Written by "Eraia" for NaNoWriMo 2006.
We aren’t sure why he disappeared, and we aren’t sure why he came back. Left isn’t a strong enough word for what he did. Leaving implies packing, maybe even goodbyes, but goodbyes weren’t Riki’s style. He was the kind of guy who never seems to s**t or eat. Didn’t make an impression.
Hell, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know any of them. Riki happened when Teiya was still at school. Riki happened before. Riki was part of the past.
It feels like I’m the only one who remembers that Riki wasn’t here, that he was more conspicuous in his absence. The shadow he left was longer, for the rest of us.
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There wasn’t much that she’d been able to pick up. There wasn’t much she’d needed, but he’d insisted on gloves and a scarf. She was unsure, even now they were this close to the counter, how to dissuade him from paying for them. They smelt, like everything else in the shop of must, and faintly of mushrooms. She held on to his arm, and that was enough to bring a slight pink blush to his cheeks. Just by the counter, she saw a hat on the shelf above the shoes. It was a brown, slightly battered, wool fedora. She shoved the winter clothes they’d picked for her into his hands and grabbed the hat. The shelf was high enough to force her to stretch a little. With a smile she wasn’t feeling self conscious enough to be even aware of, she put the pushed the hat down onto to his head.
It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was close enough. He looked at her, slightly confused, frowning a little, but the look on her face was enough to make him smile too and to stop him from saying anything. For once, she didn’t mind.
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I was walking back, in the rain, the night I met Val. Walking, blindly, through what might be better described as sleet. The cold numbed my fingers, turning them an interesting shade of purple that I couldn’t see in the dark. My circulation was never very good. But I didn’t shiver. I didn’t feel the cold.
Considering where I live, it’s a miracle I ended up where I did. Some twist of fate maybe, if that’s the kind of thing you like. Ending up somewhere where I don’t belong isn’t too rare for me anyway. It wasn’t like I’d wondered into some area where I was going to get beaten up or shot at.
I’d been at a friend’s. Sitting on the floor, drinking tea. Toma’s floor, Toma’s tea. But I didn’t take any of Toma’s money, and I didn’t take anything else, so, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t run into Toma’s wife either, so I was cruising for a fall. I should have dropped the cup or something. I should have taken a tenner.
He hadn’t been in the best mood with me that night. I felt like a child who’d been scolded just because he’d been a little chill with me. I’d tried to make him laugh, make him forget, but he hadn’t bitten. I was a little gone; he’d been giving me wine because it’s what civilised people do. He’d shown me to the door because that’s what civilised people do. By the end of the evening I was beginning to think that’s why he’d invited me.
I was happier to be walking home than trying to be sociable. The street lights left little puddles of orange, the air was full of static. My head was buzzing. I’d lost my bus ticket. A mile and a half walk, in the rain.
I liked that image of my self. Desolate, walking home, abandoned. Some kind of mucky glamour. Beggars can't be choosers.
Maybe I can just say that Val appeared there one day, like a changeling, but I want this to make sense, because I want this to make myself feel better, so I have to be honest about my self too.
I took a turn, just like in a film, into a side street, taking a short cut across the centre, getting away from the main road. The world shrunk a little, the walls on either side obscuring the sky. It seemed like real night time, rather than a film set. After a few steps I heard voices. One slightly drunk voice, slurring words, a less drunk one talking frantic bursts and someone sounding stone cold sober, begging.
How do you react to conflict situations? I turned into the alley the three of them were in. Next, I'm afraid, there's a blur. Shouting, some middle class attempts at fighting. Something smallish and warm, jacket a little ripped, resting on me.
I helped him up. He never stopped talking, but I never started listening. I told him he should be suffering from shock and being quieter about it, he asked me where I was taking him. I helped him onto the bus and paid even less attention to the bus driver than usual.
When the light when on, as the bus doors opened, I realised there was more wrong than a ripped jacket. He had gravel rash along one side of his face and one of his eyes didn't seem to be opening properly. What had been going on? Was I helping the right party here?
He was short, with hair to the middle of his shoulder blades and, once that cheek had healed, handsome, in a rough way. The one eye I could see was the colour of ice at the side of the road, and, at that point, there didn't seem to be anything behind it.
I bundled him down into the seat next to me. He was still warmer than I was and still talking, asking me questions. I asked just one: police? He shook his head, and I didn't ask any more. I was at loss at what to do. I offered him a bath, some thing to eat. There was very little traffic on the road and I the bus journey took much less time than I'd have liked. I pulled him off the bus, up the steps, up the next three flights and, finally, into my flat. I ran him a bath, the heat from the steam was enough to make my hands, cold as they were, tingle.
I waited, just outside the bathroom door, while he washed, with my head against the wall.
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Is everything ok with you?
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It wasn't the cold that had him on a down. Well, not just the cold. The revolutions of the bus wheels had more to do with it. Each revolution took him further away from her and closer to nothing. The bus passed the cathedral and stopped, but no one got on or off. The inefficient efficacy made him feel like a ball bearing. All the bus held was light and three other people. Outside it was cold, but the long walk might have been more enjoyable, now he thought about it. There’d be variety. There'd be something to see. Something to think about that wasn't the turn of the wheels putting the distance of their circumference between them.
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It was autumn, but the leaves were still on the trees, and Ruki came back.
Teiya watched people walking in and out of the pub. Impossibly and irritatingly more people seemed to be walking out than walked in at all. She adjusted cardboard coasters on the tables, flicked her employer looks he was too tired to analyse and spooked the customers a little.
The evening crowd would, hopefully, turn up eventually, but the last of the early drinkers were stretching out their last drinks beyond the realms of common sense and her patience. It took a force of will not to start swatting at them. That kind of thing was, Alex had told her, bad for business.
Alex was slumped across the bar. All 6'4’’ of him, just bending. Dreadlocks and innocent grins properly weren’t too great for business either. Alex seemed to do ok though. He kept the place a pub, didn't serve food or too many complicated drinks. Nothing on the walls that thought it was clever. Nothing was designed and certainly nothing was designer. . Nothing had changed for as long as Alex had been working behind the bar and to his memory, nothing had since he'd started coming in at fourteen with a hilariously bad false ID.
"Where’s Ruo when you need him?" Alex asked. Teiya chose to believe the remark had been aimed at her and gave an apathetic shrug. She walked loosely over to the bar and tried to look useful by adjusting bottles of sprits by micromillimeters. It'd be better if Ruo didn't come, she almost said. Ruo's bony hands and cartoon eyeliner could be done without. Ruo could, in Teiya's opinion, be done without. But he was Alex's friend and that was special enough.
He turned up, and he was right in front of her before she even noticed her. Ruo smiled at her, but her smile came a little too late. He was wearing dark, tight jeans and a proper shirt. An unimaginative uniform she'd never seen significantly altered. Alex's face lit up as soon as he noticed Ruo. He greeted him warmly, and got a brief smile for his efforts. Ruo sat down, head in one hand and ordered something that Teiya wouldn't have drunk. He was acting as if he'd just walked in off the street. Teiya felt a little spot of tension constricting at the base of her neck.
There was an expectant, drawn out pause before he spoke. All he said then was ‘Hi’, but it seemed to release a little of the pressure. There were, as ever, deep pouches under his eyes, like three day old bruises and his voice sounded of cigarettes and liquor. More so than it had time to develop in the short time he’d had. But Ruo could ham up being blond, and his hair was, somewhat miraculously, natural.
He opened his mouth again, to say something, and maybe he did, but for Teiya, at that moment, Ruo and everything else stopped existing. Behind him, walking in through the heavy, double doors, came Ruki. She wasn’t sure if he was taller or shorter, if his hair had changed in five years or if he’d lost or gained weight. The essential image she had of him was fluid, depending on how she saw how things had been. Whatever may have or may not have altered, the essential fact had not changed; he was Ruki. The only new information there was that he was there, alive, and not somewhere else.
He didn’t look at her, at first, because he hadn’t noticed her. She didn’t dye her hair like she had when they’d known each other before. Her image of him may have been moveable, but was his, him being male, more physical? And how much had she changed? But more importantly, he wouldn’t notice her out of the corner of his eyes because he simply didn’t do that. Ruki always looked straight ahead. The edges of the world didn’t bother him, because he didn’t see them.
Teiya’s chest seemed stiff, as if she had a bad cold. She had to make a conscious effort to keep her lungs filling and emptying. Alex didn’t notice, or else he didn’t say anything, or else she didn’t hear him. Ruki was alone.
He turned, but the moment where their eyed would meet and he’d run away didn’t come yet. When she’d last seen him she’d been too young to work in a pub.
He looked at her. He could probably barely see her at this distance, but he recognised her. She could see that from his face. His eyes were suddenly huge, like a rabbit hypnotised by the gaze of a snake. For a length of time that couldn’t be measured, they looked at each other. Or, he looked at her and she looked beyond and through him
He didn’t run. He took a few steps towards her, and, yes, he had lost weight. She felt annoyed, she’d wanted him back just as he‘d left her. He didn’t grin at her, which she’d almost expected, but met her eyes, once he was close enough, quite openly. Although that may have just been in comparison to what she remembered. His eyes lashes were thicker than she’s remembered, more feminine.
‘Teiya’.
She hadn’t heard his voice say her name for a long time, but it wasn’t until he did that she realised she’d been wanting too. Teiya. He only said it once, and it cut through the silence she’d created in her head, letting other sounds in for just that second. Then, again, the buzzing returned, making everything softer.
“Sorry.” It was even more meaningless than normal now. It took her longer to hear it than it took him to say it. She knew that, for him, the world was still running normally, with just a touch of blue, rather than fading out altogether, like the details of yesterday nights dream. She knew that his walking in here had been an accident. She knew he hadn’t been looking for her.
“Do you two want to talk?” Alex asked, eternally gauche. Ruki nodded for her and they were in the room behind the bar.
Ruki leaned against the back wall. He didn’t seem to be looking at her. He kept his head down and the brim of his hat stopped her from knowing where he was looking. Unbeknownst to her his eyes flickered around the room, unsure of where best to rest. There was nothing to say.
The silence felt bizarrely comfortable. Teiya folded her arms, protecting her self from what ever he might throw at her. He stood up straight, suddenly, and walked towards her. She could smell vodka and cigarettes before he even got close, but that didn’t worry her. Like the silence, it was comforting. Slowly, he lifted his head. He looked at her, from an almost uncomfortable close proximity. For a terrible, beautiful, ambivalent moment, she thought he might kiss her. He didn’t. She thought at least that he might say something, but he didn’t.
By his silence, he passed the responsibility on to her, and she wasn’t prepared for it either. She turned her head away. His breathing deepened. After a few moments, she realised that she didn’t want it to end with her unable to see him or to see him leave. He met her eyes again, and nodded. He smiled an apologetic, grim smile that didn’t contain any of the loss it should have. Then, as if she’d dismissed him, he turned and left.
She came back out of the back room, shaking a little. There was an odd, pleasant feeling that made her feel nauseous and that she was eager to try and disown. After he’d left the first time Teru had told her that it would be better if he’d died or killed himself, and, for the first time, Teiya found her self agreeing with the bloodthirsty idea.
Alex looked at her, with trusting, cow-like eyes almost exactly the shame shade as Ruki’s, but with such a different type of stuff behind them they might have been a different organ. She ran a hand through her hair, noted Ruo’s absence and steeled herself to start serving drinks to the later crowd.
Alex said no more than Ruki. Just like in the past his silence seemed to have an infectious quality to it. Speech seemed redundant and, no matter what was said, tactless. Alex didn’t touch her, or try to reach out any other way and she was glad. It made it easier to ignore it and push it away if no one else acknowledged it.
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When she’d slept with Jackie, he’d had a dent in his knee that, when she asked, he said was from the book case under his computer chair. He was in the habit of resting his knees on it, and he’d been online just before he’d come down to see her. He sat there for long time, it seemed, and the mark had a certain degree of permanency. She never saw it again.
He didn’t mention his brother and she didn’t either. He hung in the silence between them, his name ringing in their heads, conspicuous in its absence.
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I slipped a dressing gown around the door and asked him if he wanted something to eat. I hadn’t thought of it before. He almost smiled, I swear, as he asked for porridge, which, by some mad luck, I happened to have the ingredients for. If he’s asked for, say, a sandwich, he’d have been out of luck.
The warm smell of warm oats and milk was enough to make me feel famished. I’d already sobered up enough. That kind of thing can do that. He came down, wrapped in my dressing gown, looking less beat up than I’d expected now I looked at him properly in the light. He took the bowl I’d spooned out without a word of thanks and found my living room. He sat on the sofa with his legs up, keeping the bowl close to his face. He was adsorbed in eating. Surely, I thought, he should be in shock. He shouldn’t be eating so hungrily. He should be throwing up. He did, later that night.
I watched him from the doorway, and he didn’t once look in my direction until he’d finished. Then, he thanked me for the food, but also shook the bowl in my direction. I left it in to soak, burning my hand on the hot tap.
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Ruo ran his hand along the spine of the book. It was cheap. The cardboard was dishearteningly flimsy and the gold lettering that his pseudonym had been written in on the back of the spine was already rubbing off, just from having been in his jacket pocket for a day or two. The picture on the front was garish, but less garish than he’d expected. The paper was more grey than white, and not in an unbleached, let’s-save-the-whales, way.
The sense of accomplishment he’d been expecting was entirely absent. Val would be impressed. He’d squirm and purr. Alex would nod appreciatively and not get the point because one book was much the same as another to him. Knowing an author of any kind would seem like a good thing to him.
He hadn’t broken the wearing good news to Val yet, although he’d put the check in the bank some time ago. Val didn’t notice things like that. He could have removed all the money from that account and Val would have been none the wiser. And, why, any way, should he be? That was all Ruo’s money, really. Val had his own savings account, but Ruo’s was the account.
He wasn’t even sure it was worth telling him. Val would understand, and, although he’d know it was an achievement, he’d understand the humiliation and that would make it unbearable. Would, if the book was left on a surface, Val be able to tell that it was his nom de plume on the cover? Ruo didn’t want to know, because he didn’t want to know how much he knew about him.
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I offered him my bed, but even in that state he refused and insisted on the sofa. My cat took a shine to him, although it tended to ignore me. Before I went to bed I checked up on him. Despite, or maybe because of everything he was already asleep. My cat was lying on his chest and he was under a thin sheet. I didn’t have any spare bedding.
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Orange and Almond Cup Cakes
Ingredients
6 medium eggs
12oz self-raising flour
12oz butter
12oz caster sugar
Almond essence
2 Oranges
Method
1. Preheat the oven to Gas 4.
2. Lightly butter and line the base of a 7in cake tin with edge of butter paper
3. Cream the butter and sugar together and then gradually beat in the eggs.
4. Sift the flour and fold into the mixture, a little at a time.
5. Pour into the cake tin, level off the mixture with a palette knife and bake for about 90 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
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He didn’t really need this much space and, if she was honest, it was making her feel a little nervous, now that she felt that she was alone. He was lying on his stomach, not looking at her, holding a pen. She bit her lip. It’s had to have a conversation by yourself. If she was bright and cheery, he’d ignore her. If she tried to talk about it, he’d get frustrated at himself, more so, and that would make it worse.
She stood up, walked across the room and put a record on. In any other boy’s room she’d have felt good about that. They’d have watched her, smiled, said something about the record, no, probably CD, that she’d put on, but he didn’t say a word.
She sat on the bed next to him. It was a hot day. The room was well lit. There was no reason for her to feel like she was suffocating. Slowly, leaning just a little, she reached under his chin and touched his throat.
He breathed in audibly; the silence in the room became less threatening. The dead musicians looking down at her seemed less threatening. She let her hand rest there, and liked to think if he’d thought he was able he’d have pulled her down next to him, but as usual, it was up to her. She lay down next to him, held him; He shook a little, but relaxed. He put his head against her stomach, his arms around her waist.
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Yeah, I missed you too.
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She’d been with Riki’s brother for three months when it happed and she knew that it wasn’t going anywhere. Being with him had turned into something she did because it was what she did. It wasn’t that she disliked him. They just didn’t fit. She’d let him do the things he wanted to do too easily, maybe. Maybe it wasn’t her. Kissing him she felt like she was watching repeats that hadn’t been that great the first time.
She’d been sitting on his bed, in his odd, grown up room, trying to talk. He was nice. The conversation lagged; maybe she should have kissed him. He had long hair and dark eyes. It wasn’t hard to find nice things about him. He said something that might have been a joke and so she smiled, snorted in a polite girl way.
He was just a few inches away from her. He looked, smelt and tasted older than he was. He got up and changed the CD. She wanted to go home. The lack of need she felt to be here was the problem. If this had been a friend, and she was a little bored, like this, then it wouldn’t have bothered her. Maybe that’s all he was really, a friend. The thought was comforting.
Before he’d pressed the button on the CD played a note cut the silence. The deep, rich tone was instantly familiar. There was an odd moment when she thought he’d put on some blues, but, no, the noise was coming from above. Someone in the upstairs was playing the saxophone. They were playing what she assumed was a scale.
An odd look came over his face.
“I told him you were here. He must have forgotten.” She wasn’t sure what he meant. Had he forbidden whoever it was to play while she was here? It didn’t seem especially likely. She wanted to know who the person playing was. They were good, she could tell that much, and it was more than just wanting something else to do,
Teiya grinned at him, ignoring what he’d said last. On impulse she’d grabbed his hand before running out the door.
“Look, this really isn’t a good idea.” but he didn’t make any effort to stop her. She pulled him up towards the sound. She’d never been up these stairs before; she’d never had a reason to. One of his brothers, he had two and she’d never seen either of them, probably had his bedroom up here. “He won't want to see you.”
The music hadn’t stopped, but when she opened the door to the attic room it did. Abruptly. The room was larger than the bedroom she’d just left; it seemed to take up the entire top floor. It was neater too, almost as if no one lived there. There was no dust and no clutter. There was no piles of magazines, there was no CD’s out of their cases, there was no books of their shelves. There was no clutter. There was no TV and no computer. His room wasn’t the only thing about Riki that could be best described by the lack of things.
Riki looked at her, an intruder, and he was sure, with a cruelty that wasn’t normal for her, the first girl to walk up those stairs and certainly the first to open that door, with an impassive, generalised fear. He gave her a good, quick look and then looked at his brother. He was holding the sax without a neck brace. He’d taken off his tie, but other than that he was still in his school uniform.
His brother smiled apologetically. Teiya thought that Riki might get angry; she thought he might shout, she expected him to say something. But he didn’t. He looked at his brother and waited for him to do something.
Teiya wanted to hug him; she felt, as soon as she saw him, a rush of protective feeling. She’d never seen, never noticed him at school, but she was knew he went to the same one as her and his brother. He slouched a little, even now he’d put the sax down, with the bad posture of the invisible. Did he know who she was? There’d been no flicker of recognition when he’d looked at her. He must have known who she was now though.
“You’re really good!” She smiled warmly and naturally at him. The situation was awkward, certainly, but exciting too. Her mouth felt a little dry. His lips turned up a little at the corners and he shook his head. His brother was against the wall by the door, he said nothing.
“No, you are!” She hated how artificial, how scripted, her words seemed to be coming out but she meant them. He didn’t say a word to her.
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“Is this your way of saying ‘to’ and ‘from’?"
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He woke up the next morning before me. Everything happened far too early. The cat mewled at him, so he came to ask me where the food was. The gesture was so mundane as to be ridiculous. I didn’t know what to do next. Where was he from? Who was he? What if he was homeless?
I sent him away, that first morning, without as much as the money for a bus or even my address. The flat relaxed back into it’s self with him gone. I fed the cat. I hadn’t told him my name, and I felt, then, as if things had just been dealt with. He’d return to whatever his role was, and I’d return to mine. The little sphere’s we lived in within the city had never clashed before, and there was, I hoped, no reason for them to do so again.
Three days later, I saw him while I was out shopping. The coincidence of us being there at the same time was more than a small one. I was never up by this time and he always did his shopping else where. I could, I thought later after he left, have passed him any time in town before without even noticing him.
I turned a corner, and there he was. I’d been thinking of him, naturally enough, over the last few days and him there, in front of me was like an image from a dream. The version of him inside my head seemed more him to me than the real thing, and so the effect was like that of hearing a song heard only in passing again, or a cover version of a favourite song.
I was ready to ignore him. We didn’t, after all, know each other. We had no common ground we knew of other than an incident I at least was all too happy to forget. I would have walked right past him, but he looked up at me, and I glared back.
He stopped in the middle of the street and gave me a long, hard look. I only got the benefit of half of it; I carried on walking.
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Ruo left after Ruki, disapproving like a shadow. Alex elected to let Teiya off early. She only managed to stop crying for long enough to reapply her make up. Crying didn’t suit her, and she’d rather that no one, not even Alex, saw her. She gave him a hug before leaving. He was broad shouldered and slightly husky, and after that even that was enough to make a lump rise in her throat. She didn’t say goodbye, but he knew.
Oddly, as soon as she was out of the bar she didn’t feel like crying anymore. She felt like sleep, a lot of sleep. She knew she should call Ruki’s brother; ask him if he knew he was back in Bristol. Tell him he was still alive. But the words would catch in her throat and she didn’t want to hear that he’d known these things before she had. He never lied, although he occasionally missed out the truth, ignored the parts he didn’t like, and fed her the abridged, bowdlerised version.
Back home, she felt lonely suddenly, and very cold. She pulled the duvet close around her. It wasn’t dark outside yet. She couldn’t bear the silence.
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This wasn’t the kind of hotel room she’d expected, even though she’d known that he hadn’t chosen it, it wasn’t a setting she could imagine him in but he was lying there, next to her. So close that she could feel his body heat, close enough to prove he was real.
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I think he left me because I thought he couldn’t. He was gone before I woke up but he was meant to be. I didn’t start worrying until eight. He left for work at seven and I didn’t normally wake up until at least twelve.
We didn’t argue the night before he left. We hadn’t argued for weeks, and maybe that was then problem. We’d always fought, over the smallest thing. The tension between us was what kept us so close, but the tension released, the rubber band rotted.
I carried on with my day the way I normally did, but when it was time to eat, I didn’t because he always cooked, and when it was time to go to bed, I felt confused and lost.
So, what after that? How do you grieve for someone who isn’t dead? I stopped, in so much that I carried on as before, but without him. There hadn’t been any room for anyone else in my life since we’d been together, so now there was no one. My sleeping pattern stared to become more normal, with no one to see me, I started wearing glasses.
I lived and breathed loneliness so much that it became just another thing. It was like moving to a country with a different climate; I acclimatized. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t sometimes wish that it was cooler.
The lie that lay of the centre of our relationship became, in my life, an open secret. He wasn’t the one who needed me more. By leaving me, he killed me.
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Ruki and Teiya met in the mornings, before school started. He’d smile, when he saw her, which was, invariably, a long time after she’s recognised him. It wasn’t just that he stood out more, being tall, curly haired and wearing that hat, but Ruki’s eye sight was terrible. She stood in the same place every morning, but she was sure that if she didn’t call out his name he’d walk right past her half the time.
She stood by the gate, but as soon as they met, they started walking to some where more private. The need to be away from others was something she was slowly picking up from him. It wasn’t that she disliked them, but she hated the way he acted when other people where around. His moody silences seemed to be aimed at her. He might not have talked that much more, most of the time, when they were alone together, but the silence in between had a different quality. He smiled more, and even relaxed a little.
Three or four weeks in, he stopped turning up. The first time, she thought he’d forgotten her, but it was just that he’d stopped turning up to school.
She felt guilty. She wasn’t enough to make him come in, to hold him to normal life.
As abruptly as he stopped, about four weeks later, he started coming back in, everyday. She hadn’t stopped waiting. She didn’t call his house because she didn’t want to talk to either of his brothers. He didn’t say anything about not having been in that day, or for the rest of the week, but then when she went to see him on Saturday he said he’d missed her.
Teiya lay next to him, on his bed, and felt her self shiver slightly as he said that to her. He didn’t say why he’d been away, but he looked at her, while he told her. He had his note book in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it, not even to say that.
The notebooks were a bone of contention. Without them, there where whole days where he couldn’t communicate, but they gave him an easy way out. And he was far too willing to get rid of them. He’d give them to her in the mornings, just pushing them into her hands and walk off. Then he was free for at least two hours.
She liked them. She liked reading them. He talked to his older brother with them most, and there were the other, everyday notes to teachers, and notes to her. Some pages were covered in small, black words, but others had only one small phrase in the corner. They always started out much larger than they ended up because, even written down, Ruki couldn’t bear his own words to exist half the time.
She went to kiss him, moving awkwardly, slowly, but he pushed her away gently and shook his head. When he was down, as he put it, he didn’t eat, he didn’t practise. He didn’t want anything in his mouth.
They lay, comfortably, and talked about school, what he’d missed. Still, no explanation, no reference to it. The house was far from quiet. Down stairs someone was talking to themselves, or more likely, on the phone. A computer whirred and Teiya, her hearing sharpened these days, could even hear the fridge.
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I hardly went out by myself in those days. There were always friends, some one, at least, to abuse. Something to hold onto, but I went out that Friday, annoyed at the world and needing some time to think. The flat was empty; expect that damn cat, but that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t escape from myself there.
I chose a pub that I didn’t know, ordered a drink, and let myself adsorb the slumminess of it all. Places like that always made me feel good about my self.
It was noisy enough not to be able to hear my self think. I stood out, I suppose, but it wasn’t that rough an area of town. I wasn’t feeling especially masochistic that night and self preservation is a powerful force for the sane.
There was a band, some local act, I assumed. To me, they just sounded like noise. Electric guitars, that kind of thing. I didn’t listen, but I liked the fact it was there. I didn’t notice the environment, not even the spot of wall right in front of my eyes.
I’d gone through the ritual and stopped myself thinking. I was ready to leave, but the band stopped and the singer came and sat down next to me. I was about to leave anyway, but then I looked up and it was him, Val, the boy I’d rescued. He was only just eighteen.
After I’d met his eyes, I was trapped. I couldn’t make my self leave. He took my hesitation as complacence and grinned at me, far too earnestly for my aesthetic. His band mates streamed off somewhere behind me.
“Hey.” I didn’t know his name yet and we’d met only once. I gave him a cold look, but that didn’t seem to bother him at all.
“I don’t know you. Why are you talking to me?” I’m not by nature friendly or sociable. I didn’t want anything to do with him. Later, when we talked about all this he said he wished I’d just left, ignored him. Not even I could be that rude.
He told me, quite rightly, that there was no harm in getting to know people and that it wouldn’t hurt for us to have a drink together. I felt like a surly child who’d been impolite to an aunt.
We didn’t talk about much, and certainly none of the things that needed talking about. We swapped names, but neither of us offered a number and I felt a little annoyed, I wanted him to somehow remove my address from his head.
Val was so, so different back then. He held him self well, he smiled a lot, he didn’t try to charm, but he did, maybe for that very reason. He had a naive, kind look. He didn’t know yet about how dark people were, despite the things he’d been through. Things I’d find out about in police report detail, missing the emotions, later on.
Val had the kind of back story I’d write for the trashier books I sold. The illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian, he was dumped in an orphanage by his teenager mother with his younger siblings. Through pluck, courage and hard work he managed to work up, pull him self up, protect his siblings, get a place at collage -get this- learning to cut hair (later the smell of a hair salon, the odd, melancholy mix of biological and chemical smells, at the same time both antiseptic and dirty, would have a strong, almost erotic effect on me.).
But all this was far, far away from me that evening. As soon as I finished the drink I ordered to keep him company, I left. I don’t think I even said goodbye. I hadn’t been that reserved towards him, but I didn’t want to give him a chance to suggest we met again. I didn’t want to get involved with him, he seemed too fragile.
So, I left, I thought I’d washed my hands of him, that I’d never have to see him again. I was wrong. In my hurry to escape, by the ashtray and the cardboard beer mats, I’d left my wallet.
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There was a loneliness about Jackie. He was the wrong shape for the hole he’d found himself in. He couldn’t communicate with his eldest brother and Riki was too far away.
Jackie made a decision when he was fourteen that he didn’t care. It didn’t matter what it was, he just told him self it didn’t matter. Like any form of metal conditioning, it too time, but by the time he was seventeen he had the theory, and normally the practise off perfectly.
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We need a new saxophonist, and we found one. We’ve always had trouble with musicians. Drummers that disappear, suicidal pianists. Our last drummer, before we settled down, ran off with my wife.
I mean, Jesus.
I went into Max’s room, after one of those hectic nights that I hate, but most musicians seem to live for and there was a curly headed saxophonist lying next to him asleep (and drunk, ten to one). Max was looking at him with a kind of incredulous, terrified wonder. He never picked people up. He never got picked up.
The curly haired man growled, rolled over (he was still dressed, I’ve speculated, but never mind) and pushed Max, with practised ease, onto the floor. And that pretty much set the tone for the way Riki interacted with Max. Max lost the wonder early on and started looking like mouse that’s seen a cat when ever Riki walked in.
I tell a lie. Riki wasn’t a saxophonist; he was a clarinettist, classically trained, grade eight. But he took to the sax like a duck to water, he’d been playing it since he was smaller than one of the damn things, he’d never had a lesson, blah blah blah. He never practised, or at least not to often. He didn’t seem especially bothered about music, the band, anything.
All he had with him, all he had, I think, then, in the world was three suits, a clarinet and a fedora. The clarinet was under the chair, the suit jacket was on top of it, and the hat was on the corner, at an angle, when I came in. That could have been Riki.
“Where are you staying?” I invited him down for breakfast. Awkward? Who gives a ********? Our sax player had walked after our last gig. Heading back to Calne didn’t sound like too much fun.
He shrugged. The hotel foyer was nearly empty. The entire hotel was nearly empty. Sitting there, in a white shirt and black trousers, looking, as ever, like a gangster from a cheap film Riki must have felt pretty bad. He had nothing to stand out against. He was skinny then, almost as bad as Max (he didn’t look like a weasel the way Max did, shoulders too wide) but he seemed to take up more room than he did later.
I brought him breakfast and asked him to join. He thought about it for all of five seconds, and then nodded, almost shrugging it off. Where are you staying? Shrug. Got money? Shrug. I’m Mel, that’s Max. Riki, Riki Mikhaylov. I didn’t hear Mikhaylov; I heard a mishmash of syllables. Fine, so, it’s Riki. Or, in Max’s drunker, more inspired, moments Ivan.
You must think I was mad to ask him in, but it felt like fate, and despite the flakiness, he seemed solid. I was kicking myself afterwards for not hearing him play first, but that went ok. He sounded a little bored by it, but he was good at it. I’m sure not as good as he was when he took his grade 8 exam, if he was telling the truth, but he could hit the notes in the right order, keep time, and make it sound right. We were just a small band, getting gigs, doing whatever came. It wasn’t how we made our money, but it was fun. Riki was fun enough.
We practised together, ate together. Max was my oldest friend, only friend really by then. He’d had trouble growing up. No confidence, pieces of s**t for parents. A sister I don’t even want to talk about. But to me Max was just Max.
Riki used to lock him in cupboards. Max whined a little, bitched a bit, practised too much, and I don’t think Riki liked people singing really, anyway. Riki’d just push him into the wardrobe, the airing cupboard, whatever was to hand, lock the door, or even put some furniture up against the door, but then he’d just go back to reading, like Max wasn’t even in there. That was a joke, but I don’t doubt for one second that Riki could have been cruel if he’d wanted to. If he’d seen any reason to.
We worked well together on stage though, the three of us. The pianist more or less stabilised around that time as well, we got the drummer that’d steal my wife a few months after that. On stage, it worked. We practised together almost everyday when we were playing gigs. We worked hard. It worked.
The three of us would get drunk together. Where did the sax he got come from? Where did the money he always had come from? All we ever got out of him was that he’d run away from home when he was seventeen or eighteen. Technically, Riki was homeless.
He was gay, at least in theory, but he didn’t seem to do much about it. What happened with him and Max was never brought up. Never discussed or referred to. Not even I felt the need to have that talked about.
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She wasn’t just really pale; she was albino. That might have been off putting for some people, but Jackie found that he couldn’t not look at her, and it wasn’t with any kind of revulsion either.
He spoke to her only twice before it happened. The first time to ask her what she was doing for the weekend (“N-nothing.”) and the second time to ask her if she was coming to Rex’s ( “I’m not invited.”). They had nothing in common, no friends in common (or at all, in all honesty) and there was no pretext to start conversation, ask for her number or invite her to Rex’s.
She was shy. Very shy. She spoke less than his brother, on non-uniform days she wore uniform. She spent her lunch in the library.
It would be too easy to assume that he fell infatuated with her because here was one girl who was within his grasp. One girl who didn’t look down on him. But she was as distant as his eldest brother’s blond, neurotically skinny girlfriend. The albino was religious in a very un-British way. It was her shyness that proved the real barrier.
When it was time to pick their GCSE’s they didn’t make a single choice the same; he went with design based and computer related things and she went with humanities.
Typically, she occupied a lot of his time, she filled his head. His eldest brother was never single and later, after his other brother got into a very serious relationship, the house was hell. They’d talk about their girlfriends, sex, affection, underwear, making cupcakes. It wasn’t romantic, even though it was. It was too real, too dirty. He left the room if they ever came up.
His elder brother’s girlfriend treated him like he was a nasty patch of air. She never addressed a word to him that wasn’t about her boyfriend; she never looked at him if she could avoid it. She treated his other brother like this at first, but her boyfriend complained, and they turned out to have things in common. Music, books they’d read, she liked his sense of humour.
His other brother’s girlfriend knew his name, but didn’t seem entirely sure that it was his. She’d say it with a question in her voice, and tended to avoid him. The relationship between him and her boyfriend was acidic, with most of the venom coming from Jackie. Once, before the two of them left she pressed a note in to his hand with a smile. It read “You’re a ******** b*****d.”
But in his head, he had his albino. He didn’t want to sleep with her, he didn’t want to touch her, but some how just watching her wasn’t enough. No one was really surprised about how badly he reacted when she was raped, because everyone knew. He hadn’t been too discrete.
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I can’t say I was surprised when he offered me money, money he knew I desperately needed. I couldn’t say know to that much. I needed school uniform, for my sister too, so what could I do?
I knew he wasn’t that close to his brother, but even though I wasn’t surprised I was disappointed and angry. I think he liked that, though, it was better for him that way. Better than having me just insipid, bored and disgusted I guess.
He dyed his hair green, but he was lazy about it, so he had this little halo of light brown, he spiked his hair up, but not well, and it was a really weird effect. He had bad skin, he was pale…he had none of the good things in common with either of his brothers.
His attitude might have made some girls think he was original, but I always liked life, and solid things. Real things, things you could touch and taste.
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I didn’t really mind losing it. I cancelled the cards, brought some new filters and wrote off the twenty quid I’d had in there. Not a major event and I didn’t connect it with that night. I’ve never been very good at keeping track of things.
I almost closed the door on his face. It was hot; I’d been lying on the sofa, reading. If I’d wanted company I’d have called someone.
But I let him in, because he’d come all that way. He’d remembered where I lived. I didn’t offer him tea or anything, but he sat down, tried to be polite. He talked fast; he was in a good mood. He was always in a damn good mood.
I went to get myself some tea. He was giving me a headache with all his sparkling. Just as I walked back into the living area, to tell him to leave, it started hailing. This was summer. We don’t get hail often. I couldn’t send him out in that, in just a thin t-shirt and jeans. I didn’t want to lend him anything, because then he could return it and it would stretch things out longer. I lifted some books of the chair, he was on the sofa, picked up my book, sipped my tea, and carried on from where I’d left off.
To his credit, he did get a bit uncomfortable then, maybe he was getting the hint. I let him squirm. As soon as it stopped, I’d let him out and he wouldn’t come again, because nobody puts them self in that kind of situation without good reason. He’d run off like a dog across the track.
At some point, I went to the loo. I didn’t know till later, but he took one of my shirts. I didn’t notice till much later, so I never got to confront him about it. I’d just left my laundry basket on one of the chairs, and he just took one of the shirts out of it.
Sometimes, he said the cat had been on it and it just picked it up to have a look. Other times, when his eyes were bleary with cheap vodka, and the marks on his neck were still bleeding he’d tell me that he’d needed it.
Either way, he left my house with my shirt, and that was far from the last I saw of him. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jackie remembered exactly where he was, what he was doing, when she got raped. He was arguing with his brother about something he didn’t remember. But he remembered being very angry, very unhappy, and feeling useless.
That feeling didn’t go away.
He didn’t find out until Monday, at school, and he was one of the last people the rumour reached. He overheard some other students talking about it, then some more. And then there was an assembly and he couldn’t lie to him self about it any more.
He, in that typical egotistic teenage way blamed himself, but he had no reason to, so that soon faded. It was no one's fault. No one really knew the details. It had just happened.
More rumours reached him through the air. She was being kept in hospital over night, for a week, for two weeks. She was hurt, she was in shock. Her parents wouldn’t take her back. Jackie lapped up these whispers, fleshing out his own fantasy.
He found out where she was, which everyone knew, and did the most assertive and bravest thing he’d ever did. He visited her in hospital.
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It wasn’t as if he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t his first time. She still thought of him as a virgin, even if she knew better.
She, acting far out of her normal character, even in regards to such things, black mailed him.
If you tell him, I’ll tell her.
And why would he tell him? Because he couldn’t sink any lower and nothing would hurt his brother more than that. And he couldn’t get angry really. He wouldn’t be able to do a thing and it would just frustrate him. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I hadn’t seen him for three years, more, and then he turns up, drunk to hell. Crying, I think. Hell. I couldn’t turn him away. My wife was pregnant and I felt like killing him, but he was my brother, and you can’t turn family away. At least, I wouldn’t. I never turn any one way though. Every man needs a place to turn to; I might as well make up the difference.
When my wife got pregnant, she started hoarding. Light bulbs, canned food, drinks, anything she could get her hands on. Under the wardrobe. Pens, even. Everyone thought she was crazy, like normal, but she was being smart. She knew I was far too willing to give our stuff away. She knew levels of resources fluctuated and she wanted to make sure there would be enough for the baby.
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It was raining. I was reading, almost ready to go to bed. It was late. The rain was beating its soothing and idiosyncratic tattoo on the outside of the apartment block. The cat was absent, probably hiding some where warm. I was drinking tea, enjoying the peace.
Someone rang the bell to my house. I could have been anyone. I wasn’t about to get up, let them in. If it mattered they’d have called and if it mattered too much for that, or was too serious to wait I didn’t want to get involved.
But someone had left the door unlocked and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The rest of the block was silent, like I said, it was late.
Someone knocked, gently, but firmly on my door. I turned a page, ignored it. They knocked again. Harder. Until the knocking became ferocious and I feared for my door. Damn. The curtains weren’t drawn. They must have seen the light from the street.
The banging showed no sign of stopping, so with great reluctance I got up, put down my book, and went to open the door. I didn’t look out to see who it was first. By then, I didn’t care.
Val was soaked. He must have walked the distance. His hair was down, plastered to him. His clothes looked like they were made out of wrinkled rubber. I took a step back, afraid, for some reason. He fell onto my chest. I couldn’t tell before, because the rain was running down his face too, but he was crying.
He shook and I tried my best to hold him up. I brought him closer to me, which seemed to calm him a little. I was soaked to my skin in seconds. I closed the door, but I couldn’t lock it. I’d have needed both hands for that.
I took him into the front room. He clung to me, to the front of my shirt. I felt like someone had handed me a crying baby to look after. Uncharitable as that may be, that’s the truth of it. I sat him on the sofa and he pulled me down with him.
I swear I did my best to comfort him. I held him, I shushed him. I stroked him sopping hair and said his name, but he was inconsolable. He didn’t wail or gnash his teeth, which would have been better. Then I could have got annoyed and got rid of him. But all he did was shake and cry, quiet, unobtrusive tears and I felt a need to stop it.
It was the first time, I think, that two people had sat on that sofa since I’d had it. I got up, leaving him for a second and turned off the light because there was no need for it. The rain didn’t let up, but kept on filling the air with that white noise.
I joined him back on the sofa, and he pulled me to him. I held onto him, in a moment of madness, I kissed his cheek.
What I did next was wrong.
Maybe everything I did to him was wrong.
That kiss hushed him a little, his eyes cleared a little. I kissed him again, on the mouth. A child’s kiss. In the dark even that seemed horribly intimate and I wished I hadn’t turned it off. I was stuck by him now though. I couldn’t leave him after that.
We sat there for minutes that stretched, even in retrospect, to hours. I held him. I kissed his face, his neck, his chest. Whatever poison he had, I was prepared to take on, to stop him crying. It helped. I touched his neck, ran my fingers through his drying hair. I tried to adsorb that poison out of him, suck the wound dry.
I was wet as well, the sofa was cold. It was cold in our embrace, our little world. Odd that the body heat of two grown men can’t keep themselves warm because of a little precipitation. I kissed his hands. I don’t think I was ever so gentle with anyone. He calmed down, stopped crying. I suppose in a sense he came to his senses.
In the dark, I could see his shape, the glimmer of his wet eyes, his wet hair, but mostly I could feel him. I heard his breathing, felt, more than heard his sobs, which hadn’t quite faded. He smelt then of freshly washed hair, soap, metallic water, deodorant and sweat. The smells were faint, but they were all I could smell and they were evocative, alien.
He kissed me, full on the mouth. He was experienced. I felt no urge to pull back, to push him away, but I let him kiss me. For how long, I’m not sure, but when he pulled back I felt exhausted. I stood up; he made no move to stop me, but sat there, with his head against the back of the sofa, as if defeated.
I went into the kitchen, found some wine, found some glasses. I was glad he wouldn’t see them in the dark. It seemed fitting, to provide some alcohol. I didn’t turn the light back on when I went back to join him. He took the glass without comment, and drank deeply from it. I joined him on the sofa. We fitted on it together, fitted together as best we could.
We slept there, in the dark and the quiet and the wet, with only the sound of the rain and the hum of the fridge and our own gentle breathing to disturb him.
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The city stretched out before him, as distant and as a painting. From the window of the high rise hotel, Ruo couldn’t see anything he recognised. He assumed he was still in France, that there’d have been some check at the border.
Sven was late, but Sven was always late recently. Maybe there was something that had changed about him. He’d grown, he could tell that by measuring him self against Sven, but had something deeper, something more fundamental changed? He looked at him self in the mirror, something to do in the long hours he now had nothing to do in, nothing but waiting for someone who might not turn up for hours.
His face, his body, seemed the same, which surprised him a little. Surely things we do should show on our faces? Something about the way we look, the way we act has to tell other people something about ourselves, and if that changes, so should on the way we look. The image we present to the world has to have some bearing on our selves.
The peeling wall paper and the thin, oddly gritty carpet were enough to depress him, they were enough to send little shivers of misery down into his stomach and make him feel sick, so a mismatch of soul and body was more than enough to have him starching at his wrists.
Sven hadn’t even noticed the marks on his wrists. It looked like he’d been tied up with lots of pieces of thin string, inexpertly. He’d made them raw all around by scratching. Sometimes, when it got too bad he had push his writs to his temples and hide somewhere small and quiet.
The night drew on and he found him self pacing the room. Physically, there was nothing to stop his crossing the threshold of the room, there was nothing to stop him just leaving. So what if he had no money, nothing other than what was on his back? It couldn’t…but just as vampires and daemons can’t cross running water, the doorway was an impenetrable barrier for him.
Just like before, he’d been about to pick up the phone to call Toma, but couldn’t. It was that same odd force. That city had been prettier, and he’d seen more of. How long ago had that been?
At first he’d tried to keep track of the days, but that had got too hard, so now he just tried to keep in his mind what month it was, but he couldn’t remember how many months ago that was, how many hotels. Tom was part of a different world now, so phoning him wouldn’t have done any good. There was nothing he could have said.
Toma would have tried to make him come back. He would have been sensible and reasonable, but he wouldn’t have been able to do anything. It would just frustrate him to call.
The sun fell behind the tall buildings, but the city, of course, never sleeps and the room stayed relatively light, although he made no move to turn on the light. He didn’t move at all.
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He turned up in the rain, drunk. I don’t know if he was crying, because of the rain, but it doesn’t really matter. My wife opened the door, he didn’t say anything. We, I, let him sleep on the sofa.
She was hissing, spitting feathers. God, I’ve never seen her like that. She never liked him, and now I guess you couldn’t blame her. No one behaves like that. No one disappears for five years and leaves other people to pick up the pieces. Watching him, drunk and asleep I felt and odd mix of anger and happiness. This was more or less my son come home, after all.
I’d been the one who’d looked after them, because I was the oldest. All three of them. I’d never had any time, any head space to my self. What was I meant to do? They all grew up cold and weird anyway. They’re not like other people.
The three of them have no human warmth. They never cried. They fought amongst themselves, ripping each other to threads because they knew each other best. I had to watch, stand back, and show no favourite. I thought some times they might kill each other, or drive each other to kill themselves. The former is, after all, a family tradition.
As they got older, they seemed to warm up a little, or maybe they just learned to make it look like they had. After all, they were smart kids. I found myself forming bonds and becoming a brother, rather than a protector, a father. That ended up badly too.
Because the one that was the easiest to get on with, the one I got closest too, decided to leave, take himself away, with out so much as a goodbye.
But he couldn’t stick to it, and there he was, on my sofa. She was hugging her knees, looking older than normal, almost her age. She was pregnant and I’d wanted that child for so long, and more than her. She was uncomfortable, she was small and carrying a large load, I’d have done anything for her. But I couldn’t get rid of my brother.
She didn’t say anything, after the first outburst didn’t make it obvious, but I knew. I knew everything about her; I knew how she was feeling even if she had her back to me. She was used to me indulging her every whim, she didn’t whine, but she pouted, she fussed. I wanted to placate her. I’m normally single minded, the conflict I was feeling was alien to me.
She slept in after me the next morning. He was awake, getting ready to leave even. I wanted to hit him, but we have to forgive and forget, yeah?
I didn’t move out; our father did. The house was almost the same as he must have remembered it. I hadn’t moved many things; I’d repainted, but the same colours. I didn’t see much reason to change the house; I didn’t feel the need to impose my identity on something that had been the same for so long.
He’d lost weight, he seemed shorter, too, than I remembered, but that couldn’t be true. It couldn’t have been anyone else though. I didn’t know it then, but he’d left that hat at the pub where Teiya worked.
“Have you been to see her yet?” I didn’t mean too much by it, but the cold look he gave me irritated me. All things considered. He should have been bowing and scraping. I didn’t even get a sorry, and once I’d have had to stop him saying that. He didn’t really seem sure of whom I was, what he was doing there. It felt like the morning after for me as well. My mouth was dry from holding back anger.
He gave me a long look, with those empty, yellow eyes. I couldn’t break away. I felt more and more like hitting him, hurting him. Making him say something. Making him say sorry.
Like every other damn time, he just left without saying anything. He got up, walked past me, and left. It could have been a hallucination and I wanted it to be. There was no way of finding him again, no way of knowing what he was doing back in the area. He might as well have not been there. Fine.
I made my wife breakfast, and things were starting to settle down, but even if he’d left, he hadn’t gone yet.
There was a knock at the front door. We looked at each other, silently, just like in made for TV film. I didn’t think about it, if I had, I’d have ignored it. I’m glad I did open the door, because I wouldn’t have wanted to leave Max and Mel out there for long.
Max looked like he was ready to faint, and Mel wasn’t too cheerful either. I invited them in, offered them tea or coffee. I had no idea who they were, but I couldn’t avoid connecting them in my mind with my prodigal brother.
“Have you seen our saxophonist?” Mel asked. They introduced themselves, apologised for the trouble and drank two cups of hot, sweet tea a piece. My brother’s band. They seemed rather normal.
They didn’t seem too surprised that he’d left; they told me he’d probably just go back to the hotel now. He’d said, they said, that he wasn’t going to see any of us, didn’t want to see anyone. b*****d. They agreed. There was nothing holding them there, but they lingered, standing up in my kitchen. They had the night from hell. Not because they’d been worried, but because things hadn’t gone well in general. They looked used up, greasy. I wanted to offer them a shower, something to eat, but my wife wouldn’t have stood for it. Stress is bad for babies.
They went on there way eventually, leaving me feeling like a small part of something bigger, but nothing important was happening. Just drunks and pregnant women.
Years ago, I’d lain on the bed my wife lay on now with my brother. We’d drunk expensive vodka; talked, really talked, about how the world looked to us at that moment. He really talked, never stopping because it got too hard. The vodka helped, it always helped. When he was relaxed, he’d speak easily, but often less. It was as if the tension in his throat literally closed it up and stopped the words from coming out.
I should have made him talk, but I never had the heart to. Things were hard enough for everyone already. So, ok, it’s my fault. Every thing is my fault.
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It’s not my house, it’s my parents', so please don’t make it so bad that I can’t tidy it up, fix things. There’s a fund for replacements if something gets broken. I know who gives and who doesn’t. So, everyone knows. Bear that in mind.
Don’t arrive before eight unless I ask you to. You can’t stay over unless you’re prepared to help tidy up the next morning. Don’t you have friends you can stay with? They’ll be coming too.
Almost everyone’s invited, if they’re invited. Unless you're not, and then you know. So, don’t show up and embarrass yourself, and me. People will know. I make sure of that.
Bring some booze. Bring some fun people. Bring some music. Bring an instrument. Sit on the floor, in a circle. I know everyone here; everyone’s safe, easy to get on with. A few people might be a bit shy, a few a bit up themselves, but people are. That's life.
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RKO Marvais Community Member 
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