Marlo by Jay Carmichael

Author:Jay Carmichael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC027190, FIC014000, FIC011000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

A few days later, I rang Morgan’s place. It rang out the first time. I tried again a bit later. A deep, masculine voice answered: ‘Forster’s.’ His father. I slammed the phone down. I stared at it, as if it were that nocturnal demon mære, waiting to climb on me. Then it rang. Electric into my belly. I picked it up. Morgan said, ‘I thought it’d be you.’

I asked if he would like to meet me for a coffee in the city. ‘Same café, just during the day.’

I decided to walk into the city rather than take a tram or train. A crisp morning, a mid-spring morning. You could feel the sting the sun would deliver later that afternoon, teasing your pale skin. I began going back through the events that had led Morgan and me to this point. I wanted to be sure of things, from my perspective, so I could say to him what I needed to say; I needed him to believe in the truth of the things I was saying.

Whenever we met in daylight, Morgan preferred to walk to wherever we were going. And I didn’t mind that: his physicality pushing through space, bumping into me. The officer, believing in his duty, had been so forthright in wanting to see Morgan’s identification that day at the zoo; thus, he was presented papers in a back alley, like some underhanded deal. Unlike the mother we’d passed who’d brought her child in close as if one or both of us were monsters. I’d said nothing to Morgan about her; I’d shoved my hand in the bag of feed like I were the animal it was intended to fill. The suspicious eyed two men walking side-by-side, close enough to brush hands — we both noticed such people. I’d known him to take the night train, the barely peopled train. The quiet train. He was always so quiet. Except in his letters, where his voice soared.

When he’d told me he worked in real-estate maintenance, I had pictured him in vacant houses, his hands recalibrating the interior workings of some or another faulty appliance. He’d been so gentle as he’d taken my hand away from wiping the mud off his lapel — his shoulders dropped, he exhaled, and I could smell on his breath the sweet port I’d watched him drink. I knew he’d expected something else.

By night, the café in the city overflowed with bodies and costumes and light and music. By day, it was unrecognisable. The mauve-painted seating had been replaced with cast-iron garden sets, painted white — two chairs to one small table. At the centre of each was a small crystal vase with some stems and buds. No carpet runner, only the worn-down parquet floor. No standard lamps. Curtains, now opened, allowed warm morning sun to flood the room. Large grey-stone pots, up to my waist, dotted the space and grew Monstera deliciosa, Aspidistra, Philodendron.

A beanstalk boy, unlikely to be eighteen, seated us. A velvet tuxedo wore him, in that it was so large that he almost disappeared within it.

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