“I already told you that.”
“I
know
—I’m just getting started. It’s no good just guessing, is it? You’ve got to start with the facts and work up from there. Fact number one: Your dad’s a gynecologist. Correct?”
“Correct.”
She dipped a forkful of chips into her egg, then paused,
the fork in midair, looking thoughtfully at me. “That’s got to be hard work,” she said.
“What?”
“Being a gynecologist…I mean, you get up in the morning and go to work, and the first thing you do is start poking around inside someone’s fanny. That can’t be easy…especially if you’ve had a few drinks the night before.”
I tried to look composed, as if I wasn’t shocked or embarrassed or anything, which I wasn’t really, but I somehow felt as if I
ought
to be, and I couldn’t keep the feeling from my face.
“What?” she said, looking at me. “I was only saying—”
“I know…it’s all right. It’s nothing.”
I thought for a moment she was going to say something else about Dad or about gynecologists in general or about me getting embarrassed, but she didn’t. She just smiled for a second, then popped the eggy chips into her mouth and started talking again. “OK,” she said. “Facts number two and number three: You live in Heystone and you’re in Year Ten at Heystone High.”
My mouth dropped open in dumb surprise.
“Am I right?” She grinned.
“How do you know that?” I said.
She laughed, wiggling her fingers at her head. “I’m psychic…I can fe-e-el your thoughts…I know everything there is to know…”
“Did you follow me?”
Her face went still. “Of course I didn’t
follow
you. What do you think I am?”
“So how do you know where I live?”
“Because…” she said, starting to eat again, “…because…I used to see you at the skateboard park.”
“What? When?”
“Years ago, when it first opened. You used to hang around there after school, you and your skateboard friends, falling off your boards all the time.”
“How do
you
know?”
“I was there.”
“Where?”
“At the park.”
“I don’t get it. What were you doing there?”
“Sneaking around bumming cigarettes most of the time.” She laughed. “It’s no great mystery or anything—I used to live in Heystone, that’s all. I went to St. Mary’s—”
“The convent school?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t there for long, though…”
I looked at her, trying to imagine how she’d look in a St. Mary’s School uniform—the long blue dress, the stupid little hat, the short white socks—but I couldn’t picture it.
“Whereabouts in Heystone did you live?”
“Otley,” she said.
I nodded. Otley’s on the posh side of town—or the posh
er
side, to be more exact. Heystone doesn’t do poor, it only does varying degrees of rich, and Otley’s about as rich as it gets.
“Surprised?” Candy said.
“Well, yeah…I mean, not about Otley…just the whole thing. You know, the coincidence.”
“What coincidence?”
“Us…you and me…both of us coming from Heystone…”
“You think that’s a coincidence?”
“Well, yeah…”
She shook her head. “Why do you think I called out to you at the station?”
“Why?”
“Yeah. D’you think I make a habit of calling out to any old strangers on the street?”
“Well, no…I suppose not…”
“I
recognized
you. I just told you that…I remembered you from the park.” She angled her head and looked at me. “You haven’t changed much, you know. Not that it was
that
long ago—only a couple of years.”
“You recognized me?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know how I felt about that. It was nice, in a way. Nice to be recognized. Nice to know she remembered me. Nice to think I must have had something worth remembering. But I wasn’t sure I wanted
nice.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be
recognized
or
remembered.
I wasn’t sure
what
I wanted.
“Are you going to eat that?” Candy said, nodding at my bread.
“Help yourself,” I told her.
As she folded the bread and mopped up the egg yolk from her plate, I gazed out through the café window. The patio outside was deserted. Across the zoo I could see the pathways winding up and down through a landscape of trees and rocks and make-believe animal worlds. Man-made mountains stood glowering in the distance, as pale and gray as poster-painted papier-mâché, and I wondered if the animals knew the mountains weren’t real and, if they did know, whether they cared.
“Why do you have to think so much about everything?” Candy said through a mouthful of eggy bread.
I shook my head. I didn’t mean to look irritated, but Candy’s reaction showed that I did.
“I was only
asking,
” she said sulkily. “I don’t care what you do.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
She lit a cigarette and breathed out her irritation in a stream of smoke. “Thinking about what?”
“You.”
It came out before I knew what I was saying, and I think it shocked her a bit. I know it shocked me. She didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at me for a moment, then started tidying the table, piling the plates and the cutlery on the tray. When that was done, she sat back, patted her belly, and burped contentedly, like an old man after dinner at his club. Then she took another long drag on her cigarette and looked at me again.
“You’ve got egg on the side of your mouth,” I told her.
“Where?”
I pointed to the corner of my mouth.
She touched the other side of her mouth. “Here?”
“No…the other side.”
“Show me,” she said, sucking the end of a paper napkin and passing it to me. I hesitated a moment, then reached across and touched the napkin to her mouth. Without meaning to, I brushed her cheek with the back of my fingers…Her skin was delicate and smooth. The bones of her face felt small and unknown.
“Thanks,” she said, licking her lips.
I nodded quietly, crumpling the napkin and placing it carefully on the tray. The ball of white tissue paper sat there for a moment, then slowly uncrumpled, revealing an inkblot pattern of lipstick-pink and yellow. I stared at it for
a while, looking for hidden meanings in the pattern, but there was nothing there—it was just a smudge of lipstick and egg.
“Joe?” said Candy.
I looked up. Her face was pale and drawn, making her eyes seem even darker than usual.
She said, “You don’t want to know about me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just best if you don’t.”
“Best for who?”
“You…me…I don’t know.”
She seemed tense—fiddling with her cigarette lighter, blinking her eyes, tapping her finger on the table. It was as if she was desperate to go somewhere or do something, but equally desperate not to.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I don’t mind—”
“Sorry,” she interrupted, starting to get up. “I need to go to the loo.” She picked up her handbag from the table and looked around the café, looking for the lavatory.
“It’s over there,” I said, pointing to a doorway across the room.
“Thanks,” she said, walking off quickly. “I won’t be a minute.”
I watched her go, remembering the last time she’d walked away from me, when I’d first seen her at the station. Then she’d walked with a sway of her hips and a quick smile over her shoulder, as if she knew that she was being watched and wanted to make the most of it, but now she was walking without any vanity at all—no swaying hips, no pretense, no frivolity. She was walking with a purpose. Either not knowing or not caring that I was watching her.
As she went through the doorway, I wondered briefly if
she was running out on me. I imagined her going down the corridor, slipping into the kitchen, then sneaking out the back door and legging it across the zoo…
Yeah, right,
I thought to myself.
She’s going to do that, isn’t she? She’s going to go to all that trouble just to get away from you.
I sat there for a while, staring through the window, thinking about things, listening to the steamy hiss of tea urns and the clatter of plates and cutlery, then I got up and went to wait outside.
It was early afternoon now and the temperature was starting to drop. The sun was still shining, though, still brightening the sky, and the grounds of the zoo were bathed in a crisp wintry light. The air was crystal clear. I could see for miles. I could see brightly colored birds, goats on hills, zebras and llamas, capuchin monkeys playing in the tops of trees…
I looked back inside the café.
Candy was taking a long time.
I wondered what she was doing—washing her hands, fixing her makeup, making a phone call…? I didn’t have a clue. What girls get up to in restrooms is a complete mystery to me. Gina sometimes disappears for hours. I’ve often been tempted to ask her what she does in there, but it’s a tricky subject to talk about. There’s always the chance of stumbling into the kinds of areas that
shouldn’t
embarrass me but do, and that’s the worst kind of embarrassment there is. Because when you feel embarrassed about something that you know you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about, you end up in the vicious circle of being embarrassed by your embarrassment…and that’s
really
embarrassing.
I looked over at the café again, willing Candy to appear:
Come on…please…If you take any longer, I’ll have to do something. I’ll have to go and ask someone to check the Ladies for me…that woman behind the counter…the one in the apron, with the grease-smeared glasses…I’ll have to go up to her and explain what’s happened…
A door slammed inside the café. I leaned to one side to get a better view. For a second or two, I couldn’t see anything…and then Candy was there, a vision in turquoise, walking through the doorway and adjusting her bag over her shoulder.
I let out a sigh and looked away, doing my best to look casual. Hands in pockets, gazing around, just taking in the view, waiting happily—no worries at all. I was so cool and casual that even when the café door opened, I waited a moment before turning around.
“Sorry I took so long,” Candy said.
“That’s all right,” I told her, shrugging very slightly, just to let her know that I’d hardly even noticed.
She stopped in front of me, looking down at the ground, and I could sense something different about her. It’s hard to describe, but she somehow seemed
looser.
The way she was standing, hanging her head…the strange little smile on her lips…
“I was…uh…” she mumbled.
“Sorry?”
She raised her head and looked at me, struggling to focus on my face. “I’m all right,” she said. “It’s all right…Do you wanna…?” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then giggled. “Sorry…” she said. “Sorry…I didn’t mean…Do you wanna, you know…?” She waved her hand, indicating the zoo, then looked back at
me again, covering her mouth to stifle a yawn. Her eyes were enormous, like pools of obsidian, but her pupils had shrunk to dim black dots, almost invisible within the darkness.
“Come on,” she said, taking my arm. “I wanna show you something.”
W
hatever Candy had taken, it didn’t seem to affect her too much…not outwardly, anyway. I mean, she wasn’t stumbling or staggering around, she wasn’t singing or shouting or laughing like a lunatic…she wasn’t
doing
anything. She was just walking along quite normally, leading me across to the other side of the zoo, as calm and steady and cool as you like. Apart from her eyes and a slight flush to her face, it was hard to tell any difference. Her pace was a little slow, perhaps, but at least she wasn’t rushing around like a maniac anymore. In fact, if anything, she seemed more normal now than she had been before. Her speech was a bit slurred, but it wasn’t too bad, just a bit sleepy-sounding, and after the initial bout of mumbling and giggling she soon settled down and got back to being herself again.
Whatever that was.
I didn’t know.
As we walked along the pathways, I didn’t know
anything—what to think, how to feel, how to react. I mean, when you’re with someone you really like and you haven’t known them that long and they start sneaking off to take drugs…what the hell are you
supposed
to do? Ignore it? Say something? Run away?
“Loosen up,” Candy said.
“What?”
She jiggled my arm. “Loosen up…You’re as stiff as a board.”
I tried to relax my arm, but it didn’t seem to belong to me anymore. Not that I knew what to do with it, anyway. Walking arm in arm was another new experience for me. It wasn’t
quite
as perplexing as the drug thing, but it still posed a lot of tough questions—
What should I do with my arm? Should I stick my elbow out? Should I hold her arm? Should I put my hand in my pocket?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked her, just for something to say.
“Wait and see. It’s a surprise.”
We walked on in silence. Candy seemed to be enjoying herself, smiling quietly at everything around us—the passing enclosures, the animals, the signs, the people on the pathways—but there was something about her, some weird sense of detachment, that made me wonder what she was really seeing. It was as if she was living in her own little bubble, all wrapped up and warm inside, and everything outside the bubble was nothing more than a passing curiosity.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“Hmm?”
“Are you OK?”
“Fine.” She nodded.
“Do you want to…uh…Do you want to talk about anything?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know…anything. Where you live, what you do…that kind of stuff.”
She smiled. “That kind of stuff?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded again, and again, then blinked her eyes once or twice, then looked at me and said, “OK…yeah…I can do that kind of stuff. Let’s see…” She looked straight ahead, deep in thought, then started talking. “Right…where do I live? OK…I live about ten minutes’ walk from King’s Cross station in a nice little third-floor flat in a refurbished Victorian house.” Her voice was flat and expressionless, as if she was reading from a script. “My roommate’s called Sophie. She’s a dancer in a West End nightclub, which is where we met.” She stopped talking and looked at me. “How’s that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing…” She smiled. “I was just wondering what you thought.”
I shook my head.
She tightened her grip on my arm. “You must have wondered about me…where I get my money from. What I
do…
”
“Well…yeah, I suppose.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I just…I don’t
know…
”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and neither did I. We just carried on walking. I was feeling more comfortable with the arm-in-arm thing now. I was beginning to appreciate that it’s actually a pretty good way of walking
when one of you knows where you’re going and the other one doesn’t. You don’t need to ask questions or guess which way to go; all you have to do is get used to the other person, and after a while you can sense where they’re going through the feel of their body.
We were near the main entrance again now, heading off toward a little tunnel that leads through to the canal side of the zoo. As we went down into the shade of the tunnel, Candy started talking again, this time in a more natural voice.
“It’s just a bit hard to talk about personal things,” she said. “There’s all sorts of family stuff…you know…complicated stuff. D’you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “There was all kinds of crap going on at home…I couldn’t stand it. Then they kicked me out of school, and things just went from bad to worse.” I felt her shoulders shrug. “So I just left. Got up one morning, called a friend, left a note, and came down here.”
“To London?”
“Yeah…I knew a girl who had a place in Bethnal Green. I stayed there for a while, then I got myself this dancing job…and that’s about it, really.”
“Dancing?” I said.
“Yeah…I’m a dancer.”
“Really?”
She stopped walking and turned to face me. “I just dance, Joe. Nothing else. I don’t take my clothes off. I’m just a dancer. No poles, no stripping, just a flashy little top and a miniskirt. It’s nothing—you see more naked flesh on Saturday morning kids’ TV.” She shrugged again. “It’s just a job.”
“What about Iggy?”
Her face tensed for a moment, then relaxed again. “Like I told you,” she said, “he’s just a friend of a friend…not even that, really. He’s just some guy that hangs around.” She tapped the side of her head. “He’s a bit whacked—too much crack, probably. He lives in his own little world. One minute he thinks he’s a pimp, the next he’s an undercover cop. It’s best to just humor him.”
“Is that what you were doing in McDonald’s—humoring him?”
She nodded, looking away. “He can get a bit funny sometimes…he’s a big guy—you saw him. He doesn’t
mean
to be scary…”
“He doesn’t have to.”
She laughed. “He wouldn’t hurt you.”
“No?”
“Well, not much…”
We looked at each other then—a long, close look. Candy was smiling, but I couldn’t work out what kind of smile it was. It seemed real enough, a smile fit for a joke, but jokes—and good lies—are usually based on the truth, and I could see some kind of truth in her eyes. It was a truth that invaded her, like a dark disease, a truth too painful to talk about. And I was beginning to wonder if all I was doing was making it worse.
Candy was still looking at me.
I smiled.
She sighed.
I breathed in deeply, tasting the scent of her breath, and a moment passed between us—a silent agreement to put the truth on hold—and then she took my hand and led me down into Moonlight World.
“It’s my favorite place,” Candy said quietly, guiding me down the dimly lit stairs. “It’s always empty and quiet down here, and the air feels nice and cool. Mind the steps.”
I stumbled slightly in the darkness. She tightened her grip on my hand and pulled me toward her.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “Then open them again. Like this…” She turned to me with wide-open eyes, looking like a startled owl.
I smiled at her.
“Seriously,” she said. “It lets more light in.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if they just turned up the lights?”
“It’s
supposed
to be dark. These are nocturnal animals. If the lights were turned up, they’d be asleep all the time.”
The steps led us down into a twilight corridor, and as we started to walk along it, looking in at the glass-fronted enclosures, I could feel the hush of the night seeping into my skin. The silence, the emptiness, the cool of the underground air. It smelled earthy and fresh.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Candy whispered.
“Yeah…it’s good.”
“I used to come here on my own sometimes…I’d stay down here for ages.” Her voice was barely audible. “It’s a good place for sadness…”
I wasn’t sure what she meant. Good for making you sad? Or good for taking the sadness away?
“Look,” she said.
We’d stopped in front of a rain-forest scene, a moonlit world of mossy branches and waxy green leaves and strange-looking ferns, all of it misty and dark and dripping with moisture. I moved up closer and peered through the glass, but I couldn’t see any animals.
“There,” Candy said, pointing to a corner. “On that little branch at the back. See?”
I looked closer. A pair of huge yellow eyes was staring curiously at us through the darkness. Behind the eyes I could just make out a small furry animal, no bigger than my hand, sitting quietly on the branch.
“What is it?” I said.
“I don’t know…come on, I’ll show you my favorite.”
She took my hand again and led me down to the end of the corridor. Her fingers felt so fine on my skin…so light and slender, pressing coolly into the palm of my hand…sending her touch all over me…
It was more than anything I’d ever felt before.
“Here we are,” she said, stopping in front of another display. “This is what I wanted to show you.”
I didn’t have to search for the animal this time; I could see it straight away. The inside of the enclosure was a lot starker than the other one—just a sandy floor, a stone-colored background, and a solitary bare-branched tree. Perched uneasily in the tree was a russet-colored animal with a dopey-looking head and a long thick tail. It was about the size of a small dog or a big cat, but it didn’t look like a dog or a cat—it looked like a small kangaroo. Small front legs, large hind legs, a roundish triangular head…
“It’s a tree kangaroo,” Candy said.
“A
tree
kangaroo?”
She nodded, her eyes glazed with pity. “It never moves. It just sits there all the time, like it’s too scared to go anywhere.”
She was right—it
did
look scared, scared and wobbly, as if it was going to fall off the branch at any moment. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it did. It was a kangaroo,
for God’s sake. Kangaroos aren’t designed for climbing trees. And this one seemed to know it. Its face was filled with a sad-eyed bewilderment, a pitiful look that seemed to say,
I
know
I’m a tree kangaroo, and I
know
I’m supposed to climb trees, but I’m just no good at it, and I really don’t like it.
“Poor little sod,” said Candy. “Stuck in a tree all day…”
The kangaroo blinked sadly.
Candy sniffed. “Come on…let’s leave him alone.”
I followed her back down the corridor toward the exit, feeling quietly moved by what I’d just seen. The sadness, the silence, the darkness, the loneliness…all of it held in a simple little moment. It was just so…
I don’t know.
Just so much.
If nothing else had happened then, if we’d left Moonlight World with only the memory of that sad little moment, it still would have stayed with me for years to come.
But something else
did
happen.
Something that made the moment eternal.
Without so much as a word, Candy led me down to the end of the corridor and into a dark little alcove beside the exit door. I thought she was going to show me something else, another animal or something, but instead she took me by the shoulders and pushed me up against the wall and, before I knew it, we were kissing ourselves to death. Hot kisses, wet kisses, long hard kisses that lasted forever…lips and tongues, hands and bodies, everything groaning out of control…
God…
It burns me up just thinking about it.
The heat of her mouth, her lips, the rush of her body touching mine, the naked thrill of her skin…
I don’t know how long we stayed there, moaning and sighing against the wall, but if a couple of young kids hadn’t come around the corner and surprised us with a sudden shriek of giggles, I’m sure we’d still be there now. Lost in the dark desire, lost in each other…
As it was, though, the kids brought us back to our senses. We stopped kissing and looked at them for a moment, none of us moving, and then their parents appeared around the corner and the spell was suddenly broken. The parents didn’t know what to do. At first they were wary, a bit suspicious, wondering what we were up to. Then the kids started telling them what we were up to and their parents got embarrassed and that got us giggling, which helped to cool things down a bit.
Not a lot, mind you, but enough to let us open the door and walk out into the late afternoon without feeling
too
conspicuous.
“That was fun,” Candy said, still giggling.
My skin was flushed, tingling in the open air, and I felt as if I hadn’t breathed for a month. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a throaty sigh.
Candy smiled at me, her dark eyes gleaming. “Are you all right?”
“Uh-huh…”
She grinned again, reaching into her bag for a cigarette. She offered me the pack. “Sure you don’t want one?”
“Nuh-uh,” I said.
She stopped to light the cigarette—cupping her hands against the breeze, clicking the lighter, then flicking her
head back and blowing out smoke with an irresistible look of delight on her face.
“OK,” she said. “What’s next?”
Next?
I thought.
What’s next?
I was just about ready to lie down and die.
“Come on, Joe,” she said, grabbing my hand. “It’s only early yet. There’s still a lot to see.” She grinned at me. “Come
on…
I’ll buy you a Coke—boost your energy levels.”
My legs were still quivering as she dragged me away, and the ground was an alien surface ten miles beneath me.
Except for one little hiccup, the rest of the day was a nice downhill ride. Candy bought me a Coke—and a bottle of water for herself—and then we just strolled around in the paling light, ambling slowly along the pathways, arm in arm, not really caring where we were going, just walking. The zoo was gradually emptying out, the schoolkids and tourists heading back home, and as the skies began to dim and the afternoon made way for the evening, the atmosphere took on that nice quiet feeling you get at the end of the day—animals slumbering, shops getting ready to close, zookeepers with wheelbarrows preparing for the night.
It felt good to be part of it.
Tired and happy, wandering quietly in a cooling breeze, birds whistling and animals grumbling, growling, shuffling, yawning…