The Cheek Perforation Dance. Sean Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ him slowly, looking up at him, ominously submissive.

      — He was drunk. He started hitting me … He was angry

      Half sucking, half biting.

      — Why? Why was he angry?

      — I think … because … I was …

      —Yes?

      — As I said his nightclub wasn’t working out … so …

      Just biting.

      — You mean he … – The prosecutor looks like he is pained by his own upcoming dip into the vernacular – ‘Took it out on you’?

      — Yes – Rebecca’s voice goes even quieter. The judge asks her to speak up again; Rebecca apologises, meekly. She takes in one big breath and visibly grips the banister of the witness box as she says to the far corner of the cream-painted courtroom – He hit me quite badly

      — You were bruised?

      — Yes

      — Did anybody else know about this?

      — Well …

      Crossing his legs, crossing his arms, Patrick switches desperately off. He just doesn’t want to hear this bit. The bits that aren’t complete lies are the total truth: both hurt. He crosses his arm and looks at his watch, watches it tick towards lunch, as Rebecca goes on about their arguments, their fights, about the last fight before he left, before she kicked him out. Rebecca is rambling, believably; the prosecutor is gently nudging her rambles along, and Patrick is looking at his wristwatch and thinking, seriously, with passion:

      Is this it? Rebecca? Where is the other truth? The real truth? Where is the love, the sex, the death, the Aztecs? Suddenly he feels like standing up and asking her, shouting: nothing about me and Joe? Nothing about why I was angry? Nothing about my dad and your needs and my love? Your cunt? NO?

      The prosecutor is in full flow now:

      — So you decided to finish it?

      — yes

      — How long was it before you saw him again?

      — yes

      — And that was when you changed the locks?

      — yes

      — And he took how much money out of your account?

      — yes yes YES

      Patrick tries not to look or listen: Rebecca is unmistakably shaken. Under this barrage of friendly but piercing questions she has stopped, to control herself. Her voice is quieter than ever, her face shakes behind the lattice of one draped hand; her lips are smeared with pink; her delicate nostrils are pinked. And her hair is young, gold, meek and sweet.

      Then the court’s awed and worried silence is shattered as the judge leans nearer Rebecca and says I think we better take a break for lunch here but Patrick doesn’t really listen to this. Patrick just stares at his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, the girl, the bitch, the liar, the bogus emoter, and thinks:

       Jesus, Bex. You loved me that much?

6

      Lifting his coffee-bar-type soup cup full of takeaway Chinese soup Joe blows low; then sips; then grimaces. Patrick:

      — Something wrong with the soup?

      Joe shakes his head, lowers the cup:

      — Yeah no … yeah

      — What?

      — This soup. It’s that stupid healthy Chinese shit

      — Yeah?

      — With no monosodium glutamate

      — … So?

      Joe sits forward on the sunlit Soho Square bench, gazes mournfully into his soup:

      — I like MSG …

      Joe goes quiet, as he gingerly sips. Patrick looks at Joe. Then Patrick says:

      — You know, sex is in many ways the monosodium glutamate of life

      Joe:

      — Oh God

      — It makes what would otherwise be unpalatable palatable, it makes the boring samey noodles of life that extra bit

      — OK shut up – Joe says, then he says – Anyway why did I buy soup? It’s thirty degrees in the shade and I buy soup? Man

      From his side of the bench Patrick clicks his tongue, in empathy. Then Patrick returns to his own takeaway tray of sushi. Patrick can sense Joe watching on, hungrily, enviously, as Patrick chopsticks a smear of translucent tuna belly, briefly dips the fish in a little plunge-pool of soy, then deftly drapes the result between his lips.

      Joe:

      — You know your gran sucks your pants?

      — Uh-huh

      — She told me in bed last night

      — Right – Patrick says – Right … Well …

      — Yeah?

      — Your girlfriend told me your cock looks like a weasel with a goitre on its head

      — What girlfriend? – Joe shakes his head, says – How is she anyway?

      — Sorry??

      Joe, tutting:

      — Your girlfriend, the rich one … you met her in a bookshop two months ago, you’ve been sleeping with her ever since – Slowly – She’s OK, yeah?

      Silence. Patrick contemplatively stirs a few stray grains of rice around his little puddle of soy. Then he says:

      — Tits are too big

      Joe:

      — As if

      — No they are, too big, and too … firm

      — Don’t

      — Too firm and too good, wasted on me, those big creamy

      — You cunt, Skivington

      — Oh, I forgot, you like big ones, don’t you?

      — Suck my cock

      — Actually – Patch relents – I was thinking of bringing you in on the tits, as a kind of, breast consultant

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