Beauty

It is not advisable to seek out an old flame’s new girlfriend. But then I wouldn’t have found you.

Your eyebrows are perfect. Two artful brush strokes in an indie film logo. A lock of hair falls across the right. Your hair is long enough for a prince to climb. I imagine you twisting it into a messy bun. Your eyes are birthstone blue. Fateful. I want to write on the creamy notebook of your skin. I’d use my most florid handwriting. Your cheeks are the smooth sides of a cut gem. Your teeth are straight and all the same size. Your top lip juts out. An eave anyone would jump from. I follow your Twitter biography to an online magazine. You write about female neurosis. 

My face is a potato. My eyebrows are messy. Dad paid me to not pluck them when I was young and this meant a part of me was worth something. I became obsessed with them and cut a fringe to evade the pressure of making them nice. It was my biggest asset. I won the “friendliest fringe” prize during an icebreaker at a New Year’s party. I’ve recently started wearing it to the side leaving one eyebrow on show. I pluck the lonely hairs that grow down to my eye. It is brown. My skin is red after I shower. Red after I’ve been in the cold. Sometimes it peels away. My lips swell when I drink soy milk. Otherwise the top one disappears when I smile. I wear large glasses to disguise my face’s northern hemisphere. I pretend they are a one-way mirror. I look at people but they can’t see me. I look at you.

You’re too good for him. He has dark smears on his walls. He sleeps on a mattress without a bed. Dirty clothes take up the rest of the floorspace. He puts them on again without smelling the armpits. He doesn’t think he needs to try to impress because he believes he is naturally impressive. He has a beard of knotted threads. His pores are spider burrows. His hair is the forest of a fairytale. I can see the tips of your hair disappearing behind a tree.

I look for you on Instagram. Books and single flowers in narrow clay vases framed by squares of oak tabletop. Speckled grey and pastel mugs of tea. Your soft fingers cupping their warmth. Prosaic captions. “Matter impregnated with mind”. You capture patterns made by light. Artful lines formed by the rooftops of receding buildings. The beauty of a young woman’s embarrassment when she realises you’re taking a candid picture. You look at the world as an artist. I need to save you before your clothing catches on one of his brambles. Before your finger is pricked. 

I type out a message. 

“Hello. I just found your account through bookstagram. I love Claire Louise Bennet! So glad I clicked on the link to that essay. I’m actually writing about her work as well. You’re East London too, right? I hope this isn’t strange but I’d really love to go for a coffee some time to discuss books.” I send a rose and a smile. I smile in real life. I’ll save you from him. We could be best friends. 

I put my phone on flight mode to avoid checking for your reply. I change into my floor-length nightie. I climb beneath the flowers of my Ikea bedspread. I won’t pretend it’s a grave tonight. I don’t want to wake up a ghost. I want to wake up solid. I think about sitting with you on wrought iron chairs in a leafy garden behind a cafe filled with macbooks and cotton dungarees. I see you through the bright filter they put on scripted reality shows. The sun glints on your hair like it is the Aegean sea. You look almost translucent in the light. Porous. Someone I can sink into and grow out of. I count the hairs spangling on your forearm until I fall asleep. 

I turn flight mode off as soon as I wake up. You have replied in eloquent prose. 

“Thank you for your message. It’s so nice to hear you liked my essay. Compliments can mean a lot to a person! Bennet is wonderful. I love her mundane fixations. I think coffee would be a lovely idea. I’m always on the lookout for new acquaintances. For new personal stories and perspectives. Your inferences on this platform are so interesting that I’m sure we’d get on beautifully.”

I reply immediately. I don’t want to give anyone the chance to steal your nearest availability. 

“I hope I’ve lessened the quintessential anxiety of the female writer. When would you like to go for a coffee? I’m free this afternoon, actually. Though I’m sure you’ve got plans.” 

You are online and begin typing almost as soon as I finish. 

“I’m being restless and unproductive today so that’s not a bad idea. I can get to anywhere East pretty easily.” 

It’s too cold for a cafe garden. I try to think of the most writerly coffee shop I know. The Place is a barely converted warehouse with chipboard walls and drafty windows that overlook the River Lea. The bitter tofu scramble turns your tongue yellow. But there is artisanal coffee, craft beer, wine, and whisky. I can press a drink on you to make you open up. The unisex toilets are candlelit due to an ongoing power issue. This offers a talking point for tongues loosened by alcohol. A memorable afternoon. Perhaps even an afternoon that seeps into evening. You will think of me in warm electric lighting. You are sure to want to meet again.

“How about The Place, near Hackney Wick overground?”

“Hackney Wick works for me. Shall we say two? That gives us a couple of hours to get ourselves together.”

“Great! See you then.”

I decide to take a bath with the oil I received for christmas. I imagine you are fragrant in a way that doesn’t announce itself, like the smell of a new book. I run the water and add the tiniest amount of oil. I am worried it will give me the sheen of a tinned sardine. I find my copy of Pond to brush up on Bennet. I walk to the bathroom, undress, and climb into the bath. The character fixates on muesli, tomato puree, an oven, a boy in a hoodie, a chaise longue. She can build anything into a scenario. She creates controlled explosions from things that I merely eat or sit on or cross the road to avoid. Your essay did the same. Brilliant thoughts pulled into orbit around your theme. I can’t wait to mine your brain. I sink beneath the bathwater to wet my hair before applying the shampoo. 

I imagine I can’t rise from beneath the water. Stuck there by a celebrity magician through the power of suggestion. I missed the warning not to be underwater when it happened because I can’t afford a TV license. My imagination feels powerful enough to hold me down there. I think I actually can’t get up. I release large bubbles of air. The struggling young woman in a shark-based thriller. I count seconds. My imagination is beginning to fail. I push myself through the water above. I’m back in the unrenovated bathroom of my rental flat. I wonder what your bathroom is like.

From Instagram I know your apartment is filled to the brim with light. You have large windows in thin wooden frames and white walls. Mounted shelves lined with art books. A plank of pine fashioned into a bench. A mustard suede sofa. Cheese plants and spider plants you’ve propagated yourself. But your bathroom isn’t pictured. It is mine to furnish. I picture more plants with tall fronds casting shadows against the wall. The kind of rug I’d bury my fingers in during a wine-fueled evening at someone’s house. Abstract paintings that look like grey teardrops dense enough to be mistaken for rain in small square frames scattered at different levels across the walls. A stand-alone tub with a pull-around curtain. A bamboo shelf across the bath on which you place poetry books and tea while you recline in thick bubbles like Hera on a cloud.

The broken extractor rattles in the wind. I need to think about what to wear. You favour a Wes Anderson colour palette and Scandinavian cuts. Long Autumnal coats, wide trouser legs and short cotton shirt arms. I step out of the bath, wrap myself in a towel, and walk to my room. Most of the clothes in my wardrobe haven’t been used for years. I received a compliment on my swamp-green turtleneck and bought three more in different muted colours to wear on rotation. The beige seems understated enough for you. Someone who doesn’t need to wear bright colours to be interesting. I pair it with dark, faded high-waisted mum jeans. I dry my hair and apply mascara. You don’t cover up your features with make up. A writer’s mind is on higher things than eyeliner.

I’m going to be early but I can have a glass of wine before you arrive. It will stop me from stuttering. I put a drawing pad and pencil in my backpack so I don’t feel self conscious at a table by myself. My coat is bright red. The antithesis of what you like. I take my housemate’s. It is long like yours and forest green. If she notices I will blame a friend mistaking it for their own. She doesn’t know me well enough to realise I don’t have any. I take her grey beret as well. I put on my matte black chelsea boots, take my bag, and leave the flat. My forehead itches in the cold of the clean winter afternoon. I join the canal. It is thick with Sunday strollers. I catch a segment of conversation from a couple of men in eighties jackets and tiny beanie hats.

“I took acid and ate a lit cigarette. I thought my hand was god.”

You probably took hallucinogens in your early twenties. I picture you lying on your back on a dark patch of grass. You stare in wonderment at your arms pale in the moonlight as you circle and twist your hands. It is a humid summer. Your halterneck has ridden up to expose your stomach. Your hair is artfully mussed. As if arranged by a team of people before someone yells “action”. The tragic love interest played by someone too-old in a teen drama. It fans out around your head. The gold-leaf halo of a saint in a medieval painting. 

I look in the windows of the canal boats as I pass. They are so small inside. You couldn’t escape someone. You’d live on top of each other. Every morning they’d shuffle past you in the narrow corridor between the back room and the kitchen. Their daily apology would become a running joke. You’d laugh together and climb outside to drink tea. Your breath would steam as a single cloud in the air. 

I reach the bridge at Hackney Wick and leave the canal. Anxiety is starting to colonise my brain. I worry it won’t leave room for interesting thoughts that I can elucidate to impress you. I hurry past the developments and scrawled-over warehouses to The Place. I leave my coat and backpack at a seat by the window and go up to order wine. A large white that won’t stain my teeth.

By the window the wine bleeds through me. I think about the last time I met with someone for drinks. The new girl at work. Of course I researched her on social media beforehand. I was so nervous I drank two glasses of wine before she arrived. I enquired after her Scottish Terrier back home in the Midlands. She hadn’t mentioned him yet. She asked how far back I’d gone on her social media. He’d died the year before. She seemed amused. I was mortified. I made mistake after mistake. I told her I was vegan. People trust people who are like them. But I ordered a White Russian. I mentioned I had a boyfriend. Stammered when she asked his name. I referred to her best friend’s new house in a conversation about the London property market. I had looked up her friends. This wasn’t normal. She left after two drinks. I take another gulp of wine. 

I have twenty minutes before you arrive. I can’t imagine you’ll be early. I remove the pencil and pad from my bag. Drawing will help. The devil makes work for idle minds. I begin to sketch the heavily scarfed man that sits smoking in the beer garden on the other side of the glass. The twist of his scarf forms a celtic pattern that I isolate on the page. It reminds me of the graveyard in Mayo. Confession in the shrine church. I never had anything to say when the priest asked if I was still pure. I felt pleased that I was pure. Terrified that I would one day have to choose whether to remain so.

“Very good.”

I look up. It’s you.

“Sorry for disturbing you. I recognised you from your pictures. I didn’t think you’d be early, too.”

I wish I’d had time to finish my drink. I try to modulate my voice. It climbs in pitch and trips over itself under stress.

“You didn’t disturb me! I’m always early. I like to get settled. Sorry, I would have gotten you a drink.”

“I thought this was a coffee situation. But I’m partial to day drinking. There were enough artists that did it. I saw an old Vogue diet a few weeks ago that advocated a glass of wine and minimal snacks for every meal. We’ll be skinny as rakes.”

“You don’t need to lose weight!”

“Women love to build each other up. I’ll drink wine.”

You walk towards the bar. It is strange to hear someone’s voice for the first time. Someone known to you from photographs. Your voice is neither high nor low. Southern but not of a different class. I’ve lived in London long enough to distinguish between the two. His voice was the other type. He drew out his vowels as if we were competing. They always went the furthest. He used his voice to bestow big words on any listener. Each syllable a smug hair flick. He called off our relationship with a metaphor. The space where his feelings should be was a growing sinkhole. 

But your voice is wonderful. It seems to contain multiple notes at once. I imagine your vocal organ is as perfectly formed as a bird’s syrinx. At the bar you remove your tan coat and sling it over your arm. I can see a sunflower tattoo growing down your left arm from the stiff sleeve of your shirt. I envy the tattooist. It takes multiple sessions to complete a piece’s outline and colour. How you could break down barriers in that enclosed space. Their face inches from yours. I envy the ink living beneath your skin. You are returning with the drink. You sit on the stool opposite. 

“So, this is spontaneous.”

“I hope it’s ok. You said you liked meeting new people. I might not live up to your expectations.”

“I hope you’re ok. You’re on your third apology.”

“Sorry.”

You look at me. I raise a hand to cover my laugh. My mouth is too full of teeth. The back ones push the front two forward into a corner. I had NHS braces as a teenager. The metal brackets wore away the undersides of my cheeks. They bled and stung. I was given wax to smooth the brackets. It came off when I bit into food and I could feel the lumps slide down my throat. A different texture to what I was eating. I still wake in the night with the sensation that I’ve swallowed something wrong. I try to claw it out. My orthodontist retired a year before I was supposed to have my braces removed. The new one asked if I would like them taken off during our first appointment. I thought of the wax. The metallic taste of my blood. I said yes. A half-finished smile. Incomplete like the young woman that carries it. Your teeth are small and uniform. As white as the reception desk of your publishing house. But you are far more than the sum of your teeth.

“It’s like a friend date.” You say.

“I hate dating.” 

“Oh?”

“The last man I met sat down and he said listen. We both know I’m too good for you. He was wearing a suit. He’d come from the City. He said let’s not waste each other’s time. And then he left.”

“Oh dear. He sounds like Patrick Bateman. If it’s any consolation, I’d date you. I love your turtleneck. You look like Sally Rooney. Have you read her?”

“I have.”

“What did you think?”

“I wanted stronger female characters.”

“I did at first. And then I realised what I was doing. We put women in boxes and say “this is right”, be it a strong woman or a woman undone by pain. Aren’t both women worthy?”

Do you think I’m worthy?

“You’re right. I’m quick to judge.” I reply.

“I was more interested in the self consciousness. The awareness that everything we’re doing is perceived and how we play into tropes.”

God you’re so articulate.

“I’m trying to play into the trope of a French person.” I say, pointing at the beret. 

You laugh. Such a perfect laugh. I sound like a mouse in a Disney film when I laugh. 

“I like your beret.” You say. You reach over and take it from me. You put it on. 

“I wore it home and my grandad laughed at me. He said is that the fashion in London. And then he laughed some more.”

“I had the same thing with short trousers. My mum kept asking if I wanted tiny scarves for my ankles.”

I almost spit out my wine. It’s the last sip. I can make a detour to the toilet mirrors if I go to get a drink. I worry about what my face and hair are doing.

“Would you like another?”

You lift your mostly full glass and shake your head.

“OK. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I half fall off the tall stool and walk to the toilets. They haven’t fixed the lights. There’s a line of candles along the wall. I hover at the door to gauge if any men are inside. There don’t seem to be. I go into the first cubicle. The graffiti is different than what I’m used to. I often feel bolstered by the platitudes in a women’s toilet. I pretend they were left there for me by someone who cares. This is mostly telephone numbers. I wonder if I should write one down. Perhaps we could go for a drink sometime. I’m getting cocky.

I flush the toilet and move to the mirror. More candles are arranged around the sinks. My face floats into view. Horror-film style. The beret has left my hair flat. I wipe away the smudges of mascara beneath my bottom lashes. The light doesn’t reach inside the indents marring my face. Spots and scars. I hope I never have to compare our faces side by side. But I long to give you a pep talk in a bathroom at 2 am. A scene from a romantic comedy. I wash my hands and dry them. The paper towel catches a candle when I turn to put it in the bin. I drop the paper and stamp on it. There’s a mark on the floor when I pick it up. 

I head for the bar. You’re on your phone. You’re still wearing my housemate’s beret. I wonder if I could give it as a gift. Buy a replacement. Would that be coming on too strong? I order another white. I mount the stool again.

“That was an experience.” I raise my eyebrows.

“What happened?”

“The lights are out so there’s candles everywhere. It looks like the Phantom’s lair. I set fire to a paper towel.”

“That is quite the adventure. By the way, I’m supposed to be meeting my boyfriend later but he wants to come and find me now because he’s already out. Do you mind if he joins us?”

I can feel the blood beating in my face. 

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” 

“Great. I think you’ll like him. He’s very well read.”

“Actually I’ll probably go before he arrives. I’ve got plans later too.” 

You nod.

“Where is the candlelit bathroom?”

I point.

“Thanks.”

You walk away. I knew it was going too well. I was an oblivious Anne Hathaway, finally where I wanted to be, cycling into the path of a lorry.