I once read a story about a Japanese girl trapped in a garden when the cicadas came out of the ground. They all came at once. She looked up at one moment and there they were, everywhere, colonizing the air and the trees, so many that the branches were loaded and drooping. All around her the soil was pockmarked, a million maiden flights going up into the branches, the noise getting louder, echoing around the walls until it was almost deafening. Terrified, she ran for shelter, crushing cicadas, hopelessly fracturing their wings, cracking them out of their protective cases so they squealed and spun on the ground like broken catherine wheels, round and round, a blur of brown and black wings. When at last she found a way out of the garden she ran straight into the arms of a boy, who caught her up and carried her to safety. She didn’t know it then but the cicadas had been a blessing. This was the boy she was destined to love. One day she’d become his wife.
I jumped. Something had hit my foot. I sat up quickly, looking around blearily. The garden was different – dark. The sun had gone. I’d been lost in a daydream. In my dream it was Jason who caught up the girl and carried her away. His shirt was open at the neck and as he carried her he was whispering something rude and seductive into her ear, making her blush and cover her face. Something hit my arm and I stumbled off the chair in shock, dropping my books. Everywhere little dimples were appearing in the earth, dust flying up as if from bullet hits. Rain. It was only rain, but I was still in the story, with the Japanese girl, a million beetles jumping from the dust and catching in her hair. The drops on my bare skin were like acid. Quickly I gathered up as many books as I could, and raced across the garden to the wisteria tunnel.
I slid closed the screen door. The stairwell was cool; there were dead leaves in the crevices of the stairs. Behind me the rain beat against the rice-paper screen and I imagined the garden getting darker and darker, beetles shaking the branches and coalescing above it, like a huge dust-devil funnelling upwards above the roofs. In the gloom I kicked off my shoes and hurried up the stairs.
Jason was at the top, standing in the corridor, just as if he’d expected me. He was dressed to go out, but his feet were bare. I came to a halt in front of him and dropped my books on the floor.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s cut me,’ I said, running my hands over my arms, imagining beetle wings fraying my skin. ‘I think the wisteria’s cut me.’
He bent over and pressed my ankles between thumb and forefinger. I flinched, jerking my leg back instinctively. ‘What’re you-’
He put his fingers to his lips. ‘What’m I-’ he mimicked, looking up and raising his eyebrows at me. ‘What’m I what?’
I stood paralysed, my legs slightly apart, staring at him in silence, as he calmly ran his hands up and down my calves, like a stablehand feeling a horse for flaws. He let his hands rest on my knees, a few inches inside the hem of my skirt, half closing his eyes as if his fingers were a stethoscope and he was listening for damage. Sweat broke across my shoulders, on the back of my neck. He straightened and lifted my right hand and ran his palms up my arm, cupping the elbows, running his thumb over the thin skin of my wrists. The roar of the rain echoed through the house, rattling down the fragile corridors like hail. Jason put his right hand on my right shoulder and pulled my hair up and round behind my neck, gathering it all on the left side of my head in a bundle and raking his fingers through it. I could feel my pulse pounding against his palm.
‘Please-’
He smiled out of the side of his mouth, showing the edge of a chipped tooth. ‘You’re clean,’ he said. ‘Very clean.’
I wanted to put my fingers to my eyes because there were little bubbles of light popping against my retina. I could see the mole on the side of his neck, and under it the faint flutter of his pulse.
‘You know what time it is now?’ he said.
‘No. What time is it?’
‘It’s time for us to do it.’ He took my hand lightly, holding it at the palm between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Come on. We’re going to find out what you’re hiding.’
I tightened my knees, digging my heels into the spot. My skin was unbearably taut, as if every hair was standing straight up in its bed, struggling to stop a phantom me that wanted to slide out and slip straight into Jason. Two distinct rivulets of sweat ran down between my shoulder-blades.
‘Hey,’ he said, smiling slyly, ‘don’t worry – I’ll take my hoofs off before we start.’
‘Let go,’ I said, pulling my hand away from him and stepping back, almost stumbling. ‘Please, leave me alone.’
I gathered up my books clumsily and ran back to my room, bent forward a little, the books crushed against my stomach. I slammed the door and leaned against it, in the semi-dark, for a long time my heart beating so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else.
At six p.m. it was already dark and the light from Mickey Rourke was filtering into the room through the curtains. I could just see my silhouette in the mirror outlined in gold, sitting in trembly silence, a wavery line of cigarette smoke rising into the air. I had been sitting there for almost five hours, doing nothing but smoking one cigarette after another, and still the feeling hadn’t gone. It was a fizzing, euphoric sensation, like bubbles bursting all over my skin. Whenever it faded, I’d only have to think of Jason saying, ‘ We’re going to find out what you’re hiding,’ and the feeling would rush back at me.
After a while I pushed a strand of hair from my forehead and stubbed out the cigarette. It was time to get ready for the club. I was shaking as I stood up, took off my clothes, opened the wardrobe and pulled out the bags. Sometimes you get to a point in your life when you just have to hold your breath and jump.
I found a pair of French knickers, crushed iridescent silk, with wide grosgrain ribbons hanging low, a single central pane in devoré velvet, hundreds and hundreds of purple medieval flowers twining through the panel and bursting out on to the silk like a psalter illumination. I stepped into them, pulling them up high so that the waistband was sitting across my navel. Then I turned and looked at my reflection. All of my stomach was covered, from the navel to the tops of my thighs. You couldn’t see anything.
At the other end of the house, the Russians were shouting at each other, squabbling as they usually did when they were getting ready for work. Vague howls of outrage echoed along the corridor, but I hardly heard them. I put a finger inside the crotch of the knickers and pulled aside the lace. You could get inside there and the top of the knickers wouldn’t move. You really wouldn’t know there was anything wrong. Maybe life could change I thought. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe I could make it change, after all.
I dressed in a trance, pulling on a slim black velvet dress. I sat on the stool, my feet planted slightly apart, and dropped my head between my knees the way I’d seen the Russians do it, spraying my hair so that when I sat up it was heavy and glossy, very black against my white skin. The velvet dress held me closely where I’d gained weight, touching me, making me want to push back at it in some places.
Outside, the Russians were still yelling, the argument raging up and down the corridor. Very carefully I blotted my lipstick, took a little patent-leather clutch bag, pushed it tight up under my arm, put on stiletto shoes and left the room, walking down the corridor a little unsteady on the heels, my shoulders back, my head held high.
There was a light on in the kitchen. Jason was in there with his back to the door, singing to himself to try to drown the racket, moving around, looking in cupboards, in the fridge, mixing a last-minute martini. ‘Dumb-ass Ruskies,’ he was singing to himself. ‘Dumb-ass, katsap, glimmer girls.’ His voice trailed off when he heard me passing the door.
I kept walking. I was some way down the corridor when, from behind me, he said, in a loud voice, ‘Grey.’
I stopped dead, my hands in tight balls, my eyes closed. I waited until my breathing had calmed, then I turned. He was standing in the corridor staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost.
‘Yes?’ I said.
He stared at my makeup, my hair, the shiny black stilettos.
‘Yes?’ I repeated, knowing my face was colouring.
‘That’s new,’ he said eventually. ‘The dress. Isn’t it?’
I didn’t answer. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling, my head pounding.
‘I knew it,’ he said, and there was a kind of fascinated smugness in his voice. ‘I always knew that underneath it all you were just pure, pure sex.’