She was shouting, without realizing it. Over on the other terrace, the Japanese woman turned and peered politely into the middle distance.
“I mean, look at this woman: she’s obsessed with me. Look at her. She desperately wants to photograph me but can’t bear to ask. It’s very sad, really.” Annie waved a hand at the woman and her family. “Eat your lunch! Proceed with your lives!”
Felix put himself between Annie and the view. “She’s half Jamaican, half Nigerian. Her mum teaches at William Keble down Harlesden way — serious woman. She’s like her mum, she’s got that Nigerian education thing: focused. You’d like her.”
“Hmmm.”
“You know that place York’s on Monmouth Street?”
“Naturally. People went there in the eighties.”
“She just got promoted,” said Felix, proudly. “She’s like the top waitress, what do you call that again? She doesn’t do the tables no more. What do you call that?”
“Maitre D.”
“Yeah. Probably end up managing it. It’s full every day — lots of people go there.”
“Yes, but what type of people?” Annie put her drink to her lips and knocked it back in one. “Anything else?”
Felix got flustered again: “We got a lot in common, like… just a lot of things.”
“Long walks in the country, red wine, the operas of Verdi, GSOH…” Annie held her arms wide and put her fingers together as in a yogic chant.
“She’s knows what she’s about. She’s conscious.”
Annie looked at him oddly: “That’s setting the bar rather low, don’t you think? I mean, bully for you she’s not in a coma…”
Felix laughed, and spotted her grinning gummily with pleasure.
“Politically conscious, racially conscious, as in she gets it, the struggle. Conscious.”
“She’s awake and she understands,” Annie closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Bully for you.”
But some flicker of imperiousness in her face tipped Felix over. He started shouting.
“All you know how to do is take the piss. That’s all you know. What you doing that’s so amazing? What you getting accomplished?”
Annie opened one startled eye: “What am I — what on earth are you talking about? I was joking, for Godssake. What exactly am I meant to be getting accomplished?”
“I’m talking about what are your goals? What do you want for your life to be like?”
“What do I want for my life to be like? I’m sorry, grammatically I’m finding that question extremely peculiar.”
“Fuck you, Annie.”
She tried to laugh this off, too, and reached out for his wrist, but he pushed her away: “Nah, but there’s no point with you, is there? I’m trying to tell you where I’m going in my life, and you’re just taking the piss. Pointless. You’re pointless.”
It came out more brutal than he’d meant. She winced.
“I think you’re being very cruel. I’m only trying to understand.”
Felix took it down a notch. He didn’t want to be cruel. He didn’t want to be seen to be cruel. He sat down next to her. He had his speech prepared, but also the sense that they were both speaking lines, that really she was as prepared as he was.
“I’m tired of living the way I been living. I been feeling like I’ve been in the game, at this level, and I had a good time at this level — but, come on, Annie: even you would say it’s a level with a lot of demons. A lot of demons. Demons and—”
“Excuse me — you’re talking to a nice Catholic girl, who—”
“Let me finish talking! For one time!”
Annie nodded mutely.
“Lost my thread now.”
“Demons,” said Annie.
“Right. And I’ve killed them. And it was hard, and now they’re dead and I’ve completed the level, and it’s time to move to the next level. It ain’t even a matter of taking you to the next level. You blatantly don’t want to go.”
This was the speech he had prepared. Now it was out of his mouth it didn’t seem to have the subtle depth it had taken on in his mind, but still he saw it had had some effect: her eyes were open and her yoga pose was over, arms unfolded, hands flat on the floor.
“You listening? Next level. People can spend their whole lives just dwelling. I could spend my whole life dwelling on some of the shit that’s happened to me. I done that. Now it’s time for the next level. I’m moving up in the game. And I’m ready for it.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve grasped the metaphor, you don’t have to keep repeating it.” Annie lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and exhaled it through her nose. “Life’s not a video game, Felix — there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is everybody dies at the end. Game over.”
The few clouds left in the sky were shunting toward Trafalgar. Felix looked up at them with what he hoped was a spiritual look upon his face. “Well, that’s your opinion, innit. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”
“Mine, Nietzsche’s, Sartre’s, a lot of people. Felix, darling, I appreciate you coming here for this ‘serious talk’ and sharing your thoughts about God, but I’m quite bored of talking now and personally I’d really like to know: are we going to fuck today or not?”
She pulled playfully at his leg. He tried to get up, but she started kissing up his ankles and he soon sunk back down on his knees. It was a defeat, and he blamed her. He got her by the shoulders, not gently, and together they scrabbled to the edge of the wall, where they told themselves they couldn’t be seen. He had a handful of her hair tight in his fist, and tried to land a harsh kiss but she had the knack of turning every malevolent stroke into passion. They fit together. They always had. But what was the point of fitting in this way and no other? He felt her hands on his shoulders, pushing him lower, and soon he was level with her appendix scar. She lifted her arse. He grabbed it with both hands and put his face in her crotch. Fourteen when Lloyd first explained that to eat a woman was unhygienic, a humiliation. Only at gunpoint, that was his father’s opinion, and even then only if every last hair has been removed. Annie was the first time. Years of conditioning broken in an afternoon. He wondered what Lloyd might think of him now, with his nose nestled in so much abundant straight hair, and this strange taste in his mouth.
“If it’s in the way, just take it out!”
He grabbed the mouse-tail between his teeth and pulled. It came out easily. He left it like a dead thing, red on the white deck. He turned back to her and dug in with his tongue. He looked like he was frantically tunnelling somewhere and hoping to reach the other side. She tasted of iron, and when he came up for air five minutes later he imagined a ring of blood around his mouth. In fact there was only a speck; she kissed it away. The rest was quick. They were old lovers and had their familiar positions. On their knees, looking out over town, they came swiftly to reliably pleasurable, reliably separate, conclusions, that were yet somehow an anticlimax when compared to those five minutes, five minutes ago, when it had seemed possible to climb inside another person, head first, and disappear entirely.
Afterward he lay on top of her feeling the unpleasant, sweaty closeness, wondering when it would be polite to move. He did not wait very long. He rolled over onto his back. She swept her hair to one side and put her head on his chest. They watched a police helicopter pass by on its way to Covent Garden.
“I’m sorry,” said Felix.