Content Warnings (click to reveal)
Depicted: drugs, alcohol, blood, self-harm, domestic violence
Blood and Black Coffee
Here’s how I know.
We’re out walking, when from nowhere, a pigeon waddles across our path – white head, but from the neck down, cigarette-ash grey. The delineation is startling, almost doesn’t look real. Lia freezes–I need to catch this, drops her bag and follows the pigeon, phone in hand. The pigeon senses her on its trail, but doesn’t fly away. Instead, it scurries off into the courtyard of a nearby block of apartments, with Lia right behind.
I park my arse on the brick wall in the front of the apartment block that they’ve disappeared into and fall into that graceful state where you drift without thinking; that place where you’ll stay for as long as the sun warms your back and the wind caresses your face.
I sense a presence to my left, turn, and see Lia pointing her phone at me. She drops her hand to her side, real fast, and says–I lost him.
And that’s how I know.
–Gimme, I demand.
–Sure? she teases, more taunt than question.
–Yeah, I’m sure.
She digs into her handbag, pulls out a pill, reaches for a nearby beer, tucks the bottle’s neck into the palm of her hand and takes a few unsteady steps towards me until we’re face to face; places the pill on the end of her tongue, slips it into my mouth, kills the lights, and turns the music up so loud the balcony windows start to rattle. Beckons me closer, pulls me in tight and we start a slow, clumsy dance to the pounding thrash of The Pixies’ ‘Debaser’, our swaying bodies out of sync with the manic rhythm that closes in around us.
I’m a bodyless sensation swirling inside a perfect wave on the brink of breaking as her fingertips slide across the head of my cock. I feel her lean in. My chest tightens as her breath wraps itself around me. She dissolves into darkness and I wait to be set free.
Light in my eyes.
Metal in my ears.
I follow the sound, find Lia holding a knife, her wrist a slash of red, smiling as the blood drips into the glass she’s holding–Want some?
I lunge, knock the glass out of her hand, blood splatters; I squeeze her wrist and immobilize the knife.
–Jay, what the fuck are you doing? she demands, holding the knife up to my face. But the knife isn’t a knife. It’s a carton of juice – beetroot – ‘Belgola Natural, picked and pressed, made by blending the best tasting beetroot with crisp apples and with no added sugar, no artificial colours and no sweeteners.’
–Time to decide.
–Again? he asks me.
We nod and make a deal.
The same deal we’ve made before; the same one we’ll make again.
–If I lose, I forget all about her. If you lose, you forget all about her.
We both nod and lift one arm, bent at the elbow; hands clenched into fists; my right, his left.
Stray light flares across the mirror.
Three shakes and in unison we both unfurl – scissors.
I can see she’s flattered, so, I keep chipping away.
–No, she keeps saying, until one day she announces–I brought ‘em.
–What?
–The photos.
I had expected her to load up a few images to her phone, instead, she throws me a bag full of prints. They hit the ground, spill out across the carpet – pictures right back to when she was a young kid. She grabs a drink and her cigarettes, sits out on the balcony, her back to me, while I shout out questions about who’s who, where they were taken, how old she is at the time.
Every so often she comes back in, looks down over my shoulder, surprised by somebody or someplace that she hasn’t thought about for a long time. When she goes back out to the balcony, I take one of the photos and slide it behind a cushion of the couch. It’s a close-up of her, sitting outside, at night, taken maybe within the last five years; sleeveless summer dress, blue flecks on white; her hair, much longer than now, more brown than blonde, tied into plaits with blue bands, draped in front of her shoulders; mouth closed, smiling, but there’s no heart in it. It’s a square photo. Shows only Lia, but it’s obvious that there would have originally been someone sitting next to her, but whoever it was, has been cut out. I feel bad taking the photo without asking, but I know that if I ask, she’ll say–No.
I have other things that she gave me, that I didn’t steal. Like the expensive pen that came without an ink refill. Took me ages to track down a place online that had the right one. When I got the pen working, I wrote her a long thank you note with it and said a lot of things that I’d wanted to tell her but hadn’t. She wouldn’t read it in front of me, but I think she liked it, because when I asked her later if she’d read it, she looked away and changed the subject. I haven’t used the pen since, but on my desk, it sits, right next to a plastic Christmas bauble – from her as well – cream coloured, white ribbon on top, gold sparkles. On one side, five tiny plastic strobe lights flash randomly when you slide a black button on the bottom.
It lit up once, but never again.
In response to nothing at all, she tells me–When I decide to walk, you won’t see it comin’.
I wake to her restlessness, bristling, hard up against me.
The room is black. Freezing. I open my eyes. Wait for them to adjust. See the silhouette of her upright frame, her head, perfectly still, turned towards me. I breathe shallowly, regularly, to make her think I’m asleep.
An impatient rustle of sheets. Her hand slides towards me and smacks my bare shoulder.
–Hey, what’s up, I pretend to sound groggy.
–What’s fucken up? We’re both fucken up.
I mumble something about how cold it is, turn my back.
Her breathing, heavy, agitation increasing with every breath. Then the crack of her open hand on the back of my neck.
–What the fuck? I plea.
–You won’t get away with it, she says in a voice I’ve never heard before. –And it will never be forgotten. I will carry your sin inside me, along with your rank and rancid seed, forever, and no matter where you go, I will find you and I will blacken your soul with the ashes of the scared, innocent child who trusted you, who wanted nothing but to love you.
The back of her hand glances the side of my head, leaves my ear ringing. I leap out of bed and tap the base of the bedside lamp. The room fills with light and reveals Lia, upright, pupils gaping.
–Whatever the fuck you popped, last night, it must have been a batch of pretty bad shit. I’m trembling, rubbing at my ear. Her gaze stays on me, hardening with every passing second–No matter how many times and no matter how long it went, she whispers–I stared him down. I didn’t look away.
I back out of the room, tell her that I’m going to make some coffee. When I bring her the cup, she examines it as though she’s trying to work out what it is, cradles it in both hands, brings it to her lips.
–Careful, it’s hot!
She doesn’t flinch. Takes another gulp. Then slowly tips the cup upside down, all the while staring at me as the steaming, dark brown liquid spills. I jump; she’s motionless.
–For fuck’s sake, I shout.
The cup crashes into my forehead, falls into a puddle of blood and black coffee at my feet. I watch as the stain grows around the empty cup.
* * *
She remembered the first time she stayed behind in Jay’s apartment, lying in his bed, and how he had made a point of shouting out a second ‘Goodbye’ as he opened the front door to leave. There was a long silence, followed by the sound of the door handle turning slowly, hesitantly, the lock clicking back into place, and his reappearance in the bedroom doorway–I said ‘bye.’
–I heard you, she replied, holding back a smile.
He nodded, hovering like a worried little boy, before leaving once more. She waited until she heard the front door opening again, then cried out–Bye, Jay, and even though her words rang with a sense of mockery that she immediately regretted, the relief in his reply soothed and saddened her.
And now, as she calls out–Bye, Jay, and hears the front door shut, a breath escapes that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding onto, and forms part of the silence that he has left behind.
She had always hated silences. Hates the one that surrounds her now. Like all silences, this one has its own spirit. Sometimes they roared; sometimes they whispered; sometimes they forced you back into a corner that you thought you had fought your way out of. If you were lucky, sometimes they left you happy. For a while.
With Jay she’d felt more of the happier silences than with anyone, but that was just life fucking with you and that’s what this silence was doing, fucking with her, soft and sharp all at once. She kicks at the sheet, watches it puff like a sail catching a shot of wind, before losing its shape and floating gently to the floor; raises herself to her feet and stands in the middle of the bed, reaches for the ceiling, yawns, stares at a framed black and white photo on the wall opposite of an old man with long white hair – a book tucked under his arm and a tobacco pipe in his hand. Jay had told her who the old dude was, but she couldn’t remember his name. Under the photo were the words: ‘I know a little about nature and hardly anything about men.’
–Well, old fella, if you’d been screwed by as many as I have… She laughs and leaps to the floor, strips the bed of its bottom sheet, clasps two of its corners, and shakes them out; peels the cases off two pillows, reefs out their innards onto the mattress, chops up and down on them, left to right, right to left, reinserts them into their coverings; refits the bottom sheet to each corner of the mattress, slides her palms across its surface until it’s smooth, does likewise with the top sheet; grabs one edge of the doona lying on the floor, snaps it three times, ripples and waves, and lets it float onto the top sheet, adjusting it so that it falls evenly across the bed.
–You don’t have to make the bed every time you leave, he had told her, to which she had replied–But I want to. Gotta respect the holy place, where all the important shit happens; where you’re born, grow, sleep, fuck, bleed, dream, worry, rest, reset. Why wouldn’t I want to make the bed?
Breathing hard, she sits, reaches for her asthma pump from the side table, inhales, notices the brown coffee stain on the carpet between her feet, feels a flush of remorse. She reaches for the glass of water on the bedside table, drops to her knees, lets some water trickle from the glass over the brown smudge, and scratches at its surface with her nails; but the stain holds true.
She dresses and makes her way to the balcony, cigarettes in hand. A dull day, low grey clouds. Across the street, Rose, the little Asian woman from upstairs is carrying a bundle of woodchips and wanders off behind a row of cherry blossoms. She wishes she could follow her and disappear through the trees, too. Finishes her cigarette, steps back inside and washes the dishes piled in the sink from the previous night’s meal that Jay had cooked – sticky ribs and roasted potatoes, her favourite.
Leaving a congealed pan to soak, she meanders through the apartment – straightens the towels in the bathroom; studies the pictures on the walls; brushes her fingers across his clothes in the wardrobe; flicks at pages of the book he’s reading; stands in front of the mirror behind the bedroom door, blows off the thick coat of dust on its surface–Imagine how different the world would be if nobody ever knew what they looked like, he had said when she had accidentally stumbled across it the first time she stayed over. She scoops up her bag from the armrest of the sofa, pulls out a small bottle, sprays its contents around the frame of the bedroom door and wanders over to his desk.
Her eyes fall on a cream-coloured bauble with gold metallic flecks and a pen lying in front of it. The pen had caught her eye in a shop window, some dump called The Cloisters on the highway at North Sydney. The place stunk, but the old guy behind the counter threw in a pack of fancy parchment paper and matching envelopes at no charge.
Whenever she arrived at Jay’s place, she felt a slight tension that only disappeared once she had confirmed her two gifts to him were still there–You can put them away if you want, somewhere else so they’re not junking up your desk, she had said matter of factly.
–Why would I want to do that? he replied, hurt, and she recalls the pride that flushed through her at his response and how it had later unsettled her when she replayed the scene in her head, alone that night in her bed.
She sits at the desk tapping her fingers. She’d seen all the pieces before, held them tightly, recognised what each one was and how they were supposed to fit together. This time it had been close, but still no guarantee that things would stick. And she couldn’t take that risk–Fuck, Lia. Just go!
But she can’t. Not yet. He’d given her a glimpse of something and as long as she stayed, it was still hers.
A gust of wind throws a sheet of rain at the balcony window. Rose’s voice rings through the street in glee at being caught in the downpour. She swipes her phone, checks the time, pulls out a piece of the fancy paper and reaches for the pen.
The nib scratches the surface, but the ink fades halfway through the first downstroke. No amount of scribbling will make it work. So, instead, she grabs her phone, makes her way to the bedroom, kneels in front of the coffee stain, takes a photo of it, and sends it to him.
Frank Marrazza resides in Sydney. He is the co-author (with John Samperi) of Literary Grates – a satirical volume poking fun at the elitism of literary criticism. He’s currently working on a myriad of short stories, and a novel that he hopes one day will see the light of day. His next piece is scheduled to appear in November (2024) in the inaugural issue of Splinter.
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