I’M GIVING YOU A LONGING LOOK

Cody wakes from a late morning dream. The room is hot. She’s still heavy and slow from sleep, but her mind is clear. She knows there’s something she has to do. Francis, she thinks, which is nothing new. There is something different now though. She feels a pulse somewhere which tells her she’s going to do something. She doesn’t want to think what it is. She just wants to get there.

She has a bath and gets dressed to music she and Thea used to listen to at school.

– 32 –

Here’s some mud in your pretty eye
But please drop in if you’re passing by
I’ll tell you how much I hate you girl
Perhaps it isn’t true, perhaps it isn’t true

She brushes her hair, humming, smiling at herself in the mirror. Tears come into her eyes. She misses Thea. She’ll write to her, after she’s done this.

Walking into town she wonders if she’s been kidnapped by the FBI and brainwashed as a sleeper. I must kill John Lennon, I must kill John Lennon, she mutters, then laughs out loud. She feels hysteria welling up and breathes down to control it. She realises she’s heading straight for Francis’s bookshop. What’s she doing? This is stupid—she’s about to turn back but she gets rid of the thought, she doesn’t think anything, the song runs through her head.

To those who look snide
And those who connive
I say love cannot be contrived
love cannot be denied

She’s scaring herself now, and walking still, getting closer and closer. It’s a mistake, it’s wrong. No. Just get there.

And if you ask me to explain
The rules of the game
I’ll say you missed the point again

She walks into the bookshop and up to the desk where Francis is sitting. There’s no one else there.

—Hi Cody, he says.

—Hi Francis, she says. She squeezes in past the desk and stands behind his chair. For seven seconds she doesn’t touch him. Then her hands reach over his shoulders and down his chest. Her mouth is very close to his right ear. One hand finds its way up inside his jersey. The other feels the worn leather of his belt. She kisses his throat. He turns and stands and the chair falls over and her back is against the wall and they are kissing each other. She twists him around and she holds him to the wall, holds his hands to the wall, kisses him and hears someone behind her. She lets him go. He is confused.

– 33 –

—Sorry, he says to the customer.

She isn’t sorry. She laughs and says goodbye and leaves the shop.

Francis reaches in his desk drawer and pulls out his inhaler. He gulps mouthfuls of Ventolin. The customer asks him if he’s got anything by Julian Barnes and he says Never heard of him, when of course he has, he’s read everything he’s written, but the only one he can remember right now is Talking It Over, and he decides that’s what they’ve got to do.

When Cody gets home from work that night Francis is in the living-room smoking a cigarette.

—What about your asthma, says Cody.

—I don’t care, says Francis.

—OK, says Cody.

—I’m going to move out, says Francis.

—OK, says Cody.

—It’s not healthy, says Francis.

—OK, says Cody.

—They look at each other. Cody lights a cigarette off the end of Francis’s and steps away again.

—I want you, says Francis.

—Do you, says Cody.

—Yes, says Francis.

—Really, says Cody.

—Yes, says Francis.

—I suppose you want to consume me, says Cody.

—Yes, says Francis.

—Well, says Cody, —you can try.

Later, you can’t sleep. You don’t care. You reach over Cody for a cigarette. You light it and cough. You lie on your back blowing smoke into the dark above you. Cody wakes up. You pass her the cigarette. You smile at her.

—Cody, you say.

She smiles back. —What? she says.

—Cody, you say. —C—O—D—Y.

—Visions of Cody, she says, handing you back the cigarette.

—Yeah, you say, still smiling, —Every day I write the book.