Picture This

Just do what I say.

No, he texted back, feeling like a petulant child and resenting it.

Oblivious to the nature of Felix’s texts, Kiki, her dampness beneath his fingers belying her cool, detached Nordic/Asiatic expression, encouraged by his caresses, now reached over and squeezed his crotch under the table. His cock, on autopilot, hardened and Felix was forced to watch as Susie got up and began winding her way to the restrooms, unable to follow because of his erection.

*

Latisha first became aware that she was being shadowed as she descended the stairs into the subway station on 86th. A skinny white youth in a hoodie and torn jeans had been on the edge of her peripheral vision the whole time she was walking down from the Met, skulking along the walkway either on the other side of the street or at some distance, ducking into doorways when she turned. She told the ghost who’d been accompanying her ever since she walked away from the entrance of the Met and all those rich folk behaving like mannequins for the cameras. Maxine, a golden light that shone brighter in the shadows, flickering into a translucent sliver under the streetlights and gleaming shop displays, seemed to agree. She thought the youth was drawn to Latisha for a purpose and that Latisha should not frighten him off. Besides the kid was a bad sleuth, a total amateur, Latisha noted. Nevertheless, despite Maxine’s presence and the youth’s incompetency, she was thankful for the weight of her steel crutch, knowing it was deadly if swung.

Who was he? Now on the uptown platform she paused at a vending machine selling sodas. Reading the reflection in the glass, she watched him loitering at a distance, pretending not to notice her. She knew him from somewhere: the heavy brows

, the fragile sweep of the jaw, an Italian or Mediterranean set to his features… Now she remembered – a caricature in pencil over a doorbell.

‘Maxine, do I go to him?’ she asked the ghost out loud, startling a fellow passenger reading a few feet away. But as soon as she’d finished her sentence she sensed the ghost had gone.

Feigning indifference, Latisha turned and began walking toward the young man, pulling down her invisible cloak, the one she adopted when she wanted to melt entirely into the background. Poor, blue-collar, disabled and probably on benefits – people, especially white folks, visibly flinched when that walked toward them, and it was a useful weapon when she needed it.

This kid didn’t move on; he stood his ground, planting his feet defensively apart, folding his arms over his chicken-runt chest – so he was following her.

Now that she was closer, she noticed paint stains on the knees of his torn jeans, and that the kid was skinny, real skinny – starving, she’d say. But it wasn’t for food, she surmised, judging by the panicked, brittle air around him and the crook of his shoulders, an instinctive flinching just waiting to be triggered – another thing she recognised. Starving for company and maybe human affection, she concluded. But as she got closer she smelt the fear coming off him in sweet, dank waves. And then there was the shadow falling halfway down the side of his body like a scar that hadn’t happened yet. She’d seen it before; on recruits off to war, on the young men of her ’hood whose deaths in gunfire she would read about two days later, and then on Maxine, weeks before she fell off that bridge. It was the mark of early death tracking this youth like a hungry dog and she couldn’t help but feel pity for him.

I ain’t frightening, she wanted to say, forgetting that it was she who was being followed; such was the jitteriness of the boy. She reached him, and stood before him like Judgement Day itself, and for a moment he looked as if he was about to run. But, to her secret relief, he stayed.

‘You been following me, and you know I ain’t your aunt.’ Her voice was loud in the subway chill.

‘So who are you? And why did you steal my paint?’ Gabriel retorted, hidden fists now tensed. The woman was at least five inches taller and several stone heavier than he, but there was something else that terrified him, the sense that she could see right through him, read his mind as easily as the board announcing that the uptown-bound A train was approaching the platform. And, as the wind preceding the train whistled down the tunnel, he found himself fighting the desire to jump, to stop the fear, the ambiguity, the wanting. As if reading his thoughts, the massive black woman stepped forward and put a hand on his arm.

‘Don’t you dare, Gabriel. We have too much work to do for that shit.’

And they stayed like statues until the train pulled into the station.

*

The train of Susie’s ballgown was so long that it was practically impossible for her to manoeuvre herself down onto the toilet, especially as her coordination was impaired. For some reason, probably because she was so drunk, she’d started to find the whole situation hysterically funny. It didn’t help that she had the impression she often got when intoxicated – that everything appeared to be happening in the past tense and therefore any outrageous act she felt like performing had no consequences because it had already happened. It was a liberating delusion that had driven her to drunkenness more than once.

Laughing to herself, she flipped some of the train of the dress over her head and the rest to one side – managing to catch it in the beak of the stuffed raven perched in her elaborate hairstyle.

‘Jesus fucking Christ! I guess royalty don’t piss, or when they do the servants hold up the gown,’ she said out loud while urinating, her body now flooding with instant relief. It was nice in there, away from the judging masses, her own little mental sanctuary.

‘You’re Susie Thomas, aren’t you?’ The voice, female, young and American, came from under the cubicle door. It was a shock and, before answering, Susie contemplated the idea that perhaps the voice might be internal – some kind of audio hallucination of her own id, or maybe just her bursting bladder berating her. Then she looked out under the door. A pair of sensible working shoes were definitely visible – manifest and concrete and waiting outside the door.

‘Well, if I am, I’m entitled to a little privacy when on the toilet – even in New York,’ Susie retorted, then wiped herself, pulled her dress back down, flushed and emerged from the cubicle.

It was the waitress who’d been staring at her earlier. Feigning casualness, Susie made her way over to the sink. As she washed her hands she studied the tall, russet-haired girl, who stared defiantly back.

‘Let me guess.’ Susie leaned back against the wall to steady herself; the raven headdress was beginning to feel awfully heavy, and she calculated that it would only be a matter of minutes before the room would start spinning. ‘You’re either a disappointed fan, a wannabe artist, or maybe a “friend” of Maxine’s?’ she added hopefully, in case fate had finally thrown her some kind of clue or lead. ‘You look like her type, in that you look a little like me.’

‘Who’s Maxine?’

‘More to the point, who are you?’ Susie countered, losing interest by the second. ‘At least, when you’re not being a waitress?’

‘This is temporary. One day I am going to be as big as you are.’

‘Fabulous. I wish you the best of British luck.’ Susie sat heavily on the gilt-edged stool in front of the mirror and began straightening her headpiece. Considering how drunk she felt, she was pleasantly surprised to see that the styling as well as the centimetre-thick make-up had held up well; the fake blue tattoos, however, were beginning to peel.

‘Felix Baum. You’re with him, aren’t you?’

Oh Christ, another disillusioned crazed ex-girlfriend, Susie now surmised, as she reached for her lipstick. ‘I’m not with him; that’s not how things are in my world. I have a show with him in July.’