Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Coco Mellors
CHAPTER ONE
December
She was already inside the elevator when he entered. He nodded at her and turned to pull the iron gate shut with a clang. They were in a converted factory building in Tribeca, the kind still serviced, unusually, by freight elevators. It was just the two of them, side by side, facing forward as the mechanism groaned into motion. Beyond the metal crisscross of the gate, they watched the cement walls of the building slide by.
“What are you getting?” He addressed this to the air in front of him, without turning toward her.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve been sent for ice,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Oh, nothing. I’m off home.”
“At ten thirty on New Year’s Eve? That is either the saddest or the wisest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Let’s indulge me and say wisest,” she said.
He laughed generously, though she didn’t feel she’d been particularly witty. “British?” he asked.
“London.”
“Your voice sounds like how biting into a Granny Smith apple feels.”
Now she laughed, with less abandon. “How does that feel?”
“In a word? Crisp.”
“As opposed to biting into a Pink Lady or a Golden Delicious?”
“You know your apples.” He gave her a respectful nod. “But it’s insanity to suggest you sound anything like a Golden Delicious. That’s a midwestern accent.”
They reached the ground floor with a soft thud. He cranked the door open for her to pass.
“You are an odd man,” she said over her shoulder.
“Undeniably.” He ran ahead to open the building door. “Accompany this odd man to the deli? I just need to hear you say a few more words.”
“Mm, like what?”
“Like aluminum.”
“You mean aluminium?”
“Ah, there it is!” He cupped his ears in pleasure. “That extra syllable. A-luh-mi-nee-uhm. It undoes me.”
She tried to look skeptical, but she was amused, he could tell.
“You’re easily undone,” she said.
He surprised her by stopping to consider this with genuine earnestness.
“No,” he said eventually. “I’m not.”
They were on the street. Across from them a store selling neon signs bathed the sidewalk in splashes of yellow, pink, and blue. MILLER LITE. LIVE NUDES. WE WILL DYE FOR YOU.
“Where is it?” she asked. “I could use some more cigarettes.”
“About two blocks that way.” He pointed east. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four. Old enough to smoke, if you were thinking of telling me not to.”
“You are the perfect age to smoke,” he said. “Time stored up to solve and satisfy. Is that how the Larkin poem goes?”
“Oh, don’t quote poetry. You might accidentally undo me.”
“‘I sing the body electric’!” he cried. “‘The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them’!”
“Sha-la-la! I shan’t listen to you!”
She pressed her palms to her ears and sprinted ahead of him up the street. A car blasting a jubilant pop song shot by. He caught up with her at the light, and tentatively, she released her hands from her head. She was wearing pink leather kid gloves. Her cheeks were pink, too.
“Don’t worry, that’s all I remember,” he said. “You’re safe.”
“I’m impressed you remember any at all.”
“I’m older than you. My generation had to memorize these things in school.”
“How old?”
“Older. What’s your name?”
“Cleo,” said Cleo.
He nodded.
“Appropriate.”
“How so?”
“Cleopatra, the original undoer of men.”
“But I’m just Cleo. What’s your name?”
“Frank,” said Frank.
“Short for?”
“Short for nothing. What on earth would Frank be short for?”
“I don’t know.” Cleo smiled. “Frankfurter, frankincense, Frankenstein …”
“Frankenstein sounds about right. Creator of monsters.”
“You make monsters?”
“Sort of,” said Frank. “I make ads.”
“I was sure you were a writer,” she said.
“Why?”
“Crisp,” said Cleo, raising an eyebrow.
“I started an agency,” said Frank. “We’re where the people who don’t make it as writers go.”
They walked until they found the twenty-four-hour bodega glowing on the corner, flanked by buckets of heavy-headed roses and frothy carnations. Frank pulled the door open for her with a jingle. In the bright fluorescence of the shop’s interior they looked at each other openly for the first time.
Frank was, she estimated, in his late thirties or early forties. Kind eyes, was her first thought. They crinkled automatically as they met hers. Long, feathery lashes that brushed against his spectacle lenses, lending his angular face a surprising softness. Curly dark hair, spry as lamb’s wool, thinning a little on the top. Now, sensing her eyes on this, he ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. The skin on the back of his hand and face was freckled, still tanned despite the winter. It matched his tan cashmere scarf, tucked into a well-tailored topcoat. He had the slight, energetic build of a retired dancer, a body that suggested economy and intelligence. Cleo smiled approvingly.