Chapter 15
AL
Al doesn’t want to go to sleep. And he doesn’t want the night to end.
He hasn’t felt so unburdened for six weeks, and possibly even before that.
He thought for so long that he couldn’t do this life thing alone without Tara as his wife, without Walter as his friend, but here he is, doing it.
Not as the Al he has been for the past five years, but as this Al, the Al he has never been.
Thinking of them makes him wonder about the dead mice that he deposited under their couch.
His couch. Not his couch anymore – he can start to let go of that.
He can buy a new couch. Couches are replaceable, as it seems are other things.
He checks his watch.
Melody is looking at him. ‘Should I go?’
‘Absolutely not, no way.’ He slides down into the bed, where she’s lying, and turns on his side.
He runs his finger over her face. Her cheekbone, to her lips.
She takes his finger, holds it like a child.
Her entire hand wraps around his finger.
They silently marvel at this. She is smaller and more delicate than she seems, puffing herself out like a porcupinefish to scare off admirers.
Why doesn’t she want to be loved, he wonders. ‘I was just checking the
time.’
‘No, you weren’t,’ she says.
‘Can you read minds?’
‘I wish, but I can somehow read yours. You don’t have to tell me but you don’t have to lie. There’s a difference.’
She lets go of his finger and holds her hand up against his. Again, tiny, the tips of her fingers only reaching to the backs of his knuckles.
He’s fascinated at the understanding she has of him and how it was instant from the moment they met. Tara wouldn’t be able to point him out in an emotional line-up.
‘Okay, the truth,’ he says with a sigh. ‘I was wondering about the mice.’
She grins, and looks relieved.
‘It was supposed to take up to forty-five minutes for them to defrost but I was wondering how long it would take for them to start smelling.’
‘It depends on how warm it is. Is your house warm?’
He didn’t imagine she would entertain these thoughts but he appreciates it.
‘No. The house is old and needs a new heating system that I can’t afford.’
‘Not your problem now.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, realising, another problem off his list. He’d been worried about it for when they had a baby. The future expense had stressed him. ‘But Tara was always cold. Is. Was. Do I speak about her in the present or past?’
‘Is she dead to you now?’
He ponders. ‘She was always cold,’ he says and Melody smiles into his chest. ‘She had to bring this little heater into every room.’
‘Oh, she’s one of those cold girls. I can picture her in fleece socks and beige loungewear.’
He looks at her in surprise, because she’s correct, but she has rolled onto her back and is thinking, working something out. They’re still holding hands though, fingers interlinked.
‘I’d say about three days for the stinky dead mice.’
He was hoping for something sooner.
‘A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend after she discovered he was cheating, and created a social media profile and signed him up for online dating. He was contacted day and night.’
‘Why was that a bad thing?’
‘It was a gay dating app and he wasn’t gay so it wasn’t ideal for him. But I’m thinking Walter is more of a consensual non-monogamy kind of guy.’
He scrunches his face up trying to figure it out.
‘Polyamory. The desire for more than one partner at a time. There’s a dating app.’ She waves the phone at him.
A smile slowly creeps onto his face.
They sit up, she leaves the bedclothes falling down to her waist. He tries to concentrate on the dating app, which she takes him through on her phone, and not on her body.
Pulse. He watches her set it up quite easily, his eyes moving from her fingers moving rapidly over the phone, to her exposed breasts.
Her lips that pucker ever so slightly as she concentrates.
Her brow furrowed. He smiles at her cute face, hides his mouth so she doesn’t see how much he’s turned to mush in her company.
‘Do you know Walter’s number?’
Al says it from heart.
‘Tell me Tara’s.’
He doesn’t know hers, he has to check his phone. ‘Why do you need that?’
‘I don’t, I was just checking something,’ she says, with a knowing smile. ‘What would Walter love in a woman and by that I mean what would he absolutely hate?’
It’s not something that they’ve discussed but he knows Walter.
‘Hair. Bodily hair.’
She has a dirty laugh. Even her laugh is hoarse, he wants to kiss her throat, be her lozenge, which turns him on.
‘I want to run my fingers through your curly-haired pits,’ she says, typing into the phone. ‘I want to feel your hairy legs against mine. What else?’ She stops, thinking. ‘Oh toe-licking.’ She shudders and fake retches. ‘Hairy toe-licking.’ She types.
‘Is that not a thing for you, Ms Yates?’ he says, reaching down under the blanket and grabbing her feet.
She giggles and tries to kick him off, and says in a warning voice, ‘Al?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I can feel something against my thigh.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Are these hairy women turning you on?’
‘No, you are.’ And then he tells her exactly what he was thinking about, how it began with her throat, and the lozenge, because she seems to have a knack for knowing when he’s lying. She tosses the phone aside and kisses him.