Assembly(10)

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Rach sorts efficiently. Pack, storage, charity. The pile on the bed beside me, pack, is the largest. Her dresses, knitwear, blouses. Soft fabrics rustle as she places each item down. I breathe the musky-citrus scent. She’s already set aside the complementary tools: dedicated brushes, combs, shampoos, sprays. All sorts. Her clothes have complex care requirements, detailed on sewn-in tags.

Moving in together – it might even be good for her career, she says. Her voice is muffled and questioning from within the walk-in wardrobe. More networking opportunities?

She emerges with three dresses – bright, floral, patterned numbers – draped across her arms like limp brides. She sighs and sets them down next to me. Chiffon rolls, delicate and tidal, in the breeze from her open window.

Anyway, we can’t put our lives on hold, she says. We have to live.

?

The wives and girlfriends are arranged between us in boy-girl-boy formation. Two are heavily pregnant, smiling out from behind big beach-ball bellies, pink and sweaty in the afternoon sun. Here, around Lou’s reclaimed-wood picnic table, I am as much an outsider as at the office. Neither man, nor wife. Unclassified. But my boyfriend is his usual chummy self. Sitting beside me, chatting and asking questions. Laughing with Lou and the rest. He can slot in anywhere. And he brings me, too. My ladder among the snakes.

The next week, back in the office, the husband of one pregnant wife sits across from me. His name isn’t on the list. No name, no promotion. He sniffs air in. Cheeks puffed, lips tight and nostrils twitching, he obstinately avoids my eyes until finally, he says:

It’s so much easier for you blacks and Hispanics.

He says that’s why I was chosen, over qualified guys like him. He says he’s not opposed to diversity. He just wants fairness, okay?

Okay? he says again.

Okay?

I am still a few sentences behind. But okay, okay, okay.

?

Explain air.

Convince a sceptic. Prove it’s there. Prove what can’t be seen.

A breezy brutality cuts you each day – how do you excuse it? Your experience? Sliced flesh. Your hope. Evaporation? You cannot cut through their perception of reality. Breathe. At night. It creeps out from under; white square against left breast. Grasps, spreads itself around; your neck, it tightens and squeezes. Wake – gasping, face wet, arms tense, chest (cold), don’t look at it; eyes up, the bulbs gleam eerie. It’s dark.

In choking, quod erat demonstrandum.

?

The Head of Risk looks a bit ridiculous sat across from me. In a polo shirt with sunglasses pushed back into his tousled hair. Without the sharp-pressed blues and greys and whites of his weekday tailoring, he’s just another middle-aged man. His body soft and creasing. Rach is unsmiling, stirring her virgin Mojito with a wilting paper straw. Their dog laps water out of a dish beneath our table. I don’t know why the restaurant allows this.

This thing has gone on longer than Rach intended. From flirtation to affair to an uncomfortable, secretive overlap with the wife; the eventual separation; and now their tentative, unspoken merger into shared life. Shared dog. And brunch.

Rach chose. Why can’t I?

This is an opportunity, it’s my chance. To stop the endless ascent. To leave my family better off. And all else behind. To transcend.

Why shouldn’t I?

And why must I convince this doctor – or anyone? I’ve made up my own mind. I want to scream it! My life. My choice. And I’ve made it. I chose.

?

I look at my coat; the dull lyocell feels soft and expensive in my hands. It fits. It’s right for walking into this quiet building on this leafy, architecturally interesting street; upstairs to the high-end reception area and then on through to the sunny consultation room. Across from this well-dressed doctor. I earned this coat and this doctor and this life and now this choice.

She’s still talking. Explaining. Telling, telling, telling, telling –

No.

My voice is firm. I say I’ve made my decision.

?

Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air.

Open your eyes.

?

Two sisters:

One, four years younger, wants to do everything the elder does. Use the same cutlery, wear the same clothes. Go to the same school, the same university. And now, she’s at a firm just down the road. The sisters meet for lunch. The younger is sprinting down that same path and the elder can’t stop her, can’t hold her back. Can’t free her from the endless, crushing pursuit.

?

A buzz. He’s at the station already.

Nearly there, I send back.





TRANSCENDENCE (GARDEN PARTY)




Thank you, he says into the sudden silence of the stopped engine. He looks down at the steering wheel. We’re parked on the gravel driveway outside his parents’ house. Beyond, across the lawn, a few windows glow orange against the night.

He says he’s glad I came. With the biopsy, all that stuff – he pauses and turns to me. In the dim light, I see earnestness in his features. His eyes are dark shadows.

‘I’m just happy you’re okay,’ he says. Then leans over and kisses my cheek.