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The sparks of life populate the fading day, every light a story full of hope or despair, or beauty. Their sum is the life of the city, an aged thing that shapes the lives of all who flow within its channels. The soul of this great beast is neither in the cathedral nor in the skyscraper that reaches higher even than that brocaded spire. It is not the landmarks that sightseers snap with expensive cameras or even the great river that was once the life blood of all within the cities walls. In the forgotten rooms of some forgotten block, the alleys that even the mob fear, the bed where two lovers lie, the roof that should not have been left unlocked, here the great concrete soul directs the lives of those who thought fate their own, ineffable, province.
That night, the sprawl had been soaked in a storm making every dull surface shine red and white with reflected car lamps. The play had been shorter than expected and a crush of black coated figures carrying carapace like umbrellas spilled out into the rain knowing that they faced a long wait while the taxi’s they had booked found them in this obscure corner of town. The trouble was I had forgotten my umbrella and was becoming sodden with every passing moment. Huddling into my coat against the slanting rain I turned my collar up against the cold and lit up. It took several attempts to get the cigarette glowing in the damp cold but eventually the tip flared. My ears were filled with the thrumming of rain and the rhythmic splashing of cars driving along the drenched streets. Few people were talking but tucked up in small groups, huddling together like penguins for warmth. I blew out a cloud of smoke which the wind carried towards the crowd. Several people glared at me and I hurriedly looked away, pretending I didn’t even know they were there. However, as I glanced away a splash of colour caught my eye. So out of place in the swathes of grey and black, was a streak of red. A careless artists misplaced brushstroke in scarlet paint on the twilight canvas. A woman stood, alone like me, against a lamp post. Her coat was bright red and hung about slender ankles as it were a queens robe. Her hair was also red, but a deeper hue intoned with gold and chocolate and many other colours I couldn’t name, and framed a slender, pale face that was not beautiful in any conventional sense of the word but still tugged at some need within me. I couldn’t place what drew me to her. It wasn’t sexual desire for I felt no racing in my heart or any want for her body. Such an urge would be too little, too animal a goal. A club anthem compared to a symphony.
She looked up and saw me staring. I made to glance away, for I knew well enough I was not an attractive man and could not get away with such contact. Yet, as I turned my eyes to the floor a smile lit up her face. It was so startlingly friendly a smile, the kind one reserves for the very oldest of friends, that it took me a few seconds to compose myself enough to return it. Before I knew it, she was beside me and I could smell the mix of her scent. A strange combination of inescapable humanness but mingled with the aroma of concrete freshened by rain. She wore no perfume, but she had no need her smell was already intoxicating. I offered her a cigarette and she took one. I battled in my head for the right words, feeling panic rise as the silence extended. I opened my mouth a few times but thought better of the greeting I was about to offer.
“It’s ok,” she reassured me in a soft voice “you don’t need to say anything clever. I’m not here for that.”
I looked into two eyes that shifted like faceted jewels. It wasn’t that they really changed, more that I noticed they were another colour and not the colour I had assumed them to be. One moment grey, the next brightest blue then green. I held out a hand.
“I’m...”
“I don’t care,” she snapped. I was quite taken aback and made to move away but she stopped me “You don’t understand. I don’t want to know your name. I don’t need to know it just as you don’t need mine.”
I was starting to feel nervous about this woman. I had heard of nights like this happening, usually from a club or bar but the setting didn’t seem that important. However powerful her attraction I knew I did not want to end up in her bed tonight. I knew no woman could bring me to that, save one.
“Have you got a taxi?” she asked in a concerned voice, responding the change in my expression no doubt.
“Yeh, but listen...”
“Cancel it,” her voice was not harsh but I felt, never the less, that I was compelled to follow her lead.
“Why?”
I felt her hand grip my arm and was surprised by the strength in her slender fingers. A familiar hand, and in that instant I knew what it was that commanded me so. I knew this woman, not her face or name, but in some indescribable sense I knew her.
“I want to walk with you,” she smiled at me again “we can’t see the streets if we’re in a taxi can we.”
“But my apartment’s on 3rd it’ll take over an hour to walk.”
“Journey’s pass quicker when you’re in good company.”
She slipped round, her body slotting in next to me as she linked my arm with hers. I felt no heat from her, as if her skin were cooled by the same inevitable mystery that pervaded the rest of her. We walked mostly in silence. My steps felt awkward and mannered walking close to this strange spectre of friendship. Without me directing her she knew exactly where to go, tugging me forward when I slowed to check the way. I hoped she only knew the city well and would need directions to reach my home. I silently considered having the locks changed when I got back. Soon we were in the glittering megalopolis that is the heart of the city. The streets here were like the avenues of some worldwide cathedral. Here, was the city of old overlapping, seamlessly, with the new. The high, gothic spires propped up by glass fronted skyscrapers that seemed to twine about the aged structures like space age ivy. It was strange being at street level here. So much of the life of this hub occurred hundreds of meters in the air. The sidewalks felt grittier beneath the thin soles of my fake designer shoes. Here and there, a vent gushed out steam making the already sodden air thicker still and perforating the smell of laundry through the storm.
By now I was truly freezing and my coat was providing no more protection from the cold. However, looking across at my scarlet companion, I saw she was smiling up at the tumultuous sky. Raindrops pattered against her face and tangled in her hair, dragging it into waving, soaking strands that stuck to her forehead and cheeks. She looked at me briefly, just to acknowledge my presence and said, in a voice that didn’t sound the same as the one I’d heard before. She sounded like a girl quoting knowledge that she rejoiced at knowing. Like someone sharing a secret.
“Rain washes everything away. It cleanses and humbles you because no matter how invincible you think you are you can still get wet when it rains. Even when the factories were here and the sky became yellow and rain tasted sharp and hurt people’s eyes, I would wait for it to start raining and just revel in the downpour.”
For a second she stopped, and I could see the bliss on her face. A part of me felt I could understand what she was saying; the part of me that liked reading books or appreciated art, but a greater part was cold, wet and increasingly irritated that I had allowed myself to be taken in by this lunatic.
“Look,” I grumbled rather more forcefully than I intended. She turned to me with a slightly amused expression “I don’t want to be impolite, but I also don’t want to get anymore cleansed than I already am. I want to go home and we’re still forty minutes away. I’m calling a cab.”
“It’s alright, I know a shortcut. We’ll be there in no time.” She replied in a sing song tone.
“You can’t have a shortcut here it’s a grid system.”
“It’s light can only move in straight lines but people can cut corners. That’s why people are faster than light.”
I stared at her blankly for a moment, appalled at the magnitude of her error.
“What the hell are you talking about,” I eventually laughed, a little nervously.
“Come on I’ll show you.”
She wrapped a cold hand around mine and led me at almost a run into one of the many small side streets that lay between the towers. It was dark and smelt of trash and drains. I didn’t like these places, it was the part of the city people weren’t meant to go. The little spaces left over when people didn’t get their measurements right. A fire escape door opened out from the block on the right just ahead. The woman pushed on it and it opened. I was sure those things only opened one way. She led me through into a stairwell. It was a bit dank with chips in the paint and a dusty floor which indicated no-one had trod these steps in a long time. The fire escape sign was so faded it was hardly readable. Apart from the fire escape and the stairs there was only a small broom closet below the stairs. The scarlet woman pulled me towards it.
“A broom closet,” I gasped exasperated. She pushed the door. I froze in shock.
Instead of revealing some long forgotten vacuum cleaner, the door opened onto my street. Rain slanted in through the door, splashing in the dust creating a patch of damp around our feet. The woman was smiling at me.
“See,” she half whispered “faster than light.”
“That’s impossible,” I breathed. Stepping through the door I looked up and down the familiar buildings, the cracked road and the small shop where I bought bagels in the morning. I snatched my hand away from her and headed back to the fire escape. It opened to reveal the alleyway, over a mile away and yet, there I stood on one side a door to the city centre, on the other my block.
The fire escape clicked shut behind me as I turned away. Part of me felt like a school boy, exploring some mysterious and magical place. However, the part of me that had grown up was telling me that this wasn’t real, that it was a trick of the light or some hypnotist’s trick. The woman walked towards me smiling a reassuring smile.
“When a place has been forgotten for long enough, it stops obeying the silly rules you think should apply. Why is it a mile from here to there?” she pointed to the two doors “We expect to have to walk a mile no matter how we travel, but the world is not as fixed as you think it is.”
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked, my voice wavering a little.
She grinned.
“Because you wanted a shortcut. Now come on I didn’t take you here just so you could go all dumbfounded on me.”
Clearly expecting me to follow, she turned with a swirl of red and walked out into the rain.
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Enticing
Posted Jan 3, 2009
There is a real energy to the atmosphere you create in this piece. It reminds me strongly of Mark Helprin. You seem to be brewing an epic here and I can't wait to see where you take it. There are plenty of impressive descriptive flourishes that make the text come alive.
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