Sian's Bones

(Sian, it seems to me that for all this time we’ve been living in a set of brackets. We live apart from everyone else, we observe them; reach in and out as we feel. We are all powerful. We are living in stopped time, and one day, when the time comes, when I am tired, I will close you off.

-

'When you break a finger properly, you break it three times' I said, breaking his finger in my hand. I’m pulling his finger back over the counter and I feel the joints give way, top, middle, and knuckle. While I strain they remind me of cereal. Snap, crackle, pop.

I’m watching the rain fall outside the window. Its lazy rain. Funny how it assumes the colour of the streetlights. I know he’s watching it too, because I’m pushing his head against the counter with one hand, forcing him to look in that direction. I feel through his thin hair, his hard skull shivering under my palm.

We watch as the raindrops fall to earth, lit orange like sparks from a forge. It’s beautiful.

Granted, though, it’s probably not the first thing on his mind. He might be thinking about when I let go of him, for instance, or when I’ll move onto the next finger. He could be admiring my display work, a supernova of brilliant book covers leaping from all of our shelves, calling out to passers by. He might be wondering how this happened, having a good hard think.

See I snap like a wishbone. Actually no, that’s wrong, something inside falls away. Restraint falls away, that’s right, and the more your restraint falls away the closer you get to being angry all the time. Ever since I was young I’ve had these problems where all my reserves of restraint just fall away at once and all I have left is this raw nerve of rage tense, and twitching. But I had medical reasons for the knife I used to bring to school and my pint glass will only end up in your face if you cut in front of me and I like your bones, I like to hear them crunch, but I can’t do it. I can’t do it if you don’t make me.

And he made me, there sweating under the shop lights, looking at me, looking at Sian.

So in he walked, this tall glass of piss. He was all nose hair, touch of grey. A middle-aged man with a rugby shirt and tight jeans. He walked over to the counter where I was busy making a guitar out of elastic bands and a shoebox, stretching all 33 bones in his spine to reach his full height.

He wanted to refund an imported edition of ‘Jelly Rabbit’ or something; he had a hard stare on him that makes you know he loves exercising his rights as ‘a customer’.

‘What’s wrong with it’ I asked.

‘These aren’t the same as the ones I remember, the stories aren’t the same. The pictures are wrong. They’ve just got the same title and author.’

So, you were wrong then. You imagined ‘Jelly Rabbit’ would be something totally different but now that you’ve found out it’s the journal of a smack addict or something you’ve realised you can’t read it to your kids. Your fault, do some research.

‘He must just have been trying to go into a different direction’ I said, meaning he must have been trying to appeal to whole other group of arseholes ‘well anyway we can’t refund it I’m afraid.’

I could see his eyes flickering to life, he wanted to look angry but I could sense that somewhere in his head he had always been looking for this little bit of confrontation to gain a fleeting feeling of superiority, to brighten up his shit day.

‘Well, why not?’

Well, for one thing it was imported at great expense from the States; we got it in here as a favour. Secondly, your receipt is so old and yellow it looks like it has been wiping toilet seats since the fucking war.

‘It’s outside the dates that make it legible for return’ I said.

He looked at me like a paedophile outside the school gates who just found out it’s a Saturday. He started venting, tugging at his hair with his right hand and thrusting ‘Jelly Rabbit’ towards me with his left as if I had forgotten what he was talking about. Maybe he was right, I had started casting my eyes about the bookshop, bored. I noticed it was raining.

And then, from the next room, Sian walked in.

Sian has perfect bone structure. Her cheekbones are a diamond hemisphere, here nose is a runway to her lips and the wet pleasures that they hold. Her eyes are green, rare, a mutation, and her hair is cascading red spreading like roots of a tree over her shoulders, her perfect joints. They’re so beautiful, so fragile; I’m scared to touch them. I remember the first time. I had just finished the vacuuming and when I went to put it away she was waiting for me on the steps, she didn’t say anything, just held my jeans as I tried to walk past. She pulled me downwards as she opened herself up to me. It’s the way we do it all the time. I will do the vacuuming, she’ll cash up, and somewhere on the steps we will collide, lay ourselves down, and get lost. We never talk about it, it just happens. We have our work life and our sex life running parallel. It came as a shock, but I need it now, I don’t feel angry when I twist her frame. She is everything I never knew I wanted.

She was holding a cup of tea in one hand, stirring with a spoon. She gave us both a wan smile as if she had just been asleep. I hated when she didn’t recognise us, our bond. I knew she couldn’t but it burnt me. I felt the restraint falling away.

‘Are you the manager?’ he asked her. His tone had completely changed, just from looking at her.

‘Yes, I am, how can I help?’ She was always the polite one with the customers. Me? I’m the moody one. He explained his problem to her. He didn’t try to condescend. She had him under her spell.

‘Well’ she said ‘I could go and see if I can find what you thought you were originally looking for, not Jelly Rabbit, but something like it, yes?’ She was so good.

‘Now that’s a solution’ He said pointedly, looking at me. I wondered if he had one of those noses that had been broken so many times it didn’t matter what you did to it. He had a rugby shirt on after all. Still, it would bleed. I had a compass next to the till; I could give him a piercing maybe. That would be a solution.

‘I’ll just be upstairs for a minute’. Sian beamed at me, then turned and left. Her skirt was slightly transparent, and I knew he had noticed that too. I felt sick with envy, with holding on to my anger.

He turned to me, raised his eyebrows, and exhaled through pursed lips as if he had been exercising. ‘You lucky lucky, boy’ he said. He was smiling. ‘Working with an arse like that. That’s something special, kid.’

I could feel my restraint falling away into blackness as I got closer to a state of pure rage, deep dark and red, I felt it coursing through my veins, sour like battery acid. My muscles were tense, waiting, I didn’t like his bone structure, and I could see the craft of his hands. You can’t hide those bones, and they’re so brittle and ugly and knotted like twigs. I bite my tongue until my mouth fills with hot spit…

‘No wonder you work behind the counter’ he says ‘you must have a hard on twenty-four seven. Christ, how do you get anything done? I might want a refund more oft-

And then I reached out, grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed him into the counter, teeth first. I immediately pulled him back up again, his nose was fine but I could see his mouth was bleeding, I got his head into my hand and forced it against the cold counter, I could smell his sweat. I shouted at him to be quiet, a sort of paradox I suppose. I took his greasy hand in mine, and started working the fingers.

And here I am, here he is. His scalp is wet, and cold with fear, I can hear him panting. He’s mumbling something but I don’t know what. His eyes are wide, and they’re looking right into mine, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’m scared. I look around the shop and see Sian’s mug of tea, the one she left behind.

And I realise that this, now, this is about Sian. My anger, my jealousy, it comes from our relationship that only half exists. It suffocates me that I can’t live a life where the things I love acknowledge me. Where the only times I’m happy have to be secrets, have to exist in parenthesis. It’s this life that means my only option is the suppressing of my feelings, until in my furnace they become bitter, and violent.

Still, I break his little finger for his policy on refunds, and his macho sexism, and kick him out the door. He staggers away in a hunched run, and doesn’t look back.

I go to the door and flip the sign. It’s meant to be a joke, it says ‘rejoice, we’re closed’.

-

Sian, we never talk, but if you’re listening, run. This needs to stop between us before I can no longer feel anything that isn’t a desire to cause pain to others for the things I lack. For your safety and everyone’s Sian, I’m flipping the sign. I’m declaring these brackets closed.)