Gumdrop Coat
Tracing a separate path between streams and puddles on the undulating concrete she passes in front of me, head down, water bouncing off the shiny gumdrop-green raincoat she wears. It suits her: It suits her scent: not the scent of perfume, or of shampoo, or washing powder, or even a body scent, but something more intangible and unexpected, like icing sugar or sherbet. Airy, aura-like, this scent was so distinctive that it would linger after she had left, like paper leaves fallen from a breeze-blown tree. If she fell, I might catch her, rather than poring over the lines on fallen paper leaves, but, inexplicably too tense, I never touched her, fearing always her delicacy, as if she were made of dust and dreams suspended on a wire skeleton.
Too far away to call out now and in too much of a hurry to catch up, I watched her stride away, her feet kicking up water onto the cuffs of her jeans. The rest of her would have been soaked by now too, were it not for that gumdrop-green raincoat, draped over her, keeping her dry if not warm, and suiting that reserved way she shrugged off encroachments on her physicality. I felt jealous: my umbrella only covered my head, and then barely.
.
When she hugged me at that party I was surprised by her solidity, her realness, and I realised that of the handful of times we had embraced before, I had always been the one to initiate it, never her. For a heartbeat I let myself go, physicality forgotten, bodies mingled. Then the separation and the lingering sense of privilege.
.
The evening’s sky had been metallic purple and seemed to stretch into forever. Now clouded, impenetrable sheets of rain fell from it, muddying the dirt in the gutters and choking the drains with sodden leaves. In the wineglass she placed on the table a fractional pool of aqueous liquid remained, sparkling lightly. I offered to walk her home. Already in her gumdrop-green raincoat she consented and allowed me to hold the door. Once outside, I saw how the distorted refractions of street-lights and passing cars danced across the shiny plastic of her coat, but nothing of her skin or the heart that beat inside her. Even her face, determinedly facing the rain, was hidden by her hood, removing her so far from me and making my actions tense and self-conscious. I could not remember the last time I felt like this, especially with such intensity that I almost could not bear it.
Gingerly my feet pushed through piles of rain-soaked pavement leaves, while my hands moved in and out of my pockets. I felt they might at any moment reach out to prove her corporeality, and held them back only through the fear that she might collapse into dust, else might shy away from this breach of our friendship; this attack on her gumdrop green barrier. And then her hand rose up at the edge of my vision. I turned at the movement to see her tuck back a stray strand of hair that had fallen free of her hood. In the half-light her eyes flickered electric blue. From somewhere there came a bang, or a crack, as something was dropped, or slammed, or hit, or fired. The noise made us jump and my arm moved up without thought. Then my fingers closed on her elbow, water running across them as the shiny plastic crumpled slightly. She turned to face me. Eyes locked she laughed a little. On her fast-breathing breath came the faint scent of wine, reminding me of the Chardonnay she drank in the theatre-bar and the way I had longed to taste it second-hand, mixed in with her saliva and the taste of her skin.
I placed my other hand a little below her right shoulder, my heart beating like a frightened bird against a cage, and hers doing the same only inches away through the green plastic of her coat and her flesh and her ribs. She might have pulled away by now, standing there all surprised and expectant, colouring up a little in the cold, looking so lovely that the bird could no longer be held back: So it escaped, and brought together our lips with awkward force, so that our tongues writhed against each other, fighting their mouth-bound anchorages looking for a oneness, a boundarilessness, while my hands sought the same along the smooth curve of her back, before coming to the warm contours of her cheeks and her neck, and knocking back the gumdrop-green hood. Now, with the rain beating against her exposed crown, her hair curled up into the long loose waves of an Emily Bronte heroine. It was an image that stayed with me as I pulled away and blinked the water from my eyelashes, and might even have stilled my still-beating heart, had she not pulled up her hood and turned away from me, slipping easily as she did so her hand into my outstretched fingers. Then, with a little half-nervous acknowledgement of what had passed between us in the grip of her fingers, and the quick smile of her red lipsticked-lips, our walk through the puddles and leaves of the undulating, rain-drenched tarmac resumed.
Tags: fantasy, Fiction, imagery, original fiction, physicality, Rain, Relationships, sweets
