Written a long time ago. I hope to forget it one day. Enjoy:
The
Cold Beach
Somewhere, faintly and far away, she heard a whirring that required
a conscious effort to ignore. The paper underneath her thin and agile fingers
was crumpled to a scraggly heap prompting a boy sitting next to her to glance over
with exaggerated concern. She grimaced at her handwriting (chicken scratching) and reminded herself to redo this page of
notes.
A girl (nay, a woman; mature age student) sitting across the table
let her pen glide effortlessly, seamlessly, callously across her page producing
almost illegible scrawl. She wouldn’t glance twice at it.
The sound of the whirring (a windmill inside the library?) continued
on and on, droned on and on, on and on, on and on. A lifetime of this and
perhaps Eve would have impaled herself on that there pencil, sitting harmlessly
and woody on the desk. It would never know its own fate.
There was then a peaked smell like musty, old bread, once soft yet
firm. Someone’s forgotten lunch, growing idle in a bag and compressed to a sphere
of carbo-goodness. Something porky in there too; ham, salami, prosciutto, pig
trotters? Eve’s own stomach cringed away as trickles of digestive juices and
acids heave-hoed inside to a relentless rhythm.
She got up, her calves bristling together. The boy and the girl
(nay, woman) at the table glanced her
way, eyes identical in the colour of grey-blue. Babies are all born with
grey-blue eyes. Half dead already or with cataracts from their past life as the
forlorn elderly.
The library held a spiralling staircase down the centre; fibreglass
and metal banisters bearing fingerprints from greasy-handed students having
clutched (what’s that?) compressed rolls of salami and ham. Now they nearly had
that smell too; alloy of steel and pork.
It was cold and windy outside, skies grey as far as the eye could
see. Eve liked these days where it looked like the world was a greying corpse.
She always thought that, should she ever go to a beach, she would want to go on
a cold day, not the stinking hot, sweaty, sticky days of summer. A cold beach,
a grey beach, a beach with shiny pebbles (rain slicked and slimy) that you
slipped on as you traipsed across.
From outside the library she looked inside the library cafe where
steaming takeaway containers of fettucine alfredo were being served. X-ray
vision: you could see a vat of the stuff being made from a white, off-smelling
powder. Mum made that stuff. Eve wanted what cancer she probably had from it;
stomach or pancreatic?
A girl walking past her (freshman, all girl, no woman) looked at her
with concern. Lots of people did that; she was a concerning person. The girl
saw Eve looking inside the cafe like she was an orphan and hadn’t eaten in
days. But this was just Eve’s expression; she liked a cold beach.
“You okay?” asked the girl. Eve nodded without looking at her.
“I’m fine.”
Eve’s legs skipped a beat (actually: tripped over an uneven surface)
as, after another moment of quiet contemplation, she carried on her way. Her
destination was a tutorial on the other side of campus. Her attitude: dire,
tire, mire. Down at her feetsies, her tootsies, her once white shoelaces were
stained a dirty grey. From what? The world. The world was a dirty sort of
place.
She carried on her way.
Inside a building that she passed, a middle-aged professor with a
nice, rotund belly and a penchant for chocolate and cellotape sipped at a cup
of coffee as he walked across the tiled lobby. Big lobby, another big,
spiralling staircase rising up, erect and probing (ha), but this time shaped in
a double helix. You had to remind people of the grandeur of this place. You
could be misled by the dozens of tired, identical students in conspicuously
stained (silver nitrate, I promise) lab coats trailing down. Those too tired to
lift their feet would take the elevator down from the top floors.
The professor let his clumsy big oaf feet skid along a path he’d
taken for the last five years.
“Hi, Jess,” he said to the receptionist. Curly haired Sue with
bosoms that always rested on the spreadsheet or diary entry she was working on.
He looked at them sadly because his wife’s had deflated long ago.
Eve, perky and pert but hidden under a thick sweater, continued her
way across campus. To her right there was a shriek and she looked in time to
see a bird swoop down and fearlessly pluck a bit of food from the clutches of a
male student. Sad too: a kebab.
“Hello.”
The word. You know, not many people say hello these days. People say
hey, hi, how do you do. Hello was rare. Eve associated it with Enid Blyton,
kids in the UK with big, fiery imaginations, baskets full of tinned peaches and
custard tarts and a dog named Timmy trailing behind. Hello, hello, hullo, hullo they always said as they came across
either a kindly old farmer or a treacherous people smuggler. Island nation; far
away from here.
“Hello,” she said because he’d said it. He was a boy (a boy-man, 19 but thin) with a curly whip, a
marshmallow frosting, of light brown hair and skin pockmarked by adolescent
years of pussy filled pustules. That skin used to be smooth and pearly white.
Now the pocks caught shadows in it. Good for rock climbing.
“Hello, Marcus,” she said. Marcus wearing dark-wash denim and a
chambray shirt. Headed for the rodeo, Marcus, ol’ boy? Headed for some bull
fighting, some cornbread, some deep fried butter?
“Hi, Eve,” he said. His voice was deep but had a weasely quality
like he was constantly congested. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m dandy.”
Dandy. They learnt about those in high school English literature
class. A dandy like Oscar Wilde. He probably drank tea a lot. Eve hated tea. Bitter
leaves steeped in perfectly good water until the water turned as bitter and
dankly coloured as the leaves.
Dandy. They learnt about those in high school English literature
class. Class with Marcus. Couldn’t remember his last name; something like Pebb?
Pebb. Stupid last name. Not even a name, more like a sound.
High school English literature class. That was how she knew Marcus Pebb.
“How are you, Marcus?” Pebb.
“I’m good,” he said. “How’s uni?”
“Oh, you know,” she said. A muscle twinge sounded deep in her right
arm, the one bearing the weight of her bag filled with stupid photocopies of notes.
She was going to drop the unit as soon as she could (be bothered). “Just uni.
How about you?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” he said. He had bright blue eyes that danced
around in too-deep sockets (again: good for rock climbing. For little people,
for Gulliver’s friends). “What are you doing now? Want to get a coffee?”
Coffee was better than tea. At least you could hide its bitter
acridity with cream and sugar, caramel syrup and chocolate shavings.
“Yes,” Eve said. “Yes, that’s a good idea. The library cafe?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
And they had coffee.
As they left the cafe, “Maybe we should catch up again. You know,
for longer. We haven’t seen each other in so long,” he said. Marcus Pebb was a
strange guy. He had this thin, gangly appearance that gave you the impression
of social anxiety but, when he wanted to, he had no qualms about starting
conversation. He could smile and laugh like the best of them. It was frankly
disgusting.
“I would like that. I’ll call you,” she said.
They parted ways.
*
Every time Eve came out of the shower she felt like she had gristle
and debris in between her toes. That was the downfall of the dormitory shower.
Sometimes, she checked the underside of her feet (pink and tender) and would
find someone else’s hair (blonde or brown) or something soft and squidgy that
she couldn’t quite identify. Yuk. Still, she smelled good. Overpriced fruity body
scrub. It made her love and hate herself at the same time.
In her room, her roommate, Claire, sat cross legged on the bed,
chuckling at something on her laptop.
“What are you laughing about?” Eve asked and set her shower bag on
the desk. Thankfully, today she felt no unidentifiable gristle in between her
toes or under her feet.
“Something stupid,” she said with another laugh.
“I skipped my tute today,” said Eve. She sat down on her own bed.
“Why’s that?”
“I bumped into Marcus Pebb. We had coffee.”
A beat. A bat. A batting eyelash. A lash. A splash. A scratch across
metal. The sound of a big, looming train coming at you. Claire stared at Eve
with big, doe eyes.
“Marcuss Pebb? From high
school?”
“Yes,” said Eve. She checked her feet anyway, sure she would have a
foul-smelling fungus with mutant exponential growth by the end of semester. No,
just the baby soft pinkness of her soles..
“Really?”
“Yes, Marcus Pebb.”
“He’s a bit...”
He’s a bit... He’s a bit...
In senior year, math class, an argument. An answer to a test that he
got wrong. A logic question. Another girl who got it right. A disagreement
based on a desire to win rather than a desire to be right. That was the time,
the singular moment with that glint of argumentative ferocity, that bored,
glazed look that came over him as the girl rebuffed. That was the time that Eve
thought she might appreciate him.
“He’s a bit eccentric,” Eve said.
“Yes,” said Claire.
“I’m eccentric too.”
“Oh, Eve,” said Claire.
“He’s nice.”
“He’s... interesting. Says interesting things. Has an interesting look.”
“You don’t like his look.”
“It’s not that I don’t like his look.” She swept her hair up (swoop
like the eagle down on its pray) into a well-practiced ponytail. Perky and pert
(the trick was to tighten vertically, not horizontally, much like Claire
herself).
“But you don’t.”
“Okay,” said Claire. She moved onto massaging lotion into her neck and
forearms. Soft white stuff (ha). “So I don’t like his look. But beauty is in
the eye of the beholder.”
“But that’s why you think I shouldn’t like him.”
Eve lay back on her bed, her soft bathrobe pressing deep into the
bed, becoming a thin, condensed lining. Marcus Pebb, the Pebbster, lived somewhere
relatively far off. She wondered what he was up to; shenanigans most likely. He
was the sort to partake in some frank shenanigans and not post them on Headbook.
“I’m not saying that!” said Claire. Now, she was bent over her
computer, hacking away at defenceless keys. The thin bangles on her thin wrists
jangled restlessly, wanting to escape their bony ensnarement.
“Well, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I think just maybe... you could do better.” The
Lucite pink case of her laptop blinked and whizzed at Eve.
“I don’t think that. That’s an interesting way to think.”
“Just hear what I say. And consider it. You’re great, you’re smart, you
have assets to offer.” She turned to
Eve and focussed her eyes on her.
“So’s he.”
“Yeah...” Claire turned back to her lover (oh solitaire!). “You
could say that.”
“Claire...”
“Just don’t settle.”
So she didn’t.
*
The following semester, Marcus Pebb deferred to find himself and work as a lab tech someplace irrelevant. When the
semester had elapsed, he decided to attend a different uni on the other side of
the country. Chemical engineering. Eve had some trouble swallowing this bitter
pill (nitric acid, sherbert?) as chemistry was, to her, an unnecessary evil.
She had trouble swallowing the idea that it would be a long time and a special
occasion when she should see Marcus Pebb again.
“Eve,” said Claire one morning. It was midway through their junior
year. Claire had got fat. “What are you sulking about? All you do is sulk.
You’ll get wrinkles.”
“I’m not sulking,” said Eve, sulkily. “I’m just thinking. Do you
remember Marcus Pebb?”
(“Fucking hell...”)
“I’m just wondering what he’s up to.”
“He’s going to uni someplace irrelevant, isn’t he?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“So now it’s confirmed. You can stop thinking about it.”
Following this succinct conversation, they went out. That was the
night Eve met a less-than-special boy as she began her journey of recovery, her
convalescence to brighter and cleaner pastures.
“How do you feel?” asked Claire the next morning.
“I feel fine,” said Eve.
*
Eve at 24 had cut her brown hair to a brisk little thing that
flicked around her chin (and sometimes her shoulders if she was too lazy to see
the hairdresser) and bought a couple of eyeliners that made her brown eyes smoulder
(like a steaming pile of you-know-what). She had a job (let’s not say what) and
had an apartment and a dog.
It was an evening a few months after she’d started her new job that
she stopped by at her neighbourhood pharmacy for some various goods. A cunning
advertisement boasting fuller, longer lashes caught her eye (unhindered by full,
long lashes as her own were). She inspected the mascara. As she did so, a pair
of well-sized (perhaps above average) black boots appeared by her side.
“Eve?” the voice said. A voice of the pleasant variety with woody,
cedar-like undertones. Her eyes traipsed up the body (thin and gangly) and
lingered on lanky forearms covered in full, blue veins that looked like they
might pop if any muscle in that vicinity was exacerbated. The face was a
familiar one but now there was facial hair and a darkness that coloured the
almost translucent skin under the eye.
“Marcus Pebb?”
She wondered what she smelled like. Eight and a half hours at the
office and questionable food consumption over the course of those hours. Shoes
that were half a size too small, seemingly exacerbating foot sweat. A blouse
that clung too tightly around her bust producing a peek-a-boo hole between the
second and third button (could you smell like a too-tight blouse?).
“Wow,” she said. “Wow.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s been so long. How are you?”
“I’m good, I’m fine. How are you? You look good,” she said, her
voice wondering over well-practiced pleasantries.
“I’m doing well. I just moved back here.”
Eve felt this pathetic, nostalgic pang in her heart. It almost had a
noise; a soft, dainty ping that
resonated through her thorax. This from the boy she used to try to impress with
her knowledge on eccentricities in high school. This from the boy who had to
take acne medication for two years because of a rampant and unexpected bout of
cystic pustules (she had her own past with teenage skin and empathised with
him).
“You know what?” she heard him saying distantly. Like they were on a
cold, quiet beach, several hundred feet apart and his voice was being carried
on the wind to her. She tried to catch it but sometimes syllables and phrases
were blown out.
“I’m having a party at my
house next week. I think you should come?” The question mark is necessary. He
sounded unsure. She was unsure too, unsure of who this was. Who spoke with a self-assured
accent of formalities and banalities. She wondered if he danced with his two
left feet (or had he replaced one with a right?) when he got home from work.
Whatever that was.
“I’d love to,” she said. Her speech hovered on the surface between
acquaintance and friend. Right now, if she went in to punch him in the arm or,
with a gay smile, refer to something from their mutual high school years, the
tide might turn awkward.
“Great,” he said and gave her the address. It was on a fashionable
part of the coast.
“Bye, Marcus,” she said. Awkwardly, her pale arm (this is what
happens when you work an office job and like watching Ellen) reached out to pat
his shoulder. They were standing too far apart for this to be casual and were
speaking too formally for this to be comfortable.
She said goodbye to him for the first time being certain she would
see him again. She said goodbye knowing that this time something would come of
it. He wandered out into the drear, droll night, lanky legs swathed into too
much black trouser, with her wandering eyes trailing after his loping steps.
*
He lived in a pineapple shaped house by the sea. Maybe it was an
architectural masterpiece. Maybe it had started as a normal shaped house but
was then eaten away by blustery seaside winds. Her sharp heels dug in between
crescent and spherical pebbles that lined his walkway. The house was covered in
tall, floor length windows through which artificial light streamed through.
Even from here, Eve could hear the pleasant small talk of the inhabitants of
the pineapple.
It wasn’t Marcus that greeted her at the door although the man
looked startlingly like him.
“Hi,” she said and handed him her bottle of wine.
“Hello,” he said and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. She, in
some reflexive, primal place, wanted to turn her cheek but she suffered through
the insufferable act. He leaned in perhaps a little too close, closer than the
customary hovering of lips over cheek. She felt the flakes of dried skin on his
lips scrape against her.
“I’m Eve,” she said as she was led inside. The house was robust. The floor length windows lined
most of the walls. There was a lot of wood and white. There were empty
champagne glasses on top of mantles and coffee table and any available ledges.
“I’m Frank. Marcus’ brother.”
“Oh,” she said. Her right foot tripped on a kicked up corner of rug
and skedaddled across the floorboards. “Yes, you do look a lot like him.”
“How do you know Marcus?”
“We went to high school together.”
“Ah.”
Frank led Eve through the entrance of the house (several empty rooms
bearing the remnants of the introduction of the night. She paused midway to
right a picture frame that had been toppled on a bookshelf).
“I haven’t seen Marcus in a long time. Well, since he invited me to
the party. We bumped into each other at a store,” she said keenly. Keenly? It
took her by surprise to realize she was rather keen to see him again.
“Fantastic. I, myself, met Marcus again by bumping into him at the cinema of all places. Hadn’t seen him in
years since,” said Keith. He threw back a gulp of red wine he held in his hand.
The hand was thick, red and ropy but held the glass delicately. It reminded you
there could be light bones underneath the hardened skin.
“How strange,” she said quietly, “that you shouldn’t see your
brother for so long.”
“Yes, well, I was already in uni by the time he started high school.
We were never really very close even as children. A bit of an odd one, isn’t
he?” Ironic, Eve thought. Frank seemed rather more odd than his brother.
“Any other siblings?”
“A sister,” he said, “A couple of years younger.” His other hand not
balancing the wine glass between thumb and index finger waved lazily at a
bookshelf holding more pictures. There was a picture of them together; Frank
and Marcus with some girl with blonde hair.
“Here we are,” Keith said. Using the full brunt of his body weight,
the double wooden doors were pushed open and they stepped through to what must
have been the bowels of the house. A beautiful large room, octagonal or
heptagonal or hexagonal or pentagonal but not quadrangle in nature. Lights and
music and maybe 40 or 50 people.
“Thanks for showing me in,” said Eve. She looked through the door
from which she’d come seeing a trek that had seemingly lasted an age.
“You’re welcome.” He went to get himself another beverage.
Marcus with his shock of albino-white hair (perhaps a good thing;
ageing might be difficult to spot) was easy to identify through the masses of
pulsating blood and alcohol and sweat and some tears (a younger looking girl
with cropped brown hair on a phone in the corner, melodramatic wailing).
She waded.
He turned around as she approached.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m glad you were able to make it.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“You look wonderful.”
“So do you.” A suit. A grey suit. Oh, a suit.
“Beverage?”
“Sure,” she said.
Bev in hand, he led her to a vacant couch where they sat with knees
just a few inches apart. Her heart pounded wildly in a way she wasn’t
accustomed to. Sometimes she got nervous palpitations while waiting to do a
test or get a performance review or running a yellow light. Something she got
nervous palpitations while just sitting where her body would go entirely cold
and her digestive system would go funny and her hands would go clammy and she
would keep glancing at the clock while she waited for something she did not
know. But these were different palpitations. These were irregular heartbeats
that imbued her with a confidence.
“So, we haven’t had a proper conversation in years,” Marcus said.
“Not since uni,” she agreed.
“Yes,” he said with a solemn nod she saw from the corner of her eye.
Her neck was bent at 60 degrees, considering the wrinkle in her periwinkle
dress. “We were supposed to meet up again.”
“That didn’t happen.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry about that,” she said and she saw him nod again. His thin,
sloping neck not unlike a giraffe’s, albeit a stumpy, severely growth-retarded
giraffe.
The night progressed. Eve helped herself to another cold beverage,
constructed by a helpful alcohol enthusiast. It tasted good despite the fact
the enthusiast looked like he’d had a few too many himself. She talked to a few
other people, another boy she recognized from high school with freckles that
had stuck to him through to his late 20s, a woman Marcus knew from work.
“He’s brilliant,” she said, “He has wonderful ideas.”
“Yes,” Eve said, thinking about some long-ago conversation she’d
once had with him. “Yes, he’s quite brilliant.”
Finally, she talked to the girl with the pale, blonde hair from the
picture. Marcus’ sister. She was probably a few years younger. It started out
pleasantly enough as they discussed the unique construction of the pineapple
house, the flavour of Eve’s drink (she leant the girl a little tipple purely
for secondary judgement) and the tendency of the girl’s pale skin to burn.
“From high school?” said the girl, Nancy.
“Yes,” said Eve, “We went to the same uni too but we grew apart.”
“That’s terrible,” said Nancy with either an extremely genuine or
extremely well-practiced frown. It could have been a grimace if she wasn’t so
delightfully fawnlike and pretty. “Marcus and I met in uni.”
“Uni?”
“Yes. I work at the uni. I guess we’ve been together ever since.
Except for this brief time...” and she trailed off in a very gothic-romantic
way.
“How wonderful.”
“It is quite wonderful. It’s all happening so fast. The wedding is
in October.”
“How wonderful. Excuse me.”
In kitten heels, Eve stood two inches taller than Nancy who stood as
well when Eve got up. A look of mirrored concern coloured her sweet face; white
except for two expertly placed (oh God, don’t let it be natural, that would be
an injustice to the rest of humanity) splotches of pink blush on the apples of
her cheeks.
“I just need some fresh air.”
“I do love the seaside,” said Nancy.
Eve had read about hypercausis when she’d divulged briefly in a
science and health unit. It was how she felt now as she surged, a weakling wave
among boulders and heavy rocks dressed in suits and tasteful dresses. Their
voices, all seeming a pitch or two higher than the voices of normal people, was what she heard.
Talking about a wonderful musical ensemble they saw in concert recently, an
exotic holiday to India where they could help the poor and bask in the cultural
delights simultaneously. Oh, there it was. The bile that clawed its way through
her oesophagus, her soft palate then scraping through her hard palate. She
swallowed it down.
There came the doors, a heavenly saviour that she glimpsed through
the dusky musk of the fashionable youths (were they still youths at their late
twenties?). She, taking a cue from Keith, thrust her body weight against the
door and, in a moment of unfortunate serendipity, the door slammed open and hit
the wall with a bang.
Without looking back, she ran through to her escape.
The pebbles again. This time it seemed more difficult, like her
kitten heels wanted to frolic with the pebbles. Her calves were tired after
some time. The sound was cleaner outside with just the washing-machine ocean
behind her. Behind her, behind her. She glanced. The sharp whiteness of his
hair was a startling sight against the black sky.
“Eve!” he said. It was clear although his voice was dragged out to
sea. She stopped in her kitty-heels, her pathetic little girl’s shoes.
Catching up to her, “You’re leaving?”
“Yes,” she said, “I shouldn’t have come today.”
“That’s not true. It’s great that you came today. It’s great to see
you again.”
“It’s your engagement party,” she said, “I didn’t know.”
“It’s not,” he said with a shake of his head.
“But you’re engaged.”
“Yes, I’m engaged,” he said.
“How wonderful,” Eve said with a smile that she lifted up her head
to show him, “and I would love to stay but I have work tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s alright,” she said, “It’s my fault. It was a
misunderstanding.”
She left. She saw him even though she didn’t turn around. He was
older now, he wore his suit better than he had at their school ball when the
material had swallowed him whole. It had still brought a smile to her lips. His
was better practiced and disarming. The acne that had plagued him in his
younger years had been subdued to lingering scars that gave him a slightly
virile appearance.
He’s not odd, she thought. He’s never been odd.
She remembered a day in the last few weeks of high school. The
weather was warming and her t-shirt stuck in long, sweaty strips to her back.
They were on their way English.
“Hi, Eve,” he said. His voice then was always jovial. She turned her
head to look at him. She had been thinking of him for some weeks now. She had
been thinking of his jokes and smile and how quick witted he was. She had even
once dreamed about him. She had told her friends about him.
“He’s a bit...” Claire had said and that was all it took.
“Hi,” Eve said and little else. The space between them was filled
with the screeches of hormonal teenage students. Everyone but them. They
reached English class and he turned into his seat. She watched him from her
seat and felt a sharp stab of regret.
On the beach, the cold air was a pleasant reminder that she was
alive. She got into her car and drove away from that bizarrely fabulous
pineapple house, so fitting for a man-boy like Marcus Pebb. It would be the
last time she would see him.
J
