Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

on time to be perfectly late. Daniel would be early, I guessed. He was probably carving pumpkins and throwing fake spiderweb around with – David, was it? We turned down a blueing suburban street of white and cream bungalows that at its middle point turned upwards at an angle that looked from our vantage point Escheresque. On the other side of the dip it was like a mirror image of the street’s beginning, or, not exactly a mirror, a worse copy, off tilt. Even here, in this non-iconic part of the city, the streetscapes strung themselves uncanny. That was why I was here, I suddenly thought, taking a breath. That was why I remained all this time, because I could love a city so angular and ancient, full of stone secrets, folding them open. And so it was with my man Tom. Our point of commonality. I took his hand and down we walked.

Between

‘This is it,’ Tom said, fingering the map on his phone, scrubbing the highlight around our destination. We were both sweating. I made us wait in the cold a little longer – the sky still had a green tinge to it, and Tom was on the cusp of telling me something profound and delicious about his psyche. When nothing happened, I thought it might be a good idea to kiss him. He pulled back and touched his lips.

‘Did you get any on me?’ He looked at his fingers.

‘No, it’s kiss-proof.’

‘I never believe that,’ he said.

‘You haven’t tried it enough. It works.’ And I leaned in to kiss him again, but again he pulled back.

‘Don’t.’

‘Okay,’ I said. I wanted to ask, now. About his violent dream. But it wasn’t good timing – and it never would be. Suddenly he took me by the waist and spun me round. His hands remained on my waist. His gaze softened.

‘Forgive me?’ he asked.

I smiled, what else could I do?

It doesn’t only work when you know what you might really be forgiving.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘me too, if I’ve ever let you feel like you are alone. I never meant it. I like you a lot, Tom. You’re very likeable.’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said, ironic, smiling. He kissed me, then nothing was wrong, and we went in, and the party swelled for us and we danced.

And We Danced

Have you ever just waltzed into a place? I mean, really, in three-fourths time? Immediately we were in the door, Tom clasped my hand and away we went. Tom was an immense dancer; all sleek white movement, airy, as if he had practiced until his feet filled with blood, that old Hollywood glamour standard. Which he might have; I did not know him. We were white and black, fabric hanging over our bodies, we were our breaths timed with our skimming feet. I hardly knew what I was doing with my body and almost didn’t have to. That’s a lie – if I’d been clumsy that would have taken him down. But I am serviceable. We swung around the room, I held on tight. This state is unreal, I thought, the parquet floor moving beneath us and the room spinning golden and white and black from its static occupants in their costumes, clutching their cocktails and champagne. Some states of being are richer than others. The material of the moment, time itself and everything extant there and around you made proprietary, custom, of excellent quality, so that it drapes over you, satin, golden touched. We danced through the living room seamlessly into the kitchen and back again, the crowd surging around us and giving us air. We danced into the outside space, a stranger helpfully opening the French windows ahead of our sweep so we went on out onto the stone patio in the square of cast light. The music flooded the outdoors in which we turned a few times and then came back in. We must have danced unbroken for thirty minutes. But when I said I needed water, Tom dropped my hand – we were like that at the sideboard, where the drinks were – he palmed me off to one of the hosts, and when I turned to ask what he wanted, he was gone.

Ballad of the Modernist House

I went and sat down with Daniel and Mark. I was talking to them, gulping water, but I was thinking of the ballad of Tam Lin. Tam Lin was the lover, the passive beloved, enchanted. The maiden Margaret, or Janet the maiden, who danced through Carterhaugh woods, plucked a double rose and gave it to him, to her Tam Lin – and we all know what that means. They held each other close pressed against the blossom. Tam himself was not a fairy but a possession of the Fairy Queen’s. A human boytoy tethered to the otherworld. He tells Margaret he fears being given to Hell, that night, on Hallowe’en. It is Margaret, knocked up and vehement, who must prevent this, holding him tight, gripping the human out of the fey. Tam tells her he will be transformed into a newt, an adder, a lion, a bright bit of burning metal in her arms, and through it, she must hold him still. If she wishes to win her man, to stop the father of her baby being dragged to the devil. Which, in the ballad, she mostly does. I caught a glimpse of Tom’s white suit as he slinked through a doorway, surrounded by six tall women in sheath gowns of ivory silk. I followed him with my eyes until he was dazzling against an underfilled bookcase (vase, white hardback magazine, fern) and blotted out the back of a large man with tall hair, black as a newborn colt.

I peered into my glass at the musky white liquid at the bottom of it. I drank it down and got another. The company bored me – Mark had a very unpleasant look to him, I thought – and I staggered off looking for something in the