The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker Page A

stealthy, gentle kiss, the taste of his cigarettes and his cold lips. He is waiting for my permission, my invitation. It is up to me. And in my dream I see myself as if I am two people. And one is pressed, sweating, terrified, against the damp slab of heat and the other, supple, erotic, a boy sure of his power to entice and to possess, reaches out a hand towards this strange and powerful man whose gaze never ebbs, whose attention, predatory and passionate, is all my own. It is my desire that you should come to me, come to me. You who are all to me, call to me. I reach out for you, for your arms, for your cold kisses and your cold, cold, golden love. Give me your cold love and free me from the kingdom of this world, from this endless thriving green. I see myself, erect and untouched, pushing towards him through the ensnaring green. Roehm does not move, but he smiles, eerie, suggestive, ambiguous, triumphant. And then I know that I love this man, that he has come back for me, that he has never forgotten me. It is my desire that you should come for me. And I am unafraid.
    I woke in the half-light sweating and trembling, the damp flood of semen drenching the sheet. I sat up feeling sick, and swallowed the stale water left on my desk. As the dream receded I felt dizzy, filthy and ashamed. Roehm had simply kissed me goodnight, yet that was enough to unleash a sombre gust of queer fantasies. I heard the school thugs hissing ‘faggot’ and shivered. Her bedroom light was still on as I crept down the corridor to the bathroom. I looked at my watch. Not yet 5 a.m. I pushed her door open, just a little.
    She had her mattress on the floor with a giant Indian bedspread suspended from the ceiling above, like a rajah’s tent. Her nightlight was an illuminated plastic banana, now elderly and peeling, but still operational. She was asleep, her fingers clenched around the book. She had been reading The Talented Mr Ripley . The cover illustration was of a handsome young man in an Italian straw hat. I looked down at her sleeping face. Her hair was damp with sweat about her ears, her nightshirt tight across her breasts. I turned off the light. She stirred slightly and the room gradually shifted from black to grey and finally to orange as the streetlights leered through her open curtains. I waited until the darkness had cleared from my eyes, then abandoned her to her own unconscious terrors. I shuffled up the last flight of stairs. My bed smelt of unconsummated sex. The smell was disgusting. I ripped off the sheets and flung them into the corner. Then I pulled my sleeping bag out of the suitcase stowed under the bed and climbed into a blue nylon cocoon. After that I didn’t dream again, but slept on, exhausted and inert, until midday.
    She had left me a note on the kitchen table.
     
Gone shopping. Don’t forget that we’re invited to Luce’s tonight. Hope you had a good time with Roehm.
     
    I thought about the eyes of the animals in Roehm’s lab and decided not to tell her that I’d been there. There was a Greenpeace protest poster on the back of the kitchen door, which denounced experiments on laboratory animals. I had ceased to notice the tragic rabbit with electrodes riveted to his skull. He had become part of our daily furniture. I now dismissed the creature and her ethics of pity. I would neither betray nor condemn whatever happened in the experimental tanks and the hot green underworld I had unwittingly entered. What Roehm did with his rabbits was his own business.
    But she never asked where we had been, what we had done. I prepared a cautious story about the restaurant and Chinatown, but was never required to stand centre stage and deliver the script. She brushed me off with a handful of clichés.
    ‘You had a good time?’
    ‘Oh, I’m pleased about that.’
    ‘The food’s always excellent at L’Escargot.’
    ‘He’s a nice man, isn’t he?’
    Nice was the very last word any sane person would use to describe Roehm. Nice