NIGHTS IN WHITE COTTEN

by Alexandra Fox

Hot. The weight of the night’s all over her, air heavy with breathed molecules, sour, saturated. If she moves her arm it suckslides wetly, slick against her body. She’s lying naked in the wetdark; her body leaves a Turin sweatshadow on the sheet, but if she moves, just slides a little sideways to a dry patch the soaked shape will not evaporate, but leave a salt-caked imprint lying next to her, a phantom lover, unwelcome in the heat, unwanted, an unbearable two-ness (it was unbearable to him).

No breeze stirs, plays upon her body. The air squats on top of her, inert, unblinking. The balcony door is open but there is no exchange of space. This hotel room is a cell in a long sheet of bubble wrap, pumped full, waiting for the pressure of a broad squashing thumb.

Noise. Voices. Feet outside. Which sound hits her first, along the dark canyon between the office blocks, is it the cheap soles of hard sandals, strapped flapping to feet, with their piked, pointed heels tapping? Is it the uninhibited, uncompromised laughter, loosened by Bacardi, bubbling with coke?

The back of her eyes ache from sleepstriving in the darkness, rubbed raw by the grinding of sharp thoughts tumbling in her head. Why lie, try? The top sheet is discarded, crumpled at the end of the bed. She folds it, wraps it round herself, tight over her breasts, tucking it in, securing. The cotton wicks sweat from her underarms.

She steps out onto the balcony, concrete floor sandpaper sharp against her bare soles. The railing’s hot, carbuncled with rust eating away at the structure beneath, black paint peeling off on her fingers. How many years does it take for the city life to chew towards the core (her core), flaking, exposing raw layers of silverbright, corroding them, digging deeper, ever deeper till all that’s left is a thread, a tenuous string of chewing-gum evanescence, snapping with the twang of a triangular plectrum?

Four girls down there, spat out by a nightclub. Not tarts. Not paid tarts. Three giggling, high, excited, the other slumped, dragged between them, shoeless, limply protesting, face fat sulphur yellow, fading in and out with the sodium flickersickness of the streetlamp. A shudder runs visibly upwards through her body, convulsively retching, a snake unswallowing an egg. They drop her to the ground (her knees must hurt, graze (she understands pain, sympathises)) and she crouches in the road, spewing dark fluid, sick sticking in the straightness of her long blonde hair, miniskirt minimised to a belt, buttocks open to the night, split by a thong. She stands, sways, steps into the dark pool. They walk on.

Why would anyone (he) find them attractive, in their unformed, uniformed banality? Their skin might glow on the surface, but there’s no substance constructed beneath. They’ll exchange bodily fluids easily enough, but where’s the mix of fluids of the mind, experience – the cocktail full of taste, heady, strong, shaking the soul, stirring the emotions rather than the groin?

There’s silence now, but it’s not quiet. The stillness is underpinned by blacknoise, night throbbings, indistinguishable traffic rumblings, the slow deep arterial city pulse, the creak of ten thousand bodies simultaneously turning over in bed, restless in the heat, pulling apart, away from one another in their double, queensize, kingsize beds, making space, letting air in between them (him and her).

Heavy feet, uneven. A young man lurches. He sees her, poised on her balcony stage, in her white Cicero toga. He stops, double-takes dramatically. She smiles.

And as she looked down on him (his hair’s receding already, from a centre point), he unzips, whips out his prick, and pisses an endless yellow torrent against the wall below. His hand passes through the stream. He salutes her, throwing heavy drops, shakes, zips. Walks on.

Why are men so careless where they deposit their fluids? They have such pride in the wrongness of it, seeking applause, approbation, the cheers of their peers (what a man!). Why do they think it cool to piss under the moon? (Why is it such an achievement for an ancient wrinkled sperm to swim its stiff-shouldered breaststroke, reach the other end of the pool, and get pulled from the water by warm, young, welcoming arms?)

This night has been long. It wears her into weariness, yearning for lost years, tearing her apart, tearless. There are no stars, no points of brilliance. She knows they’re up there, in the clarity, that stretched infinity of dark, but they’re obscured from her, hidden by low cloud, by the reflection of city lights, traffic, the thick, airless miasma of day-to-day people trudging through full streets, eyes to the pavement, weaving patterns so they need never touch.

There’s a hint of silver sheeting, now, unrolling from the east, brushing the cloud bases with unblackness. There’s a stirring in the dark heft of night air, almost imperceptible, the shadow of the memory of a breeze, not cooling yet, but moving the heat. It needs to strengthen, wipe her sweatsour body, windfingers pushing from behind, moving her on.

Her hair falls dark against the white of her sarong, and she sees the road’s river below her, thinks of jostling splashing naked men, ritual purification. She untucks the secure fold, slips the white cotton from her naked body, walks into the room, switches on the light.

END

Alexandra Fox lives in a village in England and began writing short stories in January 2004. She has won or been placed in the Momaya, Peninsular, JBWB, BBC, Cambrensis, Hastings, SIWC, Northern Echo/Orange, Blackberry Hills and LitPot competitions, and has publications in InkPot, QWF, Aesthetica and many ezines. Lexie writes with Alex Keegan's Bootcamp.