Michael

The heat brought out a crisis of insect life in the flat - spiders crawled across blank stretches of wall, or would be revealed in cupboards, or dislodge themselves slowly from piles of paper or clothes. Heat had compromised our drone bodies - we had both been taking a lot of days off work. I started to feel young again, but with a mind and internal organs that were still soiled.

Michael came round for dinner and talked for a long time. I was sticking to my chair, and tried to drink water. Xav drank beers, smoked weed and had to be sick. He came back and sat down, and was inadvertently sick again the next time he opened his mouth.

“Whoops,” said Michael. Xav smiled politely. It was time for Michael to go.

Michael was sitting opposite me, Xav on the sofa between us, a broken wood frame with planks coming off it and a cushion balanced across. I finished my pack of cigarettes while Michael was talking. Xav had fallen asleep. I said,

“I think it’s our bed time now.”

In the night it was terribly hot. The surface of my skin was suffused with heat, and my whole body felt inhabited by it, swelling up against my boundaries. But I had to contain it. I kept flopping over, turning around and trying to find a cool bit of mattress. He kicked me punctually every time. In the morning hard light flung itself through the window - by 06:30 we were well awake. We slyly peeped and met each other’s eyes, seeing if they were open, then winked.

“Hello.”

*****

In an intensely febrile moment, I was walking down the street, trying to make it to the shops. I passed a woman wearing layers and layers of clothes, seeming indifferent though sweat was dripping off the ends of her hair. It was a public holiday, but that rang false. There isn’t public or private any more, we're much more like animals.

I’d met up with the two of them in the park. I said,

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “It didn’t become you, but that’s alright.”

“Do you think it doesn’t matter?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought I could do what I like.”

“So you liked it.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t care about me at all, do you?”

Michael said,

“The thing is, maybe you think that I could be anyone’s. But the issue is more that I could be anyone. You don’t even know me.”

I wasn’t really sure of the point of this meeting.

Michael said,

“You don’t get me.” I looked at the two of them. “And maybe this time you don’t get anyone.”

“I just didn’t think it was that important.”

He said,

“Sometimes I can be a bit cruel myself.”

But I was going to the shop to get cans. Three armoured police vehicles stationed along the way. They’d opened the road where they’d shut the road where the police had killed a man by restraining him a week or two before. Black and yellow police tape had come down; by then the flowers were well dead. The sun set its foot on the back of my neck and trod down.

*****

We woke up again and as we lay in bed it got darker, as if day was an option that hadn’t been taken up. The side of his face that I leaned my head against was in shadow. His eye was a round pool like a rabbit’s eye, with one square of reflected shine on it. The room appeared in abstract shapes: two pillars of grey around white, one dark narrowing bar. I closed my eyes, saw grey and my headrush ached.

Clouds with jagged but blurred dark ridges premised sheer patches of cloud molten with light. Against this turbulent sky an equally disturbed landscape pressing obtrusively upwards crowded itself with diverse metallic shapes. We walked along by the river, all dressed in brown and grey. I could see it as a venn diagram of sky (grey), river (brown) and buildings (brown and grey).

We’d picked Michael up at London Bridge; he was waiting for us when we came through the barriers at Tooley Street.

He said,

“It’s not that I want to say these terrible things. I just don’t know who else I can talk to.”

“At least you told the truth.”

“It’s a relief that it’s not as hot now.”

“I’d like to say I was grateful for it, but I wasn’t.”

“You can’t live like that, in a constant state of exposure.”

“But it’ll come back.”

The sun represents cruelty and ego, and this hostility to life will go on till we lose our islands to a swollen, salty, arid sea.