Coral People
“I remember a fan on a bedside table, blowing ripples across the mattress.”
“And what else happened?” says Fran.
“The morning sun was streaming through the room. Daria was next to me, snoring, her feet poking out the end of a blue sheet, and – well, that’s the strange part – the apartment was empty. Everyone else had left.”
“But that would have been at the end, right?” Fran grabs a sheet of paper off the table and quickly runs her eyes over it, “Yes, that would have been at around 9 a.m. on Sunday, right?
“Yeah.”
“What were you doing the day before? I need to know everything that happened between 9 a.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday.”
“Well. On Saturday we spent most of the afternoon by the river. We were in and out of the water a lot – laying in the sun till we sweat, playing in the water until we shivered.”
“What about the morning?”
“Let me see – ok, yes – there was a coin laundry at the caravan park. I wanted to do some washing – yes, that was my main goal for the morning. I didn’t have any change for the machine, so I walked to the supermarket and asked the man at the counter to split a note for me.”
“Ok,” Fran rubs her forehead, “Now tell me about the – uh – incident – at the end of the day.”
“Well – I suppose – it all started when we saw the man from the supermarket again. We were sitting under a tree by the river, and he walked right past us. Except he wasn’t wearing his work clothes. He had changed into tight red pants and a jacket covered in silver sequins. Daria said, ‘I wonder where he’s off to.’ And I said ‘let’s find out.’”
He glances at the tape recorder sitting between them. “You still rolling?”’
“Yep.”
“So, the guy from the supermarket,” he continues, “well, we really did follow him. We waited for him to get ahead of us, and then we put on our clothes and followed him. He was lit up – you see, with the sequins and all – yes, he was lit up, so it wasn’t hard to keep track of him. It was sunset and his jacket took in the low yellow light – he looked like a big sparkling lemon in the distance. We probably followed him for twenty minutes. Yep, we followed him all the way to town, and the whole time Daria and I were giggling and feeling all cool – like we were spies. Like we were little kids again. Eventually he walked into at a bar with neon flamingos out the front. And we just kept walking down the street. We’d had our fun, you know? We were just gonna head Coles and grab a few things – I still remember the shopping list; pasta, sage, chocolate. But a few minutes later, when we were well past the flamingo bar, a hand suddenly touched my back. I swung around and – well, I felt sick – there, in front of me, was a shimmering wall of sequins.
“Yes,” he nods, satisfied, at Fran’s cringing look, “that’s right, it was the guy from the supermarket.”
“What did he say?” Fran asks.
“Well, cool as anything, he said ‘Aren’t you both going to join me for a drink?’ And to be honest, I just stared at him – I was that embarrassed. And he said, ‘Oh, don’t be shy!’ And I don’t know how it happened – I don’t think Daria or I said anything – but like that, all three of us were walking arm-in-arm back up toward the flamingo bar.
“We walked – uh – in silence for the first minute or so. I thought his gregarious gesture was some kind of punishment for stalking him. But after a while he broke the silence and said, ‘So do you guys like to dance?’ Daria, who was white as a sheet, blurted out, ‘Uh, yep, we love to dance.’ The sequin guy grinned at her and said, ‘I know a place.’ And then he led us past flamingo bar onto a quiet residential street.”
“And this is when you went to the party?” says Fran.
“It wasn’t – well – exactly a party, no. He took us up to a studio apartment. Inside, the lights were dim and red and calm, and there were four people standing in a circle facing each other, dancing softly to this wavy ambient music. The sequin guy joined the circle right away. And they all swayed together, like coral in a red ocean; the music was a blowing through them like a current. Yes, I had this strange feeling that they were regressing – yes – all the way back to plant life.”
“Coral are animals, not plants” says Fran.
“Sure – ok – but anyway, Daria and I didn’t really know what to do. So we just sat on a couch to the side of the room. After swaying like that for a few minutes, the sequin guy asked us if we would like to join their circle. We said we just wanted to watch. He just shrugged and then knelt down in from of the couch and pulled out a little mattress from under it, and then he went to a cupboard, pulled out a blue sheet, and neatly laid it across the bed. And finally, he set up a little wooden stool and placed a desk fan on it. He nodded at the mattress and said, ‘You’ll be more comfortable here.”
“We cuddled and watched them sway in that red light for hours. It was mesmerizing. They were like glowing red drops of viscous honey, their bodies slowly forming and unforming – they were like coral, yes, they looked like coral in a red ocean. Then, at some point, we must have drifted off, and the next thing I remember was waking up and the sun streaming through the room, and the fan blowing gently across the bed. No one else was there, but our shoes were lined up neatly by the front door.”
Fran grabs the tape recorder off the table and hovers her finger over the stop button. “And that was the best day of your life?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well.” She clicks the button. “Thank you for your time.”
Nick is a writer and social worker. He is the author of Which way is that thing I don’t like? (in case of emergency press). His work has recently appeared in Rabbit Journal, Collective Effort Press, and Arena. He is currently working on a novel. His instagram is @nickwritingetc
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