Michael’s Hand
We are talking about the night that Michael set his hand on fire when he comes over to say ‘Hello’. Sitting at our old-favourite table in the very far corner of the bar against the windows. We are even in our old arrangement – Jenna with a view of the room, Emmie on the edge to let her smoke drift out and me facing them. Three girls at a square table, a bottle of red wine in the middle.
‘When I hear Cyndi Lauper,’ says Jenna leaning across the table, ‘I can’t not …’
She reaches out and touches Emmie’s arm, ‘Do you remember?’ She holds her hands up on either side of her head, open palmed, thumbs tucked beneath her chin and sings ‘Shining through …’ She draws out the first syllable, rolling it round in her mouth. I remember. The balls of my socked feet pirouetting on the smooth blue kitchen tiles, the kitchen table heaped with plastic cases and spilled silver discs. Waiting for the next track, slumped exhausted, pink-cheeked, in the kitchen chairs. Emmie shuffled through the CDs like cards. The neighbours banged on the walls. The spilled pool of light on the patio step and beyond that the dark, wet garden.
It rained through Saturday afternoon and all Sunday morning.
‘We watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ I say.
‘Weren’t you in a depression over some guy Amy?’ says Emmie. ‘I seem to remember you being in your pyjamas all weekend!’
‘Weren’t you?’ I tease back.
We had curled up around the lounge, wrapped in duvets. Passed the popcorn bowl silently from one to another. Jenna with her legs curled under her
on the sofa stroking a cushion on her lap. Me on the floor, back against the lukewarm radiator. Emmie lying on the mat, propped up on her elbows.
Jenna passes me the bottle and I fill my glass and then Emmie’s.
In the evening we opened the curtains and the clouds had lifted and left a perfectly washed evening out to dry. We stood in the kitchen warming our hands on mugs of tea. The air was as clean as a fresh sheet inviting us to bed. My dropped pyjama bottoms at the wardrobe doors, high-heeled shoes, the cold thin ends of earrings through my lobes. I’d put a marker in the day and smiled to myself, ‘Remember this. When you are old and grey and full of sleep and nodding by the fire. Remember this.’
Our meal arrives and the waitress gives the Cajun chicken to me and the rare steak to Jenna. We wait until she’s gone and then hand the correct plates to one another. Jenna is wearing a beautiful blue skirt that she keeps folding and unfolding under the table. She has a chain of beads round her neck, looped twice and glass earrings that catch the light. She looks so much older than I remember. Has it really only been a year? And Emmie’s dark hair has been cut around her face; it hangs along the jaw in a nice straight line. She could be presenting the news in her sleek black trousers and the jacket. Buttoned all night, even though it’s warm in here.
We had had the one bottle of wine that night. And then Michael dragged over a chair and his friend Richard, set their two pint glasses on our table. We ordered a second. And later a third. On the way home Jenna and Emmie sang in French. I walked in time, my heels clicking. Michael and Richard hung back, swinging their hands against their thighs. Coats were shrugged off onto the hall floor, scarves draped across the backs of chairs, the heating turned up high. Condensation bloomed on the windows. We set tea lights on the lounge table and Jenna lit them one by one. I remember the sticky ice crust on the vodka bottle as I dug it from the freezer, the wet ring it made on the tablecloth, passing the shot glass round and round the table. Now your turn, now mine.
Emmie is leaning across the table, a lit cigarette in one hand. She asks ‘Do you remember it happening?’ And as if on cue, Michael says from behind me, ‘Hello girls.’ He sets his pint glass down on the table. Jenna crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. I wonder if he is in here every night.
Richard had found the bottle of absinthe on a shelf in the kitchen and he knew what to do. He filled a glass and then dripped the liquor, Fairy Liquid green, onto a spoonful of sugar. Held it over the candle till it bubbled and then tipped it into the glass. The hush observers waited for the flame to catch. He put it out with his broad wide palm. We discovered later that you were supposed to use water. I remember the green trails creeping across the tablecloth like litmus paper. Tongues of flame dashed across the table and dripped down onto the carpet. We rocked with laughter until someone stamped it out.
Michael’s hand is the only thing that bears a scar – a bracelet of discoloured skin around his wrist. You wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know.
The sharp smell of burning hair. He blew on it gently at first and then leapt out of his chair, waving it around. We all laughed. And then wrapped it in a tea towel filled with ice. He didn’t say a thing. We went on to dancing in the kitchen, the Cyndi Lauper dance, the non-sound of a tea-towelled hand clapping.
Some time later Jenna bumped into him at Rogerio’s leaning over a pint of beer, smoking at the bar. He said he hadn’t been out since, because of his hand. He asked Jenna to join him for a drink but she said she had something to do. She felt sorry leaving him sitting there like that on his first night out.
She is picking at her chicken breast, pushing bits of feta and apricots through the couscous; leaving trails. No wonder she’s got so thin. Emmie turns a cigarette between two fingers. Her plate is pushed off to one side. She’s the only one of us that still smokes. It’s rollies now though. She likes the mechanics of creating them, pinching tobacco into the paper and smoothing it out. The delay is
delicious, partially exonerating. She doesn’t like to get anything she doesn’t deserve.
He says, ‘I didn’t go out for months you know,’ and throws his head back and laughs. There is the hand that was on fire, holding a cigarette. We all do a fake laugh too. There is not much else to say.
‘It seems like just yesterday,’ I say.
I remember opening the windows in the morning to let out the smell of cigarettes. There was an ashtray nestled in the bookshelf and footprints tracked across the carpet. A half-empty glass left on top of the toilet and toothpaste smeared on the mirror. In the kitchen the fridge door was open, and the margarine out on the counter without its lid. A knife had fallen onto the floor and left a long blonde smear of butter down the side of the cabinet.
‘Were we drinking rum?’ asks Jenna.
‘No,’ says Emmie, ‘it was tequila.’
‘But why would we light tequila?’
‘It must have been rum.’
‘Wasn’t it absinthe?’ I ask.
Michael turns to me, vaguely surprised, and says: ‘Were you there, Amy?’
