Connie nodded, although she wasnt exactly sure what it was that she was agreeing to.
When I first met Luke a couple of days ago, I saw all these photographs in his prefab. And I thought Id felt some kind of strange connection with him, but the truth is, it was the photographs. The pictures. Time, crystallized. Life. All simple and clear and uninhibited.
What kinds of pictures?
Dirty. Sara scratched her cheek. Pornography, mainly.
Right.
Are you shocked?
No, Connie shook her head.
Sara rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand, inhaled deeply and then said, Actually I dont think Lilys father is coming home.
Connie held her tongue. Sara seemed to appreciate it. Its only been two months but it feels like hes been gone forever. In fact, she inspected her fingers, its begining to feel like he was never even really here.
Saras nails were full of dirt and soil. Ingrained. She continued to inspect them. We used to farm pigs and grow crops too, but after Lily was born he started farming boar. Theyre less time-consuming. I think he thought shed need him more, because she wasnt too well. Or maybe that Id need him more if we lost her. But we didnt lose her. So I didnt need him. And Lilys never really needed anyone. Shes terribly independent Sara sighed. Anyhow, in the end I think he got to feel slightlyredundant. We argued quite a bit. He did a whole lot of campaigning about the nudist beach, which kept him busy for a while, but because of the boar he didnt really have a leg to stand on.
Connie frowned. Whys that?
Local hostility. Lilys right though, the whole thing was ridiculous. I lost a lot of weight. Ive a yeast allergy. We got on each others nerves. And Lilys too, probably. Then his mother got sick. So he went to look after her for a while. I imagine shes better by now but he hasnt come home. He doesnt phone. Its all been she shrugged, well, empty, really. Blank. Boring. Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been a long, long wait for something horrible that never actually happened. Like Ive been in water, up to my neck, fighting to stay afloat, year after year. But if only Id felt for the bottom Id have found it. It was there. The ocean bed, just below where I was treading. It was there.
Sara pushed her chair back and pulled open the cutlery drawer again. She carefully placed the camera inside it.
Coffee? she said, smiling down at Connie, as if absolutely nothing of significance had just passed between them.
Lily inspected Connies luggage. In the guest bedroom, open on the bed, lay a small suitcase. Next to it, a vanity case and a little bundle of papers tied up with a ribbon. Lily poked around in the case, lifting out and dropping several items. Then she turned her attention to the vanity case. She inspected a couple of Connies lipsticks and pocketed a pink one.
Finally, the papers. She slipped a single letter out of the ribbon and opened it. She began reading.
Oh Ronny! Where were you? I needed you but you were nowhere. I needed you but you were everywhere. Why dont you write back to me, Ronny?
Where are you?
I cannot speak. My two lips and my tongue are so inflamed that my mouth hangs open and I drool on to my shirt-front. Its disgusting. And why? And how? Let me tell you. That demon. Louis. Him. Give me time and Ill draw breath. Give me a moment
Louis. The smell of him! Hes been drinking lately. In the dark, alone, cramped up inside that tiny shack. His pores ooze and ooze. He is relentlessly wet and hot and stinking. A foetid distillery. There is no escaping him. His eyes follow me. I can go no distance. He is behind me. And there is no private hidey-hole or secluded nook in this entire forest. In this whole giant hot green hell.
I hate him, Ronny. We are going crazy here together. Me with my radar and my fine-tuned hearing. Him with his pen, his finger, his flash and his eyes, all-seeing. Like one person, but fractured, each part pursuing the other. Hunting. Warring. He demands to know of all my movements. I am the enemy. He is under-cover. A spy. He is tracking me.
And somehow I feel like that great, white ape is watching us and laughing. We wanted to invade him but have only ended up invading each other. Sniffing and pawing and whittling.
It finally came to a head. It had to. Were you there, Ronny? Did you see it? Ill write you my side of things, anyhow, and then you can tell me if my account is the true account. Louiss is different. We keep lying to each other. We believe our own lies, religiously, but also each others. Oh my brain is fizzing. Its curdling.
Heres how it went, Ronny. Heres the truth of it, honestly. Remember the bat cave? It all feels so long ago now; the clammy warmth of its darkness, its heady black blanketWell, Louis got Monty and a couple of Montys friends to stake it out. You wouldnt think it possible, but Louis made it so.
I arrived one morning, as usual, before dawn, and they were there by the mouth of the cave and they were building something out of leaves and twigs and straw. A giant bonfire. I asked them what they were doing. They were laughing at me. I said, If you light afire in the entrance youll kill the bats. Theyre just inside. Some of them are still returning home. See?
I pointed skywards. In the air, above me, I could feel their radar.
Monty pulled a face like he didnt understand me. He was shaking a box of matches. He shook them and shook them, beating out his own sick little rhythm. Finally he spoke. We wont light it, he said, until we absolutely have to.
He cocked his head to one side. He grinned at me.
And I knew then that it was over. Id been invaded. It was the end of the bat cave, Ronny. I could not enter. Instead, very quietly, so calmly and gently, I returned to the shacks. Louis was outside, sitting on an over-turned crate, cleaning his boots as though nothing at all was happening. I stood and I watched him. I said nothing.
He washed the mud off his boots. Then he dried them. He applied some polish with a cloth. He brushed them and brushed them. The sky was quite bright by the time that hed finished. He was pleased with his job. He put the boots down in front of him and was about to pull them on when I tipped my head to one side. The slightest movement, but he caught it, Mr All-Eyes.
What? He glanced at me. What? I shrugged. What? You should buff, I said quietly. Buff! Like this one word was the most delicious, the most seductive syllable ever spoken. He peered down at the boots. Buff? I have the softest cloth, I said, in a tin, under my bed.
Louis stood up and went into our shack. One of the boots fell over, as he passed it, on to its side. He was gone a while. I watched the boot. And I saw, at its lip, at its giant, dark entrance, a small congregation of insects; termites, leaf-cutter ants, who knows what else, just guarding, patrolling. And then I saw my sister, the scorpion, standing close by, just willing them to allow her to enter.
When Louis returned, he held the cloth, the buffing cloth, and he straightened the two boots and he buffed them with the stupidest, stuffiest military precision. Then, when it was done, he threw down the cloth and he pulled them on, one by one, so luxuriously.
But the second boot was already inhabited, and its inhabitant made a sudden, harsh acquaintance with Louiss big, boney ankle, his calf. She raised her tail My sister! Just a warning, I tell you but Louis doesnt understand warnings, only attack. So she stung him.
He screamed. He howled. I stood and watched him, doing nothing, not even smiling. He yanked the boot off. He was bleating. He ripped off his sock. He shook it, the boot too. He needed to find her, to see her, to identify. My sister was so tiny. But its the tiny ones you have to watch.
Help met He screamed. Slotted into my belt is my wide jungle knife. I unsheathed it. I took his sock, I shook it, I tied it above his calf, I tightened it. I touched the blade on the place that was red and now swelling. I sliced into him. Oh, the feeling!
Louis, meanwhile, was still gabbling, jabbering, hollering. He kept telling me that tourniquets were not proper medical practice any more. People get gangrene that way. Or clotting. He asked me what I was doing with the knife. And when I put my lips to the raw, new wound and sucked, his eyes widened as though I was draining out the very pith of him.
Then the storm abated. There was a strange quiet, a moment of respite, and Louis did something, Ronny. Something unthinkable. Before I could spit, he grabbed hold of my head, my chin, he placed his giant polish-smattered fingers over my mouth.
What would happen if I made you swallow? Monica? What would happen?
His blood and that tiny sting, discovering a new world inside my soft pink mouth. He held me and held me. I thought he would kill me. Then he let go. He watched me spitting and choking. He staggered back into the shack. I heard the mattress creaking as he lay down upon it.
Gods truth. M.
Connie was small and had a childs tread. So light she almost floated. When she entered her room, she was not heard. Lily was entirely engrossed, her eyes wide, her mouth ajar, her hand at her throat.
What are you doing?
Even as she spoke Connie knew that this was the silliest question. She could see perfectly well what Lily was doing. She was invading. She was knifing and filleting. Lily looked up, noticed Connie, was surprised that shed materialized so silently but wasnt in the slightest bit ashamed at being apprehended. Connie saw it. Lily held out the paper. This is Ronnys letter, she said, so why do you have it?
Connie was laughing inside but also white with fury. Those are my letters, she hissed, and nobody elses.
My birthright, she was thinking, my deathright.
Lily reached out her hand for the rest of the bundle. Connie bounded forward and stopped her. She grabbed her wrist. Her hands were tiny but surprisingly powerful. Lily tried to free herself. Connie snatched the letters first, and then slapped her, so hard, with the back of her hand, that the neat little ring she wore snicked into Lilys cheek.
Lily gasped, amazed. Shed fallen back against the wall. But as soon as shed exclaimed her lips snapped shut and her eyes tightened. Blood began trickling down her cheek. She did not try to stop it. Instead, she straightened up. She was tall. She towered. A skyscraper. A terrible, flat building. Ominously one-dimensional.