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I'll always love you
As I read this morning that Sally Thila died last night I remembered her last comment that we had messed up and wouldn't ever get a second chance. I wondered if I could save the portrait - in our memory, she had told me - that was buried among the tattered bags, shoes, printer and other clutter in my box-room.
Over two black coffees and four cigarettes I read the report of her death five times. She had been dancing when she collapsed and her heart failed; a postmortem revealed she had popped an Ecstasy. The Times reported she was 26 years old. I had imagined her 10 years older given the gutter realism she possessed; her cynicism smothered her dreams, and you could see the intense passion in her face flustered to the colour of a cock's wattles. In the picture The Times published she looked younger than I knew her: her hair fell down on her shoulders rather than the bob I remembered, though her left eye drooped slightly even in the picture. The news of her death sprawled over a fourth of page 2. Nowhere did they mention that she was a painter.
I folded the paper and stood up. In my small office I felt like an animal who had overgrown his pen. Outside, the colours glowed as if from within - the grey sky with a hue of bronze, the amber stone of the office block across the garden with its tint of sunset, the dust and smog in the air with its tinge of copper. The black-green cypress trees in the garden stooped, skulking like sentries with their chin turned down. The glow of the fluorescent lights in the windows of the office block seemed ethereal like the glimmer I had detected in Sally's eyes the first night we met. I pictured her lying dead, her yellow cheeks stained with the pomegranate-red burst capillary veins that spread like tiny roots underneath the skin. A flush of smothered passion or high blood pressure?
Although I had met Sally only twice, the last time two years ago, it seemed typical of her to die on you like that. I felt no longer angry with her for ruining our feverish night. We wouldn't have lasted anyway.
The night we met the rain looked like rods of steel in the headlights and the eucalyptus trees on the road verges flung their arms and hissed as if trying to flog the car. At the Rouch Club I leaned on the counter, sipping wine and rolling my head to the drumming beats as I watched the woman wearing trek-pants and a red fuzzy jacket dance, hopping from leg to leg, forwards and backwards. When our eyes bumped she smiled.
I shuffled over, scorched with embarrassment, and said, "I like the way you dance. How come you never tire? You have danced for 2 hours."
"It's anger and frustration," she said. "I've got too much of that."
There was an edge to her voice, and later I learned she had dropped an LSD. Now twisting her wiry figure from the hips, she slowed down and hung close.
"Through the mirrors I was seeing you looking at me," she said, laughing at the way she had caught me with my pants down, so to speak.
There were two mirrors: a large one hanging near the ceiling at the far end, tilted at an angle, and another across the bar. Through the mirrors you could see everyone mingling in the club with a camera-like perspective; I hadn't even noticed the mirrors, so I supposed you have to be tripping on LSD to spot these things. Now that I looked I could see also the wooden frames of the mirrors mottled with woodborer holes. Old furniture decorated the Rouch Club: a heavy timber counter with a marble-top, round metal tables, antique mahogany cabinets, rust-splashed beer and traffic signs on the walls, a wicker rocking chair, and lit by three revolving police lights. Its small size - two rooms little larger than living rooms - made it intimate.
I poured Sally a glass of my half-empty bottle of white wine and we clinked our glasses. As we did I managed to look into her eyes, and so did she. We talked about the d‚cor and about the vibe at the Rouch. And we talked about the music; Sally liked jungle and said she hated the techno classics they were playing at the Rouch; old records are just old, so what if they are classics? When we finished the wine Sally herded me towards the door. We peered through the frosted glass of the lattice windows.
"When I was little," she said, "and it used to rain I used to stand at the front door and watch the stream of water by the curb, as it carried litter with it down the street. Sometimes I made paper ships and placed them in the water to see them float away into the darkness. A stream of water takes a life of its own."
As she said this she huddled into herself and seemed yearning to be embraced like a little girl. I found myself grinning to everything she said.
Out of her jacket pocket she pulled a bottle and a tobacco tin packed with slices of oranges. She took a sip and sucked one of the orange slices, then handed me the bottle.
"What's in it?" I said.
"Mescal."
"Oh, Jesus," I said, making a face.
She laughed. "Oh come on, we only get one life. Every moment is a lost moment." When she said this she gritted her teeth with passionate realism. I felt her orbit of energy as if I was standing before the blasting speakers. In her quest for the fullness of life, for the roller coaster of life, she seemed dangerous to be close to. Yet I wanted more. She addicted me.
The mescal was bitter and I usually watch my intake, but in reckless indulgence, I guzzled as much as I could stomach. Sally had already drunk three-fourths of the bottle. We shared the rest.
Back inside, Sally sat on the wicker chair and started rocking, letting her legs fling, and laughing like a toddler on the swings. I rocked her faster and we both laughed.
"That's enough," she said after a while. "My head is spinning." She pressed to the side of the chair and patted the empty space. I sat beside her.
"Nice ashtray," I said, pointing at the porcelain ashtray modeled like a topless pink Cadillac.
"Yeah," she said. "It's funky." She emptied the ashtray under the table and tucked it into the inside pocket of her jacket.
Later we danced, and when we left the club there was the grey tinge of dawn on the eastern sky. The sky had cleared but the wind shuddered my second-hand Mini Minor. Sally asked me to stop in front of a supermarket. She sprinted across the road towards the shuttered supermarket and I wondered what was on her mind. She rummaged through carton boxes stacked outside, just delivered before opening times. Running back she huddled a loaf of breath, a carton of milk and three chocolate-flavoured yogurts.
In her flat we sliced the bread and made sandwiches of peanut butter and mustard. We mouthed the sandwiches like hungry beasts, without talking, just gorging ourselves. Then we guzzled the yogurt and more wine. Sally showed me her studio. She painted abstracts; what looked to me red shapes on black or white background. I'm not an art buff.
"Verdict?" she said, lifting her eyebrows.
The room was swimming. "I like them," I said.
She considered me for a while and jutted her pointed chin. She had flung away her jacket and now, seeing her profile in the harsh spotlights of the studio, her features looked sharp, her breasts flat.
"Like hell you like them," she said, her eyes burning. "You can try being honest; I can take it."
"I do like them," I protested. My voice was a whimper. Her fierceness, her anger, daunted me.
"Forget it." She waved her arm.
I had a prediction then that the night would turn sour. But I wanted to save us, to try. I asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?"
"Flashes I see when I'm caned on booze and drugs," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Our thoughts and senses degenerate so much, with drugs especially, that we start seeing the world around us, rather than be occupied by our tunnel-vision existence. Know what I mean. I see patterns and shades and formations in the arrangement of things that I never spot when sober."
She was standing up, swaying as she talked, and her steps were stilted. Except for dirty plates and glasses and a full ashtray the living room was empty. No heaps of clothes or magazines were strewn about and I wondered how someone could have lived for so long yet owned so little.
Then Sally scuttled into the bathroom, closing the door, clicking the lock. Her gasping eruptions grated my heart. I wanted to help her. I went to the door and said, "Can I come in?"
"No," she gasped.
When she came out sweat beaded her pale forehead. I said, "How do you feel?"
"Aggravated," she said. "Why do I always have to screw up?"
"It's all right," I said. Her forehead was furrowed and her eyes overcast. She must have felt that she had blown our expectations.
"No it's not all right," she said. "I fucked up." I thought I detected a twinge of guilt in her voice. Maybe her greed, drinking and eating without control, had ruined the image of confidence she had projected all night.
Now she leaned at the half-open door of her bedroom, blocking the way as if protecting her bedroom from an intruder. Her breath had the acidic smell of the contents of her stomach. "I want to catch some sleep," she said.
I stood there, balking, my eyes imploring hers'.
"Sorry," she said. "Awfully sorry."
The next day I got up alone in my bed at lunchtime. I sat at the edge of the bed; naked and staring until I trembled in the chill that crept over me. After coffee I called her.
"I feel like an intruder in my own home," she said. Her voice sounded distant and hysteric. "In this state every scraping sound in the apartment overhead rakes my stomach."
I imagined her tiptoeing, pausing to listen to any sounds as she peered from behind the curtains at the street underneath, careful to muffle the clang of the plates and glasses. That morning she had pointed at a concrete road bridge spanning the valley overhead her apartment. She said she had seen someone once leap over and crash into pulp at the bottom; she described his flight as the ultimate trip. I wondered if she was thinking of doing the same. I said, "What are you doing then?"
"Drinking," she said. "Why did I ruin our night? Why did I? Tell me why?"
"Calm down," I said. "I can come over and."
"Don't make it worse," she said. "Don't make me more miserable. We blew our chance last night to make electricity sparks, know what I mean. After soaring so high together last night we would be too stiff and anxious."
I pictured her sitting and drinking whiskey, chain-smoking pot, her hair tousled and her eye shadow smudged. Drinking and smoking. Burning out. Finding a perverted pleasure in self-destruction.
I gave Sally my number. She said she would call.
By the time she did call, several months later, I had given up on her and crossed out her telephone in my diary. She said her abstracts weren't selling, and she had to do odd jobs and a bit of drug dealing to pay the bills. Now she wanted to try her hand at portraits, and she wanted to do my portrait.
Later, when she opened the door she seemed fresh as dew at dawn.
I sat still while she painted me. The overhead spotlights burned my face and the smell of the paint lightened my head. She concentrated on the painting, without smiling or saying anything, occasionally pausing to inspect the painting and take a drag of her cigarette burning in the pink Cadillac ashtray. It seemed to me that she had lost more weight; she looked anorexic.
She said, "Why do I get the impression that you are observing me?"
I liked her bluntness because she was honest, and I hated it because it made me uncomfortable. Why cannot she keep her observations to herself? Why does she have to make you feel awkward?
When she finished the painting we went into the living room to wait for it to dry. She skinned a joint and poured a glass of wine. I had a coffee.
"I can afford to get stoned now as a reward for doing my stint today," she said.
Still feeling singed from the night we had met and self-conscious to be sitting there pretending we were starting anew, I felt as if I was having a business coffee. I watched my words to avoid provoking Sally. So I said, "Why do you paint?"
"I think it gives me a solace from the desolation of the real world," she said. "I can create my vision and make it public."
I nodded and sipped my coffee. When she caught me staring at the pink Cadillac ashtray she said, "Remember the night I nicked that?"
"Could I forget?"
"Don't be sarcastic," she said. "I feel bruised about it too. But what's done is done; we can never feel like that for each other again."
I wanted to tell her she was tragic and miserable. I wanted to grab her from the lapels and shake her. I said nothing.
She elaborated: "Most nights, returning home from a party or a club I feel terribly alone and disappointed, dreaming about what I could have said or done, or what could have happened. Then once in a while I meet someone and we hit off so brilliantly I would want to believe we were made for each other. The irony is that it always, always, ends in disappointment."
I stifled a scream.
"Know what I mean. It's like when you do heroin and because the high is so high everything else feels bland by comparison."
She gave me the portrait and I offered to pay her. She said she wanted to give it to me for free, in our memory. I dished a tenner, in appreciation for her work I pointed out, but she turned this down too. She had a far-off look. I told her it would be good to meet again. She agreed. Driving away tears glazed my eyes. Our emotions for each other, so feverish at first, would fizzle. The friendship that had germinated, that we could have nurtured, would wilt.
We never met again, and that morning when I read the news of her death I realized it had been two years since she had done my portrait.
I never liked the portrait because I thought it didn't look like me. The curves of my shoulders, the glow in my cheeks, the full lips stretched into the hint of a smile, the gleam in my eyes, the exaggerated dimple on my chin - all these were not what I saw in the mirror. But reading of her death, after work I hurried home and scrambled through the clutter in the box-room. I dug out the portrait and held it at arm's length. Moths had feasted on the canvas, thinning it and gnawing some holes in it.
With a gasp now I saw what Sally had seen and painted: the portrait did not show the normal me but the person Sally had met in the Rouch Club on the night we met, the person flushed with the intimate excitement that transforms us into angels. She had painted me the way she remembered me best, because, as she predicted, we never got a second chance to enjoy each other that way.
I removed from my bedroom wall a painting my mum had given me and in its place hung the portrait. Thinking of Sally in that stormy night I felt my nipples stiffen. I put a hand up my blouse and cupped my breast, stroking my nipple between my forefinger and thumb, and letting the spongy breast fill my hand. Sally would have liked their feel.
© Victor Paul Borg
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