.
Roxy knows most things, she thinks.
But how does she trawl the world? Her mouth must be wider than all the oceans on this overstated earth.
She reads the vast indecipherable room and wonders briefly about tears.
“You wished I’d gone away?” she asks.
“I wished you’d stayed.”