stale-mate
Isabella Bridgman and Marisol Boyle-GomezIn Starch Issue 4: 2.11.24
I woke up abruptly, my mouth dry, and my stomach void, save for that piece of gum I had accidentally swallowed: rotten driftwood suspended at sea. The bread had gone stale. I forced a crust down my throat, populating the ocean, but without butter, it left my mouth drier than before. My boyfriend looked up, mouth open, words half-formed, but he had also become too dry for me. Drizzling extra Virgin olive oil over a slice, I pondered over what made it so unfuckable.
I had asked him to buy plant-based butter yesterday, but instead he’d turned up with a plastic bag of Smirnoff and a packet of tobacco. Rollies, he was convinced, were better for your health. Or so his father used to say, after a 72 hour shift down the mines.
I took the tobacco from the table and rolled a wonky cigarette, asking him to lick it for me. I smoked it without opening the window. The imprint of my lips caressed the shaft. Hot, steaming, edged with red; I thought of the tampon I’d pulled out earlier. I had just been diagnosed with endometriosis; but at that moment, I wasn’t feeling any pain - physical or emotional.
I’ve been fucking someone else, he said, and rolled one for himself.
Smoothing the tobacco out with his thumb, he looked at me hard. He knew how his fingers turned me on. Their slimness, like a woman’s, had been what first attracted me to him, when we met, in that pub’s beer garden (Nick Drake had been playing, t-t-tinny through the speakers). He did not want me to forgive him; he wanted to fuck me. I had dreamt of him saying those words for months, and had breathed in that floral scent as though it were his own. Now, as he said them, it was but an echo in a cave. The last scratch of bread surrendered its hold on my throat and slid, with difficulty, into my hollow gut.
I left the room, and sat on the toilet seat, feeling, suddenly, egg-like, fragile. I thought of my mother, alone in Buckinghamshire, and wished she was capable of comfort. Perfecting pavlovas was all she knew. The seat was still warm from his morning visit. Through the tiny window, already clouding up with fresh smoke, I could make out the blurry, roaring vigour of Notting Hill. My neighbour stabbed someone again last week. I remember thinking when I heard the sirens, that I wouldn’t have minded if He had been the victim.
He knocked on the door.
I need the loo. Now.
I need some time alone.
He sighed, ostentatiously, and slid down the door. He let one rip to prove his point and drummed his (beautiful, lanky, tobacco-stained) fingers on the wood. I couldn’t believe I had allowed them to touch me. Perhaps it was the nicotine.
I didn’t think you’d react like this, he said.
I flushed the toilet, needlessly, ran the tap too long, and let my hand rest on the doorknob for a second. As I opened it, he started. He was holding the Smirnoff bottle, open and considerably depleted.
Don’t, Rooney. Remember what it did to your father.
He locked eyes with me and took a bold swig.
Fuck you, Sally.
Those were the last words he said to me. I pushed past, picked up the bag of tobacco, and joined the raw, swarming masses of the city.
{With thanks to EA, ZA, RP, EC, SDM, FW, DGB, EP & Sa Roo}