untitled- Part I

*Anaïs

She is used to waking like this; the world orange, pulsing with the curious regurgitation of lager, vodka and champagne. Her eyelids are cemented together, fine threads of mascara proving more powerful than any glue, so that light serves only to highlight the spindly veins meshing across her eyelids. Beer fumes prick her nostrils and rip her stomach; a familiar cocktail of booze and sex painting the metallic fur of her mouth. The lump beside her belches and rolls over.

She can only hope he feels as dire as her when he lumbers out of bed. She stumbles past him, the world too hazed to navigate without bruising; pulling on his shirt. It reeks, is smeared with a familiar shade of lipstick and is lacking three buttons. She has a feeling that too, is her fault. Her lipstick has strayed further, across his face and chest; his long hair is matted and stubble is forming shadows on his chin. Experience tells her she looks no better. Her makeup is everywhere it should not be; her eyes are crusted with sleep. A heinous bruise blooms at her neck; it will take inches of foundation to disguise this latest love bite.

They are the beautiful people.

*Christophe

Anaïs, darling;
These postcards hide an awful lot, like rubbish bins and rubbish that isn’t in them and vile crying children that are every bit as ugly as the rubbish. See the pigeons fucking out the window? I have drawn them in for you. One is that ordinary blue-grey pigeon colour; the other brown and white. How depressing; even pigeons are fucking more than me.

*Anaïs

He is like a baby bird, she decides. His head rests on her shoulder and she is dropping noodles into his mouth; with her fingers, as she has given up on the chopsticks. He gapes greedily, giggling through his mouthfuls. He is a baby bird.

*Louis

He can taste tobacco where her fingers taint the noodles. She smokes too much, lighting one cigarette from the last. He doesn’t complain, not today, because the noodles are already going cold; raising the subject would only anger her and he hates cold noodles.

*Christophe

Anaïs;
It’s late; the exact time eludes me- but it is late. Late enough for the city to turn ugly and the rabble to spill onto the streets. Usually, I am a part of this rabble; not tonight. Tonight, I merely remark that it is late enough for the coffee shops, which I would prefer to take refuge in, to be closed. The coffee shops are more pretentious and thus, more expensive but both suit me. I would not mind the extra cost should it mean I could be among the precocious and bohemian. Instead, I am forced into the bright lights of the only place to allow me to sit with only a drink and a book- although the frantic laughter and pulsating music render it near impossible to read: Burger King. Desperation breeds somewhat lower standards. I have come to the conclusion that the precocious and bohemian frequent different, unknown haunts after hours.

*Louis

He is no longer sure of why she makes these calls, or why she finds them so difficult. He expects she was drunk again last night; that Gareth phoned her, rejected by his latest string of cheap lays. And in the morning, her head pounding, she would regret saying yes; she always does.

Her phone bill is racked with these calls; these I-don’t-want-to-be-tied-down calls.

It is always Louis who dials for her.

Chris is asleep when he phones, or out again.

*Christophe

Christophe is not asleep; nor is he out.

Burger King Boy grins eagerly. Too eagerly. Christophe only hopes he will not make a fuss in the morning, when he will be turfed out of bed unceremoniously. Louis’ train arrives at eleven and he will need to change the sheets before then. He wonders whether to plead tiredness and chuck the boy out sooner rather than later.

Oh, sod it.

He kisses him and there is no stubble to graze his lips, not like Louis.

*Anaïs

She despises train stations. The sticky pools of drink clinking to her heels; the wisps of urine seeping from the toilets; the children clutching at their mothers, crying too loudly, squealing with the same surprise as identical trains scream into the platform. She stays in the taxi, running up the meter (which will cost her in cigarettes) until Louis comes out, waving their tickets in sheer delight.

He is pleased only to be going back to Christophe. He thinks the break will have done good, that Chris will welcome him back with kisses and champagne and a million other clichés that Louis craves.

Anaïs knows- as does Louis, if he would only admit it, instead of burying the knowledge beneath a bunch of roses he will never receive- that Christophe will be washing a week of infidelities from his sheets.
She regrets now her part in the affair; the unwitting matchmaker. She squashes their cases together, refusing to apologise to a fat man who takes a blow. He is eating a dead-something and it repulses her. She despises train stations; and fat people who eat in public.

*Louis

He ignores her bad temper, her glowering at the man with a ham sandwich. He rests his rucksack on his knee, whilst two children squabble over the remaining seat.

Heather was reluctant to let them go, though Anaïs stood and whined that they would miss their train. Her act fools no one, least of all him. She is in a vile mood not because of the fat man and the kids but because she hates leaving home again; hates the idea of her mother alone, although Heather is perfectly content and Anaïs just worries. They make each other sick with worry.

Anaïs hates train stations; loathes what they represent. Leaving, and the never-coming-back sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She will always come back, and Heather will always be waiting and Anaïs will smile with relief, briefly, then whinge about the dirt and the stench and the noise.

*Christophe

His knuckles are shone raw from the inside of Burger King Boy’s jeans. He will scrub that away later; shave the faint beard from his face, wiping with it any traces of stickiness from where it has caught to the hairs. He showers with the washing machine on, which causes the water to blister him, then freeze. He has no other choice: Louis is due in an hour and the Boy was reluctant to leave; fussed around, trying to make coffee, prepare breakfast until Christophe told him that he only ever drank tea, never ate in the mornings.

Burger King Boy had tasted of stale fries and grease. Louis tastes of something different, something subtler. The Boy was clean-shaven, although looked as if he needed never to shave at all. Christophe had been bored, although there was something to be said for virgin fucks, if not their blowjobs.

He climbs out of the shower and switches the kettle on. He will make coffee in time for Louis’ return. Breakfast too.