Brushed Faces

1
And they brushed faces in the bar, and she grabbed his wrist and bit into his cheek, quick and sharp like a baited predator. Not for long, just a slipaway token of pain in the noisy night, a thing to be remembered by. Outside, she slid into a taxi and waved goodbye with her eyes, not her hands. Her retreating profile was motionless: regally so; it was starched equidistant from the corners of the frame of the taxi window, as if she'd decided to stop breathing and turn into a picture instead. An itch flickered across the inside of his wrist. He stroked it with the opposite thumb. Felt the pockmarked dimples. Recognised. Looked. Felt again. A telephone number. In Braille. He could see the dots of the numbers as dust motes in his eyes as he thumbed each digit. The cars boomed through the street, pure bass, their treble overtones attenuated by the rain. He heard the bouncers breathing behind him, like cattle on a cold evening. He knew he'd never get back in tonight. He flipped the mobile open. Pressed buttons. You have reached the voicemail of. No name. Only the number he'd just keyed in. He didn't speak. In the dark, leave nothing, not even a message. He glanced behind. The bouncers were edging together, like cattle keeping warm in the frost beneath the moon. He started to walk away. Stroked his opposite cheek with the fingers of the Braille-infected hand. Felt a clip of embedded bone. Pulled out a fragment of tooth. Canine. Female. Not fanged. Good condition. No decay. Pure white, except for the curved red tip like a candle flame. He licked off the splash of his blood and put the tooth in his shirt pocket for protection. Started to walk. The pavements were slummed with wet soot. The traffic booms had morphed to a single drone. In his head, at least. The itch at the side of the inside of his mouth had started to burn. He could feel one of his vocal chords going again. His voice would once more lose bass, as if sucked out by the night traffic.

2
He woke up in a pool of noise and a blast of light. The window was open and the curtains were still tied. His contact lenses were still in, scratching his eyelids. The room was red at the corners. His suit stank of something chemical. His mobile rang. It was not one of his ringtones. The tune was from further east. He rolled over and picked the phone up from between where his shoulder blades had been. The screen showed the same number. Still in Braille.
"Hello?" (His voice lurching high, as the traitor vocal chord failed him.)
"The pain will burrow but not escape." (The voice was female, calm.)
He grabbed for the contents of his shirt pocket and retrieved thin air. He felt a stiletto stitch, just above his heart. His finger found a lump but no wound.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who knows someone who was blinded."
"But that wasn't my fault! I tried to help! And not just then, but afterwards! You can't blame me!"
"There is no fault. There is no blame. There is no judgement. There is only the pain and the sharing of pain."
"What do you want from me?"
"To kiss you again."
"Where?"
"On the other cheek."
"Why?"
"Because it's good to share."
"What good does it do you?"
"It doesn't do me good; it gives me pleasure."
"Why?"
"Because it's good to share."
""
""
""
"Well?"
"OK."
""
"OK. Name your place."
"I name your place."
"When?"
"When I like."
"Do you know where this is?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Knowledge can be shared as well as kisses."
"Who told you?"
"Someone who can still speak and who can still hear."
"But can't see?"
"Someone who can still speak and who can still hear told me."
"How is she?"
"I didn't say 'she'."
"How is she?"
"I shall be there."
"When?"
"When I want to."
"How shall I know to be in?"
"When I want to come, you will be there."
The phone crackled into silence. The early morning traffic pummelled through the streets, beneath the open window, swooshing the standing water aside. He lay back down on the bed, and failed to sleep.

3
It was another club and the promise of another person. Another club, another place. Another space to fill. Another face that spilled around the edges of his memory and his anticipation. He was alone, as usual. He was fragile and loose and jostled in a body of bodies, bending with the collective will, diverted into backwaters of the club by the snag and snarl of the music.
He found himself disgorged by the crowd towards the back wall and slumped onto a sofa, the body of bodies hobbling collectively behind him, the primary palette chords of the music carving the air. He retrieved a small plastic bottle from the inside pocket of his jacket and drank. Daintily, like a dowager drinking tea. He fingered the second lump on his cheek, knew with his fingertips every tooth-notch beneath the skin. Drank a little more.
And a giant pair of eyes expanded and exploded from the crowd, extruded from the sweat and the manic energy, bellowing and enveloping, scratching pain from the air, and a presence swallowed itself through his throat and gut and rebuked itself through his body, spreading like white corpuscles in the stagnant night, and left him gasping, grasping at the rasping, noise-fuddled air in vain as the choke and the strangle grabbed his throat from within and juiced his lungs to oblivion and black-red Braille letters perforated the air above his head.
And he was outside, outside with an extra ache and legs that were not performing their function but were performing a joke stage act and a susceptibility to the cold that was bitten into his body like a fresh tattoo, and he could feel himself doing the night street stagger along unfamiliar routes with nothing but a homing instinct for company, through the early morning youth-packs, their voices like growls added together and amplified by the menace that they fed off. He felt an urgent need to vomit but knew that bending over puking in a back alley would tip him over the balance to vulnerability. He was only half-sure where he was going but went there anyway. Feeling for the outline of the protecting fragment of tooth embedded in his skin underneath his shirt pocket. One foot was dragging, obliterating the Braille-dots made by the leading foot in the slush. He moved on, on through the vague promise of a dawn.

4
She was asleep when he dragged himself in, snoring gently like cat, stirring like a disturbed weather front in the fold of the bedding, relaxing back to stiffness, the double-angled shape of her body echoing the markings of the snake on her unseen tattoo. She paused briefly when he clicked the door shut, then sighed back to sleep. There was now enough light seeping through the thin curtains to let him see where he was going. Light like pus, escaping when you didn't want it to. He could tell without touching that his second wound was weeping again in her presence. A jailbreak of his plasma. Out into the wild world to take its chances.
She was smiling with her mouth but her eyes were closed. He staggered and groped to the bathroom, and turned on the buzzing light. Her eyes were now open, and staring from the mirror of the bathroom cabinet. He stared her out, and her eyes faded and were replaced by his own bloodshot gaze, in the unshaven, scratched background of his traitor face. And his own face scowled at him. He scowled back. The pus from the second wound leaked down, as if someone had started to draw a greying beard on the side of his face. He left it unwashed. He knelt and smiled at the toilet bowl, but the vomit wouldn't come. He limped back to the room, and punched himself into folds of his body against the folds of her body in the folds of the bed.

5
When he woke up, she was not there, and the window was closed, and the traffic noise was muffled back to a jagged, freeform bass. He drew the curtains open, and swathed the condensation aside. The slush had slunk back down through the drains and the sun was peeking weakly through the cataract clouds. He looked down: on her pillow, in tiny Morse pinpricks of blood, a message, in Braille. In his language and hers. He stroked the original wound. His blood and hers. He went into the bathroom. Looked at the stripe of grey on one side and the stripe of red on the other. Waved to himself. Waved goodbye.

6
The phone.
"Yes?"
"The time is approaching."
"What time? What gives? What do you care?"
"The time for reconciliation and retribution."
"There is nothing to be reconciled! There has been no act committed for which retribution is appropriate!"
"Not all opinions are alike."
"Anyway, I thought you'd said goodbye."
"There are many kinds of goodbye. This one will only last until the time has approached."
"No."
"No? What kind of no is this?"
"I'm not playing these games again. I'm not playing these games any more."
"No, that is not correct. The time is approaching."
"You can go to hell."
"Where we shall meet again."
"I thought you didn't believe in hell."
"It is as good a name as any other for a place where we shall meet again."

7
And they brushed faces in the bar, and she was a stranger and he grabbed her wrist and bit into her cheek, quick and sharp like a baited predator. Not for long, just a slipaway token of pain in the noisy night, a thing to be remembered by, as he was ushered roughly by the armlocking bouncers out of the door, their language and their tempers foul as cattle's breath in a winter's morning.

8
"Think your fucking bit of tooth was gonna save you, cunt?"
"Got plenty more bits of tooth to choose from now."

9
He was found there with his eyes open and seeing, but not blinking, as the hands of his watch clicked around and the snow started to settle. They slid him into the ambulance. The whole of his back ached like tattoos. He felt himself starched equidistant from the corners of the stretcher, and he waved goodbye with his eyes, not his hands, as he decided to stop breathing and turn into a picture instead.