inside the silk drapes of his four-poster. The room was fetid and smelled of yeast. Sex. The curtains were closed, but I could see the full blue condom that had belly flopped into a brogue.
I crawled into the bed. “Freddie.”
He was asleep.
“Freddie, why did you let Allegra’s brother in here?” I pried his eyelids open. His eyeballs were a brilliant red. “Get him out.”
Freddie smiled and pulled me down against him so that my face was pressed against his naked chest. “This is nice,” he said. “I love you.” He kissed me on the forehead.
I lay down next to him and smoked a cigarette. Then I got up and attempted to lock the door, but the lock was broken.
Samuel appeared wrapped in my towel and sang in a falsetto: “Say My Name.” He got into bed too.
I was stuck between them.
The gloom was unbearable; I got up and opened the curtains.
“Freddie says you love Beyoncé because you went to a black school and that is sick,” said Samuel.
The morning light seemed to wash the room. I saw the full horror: more full condoms; three more. More white dust.
Now Freddie and Samuel were kissing, graphically.
I shook Freddie until he turned away from Samuel and turned toward me. “It’s finally happened!” I said. “I felt it—the coup de foudre! Vic and I had sex so hard last night that now I can’t even walk properly!”
“Deck,” said Samuel.
I spat in his face.
He looked like he would cry again.
“That’s not very nice, is it?” said Freddie. “You got on very well with Samuel when we all spent that lovely weekend together in Buckinghamshire.” He turned to Samuel: “When your parents were in the Maldives.”
“Yeah, it was awful.”
I addressed Samuel: “You’ve changed. You used to be a chess champion.”
“Yeah, but now I’m a hipster.” Samuel nodded earnestly. Then he shook his head. “No. I forgot. I’m not meant to say that I’m a hipster. But I am one.” He bared his private-school teeth: they were straight and white like hers. “I got the braces taken off and everything! I was just waiting to get them taken off before I made my last exit to Hackney.”
Dear Vic,
A man with arrested development has invaded the house. If you don’t write back to me soon I’m going to kill myself. That is not an empty threat. I never did see the point in living unless some form of meaning was erected out of the raw, overwhelming nothingness. I guess that’s the point of being an artist. Are you an artist, Vic? Could you ever be one? I doubt it.
I’m glad. Artists are like megalomaniac aging despots who build halls of mirrors around themselves in order to block out the world that dares to be itself, e.g. autonomous. They veer between arrogance and insecurity.
I think I’m falling more and more in love with you.
Ann-Marie X
I sat in the basement on an upturned plastic bucket and switched on the projector. I had to cover my nose and mouth; the smell of sewage was unbearable. It was dark and I was alone except for the mice. We turned this space into a screening room a few months ago.
Our Super 8 installations flickered like sun on water. There I was dressed up in a mohair sweater and white shirt, my hair coiffed, my ankle socks pristine, preparing milk and cookies in a Formica kitchen, kissing two child actors whom Freddie had hired for the day, laying them down for a nap, duct-taping the bedroom door shut and sticking my head in the oven. There I was dressed up in an Edwardian hat, traipsing into the River Cam in the middle of the night, piling rocks into my pockets, looking depressed though ready. Drowning. There I was gassing myself in a parked car in a garage—that was Anne Sexton. She was less well known, but Freddie had wanted a trilogy. His lucky number was three, but only if pressed—really, he wasn’t superstitious at all. He’d won a young filmmakers’ scholarship from Sundance.
Dear Vic,
Do you want to Skype? My username is purposedestiny7.
Ann-Marie X
Samuel decided to make a cocktail called Aqua Fortis because a friend of a friend who’d been to Williamsburg had said it was deck, so off he went to Gerry’s specialist off-license in Soho to buy marjoram-infused Lillet Blanc, El Jimador Reposado, and Meletti Amaro. He returned hours later, empty-handed.
Samuel couldn’t get served. He couldn’t get served because he was only seventeen.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” I demanded.
“I gave all that up.” He was standing against the wall in the kitchen, his hands behind his back.
Freddie sat at the table, morose and smoking.
“Samuel.” I spoke very slowly. “Do your parents know where you are?”
Samuel started to nod, but then he shook his head. I saw the tears. “They think I’m at the Custard—” Now the tears flowed.
“Is that your candy store?” I said.
“No. The Custard Collective is my squat. East. I ran away to the Wick, as they say!”
“They don’t say that,” I said. “I’ve never heard anyone say that.” I came very close to his face. “You are in a lot of danger. Hackney is a very dangerous place for a boy like you. They will get you.”
“I don’t care! I don’t care!” He went hysterical, grabbing at the copper pans hanging from the stove, banging them together. It reminded me of Allegra’s performance back in my dorm room all those years ago. Three years ago.
“Sit down!” I commanded.
He sat next to Freddie, who was repeating: “I want a drink. I want a drink.”
“I was born to be a DJ!” said Samuel, with passion. “Or a lifestyle—a style consultant.”
“Samuel’s an Enlightenment polymath,” said Freddie, darkly. “I’m going to make him a star.”
Samuel turned to Freddie with the light of true love in his eyes. He buried his face in Freddie’s neck and said again and again: “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
I had agreed to buy the drink, but I had no intention of going all the way to Gerry’s because I was due in Soho in two hours anyway to start my shift. I considered trying to find Vic’s house after work and using Freddie’s drink money to pay him to go out with me. I had £150 in cash in my hand. I had never felt so free. But soon my freedom became a burden again.
I
