Chapter Eleven
It was something of a revelation, our kiss. It was a moment of desperation in some ways, two people reaching out for something they didn’t understand, trying to make sense out of our situation. We had been thrown together day in and day out, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that it happened.
I wasn’t sure what I felt about Lisa, she wasn’t Angelica, that was where my knowledge of her ended. I knew she was capable, a little scary sometimes, she disregarded everyone’s feelings. I also knew there was something about her I should have been attracted to. In years gone by I would’ve been bragging about kissing Lisa, she was very possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever kissed. Now, I felt that I could never talk about it, I wanted to forget it.
This wasn’t the first time we had been intimate. It was only that her response shocked me this time, that she replied my kiss and didn’t push me away. Let me explain, we were in Norway. The first time we were close I suppose it was under similar circumstances, we were both overcome with fear and frustration. We were lost in the ever growing facts and puzzle pieces, feeling like we would never know the truth.
My heart was still thudding and the stiflingly hot room was making it hard to breathe. The sweat was drying with my steady gulps of air as I fell into an armchair. I was back in the hotel room, I looked about me, familiarising myself with everything in the room, scared it would dissolve.
As I began to relax the scenes of the night played over, slightly warped, darkened by my lapses in memory. I couldn’t hear Lisa, everything was so utterly still that I imagined I was alone, when I knew she was watching me, I could feel her eyes on me, I felt them creep across my spine, but she didn’t move, she didn’t even blink.
The coastline glittered from the narrow window, the moon casting a dark glow over everything, black shadows coloured silver spread over a landscape so perfect I wanted to sketch, I wanted to write poetry. I was shaken, but it was hard to believe anything could hurt us in this beautiful place. When I had regained my breath the events of the night lapsed into fantasy, I started to rationalise everything.
It was this country, the whole place was covered in pixie dust to me, the place of fairytales. It held nightmares that could be washed away with wishes.
‘What just happened?’ Lisa wasn’t under the same spell as me, she didn’t even consider the view.
‘We’re safe,’ my voice came out slow and lazy.
‘But what happened?’ She pointed to the jacket I had thrown on the bed.
‘Drugs,’ I shrugged, and I really believed it in the warm glow of the night.
Lisa seemed to think I was in a trance, she stormed over to me and placed her hands on the sofa edge, she leaned in close and spoke to me like I was a child.
‘You don’t believe that,’ she said.
I turned away from her.
‘Look at me,’ she growled. ‘There’s something else going on,’ she continued when I still looked past her to the window. ‘You know it.’
My stomach was starting to churn with worry, I wanted her to disappear, to evaporate in a puff of smoke. ‘Does it matter?’ I asked finally, ‘it’s not our problem.’
She snorted, ‘its all connected.’
I shook my head, I was exasperated, sometimes Lisa believed things so intently that no one could stand in the way of her delusions. In fact, you soon felt foolish for not agreeing. ‘This place doesn’t have an answers,’ I said quietly, though it hurt, if there was a revelation, if there was something deeper going on, I would want it to be here.
There was another horrible moment of utter stillness. This time it was worse, because she was looking right at me, she was looking in my eyes and pleading with me, but she was carved from stone. ‘I know,’ she said finally.
I had never heard her admit defeat before. So I held her, I took her stone hands and wondered if she was always this cold. I pulled her into my chair and she didn’t resist. We sat for a few moments like that, me gently stroking her hair and her seemingly on the verge of tears.
‘Thank-you,’ she said after a while, ‘you saved me tonight,’ even though we both knew she would’ve been able to save herself.
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