The Nine-Chambered Heart. Janice Pariat

you don’t reply. You don’t know, and I think that’s what annoys you. I don’t know when you’ll snap next and for what reason.

      The other night, I asked if I could borrow a couple of plates from you for a shoot in college. Some video project for class.

      ‘No.’

      ‘It’s just some plates, man.’

      ‘No,’ you shouted back, your eyes filling with tears. ‘You’ll break them.’

      ‘It’s just a fucking shoot,’ I yelled back and left, slamming the door behind me. By the time I returned, you were in bed, the lights were off. I don’t know if you were asleep, but you didn’t speak.

      One evening, we watch a movie. Something that had been screened in class that I wanted to share with you. We do this often. You recommend books, that I admittedly don’t read, and I bring back films in my hard drive, filched from friends at university. Within the first five minutes, barely after the opening credits, we are arguing. A shot of a woman lying on a bed in her underwear, from behind, and I remark on the camera’s ‘male gaze’. It’s something our professor had mentioned.

      You roll your eyes.

      ‘What?’

      ‘The movie’s directed by a woman … so perhaps this is somewhat subversive.’

      We don’t finish watching the film.

      The night I almost hit you, we are headed to a blues bar hosting a live act. These are my favourite evenings in the city. Back home, the streets fold into themselves by six. Here, nothing begins until late. Even if I’m not performing, nothing makes me happier than being someplace where someone is. You seem all right when we leave. We get on my bike and head south. You seem all right even when we get there. When we climb the stairs and step into a dimly lit room. There’s the stage. The audience, with drinks in hand. The band is setting up. Sound check. The first number. They’re good. Not brilliant, but I don’t really care. You seem all right even when you meet a few people you know, and make conversation. When you sip your drink, and bob your head to the music.

      See, that’s the thing, I can’t tell the moment when you’re not all right. It’s a switch that takes seconds.

      Suddenly, you’re tugging at my sleeve saying you want to leave.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I want to go …’

      ‘But they’ve just started.’

      ‘This place is awful …’

      ‘It’s fine … I want to stay …’

      ‘And I don’t want to.’

      It carries on like this, and the band’s really getting into it now. Something strong and bluesy bursts into the air. I’m beginning to get annoyed.

      ‘You stay,’ you say, ‘I’ll go.’

      ‘No,’ I shout over the music. ‘We came together, we leave together.’

      ‘That’s ridiculous …’ you begin to say when I walk out. I only know you’re following when I hear your feet clatter behind me on the stairs. We step out into the evening. You’re saying something, but I can’t hear you through the throb of my anger. I feel something strike me on the side of my head.

      ‘What the fuck?’ I roar, turning. You’ve flung a magazine at me. For a second, I pause to wonder where you got it from. Strange, isn’t it, the things that occupy us even at moments like these?

      Back at your flat, the argument continues.

      ‘It wasn’t a big deal,’ you yell. ‘You could’ve stayed … I could’ve left.’

      ‘We went together, we leave together,’ I shout back. I don’t know why, but I’m hung up on this line. It’s become precious to me, this idea. We are loud, and I’m sure people outside, downstairs, upstairs can hear us. I don’t give a shit. We shout at each other.

      ‘You threw that magazine at me …’

      ‘Because you wouldn’t stop and listen.’ Your voice is shrill and piercing. I cannot bear it.

      It seems like you’re raising your hand against me. So I raise my hand too. Your eyes widen, your mouth rounds into a silent ‘O’ as the words die in your throat from surprise. And fear.

      ‘Look what you made me do,’ I shout. ‘Look what you made me do.’ I am the worst, most vile version of myself. I am crumbling like a pile of garbage. I am a pile of garbage.

      With you, I am highest, and lowest.

      It isn’t this, though, that breaks us up.

      We continue for weeks, months. Over a year. Two. At a wedding you get pissed off because I’m chatting for too long, you say, with some other woman. Another time, you find an email exchange on my laptop between some girl and me, entirely innocent in content, but then why haven’t I told you about her? Back home, I’ve seen butchers dice meat, and sometimes pieces string together because the cut isn’t clean. We hold on like that too. Unhappy together, but what if we’re unhappier apart? I think, at times, we would be. Because, no matter what, we do have fun. We sing a lot, with me on the guitar. A bottle of whisky. You dancing on the bed. We still drive around the city at night, and eat ice cream, and go to gigs.

      But eventually, all this is not enough.

      One evening, after a fight about I don’t even remember what, I storm out of your flat and go to my friend’s house to spend the night. We drink. There’s meat being cooked. We sample some weed from the hills. Some time just before dawn, when I’m lying awake in an unfamiliar room, I send you a text. It’s the coward’s way out, I know, but maybe that’s all I am.

      I say I can’t do this any more. That it’s over.

      You don’t reply. Not then. Maybe you never will.

      I stare at the screen. The light fades, and it finally dies into darkness.

THE CARETAKER

      YOU’RE HALF MY age, maybe younger, but I see you and I want you.

      I’ve felt it before, this kind of want. It’s raw and easy, and instantly recognizable, like hunger, and as uncomplicated – mouth to gut. With you, though, I’m afraid.

      At this time of night, it might be the alcohol. How much have I had to drink? Always one too many. In my head, that familiar lightness, and the hall in which this gathering is taking place has taken on a certain hazy glow.

      I see you clearly as you step into the room. You stand uncertainly for a moment, glance about you, and walk across to where the door opens towards a small lawn. You stop just beyond the glow of the wood burner. Why would you do that? It’s December, and cold, and your dress – if that’s what it can be called – won’t do much to keep you warm. It’s a cross between kimono and lab coat, with sleeves that swirl like windmills. On my wife it would look like an eccentric bathrobe, but you it suits, that touch of the dramatic. You seem to be a woman to whom something is always about to happen.

      I watch you from a distance; sip my whisky – both in unhurried pleasure. I am called to your face. That nose, that sweep of brow, something about your chin. Your hair is long, but swept deliciously away from your neck, piled on top. You are pleasingly – not conspicuously – tall. As a child you must have been awkward, gangly, I’m certain of it, but not now, not any more. And if I were a poet I’d find a way to describe your body as it deserves to be. All that comes to mind is a tree, a cypress, whose leaves shimmer in the sunlight.

      I watch as you gaze into the wood burner, your face indecipherable. Are you thoughtful? Bored? Dulled by your surroundings? Quietly contemplating setting the place on fire? For the moment, nobody joins you; you stand alone while the people around you ebb and flow. It doesn’t seem like you know anyone and no one else knows you. In which case, why are you