Chapter Five: I Hear The Roar Of The Smoke Machine
Warmth. Sleepy half-conscious warmth, that all-suffusing glow that seeps through the body and looses every knotted muscle. Sometimes it comes from a hot bath or an electric blanket. And sometimes it comes from sleeping in somebody's arms, skin against skin, when the bodies fit together just right.
Half-asleep - no, nine-tenths asleep - I felt the changes as Anjali woke: the shift in muscle tone and breathing, the pause as she yawned and stretched. Then she placed her palm on my hip and slid down my body, to wake me the way I liked best, and I curled my fingers in her hair.
Afterwards, as we lay side by side in the afterglow, I felt Anjali chuckle.
"What's so funny, cutie?"
"I was thinking about my first job. I was fourteen years old, working in my auntie's grocery shop. She got
so
cross with me because I never could just do what I was told. I always had to know the reason. She told my mother I was disobedient, but I really wasn't. I just had to ask questions. And now look at me, doing whatever you tell me to."
I stroked her under the chin, kissed her. She tasted of me. "And why is that, my dear?"
"Mmm. Because I trust you. I can switch off and let you make the decisions. Do you know how
nice
it is just being able to let go for a few hours and not having to worry about choices?"
Aspies are creatures of habit, and over a few months we'd settled into a routine. Does that sound dull? It shouldn't. Routine is comforting, sometimes too much so.
Friday or Saturday night I'd take Anjali out to dinner somewhere nice, usually one of the same two or three places that we both liked, and we'd chat about my work and her PhD project. Afterwards we'd head back to my place for an evening of transactional intimacy, and in the morning after breakfast I'd pay Anjali and kiss her goodbye, and we'd go back to our normal lives for another fortnight.
Her life had settled down somewhat. At long last she'd found a flat and moved out of her share place. I didn't ask her about her finances, but I understood she was banking a sensible percentage of the income from our regular liaisons, and no doubt having a nest-egg contributed to her peace of mind.
Meanwhile, she was becoming more comfortable in her studies. I'd been slow to recognise it, but Anjali had been going through the same process I always have in a new job. We're what you might call a long-term investment, tortoises in a world of hares. Throw us into something new and at first we plod along, learning slowly while the neurotypical folk outstrip us. But down the road, as their learning curves begin to taper off, we keep on absorbing more and more.
Anjali was now catching up with the hares. Month by month her confidence grew as she started to believe she might actually know what she was doing. She talked less and less about the frustrations of her studies, and more and more about the rewards. Sometimes at night we'd lie together in the dark as she talked to me about the dynamics of neutron stars, star-quakes ripping through mountains of crushed iron a few millimetres high, and about her ideas for how she might test her theories.
All in all, the two of us had settled into what seemed like a stable orbit, wandering planets who'd captured one another... until another little nudge set something new in motion.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't a goth. Until age fifteen I didn't know there was a name for it, but I've always been fascinated by tombstones, black and silver and blood-red. In my bookshelves there are worlds full of magic and terror; heroines in love with vampires, and heroines who
are
vampires; Dream-lords alliterating with Delirium and Despair; creatures of forbidden sensation, with such sights to show you. My wardrobe is a sea of black with a few islands of colour, mostly business-wear and things other people gave me. And my music collection... well, you get the idea.
Anjali, who preferred her entertainments far more upbeat, found my tastes a little baffling. She did her best to understand, and I tried to explain, but truth is, I don't really know where it comes from. Not from childhood trauma; if anything, I eased off a little when Cassie died, too distracted to keep up with my hobbies.
Perhaps it's a way of facing one's fears; you can't very well be afraid of the monster under the bed if you
are
the monster under the bed. Perhaps the centres of the brain that deal with pleasure and sorrow are not so far apart, and the one can feed into the other? Perhaps it comes from the same place as my tendency to identify with the almost-human, that autistic feeling of being a visitor from some other world?
I have a dozen theories, all of them plausible, none guaranteed true. I don't know, and I've come to peace with not knowing. Somewhere in my early thirties I finally realised that 'I enjoy it and it's not hurting anybody' is all the justification I need for liking something.
But Anjali was insatiably curious, so once again I was doing my best to convey to her the things that I didn't really understand myself. I tried showing her Crimson Peak one night and she stuck it out for a bit, but after forty-five minutes it was getting too much for her; I could see she was uncomfortable, and I switched it off.
"I'm sorry, Sarah, I just don't get it." She paused. "Although, I will say, the costumes are beautiful."
"Hell yes. Del Toro has fantastic visuals. Hey, you know, if you like those..."
As I fired up the laptop and started to search for images, I kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier. Anjali might not care for the music or the blood or the doomed romances, but the wardrobe was something she could appreciate. That evening, side by side on my sofa, we fell down a rabbit hole of High Gothic finery.
I would have been content to glance at each of the outfits, admire it, and move on to the next, but Anjali was no amateur. Whenever we saw something that caught her eye or mine, she'd stay there, staring at the photo until she'd figured out exactly how it was constructed. We spent three or four hours that way, immersed in lace and leather and satin and a lot of black lipstick, and then Anjali asked the obvious question.
"Do you dress up like that?"
"Oh, I used to. Haven't done since I got back from Germany. I was busy with work, and I can't stay up till two a.m. the way I used to, so I sort of drifted out of it. I was sort of thinking about it, though... the Sisters of Mercy are touring in a couple of months, and I'd like to see them. I don't know if they'll be any good, probably not, but I want to be able to say I've seen them."
"Then you should go!"
"I know, just..." I scowled. "I hate going to social things when I don't know anybody who's going to be there. I never really met the Sydney goth crowd. I feel uncomfortable going to stuff like that on my own."
Anjali stroked my hand. "There is an obvious solution to that, Sarah."
"I thought it wasn't your thing?"
"It's not, but I don't hate it either. If you want to make that one of our date nights..." She squeezed.
"You're the best!"
She did get cold feet a couple of weeks later, though not for the reasons you might expect.
"I don't have the right clothes for this."
"Anjali, you'll be fine. Just wear whatever, nobody will care. Look." I pulled up some concert photos. "See, not everybody's going high gothic. Lots of people just wearing jeans and T-shirts." I zoomed in. "That one's in a Bon Jovi shirt. Nobody minds."
"Sarah, look at that photo again. What do you
not
see?"
