Scruffy Buttons

by Chris Castle

(Continued)
     "Yeah, maybe secretly they’ll be glad. They looked like they had a lot of clutter in here anyway. It always felt to me like they were overcrowded with things, like they were bleeding from the walls or something. Maybe they’ll use the insurance for another holiday or something. Something good." He leant over and took the turban in his hand. It felt light, as if it were a million strands of coloured cobwebs weaved together. He reached over and placed it on her head. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. He felt then, for the first time that night, that she was accepting the night for what it was.
     "How do I look?" she said.
     "Like a princess," he said.
     "A princess of what?"
     "Princess of a thousand tribes, whose soldiers all fought on behalf of her heart." He often did this for her. He would draw small comic strips just for her that would tell tales of a beautiful girl and the trials she would endure and conquer. He always made them grand and overblown; just to see her face being overwhelmed by each description. Sometimes he would spend more time on those thin strips than he would anything else.
     "Only we could find a fancy dress shop and have all the mirrors stolen. Do you think that’s a...what s the word I’m looking for? Metaphor. I guess this drink’s going to my head." He reached over and refilled both the glasses, saying what he always said: "Well, let this one fill your boots."
     Stan reached into the box. He pulled out a green army helmet, a World War Two-style piece. He held it in front of him. It looked real enough, though he wouldn’t know the truth. He dropped it on his head, felt the cool metallic steel brush against his skin. She looked at him and goofily saluted. He acknowledged her with a stern nod.
     "Ma’am." he said. She leant over this time and took off his glasses.
     "You wouldn’t be allowed to storm the seven seas in those, real or fake. I like you better without them on, anyway, soldier. " She leant forward long enough to kiss him quickly before she sat back. She looked at him. "So how would have this have worked, soldier?"
     "What’s that, ma’am?"
     "Us being in love during the war. Would we have wrote to each other every second week, and kept our solemn promises and loved each other until your return unharmed? Or would we have gone some other way? "
     "I would have written. I would have drawn for you. " He liked getting letters from her. For a while he was out of the county. She had written him two letters. They were disjointed and erratic and by the end of the second one all he could make out was that it was 2:33 in the morning. That made him feel good. To know there was someone looking out for him, thinking about him, at 2:33. He told her this now. She blushed and then smiled, as if one had to follow the other.
     "I wouldn’t let you go to the army. I wouldn’t want to lose you. "
     "But then how would I, a soldier, fight and win your honour?"
     "You’d draw me a story. A tapestry that would go on for miles about our love and our weaknesses and every moment you planned for us to be together. That would be worth more to me than any silly fight." She had talked about this one night. She had been half asleep and said how she wished that he would draw her something that would stretch on forever. He said he would, he swore it. He still believed he would someday. He was just relieved she had not forgotten that night, those few, half-stolen words.
     "If you went away, you might have been killed in action. And then what? Would you have wanted me to be a grieving widow all my life? Would you have begrudged me another man after I’d lost you forever? "
     He thought about this. He took the helmet off. Suddenly he had the notion that it was real and that someone had died wearing it. That someone’s heart had stopped and his blood had run and there was still, somewhere, a family fractured by what had happened back then. He sipped his drink, thinking.
     "I guess after a while. But I’d want to still think there’d be a part of you that still loved me a little, no matter what else went on after. Maybe a bracelet or a locket I gave you before I left that you’d swear never to take off, including your wedding day. So on you’re wedding day I would still be there at the altar in some ways. I guess I’d see that as fair. In the long run."
     He put the helmet to one side and reached further into the box. He lifted out a long white silk scarf. It was still so clean and well preserved it looked as if it had been lacquered. The look felt at odds with how smooth it felt, like dry honey on his hands. He threw it through the air to her. They both watched as it sailed silently, looking as if it should have some sound attached to it as it moved. She let it flutter against her chest before she held it between her fingers.
     He reached in deeper and found other pieces. A gold sash, a pair of silk gloves, a black fitted jacket, and a cummerbund the colour of white and red wine mixed. They tried each piece on, some ill fitting on him, others moving too far over her. They smoked more cigarettes; they poured more rum and less pop. They asked each other questions, and waited until they had replies. As she pulled the gloves on she asked him a series of questions.
     "Why do you always wear those glasses? Do you want to be someone else when you leave the flat? Our bed? Why do you shave? I like you better when you don’t. Where did you drink tonight?"
     There were questions within these questions, he knew this. He answered the questions and then pulled more words out of the others to cover what else she wanted to know. He explained as best he could what he thought it was she was looking for. He didn’t hold back from her. He wanted her to know. Somehow, wearing the cummerbund and the scarf, he felt more like himself. He couldn’t explain it. But he kept talking. He told her whatever it was she wanted to know, until he felt like there was nothing left. By the time he had finished talking she had moved inside his arms, the scarf brushing his neck along with her skin, the lace gloves pushing gently against his opened shirt. He tried to explain how it felt when she touched him, her touch the trigger for him to breathe. He closed his eyes for a while as she touched him and tried to imagine he was blind. He described the sensations, as she shifted one material to the other against his skin until finally it was her fingertips, what he wanted to feel most of all.
     Jen then told him about something she used to do when she was younger. She had taken a job at a home help and cared for the people with disabilities. She said how most of the work was basic and hard and not something she’d cared to do again, but there was one thing that always stuck in her mind when she ran the memory through her mind. She remembered one man, in his thirties, who was brain damaged. He’d been dropped as a baby by his mother and never recovered. She had treated him and looked after him and she was pretty sure that he was in love with her, as much as a man in his way could be in love. She remembered the way he would look at her for a few seconds, before his eyes split apart and buzzed into different directions all over again. There was nothing sexual about it, it was just a love that comes from being looked after, was how she reasoned it.
     And every Thursday she would shave him. He wasn’t that well developed to be in need of a shave more than once a week, but by Thursday it was necessary and the weekend nurses were cruel and didn’t seem to care about any of the patients. So she would lead him by the hand to the doctor’s chair and she would sit him down and shave him. Not a simple morning shave before work but the sort of function Al Capone would have gone through each other morning. A procedure as much as an operation or preparing Christmas dinner. She would wet a towel, lathered his face and draw the dirt and bristles from his soft skin, wiping down his cheek and never drawing blood. Then, after this was done, she would crank down the chair and clean up the tools and cry. She cried because she was happy, because she knew somebody loved her for who she was. She said it was the only time that she’d ever been happy in silence. It was just a time when peace came to the fore. And there was no better feeling than that.
     She asked him to tell her something to trade for what she had just told him. Something that deserved to be told, that he had never spoken of before. He sat back and thought, although as soon as she suggested it he knew exactly what it was that he was going to say. He sat back and took a sip of his drink, drew cigarettes from the carton and passed one to her without thinking. It came easy to them now, lighting one for himself, saving the flame for her.
     He told her how on the first night they had stayed in the same bed he had this dream. It was the first and last time he had the dream, but unlike all the others he had never forgotten it. He said that he was employed as an ambulance man and that the dream never cut away from him being in the front of the van, hurtling down the streets. The streets never changed from the same single yellow-lined gray concrete. He was being driven by someone, someone famous, but he couldn’t think from where. By the time the dream reached the end he had climbed into the back and touched a pile of bodies that had been there for days and each one he touched simply rose up and sat to one side of the van. They didn’t say thank you or react or panic, they just nodded and then sat down. He couldn’t remember anything horrific or gory but they were all different. It wasn’t like a plague or a train wreck. It was just the different things that people die from, he reasoned. And then he woke up and felt good about having a dream where he’d done something positive.
     "Don’t do that anymore now, okay?" She said. She moved round to face him, looked him in the eyes, the smoke dissipated. "Don’t keep anything else tied up and away from me, okay? Promise?"
     "Promise."
     And like that the deal was done.
     The bottle was nearly finished when they decided whether to steal the box or not. They could blame it on the thieves. And once something is left behind in a robbed flat it’s practically stolen anyway. They weighed it up, they were laughing and then serious in turns, they decided against it. They decided that tonight was the one time they would experience this the feel of the gloves, the rust on their fingers from the World War Two relic, all of it. It was a snapshot for the two of them to remember and never repeat. A night like this could never be repeated. They swore on it. They would not steal anything to commemorate the occasion, so both had to reach into their pockets and put down what they had already taken. They packed the box up and replaced it back where they had found it, as best they could. If they were asked they would lie, but they already knew there would be no questions. They held hands in the empty room but somehow now it didn’t feel empty.
     They reached into the pack and finished the last two cigarettes inside. They smoked them still holding hands. The bottle was empty. When the cigarettes were finished they started to dance. They danced in the same way they did at all the classes but now they held each other close. There was a veil across the air that made it seem like another place as they danced. They both closed their eyes without thinking. When Stan opened his, the sun was just starting to rise in front of him. He stood still for a moment. It felt as if the sun was doing this just for them. They stayed still but somehow still kept dancing. There was motion from inside of them. The sun rose a little higher in the sky. Sometime soon there would be footsteps on the stairs outside. At some point a key would snap in the lock and bring this all to a close. But not yet. They kept dancing as the sun moved further across them.
Chris Castle is English but works in Greece. His influences include PT Anderson, Ray Carver and Bill Murray. He has been published 90-odd times this past year and can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com.