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New Writing Harmonica - Opening Chapter
New Writing Harmonica - Opening Chapter | Harmonica - Opening Chapter |
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| Written by Jaime Campbell | |||||
| Friday, 20 April 2007 | |||||
Page 1 of 3 The Last Tape - Final moments - Wednesday - Day 6 – 11:57pm So after sautéed crab cakes served over a nest of tri-colour linguini, in Dijon cream, in the Windjammer Lounge, we’re balanced out on the ledge, looking down, seven stories from the ground. Looking out into the night. Looking out over this city flickering neon like butterfly wings, ready and waiting to go. - TEN Ready to roll off the ledge goodbye. - NINE No anger left now, no neon indignation. No fireworks or final fuck-you to the world. Just two kids unable to grow up, seeping out like Christmas brandy, spilling over chairs, over tables to the windows, to the ledge. Failing on our own terms as we stand there. - EIGHT Ragged. Caught up in the rush, in the pouring of days since I met her. This technicolour woman. This Christmas decoration Suza Brown still crackling like firewood as she grabs my hand for comfort, choking a last prayer. Head spinning like a kiddie’s toy, eyes rolling like radio dials trying to tune out all the rush, all the static before stepping out over the ledge to simply swan dive goodbye. - SEVEN This stolen jacket pulled across, stretched and buttoned to hide the knots in my stomach. To hide the wound she gave me, still wide and bleeding, lipstick red. - SIX As we stand, my face pale, the colour draining. - Diabetic acidosis. Giving a little but hanging on. After clam chowder and lobster bisque she swallows the last of her glass to tell me, “This is it”, the moment we take on new lives and, “Fly. But not like great birds. Like aircraft nosing to dive. All the rattle and twisted metal.” - SIX “Like accidents waiting to happen”, I joke, trying to mask the nerves but the words splash out like cheap aftershave. - The increased thirst. The increased urination. And after six bottles of fuck-me wine in a whirlwind mind we step out together, seeping out onto the ledge hand in hand with this technicolour woman, this Christmas decoration Suza Brown. The fatalist. - The fast, short breathing. The smell of acetone on my breath. This wound in my stomach she stitched with cotton soaked in gin. - FIVE That she bandaged with seafood serviettes. - The romantic fiction of it all? After Chilean sea bass and Jonah crab we climb out as if in slow motion, synchronised like cutlery, like silver service. Diners, waiters in this cigar & cocktail landscape looking on with the headlight stare of rabbits, eyes caught frozen in the beam, lights bouncing off all the jewellery. - The nausea. The vomiting and stomach pains. After signing everything over in the tip I loosen this blue silk hire-me tie and together we step up, ready now. - FOUR Ready to slip our moorings and float away upstream. Filming it all. Camera rolling to record the final moments, the farewell note, the last round in the ring. Gloves tied. Shield in the gum. No corner men to fix the cuts now. Into the ring with fighting weight. Looking out over this city flickering neon like butterfly wings. Ring of the bell. Round fifteen. Security spilling like skittles as we hold hands like nervous children and climb out onto the ledge, fingers suddenly taut like wires cutting into the knuckles, cutting deep into the palms for grip, for comfort, the two of us ready to jump now. - THREE Ready to test fate. Ready to accept that the heart is just machinery, the blood just lubrication. - If my friends could see me now. It’s here that I lose my footing. - TWO It’s here that the realisation kicks in that only to insects am I a giant. Spitting, struggling, stepping over the cracks on my messy journey through all of this. The realisation that I’m nothing but a tooth, enamel stripped away to expose the root, the nerve raw and painful with each breath of air. Fear always with me, always there like glass from a broken bottle, hidden in the sand. - ONE Losing my balance. Losing my footing out on the ledge in the wind and rain as she watches, as she just looks on, this technicolour woman, this Christmas decoration Suza Brown. My arms slung out like a trawler’s net just to grab at something, anything. Grab at anything at all. - ZERO Just to take her with me. |
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