Tracks - A Love Story

Our eyes met across a crowded room, or at least that’s what I would always tell people when they asked how we met, because ‘Brendan88 has viewed your profile’ doesn’t quite have the same romantic appeal. Not that I was embarrassed to have met the love of my life on Guydar, but having to explain to co-workers and cousins exactly what kind of app it was made the whole thing seem unnecessarily seedy. And I’d had enough of seedy by then; take the last man to send me a message before you, ‘Shy_Guy_6’, who communicated solely via dick pic and emoji. I tried engaging him in polite chitchat but that just got me a close-up of his anus followed by a winky face.

Thank god, then, that you replied to my message. You’ll never know how long I deliberated over what to say, before finally settling on an unimaginative but reliable ‘Hi', hitting Send, and holding my breath. In my head I call it ‘the last hi’, because I deleted the app immediately following our first date. Amy called that move ‘a little keen’ but I preferred to think of as ‘quietly confident’.

We spent a fair portion of that date sharing war stories from our respective experiences of online dating, laughing about the various deviant requests we’d received, both of us aware but unwilling to admit just then that we were drained, that loneliness is infectious and if we were forced to spend any more of our lives typing out gambits to strangers in text speak then it wouldn’t be long before our messages became tainted with the same desperation as all the others. We were each other’s saviour.

You were the most serious relationship I’d ever had, and even though I never said it in as many words I think you knew. You’d had a couple of proper boyfriends before, none of this was new to you, and that bothered me sometimes, but mostly I was just happy. Amy thought that the six month mark might be a bit early to move in together, but we joked that in gay years we were an old married couple. Not that we bickered much; mostly I hated it when you stole my aftershave and you would turn the air blue whenever you tripped over a pair of my shoes in the hall. It was tiny stuff though, silly stuff, because we were in love and we trusted each other.

And I did trust you. I wasn’t spying, I swear, but my phone was dead and I needed to check my email so I used yours, and while I was scrolling through work memos a notification popped up with a  familiar little chirp. A message from Guydar; ‘VersFunSW4 has viewed your profile.’

And that was when morbid curiosity overtook me, and I opened the app which was still on your phone almost a year after I deleted it from mine. Maybe you just forgot it was there, I reasoned with myself, but then I saw your updated profile pic, tanned and gorgeous in Barcelona. I took that photo myself, had even remarked afterwards how handsome you looked in it. Was that what made you choose it? It was certainly a success with the men on Guydar, judging from all the messages complimenting you on your eyes, your smile, one even saying he was captivated by the chest hair peeking out from under your shirt collar.

I felt sick. Sicker still when I saw your responses, all LOLs and winky faces at first but then less coy. Lengthy, intimate exchanges where you implied that you and your boyfriend had an ‘arrangement’, where you described in detail exactly what you would do to LondonSub22 and TroyBoy and all the others. And I realised that I hadn’t been your saviour after all, because you had never been lonely, you had a phone full of men just gagging to keep you company. I was crying by the time you walked in, that awful messy kind of crying where the words don’t want to come out, but you pieced it together quickly enough, grabbed your phone out of my hand and stormed out.

The thing with fights is, they usually end. Whether it ends with shouting or tears or sex or exhausted indifference, there’s always something. But that was the last time I saw you. Hours later when my phone rang and it was your name, I ignored it. I ignored it the second and third time too. When I finally did answer, it wasn’t you on the other end. It was a nurse who had been trying to get through to your emergency contact.

‘It was incredibly quick’, she told me. ‘He wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

That was a year ago. Just over, actually. I stopped counting the days after the first anniversary. Amy has finally convinced me it’s time to move on, maybe even to go on a date. But the thought of walking up to a guy in a bar and starting a conversation makes my stomach hurt, so I compromise, and say I’ll think about downloading Guydar again. It’s another month and a half before I finally give in and actually do it.

Shy_Guy_6 is still doing the rounds with his smut and smileys. They’re not even up-to-date photos; he’s spamming me with the same picture of his penis that he first sent over two years ago. This fills me with white hot, utterly irrational rage. I’m typing out a message to him, a furious demand to show his face or get the hell off this app forever, when my phone vibrates with a notification.

‘Brendan88 has viewed your profile.’

At first I think I’m reading it wrong. But there’s no mistaking the picture in the profile; not the one I took in Barcelona, but the one  you had two years ago. The first glimpse I ever got of you. It’s you, or at least a few thousand pixels of you, and I’m so deliriously happy to see it that it doesn’t register at first that this is impossible.

It’s a catfish, I think. Some scumbag found this picture of you in a dark corner of the internet and fancied taking it for themselves. ‘Despicable,’ I mutter. But what if it isn’t? What if this is really you, and you’ve found a way back to me? I have so much I want to say. I might even finally get to break up with you, and it would serve you fucking right.

I look at my Guydar tracks. The last person to view my profile before you was a Belgian in a gas mask. I realise with a sinking feeling that I could actually do worse than a cheating ghost or an identity thief. So I type out an unimaginative but reliable ‘Hi’, press Send, and hold my breath.

~

Hold My Hand

I am lying in my bed, alone, and somebody is holding my hand.

It's been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, and smaller, the hand fit mine perfectly. Now I am grown, and the cold little hand squeezes mine for warmth. 

I have never turned my head to look at who is lying next to me, who has shared my bed for all these years. Fear has always stopped me. Not fear of my silent bedmate, who has never given me cause to be frightened, but rather, for fear that if I turned my head to look upon them, they would vanish, go away forever, and I would be left to sleep here all alone in the dark.

Of course it is silly, for an adult to be scared of the dark. But I feel I have just cause, I believe there is something out there we would be wise to fear. For what else could have spurred my invisible friend to reach out for my hand that first night, and to keep reaching, to keep holding onto me ever tighter, every night after?

We Prefer Angels

Phone sex is less fun, Lyla decides, when neither of the participants happens to be you – not to mention a nightmare to transcribe.

Party 1: You like that, baby?

Party 2: *Unintelligible grunt*

Even more of a faff is trying to preserve the narrative of sexts when they consist entirely of emojis. Lyla knows she’s on perv duty as part of her punishment, even if the official story is that she’s just ‘filling in’ while Raj has his appendix removed.

She should have just kept her mouth shut and her head down; always easy enough to see in retrospect. But she didn’t, so now her working day consists of trawling through the telephonic filth of some depraved ambassador while Perry completely screws up what should be her caseload.

They’re a fairly small team compared to some; just herself, Perry, Raj and George, dedicated to monitoring prominent families and a handful of celebrities with political aspirations. The door to their office simply reads ‘Specialist Division’.

It had given Lyla butterflies on her first day. Here she was, an analyst fresh out of Cambridge, in the heart of the watchtower. The job lost some of its lustre, however, the moment she stepped through the door and met Perry.

“You that tart from downstairs?” He asked, looking her up and down in a way that made her desperate for hand sanitiser.

“Lyla,” she replied, cooling to him instantly. “You the head snoop?”

“We prefer angels,” he said. “You know, as in guardian angels.”

“I bet you do.”

“And no, I’m not in charge.” He jerked his head towards another closed door at the far end of the office. “George is.”

It was all a bit Charlie’s Angels in the Specialist office, Lyla soon found. They received emails from George with requests for updates or reports, but there was nothing in the way of personal contact. She never actually met the man until she was six months into the job.

Lyla was intercepting the calls of a young parliamentary candidate, Rory Snow. She knew the sort, had been surrounded by them at Cambridge. Tall, blonde, with a plum in his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. These were the men who got what they wanted, who didn’t even need to ask for it. Snow bucked the trend in one respect only; he was a democrat, and a squeaky clean one, if you were to believe the press.

But the first lesson Lyla learned as an angel was that nobody was ever truly clean. Rory Snow kept his vice well hidden, but after just a few weeks of listening in on his life, Lyla stumbled upon it.

“Pretty girls,” she told Perry, dropping a pile of transcripts onto his desk.

“They’ll be the downfall of this great nation,” Perry sighed, ignoring the folder.

“That’s not all of it,” Lyla said. “Some of these girls are a little on the young side.” That was putting it mildly. Snow’s unsavoury preferences made her new ambassador friend’s exploits seem as harmless as a stack of Playboys under a teenager’s mattress. Perry took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Just log it,” he said.

“We need to call the police.”

“And say what?” Perry asked. “How do you propose we explain how we came by this information? We do nothing.”

“I thought we were meant to be guardian angels,” Lyla said. Perry rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” she picked up the papers. “I’m going to George with this.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Perry called after her, as she marched across the office. He didn’t stop her, though; just reached for a Danish.

Lyla gave the door three sharp raps, and when no sound came from within, knocked again. Still receiving nothing in the way of a reply, she reluctantly returned to her desk. At the end of her shift, she logged the day’s transcripts, shrugged into her jacket and left, just like she always did – only this time with a sheaf of printouts stuffed into her handbag. If Perry and George weren’t going to do anything to stop Rory Snow, she thought, she would have to do it herself.

Except, of course, she didn’t even make it out of the building. Vic, the avuncular clerk at the front desk who commented on the weather as she signed in each morning, called over to her before she could reach the revolving doors.

“I’ve been requested to escort you upstairs,” he told her, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. For one brief, wild moment, Lyla considered darting for the doors, but thought better of it.

“Fine,” she assented.

She was taken to an empty conference room and left to wait, alone. For what felt like hours (but probably only amounted to five minutes), various scenarios played out in Lyla’s mind. Would she be fired? Prosecuted, even? The foolishness of what she had just attempted hit her. Leaving the watchtower with an open case file – how could she have been so stupid?

And then George walked in. He was nothing like Lyla had imagined. Tall, rake-thin, Savile Row from head to toe. He sat down in the chair next to hers, so any onlooker would think they were both for the gallows, folded his hands on the tabletop, and said simply;

“I believe you have accidentally left something upon your person.”

And that was it. Lyla gave up the papers, and he left. The next day she came into work, and was given Raj’s workload. Perry could barely contain his delight.

“I’m going to make you scream,” the ambassador whispers in Lyla’s ear. “I won’t stop until you’re begging for mercy.”

She still has work to do, she tells herself. Important work. The safety of an entire country is in their hands; they have to think of the bigger picture.

The ambassador releases a wordless, animalistic cry. Lyla includes this in her notes, and suppresses a scream of her own.

 ~

The Selfie of Dorian Gray

The moment the shutter on the camera clicks, Dorian feels different. He is momentarily short of breath; it is almost as if, by capturing his image, the iPhone also drew the very air from his lungs.

“Preposterous,” he mutters to himself, and looks down at the picture he has just taken.

This, he realises, must have been how the accursed Narcissus felt, upon first catching sight of his own reflection in the river. Never before have his own eyes seemed so blue, his hair so golden, his lips so full.

It is, without a doubt, the perfect selfie.

~

“Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Sabina howls down the phone, like the proverbial banshee. “We are not finished here, you owe me an explanation!”

“Darling,” Dorian replies, in what he feels is his most reasonable tone, “I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea about me. But I’m just not looking to settle down. When did I ever say otherwise?”

“How cold you are,” she spits. “How cruel. So you think it’s alright to sleep with other girls? With other men? Do my feelings matter at all?”

Dorian ends the call.

“Needy, needy girl,” he whispers to himself, shaking his head. To take his mind off the whole debacle, he decides to check how many more likes his selfie has racked up. Twelve since he last looked. Satisfied, Dorian is about to return his phone to his pocket when he notices something. Something off.

He raises the phone to his face and squints. Impossible!

The picture has changed. His eyes are still blue, but paler; they have lost some of that trademark twinkle. His lips are still red, but they don’t look quite as full.

“How can this be?” He utters, but there is nobody in the room to respond, and of course the photo can’t very well speak for itself. Sabina called him cruel; this is a likeness of a cruel man. But that image was taken weeks ago, before he even met Sabina. Before he slept with her, and then her best friend, and then her brother.

But still, it’s undeniable – the picture has changed for the worst. Dorian shrugs, and puts his phone away. What does it matter? A glance in the mirror reassures him that in the flesh, he has never looked better.

~

Time is kind to Dorian, and unkind to those around him. With each year that passes, the selfie ages. With each heart he breaks, with every tramp he hits in his Mercedes, the eyes on the screen grow ever narrower and more flint-like, the smile gradually curling into a sneer. After a decade, it pains him to look at the photo at all – it has changed too drastically, reflects too much, while his own face remains precisely as it was.

There are two Dorians now, and over the years makes his peace with it, telling nobody his secret when they enquire after which face cream or cosmetic surgeon holds the key to perpetual youth. Not that anyone would believe him if he were to tell them the truth; that his withered soul is trapped in a magic photograph, belied by his own youthful, perfidious exterior.

He has long since removed the image from social media, obviously. He often wonders what would happen if he were to delete the selfie entirely. Would his every sin from those misspent years be returned upon him? Would his skin crack like parchment? Would he, god forbid, lose his hair?

Whatever spell the selfie has cast, it is a gift. To question or waste it would be a crime. And so Dorian vows to live as authentically as he can, pleasure and gratification his only commandments.

Instagrammed, immortal, and irredeemable.

~

Rain Dance

I respond to the idiotic claims that homosexuality causes floods the only way I know how - in the form of a story.

~

“A church wedding would have been nicer,” he overhears a second cousin saying at the reception. Callum suspects this distant relative would also have preferred there be a bride, as opposed to the two young men in suits who made their vows this afternoon. He makes a mental note to strike the cousin’s name from his Christmas card list.

He didn’t even want extended family at the wedding; it was Mitchell who insisted they have everyone there. His new husband (Husband! He can’t get his head around the word) has a much more genial and forgiving nature. In fact, the only flaw of his that Callum is still working on correcting is his tendency to drop grammatical clangers from time to time.

“Shame about the weather,” somebody closer to the top table remarks – Callum thinks it might be Mitchell’s auntie. In this instance he is inclined to agree. Torrential rains have turned the hotel grounds into a swamp, making any outdoor photos completely out of the question.

A nasty little thought squirms to life in the back of his mind. Something ridiculous and half-forgotten. A story from the paper a few days before the wedding. A politician with views that skew towards the radical claimed that the government’s decision to allow same-sex couples to marry was the cause of the recent extreme weather conditions ravaging the country. Mitchell dismissed the councillor as “Old Testa-mental”, and used the article later that day to line the cat’s litter tray. And Callum didn’t give it another thought. Until now.

“Don’t be stupid,” he mutters to himself, pouring himself and his new hubby (ugh, no, ‘hubby’ is too saccharine, he decides) another generous glass of champagne. He is rescued from his own dark thoughts by the sound of a spoon tinkling against a glass.

“Good evening, everyone!” Bellows his best woman, Ros. Oh, lord. He’d forgotten about this part. It has kept him awake every night this week. He’s never been any good at it, no matter how encouraging or patient Mitchell is as a teacher.

“What are we calling you guys now – Mitchum? Callell?” Ros shrugs. “Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, please be as upstanding, as our newlyweds take their first dance.”

Callum lets Mitchell lead him by the hand onto the dance floor, and the song they took weeks to agree on begins to play; ‘You’re My Best Friend’. Because, as Mitchell said at the time, their wedding just wasn’t gay enough.

As it turns out, dancing in front of everybody he knows isn’t that bad. He steps on Mitchell’s feet a couple of times, but for the most part his awkward shuffling is met with dewy eyes and heartfelt smiles. The song is almost over when he hears the maniacal laughter. He spies the culprit at the back of the room; a guest he doesn’t recognise in a bright blue suit and derby hat. He is throwing back his head and laughing, clapping his hands, and hopping from foot to foot like an excited child.

“Bet you wish we’d stuck to close friends only,” Callum whispers in Mitchell’s ear, nodding towards the dancing madman, who is attracting the attention of the other guests.

Mitchell frowns.

“I have no idea who that is,” he replies. “I thought it was one of your old uni mates?”

Callum shakes his head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“Well let’s ask,” Mitchell says. “Looks like he’s coming over.”

And so he is – the curious blue-suited gentleman is now at the edge of the dance floor, observing the newlyweds and chuckling away. Once he notices that they have stopped dancing and are, in fact, staring at him in utter bemusement, he steps forward.

“Mind if I cut in?” He asks Mitchell, not even waiting for a response before grabbing Callum by the hand and spinning him around.

“Who the hell are you?” Callum asks, trying his best to be angry but finding that all he feels is relief – his feet finally seem to know what they’re doing, and he is matching this lunatic step for step in what can only be described as an epileptic jive. The music is louder than before, faster, and the other guests are soon sweeping onto the dance floor to join the revelry.

Thunder can be heard over the music, as it rolls across the sky outside.

“I’m Ba’al,” says the intruder. The apostrophe rings in Callum’s ears. “But you can call me Bill.”

“Ba’al,” Callum echoes. “What kind of name is that?”

“A very old one,” Bill replies, clicking his fingers in time with the beat. “It means all sorts – thunder, rain, lord of the heavens. Take your pick.”

“You’re insane,” Callum says, twisting his hips. Bill just laughs.

Mitchell reappears, refreshed champagne flutes in each hand. “Everything alright here?”

“Fine,” Callum answers, taking one of the glasses. “I’m just dancing with God.”

“A god,” Bill corrects, snatching Mitchell’s champagne and knocking it back. “We’re like the public sector. There’s loads of us.”

“Well you weren’t invited,” Mitchell says, “but you’re more than welcome to stay and enjoy the disco.”

“I might just do that!” Bill squeezes Mitchell’s cheeks as if he were a particularly cute toddler. “And is there a spread?” Mitchell nods, unflappable as always. Callum is less inclined to accept this ludicrous turn of events.

“That crazy bible-thumper was telling the truth about us, wasn't he.”

“It’s true,” Bill says, smile faltering, standing still for a moment. “Your union has made the gods weep.” Callum’s heart begins to sink. “But,” Bill continues, “these are tears of joy falling from the sky. Mankind is finally making the progress we have long known you capable of.”

“Huh,” Mitchell murmurs. “Even gods end sentences on prepositions. How about that.”

The rain god hoots with laughter once again, before moseying off through the ecstatic throng in the direction of the buffet.

~

Some Scenes Have Been Created For Your Entertainment

“This isn’t working,” said Jake. “I think it would be for the best if we don’t see each other any more.”

Annabel said nothing, although she wasn’t exactly surprised. By the time she finally thought of a suitable response, she couldn’t help but feel that the moment had passed.

“Cut,” she said. “Can you do that again, Jake? But this time, really look at me. Don’t be afraid to get a little bit intense, to make the viewer squirm, you know?”

“For god’s sake, Annabel!” He snapped. “Can’t you see that this is the problem? I can’t indulge you any longer. I won’t go on being a player in this little show of yours. None of it is real – the whole thing is just too weird.”

Annabel frowned, hoping his comments hadn’t hurt Bill’s feelings. Bill was her cameraman.

“I understand,” she said, “but if we could just give this one more go –”

“No, Annabel, it’s over.”

“Oh, I know that,” she said. “What I meant was, could we give the breakup another go? One more take, maybe two. I think we’re so close to nailing it.”

Jake’s lip curled up in disgust, but she signalled for Bill to keep rolling. Sure enough, Jake stood up and stormed out of the restaurant. With the right editing, it would make the perfect cliff-hanger before an ad break.

Annabel was the first to admit; reality TV wasn’t for everyone. She’d had some doubts about it herself, when she first got the call from the production company. Because no matter how unseemly your average Guardian reader might find it, the qualms of the prospective starlet are double. Was she anxious, apprehensive even, at giving a film crew unlimited access to her life, of forfeiting mherprivacy for god knows how long? Of course. But she also knew that the show, The Sweet Life, was too big an opportunity to give up.

At the end of their first day of shooting, Bill had taken her aside and told her she was a natural. It took some getting used to at first; having to enunciate more, conducting the same conversations over and over in order to form a seamless narrative in the edit. And then there was the camera. She soon learned to suppress the instinct to smile or ‘act’, and just behave nonchalantly. It was funny, really. She’d always felt special. Like, maybe in another life she might have been Cleopatra, or Marie Antoinette, or Cheryl Cole. Turned out, she was born to be a TV star, which she thought beat being Kate Middleton any day.

When Annabel arrived home after her disastrous lunch with Jake, Mum and Dad were sitting in the living room. She positioned herself far enough away from the window that the late afternoon light wouldn’t ruin the shot, then said brightly:

“Hi kids! What’s new?” She talked to her mum and dad as if they were the young, hip parents of a 90’s sitcom. Apparently the fans loved it.

“Darling,” Mum beckoned for Annabel to sit next to her. Instead, she perched on the arm of the sofa, to better show off her Jimmy Choos. She was hoping to get an endorsement.

“We ran into Jake this afternoon,” Dad said. “He told us what happened.”

Damn. If Jake was blabbing to all and sundry about their recent split, it wasn’t going to come as much of a surprise to viewers when the episode aired.

“I won’t lie,” she said, with a heart-heavy sigh, “I’m really hurting right now.” This could be the episode’s closing act, she decided. The star of the show, letting down her confident, ready-to-take-on-the-world exterior, and showing her true feelings. There had been talk of a National TV Award, so she needed to give it her all.

“Why don’t you tell us your side of it, love,” said Mum, supportive as ever. Annabel had told her more than once that she was a firm fan favourite, but she’d hear nothing of it.

“Good idea,” said Dad. “Who dumped who?” Unfortunately, Dad’s directness had garnered him less in the way of a fan base.

“He…” Annabel paused, and let her voice falter. “He broke up with me. I never thought I was the kind of girl who needed to be with a man, but he made me really happy.” After another long pause, she added, just for good measure: “I'm heartbroken.”

“Oh, love…” Mum reached out and took Annabel’s hand in hers. “Did he say why?”

She hesitated before replying, reluctant to bite the hand that fed her, then resolved to tell the truth. She’d only be seen as braver for it.

“It’s the show,” she said. “It was all just too much for him.”

Mum’s expression changed.  She glanced at Dad, then turned back to face her.

“Annabel,” she said, in that gentle yet firm way of hers, “we’ve talked about this. There is no show.”

Annabel laughed. “What are you talking about?” Is this some kind of meta joke, she wondered, or perhaps something for the DVD extras?

“It’s all in your head, Annie,” Dad said. “The Sweet Life, the cameras, everything.”

Something in the way Mum and Dad looked at each other, that worried glance they shared, made Annabel uncomfortable in a way that being dumped by Jake just hadn’t.

“But Bill,” she said, no longer concerned with breaking the fourth wall.

“Bill’s not real either,” Mum said. “Look around. See for yourself.”

She turned to where Bill always stood when they were filming downstairs; in the doorway, where he could capture the entire room. Except he wasn’t there now.

“No,” she said, “this isn’t right. I’m a natural. People love me.”

Her eyes began to sting, and Mum pulled her into a tight embrace. Why did she feel like this conversation had happened before? Why did this feel like the umpteenth take? Tears quickly followed, and as she cried into her mother’s silk scarf, Annabel thought she heard Bill’s voice in her ear:

Give that girl a BAFTA.

~

Last Dance At Yoko's (Part 4 of 4)

Following his impromptu excursion into the past and metaphysically impossible reunion with his dead girlfriend, the day to day routine of Charlie Gillespie became something of a waiting game. He would eat, sleep, smoke weed and shoot the shit with Kat, but he did all of these things on autopilot – the whole time, he was listening for something. Fine tuning his senses as best he could to the whims of the universe, trying in vain to anticipate his next Quantum Leap.

But a watched universe never boils, and Charlie found the weeks passing with worrying regularity. Before he knew it, well over a month had gone by, and he began to despair. Might he not get another chance to put things right with Alicia? Had he wasted the chances he’d been given? Or, more probably, had he simply imagined the whole bizarre affair?

He could tell that Kat was feeling less and less inclined to humour him. He never intended to bring it up in conversation, knowing only too well how deranged he sounded, but he found it hard to stop himself. They’d be watching a reality show and Charlie would feel the topic bubbling up in his throat like a hiccup.

“I know it’s going to happen again, I just don’t know when,” he said once without provocation, and he swore he could see Kat physically resist the urge to roll her eyes. She very patiently explained to him that it had in all likelihood been a rather complicated coping mechanism, and he should see the fact that he was no longer experiencing these blackouts as a sign he should be moving forward.

But forward was not the direction Charlie was interested in, and they both knew it. At the end of the second month, Friday night came around but Kat didn’t. He knew he should pick up the phone, but it just never quite transpired. Nothing at all seemed to carry much importance anymore.

After what felt like a lifetime of avoiding the local shop like the plague, Charlie’s cupboards were now well stocked with all the essentials; lager, whiskey, vodka, schnapps for when he was feeling exotic, and a variety of hard-boiled sweets to go with the treats he had been able to procure from Twig, whose acquaintance he had decided to renew.

Friday nights became quite the party chez Charlie, not that anybody received an invite. He would crank up the Arctic Monkeys, work his way through a bottle of spirits and a dash of whatever else he had handy, and while away the hours rehearsing what he would say to Alicia when he next saw her.

“Don’t call her a bitch,” he would tell himself. “Don’t get into that row again, don’t ruin your last night together. Make it perfect, like it should have been, like it has to be.” He would play ballads and practise his slow dancing moves, knowing that “Careless Whisper” or “I Will Always Love You” could always be relied upon to make appearances at the end of the night in Yoko’s.

Charlie became so focused on preparing for his next trip that he stopped trying to predict it. He had no notion of when his reunion with Alicia would occur, only that it would, and this was where all of his energy went.

Once, on his way back from a fruitful meeting with Twig, he ran into Janelle in the street. He smiled and went to give her a hug; she shrugged him off and marched away at a steady chop, glancing back frequently over her shoulder, her eyes wide and panicked. She didn’t recognise him. Charlie tried to think when it was that he had met her, and where. The details eluded him; anything that had happened in his life before Yoko’s reopened for business seemed not quite real.

Even the most impatient children know that Christmas morning will always come eventually, and whether Charlie was good or not, he knew the same was true of that club, of that night. And not long after he saw Janelle, a week at most, Christmas came for him.

The third time that Charlie was plucked from his linear existence and thrust back into Yoko’s, torn on this occasion from a half-finished bowl of cornflakes, he recognised the pure Eighties piano synth assaulting his ears before his vision even had time to clear. Tears For Fears, one of the few old school groups Alicia had time for. “Head Over Heels”. 

He was standing on the edge of an empty dance floor. He turned around, scanned the entire club, but saw nobody. The place looked completely deserted. His chest began to tighten, he should have known dreams didn’t really come true…

And then he saw her.

“You’re late,” she said, emerging from the doorway that led to the Ladies.

“You’re dead,” he replied.

“Don’t change the subject, you’re still late.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been waiting so long for you,” she told him, taking him by the hand and pulling him towards the dance floor.

“I tried to get here sooner,” he said. “But I forgot the way.”

“Doesn’t matter, you’re here now.” The song changed to something by The Cure, and Alicia began to rock gently.

“I’m still not sure I understand,” Charlie murmured, not entirely sure he cared anymore.

“Think about it,” Alicia whispered in his ear.  “When was the music here ever this good?” She stepped back and held out her arms.

“Dance with me,” she said.

Charlie took her by the hands and pulled her closer, as close as she could be to him without their bodies merging.  It dawned on him that he need never leave this place, that he had always belonged here, at Yoko’s, with Alicia. He would only ever be a stranger anywhere else.

The DJ spoke into his microphone, informing the club that the final song of the night was about to be played.  Alicia wrapped her arms around Charlie’s waist and he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, and together they began to sway.

~

Last Dance At Yoko's (Part 3 of 4)

Charlie kept the promise he had made to himself and stopped taking Dr Clarke’s pills.  He gave the pub that Twig liked to do business in a wide berth, believing that if he avoided temptation, then the chances of a repeat of Thursday’s incident would be vastly reduced.

As he put more and more days between himself and the event, it became easier to think of as nothing more than a particularly vivid dream.  A chemical and emotional hiccup.  After a while, Charlie had all but forgotten the entire episode.

It was almost three weeks later that it happened for a second time.  Charlie had just bid Kat goodnight after a curious dinner which she had insisted was Persian, but looked and tasted more like Indian food would if it just stopped trying.  Charlie slumped down on the sofa with a beer, intending to flick through the channels until he came across some post-watershed foreign film that showed a little flesh.  But when he reached for the remote, he touched nothingness.  He could feel neither the sofa nor the floor beneath him.  There was only blackness, and silence.

When Charlie felt something solid beneath his feet, he opened his eyes which he hadn’t even realised were squeezed closed.  He was surprised by how little surprise he felt at being back in Yoko’s; this time, he had been deposited in the red corridor leading into the main club.  Thankfully, he didn’t appear to have been sick as a result of this latest trip.

He looked down, and sure enough, he was wearing the creased shirt and leather jacket from three years ago.  Even his shoes carried the same stains from numerous spilled beers.  Charlie walked slowly into the club, passing two young men who were engaged in the age-old ritual of mutual shoving, and scanned the room, knowing she would be here somewhere.

And sure enough, there Alicia was, dancing with her girlfriends to Joy Division, although Charlie knew for a fact that none of them would recognise this song beyond its use in remixes, samples and other bastardised efforts.  "Love Will Tear Us Apart".  A little on the nose, Charlie thought, not to mention out of the ordinary for Yoko’s on a Saturday night, when the edgiest fare one could expect was “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Alicia tossed her hair in that rehearsed, stripper-like way of hers, and he could tell she had spotted him from the corner of her eye.  She waited for the song to finish before retrieving her tiny handbag from the small pile in the middle of their group and sauntering across the dance floor towards him.  She looked less angry than the last time – had he arrived at a different point in the evening?  Charlie glanced down at his wrist, but it was no use; he had never been the type of guy to wear a watch.

Alicia greeted him with a peck on the cheek, then took a small, expectant step back.

“Now I just know there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you’re so late.”

“Almost certainly,” Charlie said, old habits easing his tied tongue.  “And as soon as I think of one, I’ll tell you.”

Alicia frowned to cover up her involuntary smile.

“Stop me if you you’ve heard this one before,” he continued, “but did it hurt?”

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘when you fell from heaven’, I may have to leave immediately.”

“Then my lips are sealed.”

“Let’s not be too hasty,” she interjected. “You know how fond I am of your lips.”

“Why don’t you remind me?”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.  Alicia kissed him back, completely unaware that from his perspective, this was their first kiss, their first embrace, in over one thousand days and nights.  This was more than a simple dream or memory.  Charlie knew his mind was incapable of recreating the smell of Alicia that night, the perfume and smoke and sweat.  She was real, and she was here; he could feel the heat and weight of her in his arms, on his lips.

Except… 

Except, Charlie knew that this was not how things had played out that night.  He had arrived late, Alicia had been furious, and the spiteful row that followed had cracked their relationship open, allowing every tiny annoyance and resentment to come spilling out.  She had been unable to hold in any longer how much her friends pitied and mocked her for having to forever hang on, waiting for him to grow up.  He had decided to bring up the exact number of her close friends who happened to be male, succeeding in calling her a whore without ever uttering the hateful word.

Remembering that bitter truth was all it took, it appeared, to break the spell.  Charlie could physically feel Alicia vanishing from his arms as the strobe lights, drunken revellers and humid din of the club gave way to his living room once more.

“No!” He exclaimed, turning to punch the nearest wall.  Not satisfied with the first jolt of pain, he did this again, and then again, continuing to drive his fist into the wall until both his knuckles and the plaster were spattered with blood.  She had been right there.  He had spoken to her, kissed her for heaven’s sake; how could she simply be gone again?  It felt wrong.  Beyond unfair, it was obscene.

Charlie sank to the floor, cradled his wounded hand, and made a mental list, exploring every possible explanation for what was happening to him.  It turned out to be, inevitably, a rather short list:

1. I am actually, physically, travelling back in time.

2. I am going mental.

He was naturally inclined to believe the second one and get on the phone to the funny farm straight away, but something stopped him.  Something about the way Alicia's hair had smelled.  Like coconuts and nicotine.  If he inhaled deeply enough, he was almost sure he could still detect it.  Or at least, he thought he could.  Charlie dismissed the idea temporarily as he rose from the floor and went in search of a bandage for his hand.  He could be certain of only one thing.  If time travel really existed, then it was purely as a means for the universe to play a cruel joke on him.

He switched on the battered radio on the kitchen windowsill before putting his hand under the cold tap.  The Pixies were playing on whatever obscure, too cool for school radio station he had tuned it to months before.  “Where Is My Mind?”  Charlie swiftly turned the radio off before it could offer any answers.

~

To Be Continued
Read Part Four

Last Dance At Yoko's (Part 2 of 4)

Charlie rolled onto his back and continued to lie there, staring at the ceiling, for half an hour.  When that half hour came to an end, and he had failed to wrap his head around what had just happened, he sat up, walked into the kitchen and began to make himself some beans on toast.

“I’m going to have a word with Twig,” he muttered to the beans as he stirred them in their pan.  “God only knows what was in that stuff he gave me.”

The clock on the kitchen wall informed him it was approaching seven in the evening.  Charlie had left his new acquaintance Janelle’s home at around quarter past ten.  Which meant that he had spent the entire day hallucinating.  And had, at some point, made it back here safely.

Charlie ate his beans straight from the pan (there was no bread to make toast), then made a cup of excessively sweet tea and retired to the sofa that he must have somehow fallen from earlier.  It was the only explanation for the collision with the floor that had ended up waking him.  As for the dream itself, Charlie wasn’t too sure he felt like dwelling on it.

But dwell on it he did, as he lay in bed that night, sleep evading him at every toss and turn.  It was perfectly logical, he decided, as midnight melted into one, then two, then three.  He had been thinking about Alicia that morning, and then he’d suffered some ill effects courtesy of Twig, or Dr Clarke, or both.  It was only natural that his subconscious would throw up that night at Yoko’s to tease him; the last time he had ever seen Alicia, and they had fought.

That had been three years ago.  Three years in which Charlie did very little except go to the pub with his mates from home, the ones who hadn’t gone to uni.  Until one by one they started getting girlfriends, and jobs, even kids in some cases.  Three years passed, and everybody was busy living, except Charlie.

He’d thought about Alicia often, of course. Constantly, in fact.  First bitterly, licking his wounds, then more tenderly as time went by.  He wrote letters that he could never quite bring himself to send, picked up the phone a million times but always succumbed to his own cowardice.  He’d called her a cold bitch that last night in Yoko’s, before walking out and leaving her there.  That was what he relived every time he considered making contact, and the shame always stayed his hand.

And then eventually, of course, it didn’t matter if he wrote or not, because Alicia Solomon died.  Killed in a car accident along with her new rugby player boyfriend.  In fucking Australia, no less.  Charlie couldn’t help but think that Alicia would be pleased with that last part.  When friends and family spoke of her years from now, she would be remembered as the tragic, beautiful girl who died before her time… in Australia.

That was why he had been taken back to Yoko’s, Charlie decided as the night sky began to pale outside.  To him, Alicia had never left the nightclub.  She’d stayed where he’d left her.  Simple psychology, really.  As Charlie finally succumbed to sleep, he resolved to steer clear of Twig, and refrain from taking Dr Clarke’s pills again.  He could do without the guilt.

It didn’t dawn on him until his doorbell rang that evening, stirring him from his bed, that today was Friday.  Charlie didn’t have much in the way of a routine, or any real notion of structure in his life at all, but Fridays meant one thing and one thing only: Kat.  A former colleague from one of the brief periods where Charlie had held down a job, she was almost but not quite old enough to be his mother, but that had never got in the way of them being mates.  And, ever since the day that Kat had made it painfully clear to Charlie that he would never get into her knickers, very good friends was just what they had been.

When Charlie had first heard the news about Alicia, his mother and father had been sympathetic, as had most of the friends from whom he had drifted apart.  Everybody knew what she had meant to him.  But as the months slipped away and Charlie refused to make even the slightest move in the healthy and expected direction, people began to lose patience.  Mates returned to the vacuum from which they had appeared, and his parents rang every so often to make sure he hadn’t hanged himself. But, for the most part, Charlie was left to his own devices.

Except for Kat.  It had mystified Charlie at first, why she insisted on darkening his door every Friday with a takeaway and a bottle.  Her intentions were far from romantic, and Charlie had never done her such a kindness that it needed returning.  In the midst of his greedy, all-consuming grief, selflessness was something Charlie couldn’t conceive of.  A few Fridays had passed before he started to suspect that Kat might know a little something about what he was going through.

“Tell me about Alicia,” she’d said to him that first Friday, after helping herself to his best weed.  And so Charlie had told her, not realising until hours after, when he went to sleep, how much he had needed to talk about her, how saying her name aloud had almost been enough to conjure her back to him, so that she was part of his world again and not forever dying over and over in a car with a rugby player on the other side of the world.

They had never been what one might call an obvious match, by anyone's standards.  While Charlie would fret over whether the Gallagher brothers were going to see past their differences long enough for Oasis to produce another album, Alicia would be busy extolling the virtues of her favourite Sugababes line-up.  Nothing that Charlie owned looked like it cost any more than the spare change which solely occupied his wallet.  Alicia, on the other hand, was partial to expensive, close-fitting dresses.

It wasn’t anything as clichéd as “opposites attract”, thank god.  More an example of how being utterly, spectacularly drunk can bring two people together in an unexpected and serendipitous way.  For a short and blissful time, they were perfect for each other.

Kat would say nothing as Charlie rambled on for hours about Alicia and Carrow (because the two were forever intertwined), every film they had gone to see together, every shit student party, every argument and every reconciliation, everything but that last evening.  She would just listen, drinking wine and ever rolling another joint.  So yes, she must have known.  Must have lived her own version of Yoko’s at some point.  One day, when Charlie was less of a catastrophe, he intended to return the favour.

Tonight she had treated them both to a fish supper.  Charlie began to roll a joint in preparation for after the meal, while Kat hunted through his cupboards for ketchup.

“Have you actually ventured inside a supermarket this year?”  She called out from the depths of his fridge.

“They’re overrated,” he shouted back.  “Now get in here and eat your chips before they get cold.  I have a story to tell you.”

They sat cross-legged on the rug in the living room, eating straight from the masses of crumpled newspaper in their laps.  Between steaming mouthfuls, Charlie told her all about his experience the day before.

“You’ve taken all sorts in your time,” he said, when he had recounted the entire tale.  “Has anything like that happened to you?”  It was the first time he’d mentioned anything to Kat about that final night in Yoko’s, and he could see her storing that away for further exploration later.

“Who’s to say it didn’t happen for real?”  She asked, seemingly serious.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well?  Is it really so preposterous?”

“I’d say so.  Maybe we should give the bud a miss tonight.”

“Think about it.  You loved Alicia more than you’ve ever loved anyone.  You still do.  The human mind is capable of some pretty amazing things.  Even more so the human heart.  Sure, there’s the rules of physics and everything that keeps the sky up top instead of down below, but what if you’ve found a way around all that?  What if, somehow, through sheer force of want, you’ve found a way back to her?”

Charlie stared at Kat, aghast, for a full minute before she cracked up.  A few seconds later, he was laughing along with her.

“On the other hand,” she snorted, “what a load of bollocks that would be.”

“You are awful,” he admonished.

“It made you laugh, didn’t it?  I was seriously thinking I’d have to shag you in order to put a smile on that sullen face of yours.”

“That may still be necessary,” Charlie grabbed a handful of thigh and gave it a playful squeeze.  Kat responded with a swift, painful jab to his left kidney.

“Fuck off,” she grinned, as he doubled over in pain.  Then, rather more sweetly: “Would you happen to have a lighter?”

~

To Be Continued

Read Part Three