Diamond Dust and Moonstones
by Karen Jones
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A woman tries to recapture a past that never really existed.
_____________________________________________________________________
His chest hair, more red than blond – how could I have forgotten that? – irritates and tickles my nose with every inhalation as he holds me tightly, my head pressed against him. He smells sour and over-ripe – evidence of his long journey and insistence that he couldn’t hold off, couldn’t take the few minutes to shower. I want to pull away, to get as far away from here, from this, from him as I can. He strokes my hair; his hands are squarer, heavier than I remember. In my mind he was always the artist, the musician. His palms soft, fingers long and elegant. These hands that touch me now and make me shudder rather than shiver with pleasure, are hands more suited to a bricklayer.
He is still an artist and musician but his money comes from his day job, from real estate. And he has plenty of money, more than this grim hotel room would suggest. It was the first place we came to on our walk away from our pilgrimage to The Palomino Club, the scene of our first kiss twenty-five years ago. The club is still there, music drifting out into the street, but the sign has lost most of its letters and the few that are left hang precariously, faded and neglected; the ubiquitous wear and tear of the old, not worth repairing. We didn’t go in - we just looked at the fat, crooked letters reflected in the dirty puddle outside the door and shook our heads at how sad they looked. He didn’t want to walk any further than this place after that; the only thing from our past he said he really wanted was me, naked.
“I still can’t quite believe this. Can you? Can you believe this?” He’s slightly out of breath from his exertions. “Rhona?”
His voice doesn’t carry the cultured tones I remember. Far superior to my broad dialect, he had a voice that captivated me, promised things and places I had only imagined. When I tracked him down through old college friends and contacted him, it was by letter, so I had no way of knowing that the voice I’d heard in my frequent fantasies has gone, like the rest of him, downhill, skewed by the accent of his chosen home in America, but not far enough to be one thing or the other. More mongrel than hybrid, it grates.
My own voice is clipped, unnatural to my ears. “No. No, it’s quite unbelievable.”
“I never thought I’d get the chance to be with you again. I’ve thought about it – I’ve thought about it a lot – the sex was always spectacular. It was everything else that was screwed up, eh?”
He laughs. A pleased with himself laugh.
I feel like I might vomit. I think about a few moments ago, to the rough, frantic coupling, when I winced and struggled not to shout my disgust as a drop of sweat fell from the end of his nose and splashed onto my forehead. It’s not just physical repulsion – and I do find him repulsive – there’s something else. Guilt? No, I feel no guilt. I no longer have anyone to feel guilty about. But shame. I do feel shame. I’ve allowed myself to only remember the good parts of us. Tonight, here with him in this hovel, the minute he touched me the bad bullied its way back to the surface. I should have stopped him.
“Yes, well, you were never one for fidelity. That can be problematic in a relationship.” It slips out. I wish I could claw it back. It doesn’t matter now. It’s not like I’m planning to see him again, not as if we’re about to try again, but I don’t want him to see it still hurts. Until a moment ago, I didn’t know it did.
My hair feels the full blast of his snort of derision and a fresh wave of revulsion washes over me.
“Not exactly one to talk, are you? Unless you’re going to tell me Brendan knows you’re here tonight, fucking me for old time’s sake.”
The pain at hearing him use Brendan’s name winds me. “No. No he has no idea.”
“There you go then. And at least you and I were never married.”
Silence. Silence except for the dripping tap in the miniscule, mouldy wet-room. I went in there earlier, thinking if I freshened up, he’d do the same. The water had left a brown stain in the green sink. Avocado, that’s the colour. My parents had that suite in the 70s. Everyone did, even his parents. No one has it anymore. It’s all white now. I’m convinced we’ve managed to find the only hotel in Glasgow with a tasteless reminder of our childhood. We’ve also found old scabs to pick at and it’s happened a lot faster than I thought it would.
“So how is old Brendan? Still working?”
“He wasn’t that much older than me.”
He grabs the loose, stretch-marked skin around my belly. “Well you’re showing signs of having been around for a while, doll, so fair question.”
His attempt at slipping into an accent he never had is more offensive than his words. It always was. Raised by English parents, sent to private school in Glasgow, he remained virtually accentless.
So many repressed recollections battle for my attention. How he balked at the street I lived in when he first visited: “A council house? Really?” He had never been in one, couldn’t get over how tiny it was, couldn’t help letting my family see his amusement.
But I also recall how happy he was when he took me to the café where I had my first croissant, my first cappuccino. He took me to see bands I’d never heard of, subtitled films, plays I’d never have thought to see. So many firsts with my first. Those are the memories that have sustained me over the years. But he tired of it, of me, and his pleasure at showing me new things grew to scorn of my ignorance and innocence. How have I managed to forget the reality of what we were in the end?
“I had children. My body changed. It happens. I’m happy with it as it is now.”
He grabs at the loose skin again. “With this? You’re happy with this? Oh, let me guess, you’re still pretending to be a feminist and this shows you’ve lived, you’ve loved, you’re a real woman?” He laughs again.
I swing my legs off the bed, glad he didn’t give me the chance to remove my stockings earlier – I don’t want to put bare feet on this carpet. He reaches for my shoulder.
“Aw, come on. I’m only joking. We’ve turned out pretty well, you and me. You look fantastic for your age. We both do. Let’s not fight. I get the feeling you’re only going to give me tonight, so let’s not waste it.”
Fantastic for our age. His face is heavily lined and too tanned. He clearly enjoys his food more than is healthy or wise and his nose is red from too much booze. His eyes are dull, his hair thinning and those hands. What happened to his hands?
“I’m not fighting, I just have to leave.”
I hear him slump back down onto his pillow. “Oh, I remember this now. I remember your silences, your huffs that could last for days. And you wonder why I looked elsewhere for fun?”
I turn to look at him one last time. “But you stayed with me. You came back to me each time.”
He shrugs. “Like I said, the sex was great. Still is, eh?” He reaches out to me. “We can at least have a bit more fun since I came all this way. What do you say?”
I say goodbye, not just to him, to the romantic notion that one day he, my true love, would come back and take me with him. Now all I can think is, Brendan might have been boring – and was he? Or was he just safe, nice? – but he genuinely loved me, adored me. Jesus - a romanticised version of Brendan is already taking shape in my mind. I shake my head - waiting for someone who can’t come back would be too ridiculous, even by my standards.
Outside, I push my scarf up around my chin, more aware of jowls and wattle and gravity’s pull after an evening with someone who always saw my faults. I huddle into my coat – the one my daughter calls my funeral coat - and walk back to my empty house.
The night is cold and the pavement, if you’re in the right mood, looks like it’s speckled with diamond dust and moonstones. Tonight all I see is silver frost and trampled, discarded chewing gum.
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A woman tries to recapture a past that never really existed.
_____________________________________________________________________
His chest hair, more red than blond – how could I have forgotten that? – irritates and tickles my nose with every inhalation as he holds me tightly, my head pressed against him. He smells sour and over-ripe – evidence of his long journey and insistence that he couldn’t hold off, couldn’t take the few minutes to shower. I want to pull away, to get as far away from here, from this, from him as I can. He strokes my hair; his hands are squarer, heavier than I remember. In my mind he was always the artist, the musician. His palms soft, fingers long and elegant. These hands that touch me now and make me shudder rather than shiver with pleasure, are hands more suited to a bricklayer.
He is still an artist and musician but his money comes from his day job, from real estate. And he has plenty of money, more than this grim hotel room would suggest. It was the first place we came to on our walk away from our pilgrimage to The Palomino Club, the scene of our first kiss twenty-five years ago. The club is still there, music drifting out into the street, but the sign has lost most of its letters and the few that are left hang precariously, faded and neglected; the ubiquitous wear and tear of the old, not worth repairing. We didn’t go in - we just looked at the fat, crooked letters reflected in the dirty puddle outside the door and shook our heads at how sad they looked. He didn’t want to walk any further than this place after that; the only thing from our past he said he really wanted was me, naked.
“I still can’t quite believe this. Can you? Can you believe this?” He’s slightly out of breath from his exertions. “Rhona?”
His voice doesn’t carry the cultured tones I remember. Far superior to my broad dialect, he had a voice that captivated me, promised things and places I had only imagined. When I tracked him down through old college friends and contacted him, it was by letter, so I had no way of knowing that the voice I’d heard in my frequent fantasies has gone, like the rest of him, downhill, skewed by the accent of his chosen home in America, but not far enough to be one thing or the other. More mongrel than hybrid, it grates.
My own voice is clipped, unnatural to my ears. “No. No, it’s quite unbelievable.”
“I never thought I’d get the chance to be with you again. I’ve thought about it – I’ve thought about it a lot – the sex was always spectacular. It was everything else that was screwed up, eh?”
He laughs. A pleased with himself laugh.
I feel like I might vomit. I think about a few moments ago, to the rough, frantic coupling, when I winced and struggled not to shout my disgust as a drop of sweat fell from the end of his nose and splashed onto my forehead. It’s not just physical repulsion – and I do find him repulsive – there’s something else. Guilt? No, I feel no guilt. I no longer have anyone to feel guilty about. But shame. I do feel shame. I’ve allowed myself to only remember the good parts of us. Tonight, here with him in this hovel, the minute he touched me the bad bullied its way back to the surface. I should have stopped him.
“Yes, well, you were never one for fidelity. That can be problematic in a relationship.” It slips out. I wish I could claw it back. It doesn’t matter now. It’s not like I’m planning to see him again, not as if we’re about to try again, but I don’t want him to see it still hurts. Until a moment ago, I didn’t know it did.
My hair feels the full blast of his snort of derision and a fresh wave of revulsion washes over me.
“Not exactly one to talk, are you? Unless you’re going to tell me Brendan knows you’re here tonight, fucking me for old time’s sake.”
The pain at hearing him use Brendan’s name winds me. “No. No he has no idea.”
“There you go then. And at least you and I were never married.”
Silence. Silence except for the dripping tap in the miniscule, mouldy wet-room. I went in there earlier, thinking if I freshened up, he’d do the same. The water had left a brown stain in the green sink. Avocado, that’s the colour. My parents had that suite in the 70s. Everyone did, even his parents. No one has it anymore. It’s all white now. I’m convinced we’ve managed to find the only hotel in Glasgow with a tasteless reminder of our childhood. We’ve also found old scabs to pick at and it’s happened a lot faster than I thought it would.
“So how is old Brendan? Still working?”
“He wasn’t that much older than me.”
He grabs the loose, stretch-marked skin around my belly. “Well you’re showing signs of having been around for a while, doll, so fair question.”
His attempt at slipping into an accent he never had is more offensive than his words. It always was. Raised by English parents, sent to private school in Glasgow, he remained virtually accentless.
So many repressed recollections battle for my attention. How he balked at the street I lived in when he first visited: “A council house? Really?” He had never been in one, couldn’t get over how tiny it was, couldn’t help letting my family see his amusement.
But I also recall how happy he was when he took me to the café where I had my first croissant, my first cappuccino. He took me to see bands I’d never heard of, subtitled films, plays I’d never have thought to see. So many firsts with my first. Those are the memories that have sustained me over the years. But he tired of it, of me, and his pleasure at showing me new things grew to scorn of my ignorance and innocence. How have I managed to forget the reality of what we were in the end?
“I had children. My body changed. It happens. I’m happy with it as it is now.”
He grabs at the loose skin again. “With this? You’re happy with this? Oh, let me guess, you’re still pretending to be a feminist and this shows you’ve lived, you’ve loved, you’re a real woman?” He laughs again.
I swing my legs off the bed, glad he didn’t give me the chance to remove my stockings earlier – I don’t want to put bare feet on this carpet. He reaches for my shoulder.
“Aw, come on. I’m only joking. We’ve turned out pretty well, you and me. You look fantastic for your age. We both do. Let’s not fight. I get the feeling you’re only going to give me tonight, so let’s not waste it.”
Fantastic for our age. His face is heavily lined and too tanned. He clearly enjoys his food more than is healthy or wise and his nose is red from too much booze. His eyes are dull, his hair thinning and those hands. What happened to his hands?
“I’m not fighting, I just have to leave.”
I hear him slump back down onto his pillow. “Oh, I remember this now. I remember your silences, your huffs that could last for days. And you wonder why I looked elsewhere for fun?”
I turn to look at him one last time. “But you stayed with me. You came back to me each time.”
He shrugs. “Like I said, the sex was great. Still is, eh?” He reaches out to me. “We can at least have a bit more fun since I came all this way. What do you say?”
I say goodbye, not just to him, to the romantic notion that one day he, my true love, would come back and take me with him. Now all I can think is, Brendan might have been boring – and was he? Or was he just safe, nice? – but he genuinely loved me, adored me. Jesus - a romanticised version of Brendan is already taking shape in my mind. I shake my head - waiting for someone who can’t come back would be too ridiculous, even by my standards.
Outside, I push my scarf up around my chin, more aware of jowls and wattle and gravity’s pull after an evening with someone who always saw my faults. I huddle into my coat – the one my daughter calls my funeral coat - and walk back to my empty house.
The night is cold and the pavement, if you’re in the right mood, looks like it’s speckled with diamond dust and moonstones. Tonight all I see is silver frost and trampled, discarded chewing gum.
About the Author
Karen Jones is from Glasgow. She was short listed for the 2007 Asham
Award, took third prize in the 2010 Mslexia short story competition, received
an honourable mention in The Spilling Ink short fiction competition 2011, won
second prize in the Flash 500 competition 2012, first prize in Flash 500
competition 2013 and first prize in the Words With Jam Shorter Fiction
Competition 2013. Her stories have
appeared in numerous magazines, ezines and anthologies. She salsa dances. She salsa dances a lot.