25

February 2017

Alex, Diana

“Your Vickey is an absolutely charming creation, unique, I’d say. There are few people in this world who experience unconditional love,” Diana said to Alex, when they went out, just the two of them, to smoke some grass in the kitchen and have a chat. “She’s the only person on Planet Earth who’s prepared to love you the way you are. Why don’t you, poor Hamlet, marry her immediately?”
About twenty people had gathered at Alex’s apartment to celebrate the filing of the latest issue. For the most part they were colleagues, along with two or three friends who weren’t linked to his work. The small living room was packed with people. Leaving Vickey in the room as hostess, he’d taken Diana to the kitchen where it was quieter. He was worked up and somehow needed to calm down.
“I’ve started going to a therapist,” Alex said in place of an answer.
Wrapping herself up in a blanket, Diana climbed up onto the windowsill and pushed her feet out through the open window.
“Careful!” Alex shrieked.
Diana glanced at him sideways, laughing.
“And this is my friend – a guy who doesn’t give a fuck, a representative of the creative classes – telling me, a heart surgeon, an elite rhythmic gymnast and a fatalist at heart.”
“Seriously, though,” insisted Alex. “Climb down. I’m scared for you! Or you’ll get a cold.”
“As my Dad says,” Diana continued cheerfully, although she pulled her feet back, “being scared is pointless. I was brought up to believe that death, illness and loss are unavoidable, so why waste your time on fearing that they’ll happen?”
“You were lucky with your father,” said Alex, taking his first toke. The stress of the day was finally easing off, his shoulders were beginning to relax.
“Yes, Dad, Mom, surgery and meditation – they’re my main teachers. That must be why it’s so easy for me to be happy. I worked out an incredible thing long ago,” said Diana. “I was happy as a child, I’m very happy now, I’ve got used to being happy!” said Diana, deep in thought. “And I’d be happy if you got on board this train of happiness with ‘eyes wide open.’ Trust me – there’s more than enough room on this train.” She took the joint from Alex’s hand. “So, my mysterious friend, running headlong from your happiness, what did your clever therapist tell you?”
“He said, in fact, that, unlike you, I was very unlucky with my parents,” answered Alex. He took another toke and continued. “I don’t want a family, Diana, I don’t want one. I’m scared because I don’t know what love is. I don’t trust life. I’m always fighting myself, and I think that I’m always losing in that battle. I read something recently and it really struck a chord – Mickey Rourke said that if he undoes just one button all hell will start bursting out of him. It’s the same with me. If I just relax slightly, a whole load of horse manure will start oozing out of me, if you’ll forgive the expression.”
Diana smiled mournfully.
“As for love…” Alex continued. “That must be what Vickey feels for me … Who knows? Do I love her? Do I love anyone?”
“Hang on! What about me?” asked Diana, clearly not wanting the conversation to slip into a minor key.
“You – yes. A lot,” Alex answered sincerely, though he went on in a craftier tone. “I’m definitely not planning on marrying you, though, but that’s just because of the dramatic mismatch in our life plans.”
“Be careful, or you’ll lose your treasure: she’ll leave, or I’ll take her,” Diana said in an unexpectedly serious tone. “I really like Vickey.”
“Sometimes I wish for just that to happen,” Alex answered her calmly.
“You’re not scared of losing her?” Diana asked seriously.
“I’m scared. Of course I’m scared of losing her.” Alex stubbed out the joint. “But, you know, I’m even more scared of not finding out the truth about myself. Of not being able to free myself of my mother, of not being able to throw off everything she ‘gave’ me. I can’t be with Vickey now, I just can’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be with her in the way that she dreams of. I’ve never had a normal family. I don’t believe that I can ever be normal.”
“It’s hard for me to give you any advice, my dear, beloved friend,” said Diana.
“I’m realizing more and more that I’ve got mixed up,” said Alex. “Tell me: how do you understand that you’re lying to yourself? Or telling the truth? How can you understand that?”
“I don’t know,” said Diana. “Maybe it’s a simple question that requires a simple answer?”
“I’m not sure,” said Alex. “There are too many things surrounding us that, when you push, give way.”
“What do you mean?” asked Diana. “Give me an example, at least.”
“The best example is sex,” said Alex, thinking for a moment. “Sex is a kind of power. You either give yourself over to your partner, or you take power over them. Or it’s a dance. But that happens rarely. Almost never. If it happens, that means you’ve really got lucky.”
Diana looked at Alex, fascinated.
“I think you and I only danced once,” said Alex. “But maybe I’m mistaken. We were both incredibly drunk, after all.”
Alex forced a sorry smile out of himself.
Diana didn’t answer, still looking at him.
“Sex intrigues,” continued Alex, no longer smiling. “Wherever I am, Diana, I show open palms – here I am, no weapons. But, at the end of the day, you have to take a position. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to put my thoughts on that into words. It’s sex, after all. It might sound funny, but sex is something that you can’t touch. It’s an ephemeral thing.”
“You’re one of the few who’s made a fundamental study of that ephemeral thing,” said Diana.
“When you play with sex for a long time, you devalue it,” said Alex. “But the trick is in the meaning of learning about yourself. You have to know the question. And then look for your answer to that question. Your answer. Sex is just one of the unknowns. One of the unknown, indeterminates in this vast equation that’s called ‘life’, Diana. Which is called ‘freedom.’ True freedom.”
“And love?” asked Diana.
“And love, of course,” he replied.
Diana was silent for a while. Alex’s mood had overcome her.
“Do you love Vickey?” she asked very seriously, going back to the beginning of their conversation.
“I think so,” answered Alex. “And that’s exactly why I don’t want to ruin her life.”
Diana looked at Alex for a long time.
“But you’ve already ruined it.”

26

August 2017

Vickey

It all turned out to be unexpectedly simple. She felt great with Diana, and Diana, it seemed, felt great with her. They immediately started living together, staying in Diana’s cozy apartment.
They found it easy to pretend to everyone else that they were just friends. Without having to hide, they could walk out in the streets, sit in restaurants, go to the cinema, and then spend the night in each other’s arms, whispering sweet nothings.
Vickey didn’t tell her parents that she was now living with a girl, afraid of their condemnation. They wouldn’t understand, they hadn’t brought her up that way. She didn’t tell anyone, in fact, afraid of scaring off that fragile sense of happiness, love and care, that she felt for this girl.
Diana behaved in a totally different way. Fairly quickly, she introduced Vickey to her friends, colleagues and wonderful family – a real North London intelligentsia family, the members of which had been surgeons for generations.
Diana’s mother Sophie in particular adored her – a joyful and incredibly wise woman, a urologic surgeon. A woman who allowed her children to grow up with absolute freedom as to who they should be with and who they should sleep with.
Diana’s only brother, a brilliant brain surgeon, was also gay and had been in a monogamous relationship with his partner, a Phillippino colleague from work, for a long time. But her mother, it seemed, wasn’t worried about all this – something that would have concerned many parents.
“The main thing is that you should be happy! You can always adopt me some grandchildren,” she would say, laughing. “But remember this: I dream of an international family! I’ve only got two requests. My multitude of grandchildren should be children of many different nations, and they should all be surgeons in terms of their profession.”
“Diana is so lucky,” Vickey thought, with a touch of envy, recalling the supper they had had the night before with Diana’s family. Diana’s father, a terrible grumbler but renowned heart surgeon, had demonstrated his new hobby, juggling, whilst assuring them that Alzheimer’s was always on the march and that you had to learn something new every day in order to fight off senility and insanity until scientists came up with the right medicines. “The Tangerine Horror” was the name that later, laughing, they would come up with for this evening – Diana’s father had juggled with tangerines, and every now and again they would fly out of his hands across the room, taking unexpected trajectories to the giggles and non-stop teasing of all the members of his family.
“She doesn’t have to live another person’s life to suit someone else’s opinion of her. I’d like to learn how to do that too. I’ve got a lot like that to learn from her.”
Vickey smiled dreamily, remembering Diana and what had happened after the supper when they got home. Her neck, which she’d carefully bound with a red silk scarf from Kenzo, still keenly sensed Diana’s kisses, her shoulders ached slightly at the tender bites, her lips a touch swollen, still tender.
A metallic voice sounded over the loudspeaker system, announcing the next station. “Another two stops to Islington,” Vickey noted to herself on automatic, as her thoughts returned to Diana.
“I didn’t think that could happen. Of course, I’d seen lesbian love scenes in films. The Americans do that brilliantly. In America, in Hollywood – they’re the only people in the world who can make a film where you get the impression that you’re in bed with that handsome guy, or with that brunette, like in the film Atomic Blonde, where the incredible Charlize Theron fucks that dark-skinned Spanish girl. But our sex with Diana is unlike anything I’ve ever tried or seen before. Did I ever even suspect that I’m capable of wanting a woman, her caresses, her love, quite like this?”
Vickey recalled that at the very beginning of their relationship she had been amazed by the fact that she was having sex with a woman. She tried to listen to herself, to understand what was happening to her, to understand what she felt when Diana’s skillful lips touched on her most intimate places and that hot wave of shame and hunger for ecstasy rolled over her from head to toe. In those moments, she almost entirely forgot about Alex.
Alex – her first real, eternal love, the only man to have broken her heart.
“It’s so ironic that you introduced me to the best woman on the planet, but I still can’t stop loving you,” thought Vickey with sorrow. She quickly shook her head and drove those thoughts away. “I love being with Diana. It’s really calm, and isn’t that what’s important?”
“I’ve even started being afraid of myself. Being ashamed of myself. A lot of what I saw around myself seemed to be a sham, after all. I wanted to stand up to it all. I thought I was better than everyone else. I didn’t need what brought them joy.
“But life goes on. Tik-tok, tik-tok. Every minute. But where is that needed happiness? Where is the proof of my uniqueness?
“I was looking for my safe harbor. I needed a place where I was ok. Always ok. And all of that was concentrated in one person. In him. I felt that I’d found it. But in going to Alex, I ran into a brick wall. There was only one door in that wall. A revolving door. Like the ones you find at an entrance to a mall or a business center. A big revolving door that you go into. If security doesn’t let you in, you turn full circle in that door and again find yourself out in the street. You were inside for just a short time. A really short time. And again you’re out in the street. Back where it’s cold. Cold for your body and for your soul. That door in his wall was sex.
“So. Rejected, tired, I’ve crossed what is a new boundary for me. I’ve found my soulmate, a person I’m calm with, she shines when sees me.
“I have to work out what kind of game I’m in now. What the rules are. Because now, everything in my life is going to be different.”
Diana had turned out to be extraordinary! Vickey wanted to see her again as soon as she could. To run to meet her, to embrace her, to whirl around with her, cheek to cheek, body to body, looking into her eyes, breathing in her scent, her very essence, recalling everything that had happened that night, to blush a touch, to laugh. To simply be with her.
“My first woman. That’s what men usually say, after all…”

27

May 2018

Greg, Maxim, Alex, Leon, Vickey

It all went exactly as it had the first time. Through the window it was early May in all its splendor. It was a Bank Holiday weekend and a festive mood had already enveloped the city. People were sauntering around the streets and chilling out, putting the worries of the working week behind them.
It was about three in the afternoon. “The quiet time,” as Greg put it, and the till should be packed with cash from the morning’s takings. The cash would be collected in the evening, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. They were in their disguises with a thick layer of liquid plaster on their hands.
Just like the first time, Alex, choosing his moment, slipped into the chemist’s when there were no customers inside, read some labels, and the chemist behind the counter, a middle-aged woman with a neat face, turned her back to him as she started looking for some medicines.
Then Max and Leon entered. Vickey stuck a “Technical Break” sign up on the door with double-sided sticky tape.
Greg went in last. Just at that moment, a second chemist came out through a door behind the counter, but neither Max nor Greg missed a beat.
It all went down almost exactly like it had the first time. Greg’s authoritative orders, given with the barrel of a gun pointing at the women, did their work. Greg immediately got control of the staff, and Max’s sharp shouting as he held the barrel of his gun to Leon’s temple, and Alex’s shrieks, deprived them of any wish to run for it or hit the alarm button.
Alex stood behind Greg’s back, placing himself between Greg and the door out. Max stood to the side of Greg so that the chemists could see his gun barrel up against Leon’s head. It all happened fast and Greg and his colleagues were completely in control.
But then things took an unexpected turn. Outside in the street, three youngsters approached Vickey – two guys and a girl. By their behavior you could easily tell they were in good spirits, not to say slightly drunk. They were moving fast, heading straight for Vickey, who was shaking with fear.
“We’re having a technical break,” Vickey said, blocking their way to the door. Her heart was thumping hellishly, and she could barely control her breathing. After the first robbery had gone so smoothly, the appearance of these tipsy youngsters, who had no desire to listen to her, was completely unexpected and almost entirely paralyzed her.
“Come off it, beautiful,” said one of the young men gently as he confidently moved Vickey away from the door. “We’re just going to be a second, we’ve got to sort our heads out.”
The youngsters laughed.
“You can’t!” Vickey tried to shout out after them, but the first young guy was already opening the door to the chemist’s and stepping in.
“Calm down, we just need some aspirin for cash,” one of them said drunkenly, waving her away like an annoying fly. “You can put the money in the till later, darling.”
Vickey clumsily tried to get herself in between them and the door, but the second guy, who was propping his girlfriend up on his shoulder, pushed Vickey away from the door into the chemist’s with his free hand, and they followed their friend inside.
The youngsters noisily entered, saw what was going on and froze. Alex was standing closest to them.
They hadn’t discussed or planned for this scenario. A mass of options passed through Alex’s mind in a fraction of a second. He was scared that the young man would rush back out and into Vickey, and that might end very badly. Something could happen to Vickey. In an instant, he turned into a tightly coiled spring. Fast, even surprising himself, he grabbed the first guy by the lapel of his jacket and dragged him over to the wall.
The guy, not really able to take in what was going on, tried to resist, but because he was more than a little drunk and due to the element of surprise, he didn’t really put up much of a fight. Alex’s physical memory worked in a flash. Like it had when he’d trained as a wrestler. He dragged the guy over to the wall, skillfully tripped him and threw him to the floor.
The guy hit his head and back on the wall, slumping to the floor, his eyes wide open, staring at Alex, who had frozen in place.
In that same second, in a single leap, Max reached the couple and with a sharp movement of the pistol’s butt he cracked the second guy over the head, knocking him out. The girl, as if she’d been released from a stupor, tried to shout out, but Max immediately cracked her in the jaw with a left hook. She slumped down to the floor next to her boyfriend.
For the whole time, Greg had been standing in place, as if welded to the floor, his pistol still trained on the chemist, everything about him letting her know that he was in no mood for jokes. While Max took out the couple, moving the barrel of his gun from one chemist to the next, he spoke loudly and clearly.
“Don’t move!”
When all three uninvited guests were on the floor, Greg spoke to one of the chemists.
“Give me three bandages! And you,” he continued, turning to the second chemist, “put the money in a bag! Fast!”
The guy Alex had smashed up against the wall, croaked out a plea.
“We won’t tell anyone. Let us go, please. Please,” he repeated. The sham, drunken bravado of a few moments earlier had disappeared without a trace.
“Shut it!” Greg barked at him. “Or I’ll do you in.”
The first woman, her hands shaking, took out several packages of bandages, putting them on the counter.
Greg, glanced for a second at Alex.
“Put those assholes on their stomachs and tie their hands behind their backs. And you, Fatty,” he said, turning to Leon, “help him.”
Leon grabbed the bandages and with Alex, one by one, turned the three newcomers over onto their stomachs and tied their hands up tight behind their backs.
The couple, after Max’s blows, barely gave any signs of life, but the first guy who Alex had smashed up against the wall, helped them as best he could. He got up on his knees, then lay on his front and put his wrists together behind his back.
“Shut him up, Fatty,” ordered Greg.
Leon clumped some bandages together and stuffed them in the guy’s mouth. The couple were lying semi-unconscious as it was, so they didn’t need any help in keeping quiet.
The second chemist put the bag with the money on the counter.
“Everything’s under control,” Greg said to his team and then, unexpectedly, started laughing evilly. “Everything’s just wonderful, kids.”
He looked to the door. Vickey had her back up against it, just as they’d planned.
“Let’s go,” he commanded.
Max grabbed Leon by the elbow, and they were the first to leave the chemist’s.
“Lie on the floor,” Greg said to the chemists, and they followed his orders in silence.
Alex opened the door out into the street, grabbed Vickey, and they headed off along the routes that Greg had previously planned.
Greg came out a few seconds later.
Vickey’s whole body was shaking. Alex, following Greg’s orders, pretended that he was telling Vickey a funny story. In fact, he almost had to carry Vickey in one arm because her legs could barely move from the stress.
Reaching the nearest courtyard, they turned into it and headed to a hut containing rubbish bins. There, they turned their double-sided coats inside out, Alex took off his beard and moustache, put on a baseball cap with a big, rapper’s peak, and Vickey took off her dark wig, pulling the hood of her coat over her head.
It all seemed to have gone well, despite the problem that had cropped up out of nowhere in the form of the trio of drunks. But instead of jubilation, Alex was overcome by fear. A fear that hadn’t been there after the first successful robbery. His head was pounding with words that Greg had spoken only recently: “Professional thieves have been caught for tiny fuckups.” Alex kept speaking to Vickey quietly, trying to calm her down. But the fear inside him was taking up more and more space. He could sense that clearly. And that made him all the more fearful.