He wakes up. He was dreaming of the smell of patchouli.
The day pokes fingers of sunlight between streaks on the grimy window
and into his dry eyes. His head is parched from last night’s intoxication, last
night’s dream. He feels like he’s slept for three weeks. Only he knows that’s
wrong. It’s three weeks since the funeral, but he knows. In that time he’s
hardly slept, except for last night, this morning. This morning’s dream. He was
dreaming of the taste of apple, dipped in cinnamon sugar.
He sits up. He’s in his own bed. Some remaining inkling of
self-preservation had made him leave Alvin’s pad, late in the night and seek
his own, safer place. He pulls protesting limbs to the sink and gulps water. It
oozes over his wizened tongue and down his throat in slow motion, like a stream
of new rain creeping over a parched desert, with the burning ground sucking
moisture from beneath as it tries to run. He was dreaming of the wetness of
fucking, with her wonderful, fair skin sliding beneath his sweating body, his
mind burning with the joy of it.
He remembers yesterday, before the dream, he had climbed to the
top of Sandringham flats because he couldn’t bear it any more. Oblivion
beckoned and he followed and he toked on Alvin’s pipe, and now he understands.
It’s something else, the fulfilling blast of smack, but it’s not real, because
this morning the world is still dry. He feels parched from his skin to his
core, like brittle, bark-less twigs high on a beach, bleached and sand blasted.
Out of the reach of the water.
He was dreaming of Sandy. Now he needs to find her.
