(no subject)
The interior of the shop was dark and the smell of dirt was everywhere. Clothes covered the walls - punk stuff, goth stuff, fetish clothing. It was typical Camden fare. My friend Zach and I looked out of place with our T-shirts and jeans. We were on something we called the Camden cocktail: skunk, poppers, shrooms. The poppers were wearing off but the shrooms hadn’t hit yet, although I was finding the chains on the walls unusually absorbing.
The owner of the shop appeared: he had a midlife crisis moustache and eyes that were almost lost in his fleshy face. His demeanour seemed falsely cheery in the dank cellar filled with unmatched clothes. I thought that if the clothes could come alive, they’d all ignore each other - I giggled at the image, then realised I was stoned.
“Looking for something in particular?”
He had an accent I won’t try to reproduce. Polish, maybe. I looked at Zach, who looked pretty out of it. This guy was probably used to kids like us. All he had to do was to keep up the show of normality and he could sell us shiny badges for exorbitant prices. I knew we had to keep up the show of normality also, so I communicated back to him across a sea of quivering detail.
“Just … looking.”
“Anoushka! Elena! Please show these gentlemen upstairs.”
Christ, he wasn’t having any of it. Exhibits 1 & 2 appeared, dressed in the same leather outfits. Attractive, probably, but with faces so heavily pierced that I couldn’t tell if they were twins. Was this a whorehouse? I had no money left. What happened in whorehouses if you had no credit? Did you work off your debt? Zach had money. Was there a way I could let him know of the trap we were walking into?
“This way, guys.”
They manoeuvred us up the stairs that led to the back of the shop. I’d heard about this sort of thing happening in Amsterdam, prostitutes leading stoners astray. I remembered the story of my friend Matt, who’d come out after just one minute with a prostitute, saying in dark tones that he’d been raped. They had a trick to make men come early that involved their index finger. This was not what I needed in my fragile mental state.
We ended up in a bare-floored room with stacks of clothing all around. There was an attic window with white light streaming through.
“Why are you …”
“So nervous?”
They would talk at the same time, giving their voices a dream-like cadence. Their voices were so flat that I thought they must be addicts. Their eyes were vacant in the white light that streamed through the windows. Zach leaned so far over a stack of jeans that he fell onto them face downwards, like he was trying to inhale them. One of them took down my trousers.
“It’s nothing …”
“We haven’t seen before.”
I considered screaming, but instead hopped pathetically over to the wall to steady myself. Their hands were everywhere, pushing new trousers at me, stroking my hair. I looked at the one who was taller. Her expression was something between amusement and derision, yet there was gentleness there too.
“Your clothing …”
“Rubbish.”
“We’ll make you …”
“Gorgeous.”
The rhythms in their voices were like distant drums: alien, enticing. The taller one - I decided she was Elena - seemed to be challenging me to come into her world. It was a world of powerful symbols, promises written across skin, where the most important things in the world to us - like death - were laughed at.
The other one was kneeling and putting my feet into the legs of the trousers. I felt very vulnerable and yet somehow full of this sense of newness. From afar, it occurred to me that I might have an erection. I smelt something on Elena that gave me images of late nights drinking absinthe with her feet across some stranger’s knees.
"What's your name?"
"Her name's -"
"Anoushka."
The trousers they had fitted on me were huge and black. Zach had emerged from the denim depths and was now laughing at me, or just laughing in general. I decided it was time to go.
"We have no money."
"No money? You have -"
"No money?"
They stood aside to let us leave. We lurched off as they began to clear up the trousers on the floor. Downstairs, the owner was sniffing around some acid-laced school girls.
"Hey man, you know Anoushka?"
"Yeah."
"Is she related to Elena?"
"No - mostly she works some other place."
I bought a chain out of pocket change. He gave me her work address. As I left the shop, the sounds of the street suddenly hit me. Zach was already standing in the sunlight. As I looked about, the after-image of the dark interior floated in front of everything, like a filter against the world.
The next day was a Sunday. I spent it thinking about Anoushka. I couldn’t absolutely reject the possibility of being in love with her. Zach was cool about it, as always, letting me talk about her while we watched wreathes of weed smoke tear themselves apart in the half-dark of his shed. Where did she work? In a strip-bar, a records store, or an exclusive club?
On Monday at lunchtime I decided to go alone to the place. I dressed myself in my best clothes and caught the bus. I wondered what it would be like to kiss her and remembered the weed smoke in the half-darkness.
I found myself in front of a flower shop. It had a green sign and a covering over a few rows of stalls, each offering a few drowned-looking shoots. This must have been the moustache man's idea of a joke. I walked inside, and checked my steps. There she was with an apron on, her piercings removed or covered with blue tape. She didn’t look surprised to see me.
“You’re not here for flowers, are you?”
I shook my head. She walked around to the curtain at the back of the shop. She looked over her shoulder. I followed her through a storeroom and out into a bit of waste-ground behind the shop. There was a big tip full of an evil-smelling chemical that she started throwing armfuls of dead flowers into. I noticed that she looked much older out in the sun. She spoke again in her flat voice, now without rhythm to it, as empty as a winter sky.
“Do you want to fuck? I’ve got a quarter hour off at one.”
The flowers landed on the surface of the smooth brown liquid. Their petals were dried, the colours drained. Slowly they sank, darkening under the surface, then disappeared forever.