Chameleons

chameleons

1:
the day bursts softly like a bubble above my head and i open my eyes. i
am seven storeys up and sleep-drunk, high under the covers. an
aeroplane crawls across my window. i move nothing except my eyes.

the room is full of chameleons. you can't see them, of course, and
they're not pets. they live here like the mice and the dust-mites and
me; little invisible dragons under the bed and on the picture-rail,
eyes swivelling everywhere in cool reptilian apathy. they see
everything i do and do not do and they have absolutely nothing to say
about any of it.
they're very discreet like that.

like them, the day is colourless. nothing but transparent sky outside
the window and snow the colour of white noise. what's out there is of
no concern to any of us. today is a day for living amongst our dead
skin. it is sloughed around and against the legs of tables and chairs
and it slouches in the bed. it covers every available surface in a
barely visible sheen of passing time. it coats Maria while she is still
trapped and sleeping in my arms. she isn't part of the day yet. her
eyes, when they are open and clear of sleepdust, will be brown as
sugar. her creamy hair is spilt and it oozes over her shoulders. she is
sticky as fly-paper. i can't let go of her. if you look around the room
you will find photos of us looking equally stuck.

i clean my teeth. i sense the chameleons move as bubbles burst softly
in my mouth. the South Downs water is chalky and brisk and feels like a
walk along the cliffs. i could jump in the car and drive there now. i
could slip my soft bonds. i could pretend to be homesick for somewhere
or lovesick for someone else. seagulls would tail me and the deep snow
would bite at the soles of my boots and the east wind would blow epic
postcard epigrams into my ears like parting put-downs or famous last
words, so i could leave the world with airy levity, maybe dress like a
choirboy, sing or shout or sick up something sweet and flimsy in my
defence, insist on a urinal for my headstone, swim like a jellyfish,
sting like the sea, drown like a spider in the sink.

Maria sleeps with a tooth under her pillow. it fell out when she was
five and the fairies have never taken it. she doesn't expect to wake up
and find it gone anymore. maybe that's why she keeps leaving it.

under my pillow i keep a mouldy book with a crocodile-skin cover.
inside is scattered an entire firmament of musical notes, held in
constellations by bars and clefs and with each line footnoted by a
muttering of Latin. in the margins are expletives and dirty drawings i
made when i was twelve. i used to sing from this book. i hailed Mary so
much she got sick of it and slept with me to shut me up.

2:
there's a girl who sits smoking in the pews. she comes to every
rehearsal and lights up, despite the signs. she holds her smoking arm
like the Queen waving or the way the little doll of Jesus does in the
icons, with two fingers up in blessing. when she tips her ash onto the
tiles she makes it look like a benediction.

the chameleons cluster around her. their gargoyle toes grip the back of
her bench and once perches on her shoulder. they are not in the least
interested in my performance. they just have to be here.

i'm one of many mouths identically dressed and tended. i'm a tenor now.
those soft bubbles between my legs have dropped like conkers and there
are fillings in my teeth. just a few months ago life was a beach:
yellow sands and ribbony spray, summer bubbles and starfish. chameleons
sunned themselves to stone on the rocks. they were like bodyguards and
i hardly noticed them stare. but there's been a sea-change. the sky and
the coral and the rock-pools and chameleons have lost colour, like
they're pale with mistletoe poisoning.

there are caves under the cliffs, big mouths of seaweed and glittering
salt. the acoustics are better than in church. i sing church songs
here, but i change the words to filthy ones and i sing much
louder.

i've stolen a car and we're taking a bumpy ride together to the cliffs,
just Maria and the chameleons and me, up where it's really remote and
the snow hasn't been touched. the heater is blurring and the sea sounds
like it's coming in through the grille. we get naked and wriggly on the
icy leather seats. i tell her we'll drive up to London and live there
one day and she says i could maybe get a job in a choir there and
wouldn't it be wonderful if she could come and hear me sing in
Westminster Abbey or St Paul's one day and i say yes. i say she could
pretend every Ave Maria was for her: Ave Maria, dei plena gratia.

she tastes of smoke and skin-cream.

3:
i filch in the fridge and drink the last of our milk. it clashes with
the taste of toothpaste and leaves a cold, oyster-slick coating in my
throat. Maria says i look like a boy when i drink milk. she says i only
drink it as a comfort. she doesn't seem to realise she looks like a
little girl when she's in the bath, a little pearl, and that the soapy
bubbles are just as much of a comfort. she's always scrubbing herself
of dead skin and getting younger. i tell her i prefer to concentrate on
my bones.

among all the tiny rituals and habits that have attached themselves to
us like limpets over the years, i have only one that i keep invisible
from Maria. most mornings i have pupils whom i have to scrape through
scales and other singing exercises, but on the days that i don't, i get
up early and steal the tooth from under her pillow. i drive away,
leaving behind a dry and dusty flat and a transparent city, and i head
to the sea. the church has been pulled down now but the caves are still
under the cliffs. i spend the time singing my old dirty church songs
and pissing in the rock-pools like i did when i was twelve. as always,
the chameleons watch. they wait for me to do something wicked and
sometimes i'm tempted. i never do because i've brought something with
me that i have to return.

Maria doesn't expect to wake up and find her little tooth gone. and so
far she hasn't. on the morning that she does, i don't know what she'll
do.