Page 26 of Exquisite Things

about this serial murderer on the loose. I know that feeling. The suspicion that danger is one wrong turn away. “My mum said

he’s only killing prossies.”

“Must make her feel better, thinking it’s just prostitutes.”

Pink Sequins rolls her eyes. “Nothing to be terrified of if it’s them and not us.”

Lily turns to the left at the next intersection. The girls turn right. It’s just us on a quiet street. Lily looks at me with

steel in her eyes. “At least the press gives a fuck about those Yorkshire girls. When we disappear, nobody pays it no mind.”

“We?”

“Queers. Queens. Freaks. Fag folk. Trans folk. Black folk. Brown folk. Shall I go on?” She offers me a bittersweet smile.

“Us.”

“Us.” I’ve felt so alone for so long. So far from Oliver. Loveless. “At least there is an us , though.” The last time Oliver left me a classified message was a month ago. He addressed me as T. S. Eliot. Identified himself

as Vivaldi. The message simply said that the weather was warm in Buenos Aires. That told me he’s in Argentina. That’s all

he’s granted me since we parted in Boston almost six decades ago. His location. Nothing more.

She stops when she reaches a run-down building on Floral Street.

Two punks drink from the same container on the stoop of the building.

One of them has a shaved head. Wears nothing but a leather vest. Even in this freezing cold.

The other has an orange Mohawk. He’s wrapped in a ragged blanket.

I think I see bedbugs crawling on the wool.

“Good morning, boys. Nice to see you’re sticking to a healthful diet. ”

“And you?” Shaved Head glances my way. “Looks like you’ll be eating chicken for breakfast.”

“Bite your booze-soaked tongue, baldie. I’m helping the kid out, and you turn it into something dirty. You’re no better than

the Tories who think queers shouldn’t be allowed to teach children in schools.”

“Oi, I’m no Tory.” Shaved Head takes an insolent slug from his bottle.

“So you say.” Lily unlocks the front door. Gazes down at him. “Bet you would’ve been burning records at Disco Demolition Night.”

“DISCO SUCKS!” That’s the last thing I hear out of the punk’s mouth.

Lily looks down at the punks with real empathy. “So does booze. Look what it’s done to you two.” I can’t help but agree with

her. I’ve lived long enough to know I never want to experience another hangover.

Lily slams the door shut behind us. There’s no lift.

She makes her way up the stairs. I follow.

“I would’ve introduced you if they were worth knowing.

Pissed punks. At least Thatcher and her buddies look the part.

But the punks. They think they’re so cool.

Deep down, they’re just conservatives in secondhand clothes.

They think their rage is more valid than ours, their art more meaningful.

Disco is manufactured to them just like my tits are.

” She unlocks the door. “It’s a mess, kid. You’ve been warned.”

“Wow.” I almost shed a tear when I first lay eyes on her flat.

“Come on, it’s not that bad.” She closes the door behind me.

“It’s... fabulous.” I turn my gaze from one end of the flat to another. Living room. Dining nook. Kitchen. All connected

by open arches. Fabric everywhere . Patterns of embroidered satins thrown onto a fuzzy brown couch. Monochrome polyesters on a hard wooden chair. Plaids. Wools.

Explosions of color. Crushes of velvet. Bunches of chiffon. Like pastel clouds. A sewing machine on the dining table. The

scent of home-cooked food. A small television with a machine I don’t recognize under it. A record player. Crates and crates

of vinyl.

“Wow, you have so much music. This must have cost a fortune.” I look at her curiously. “Are you rich?”

“Never ask a lady how old she is or how much money she has.” She laughs. “I’m thirty-three and just getting by. None of the

records belong to me. I make clothes for all my DJ friends, and store their records for them as payment.”

“I’d like to be the kind of person who says all my DJ friends as casually as you do.” I gaze at her with reverence. “You’re fabulous.”

Next to the record player is what can only be described as a shrine of sorts to Donna Summer. I approach. Photos. Magazine

covers. Records. All carefully placed next to each other. Three candles underneath them. Dried wax dripping down their edges

like withered tears.

“We all have our saints.” She kisses her knuckles. Places her hand gently on Donna’s face. “I was raised with God and now

I worship a goddess.”

“I love her too.”

“So you don’t think...” She imitates the punk now. Raises a fist up. “...disco sucks?”

I snort. “No, of course not.”

I know why she’s sore about this. Disco is her music. Black. Queer. A reflection of her world. Over fifty thousand twats blew

up disco records just a few months ago in Chicago. Disco Demolition Night. It was during a baseball game. America’s pastime

is burning us down. London’s no different. Perhaps nowhere is. The powerful always want to destroy the powerless when their

dominance is at risk.

“Good, because I’m going to put a record on and get to work while you shower.” She reaches into a hallway closet. Hands me

the striped towel she pulls out. “Here.” She eyes my filthy clothes. “Do you have something to wear that doesn’t smell like

a rubbish bin?” I shake my head. “I’ve got some for you. I tried my hand at menswear a few years ago and the results were

terrible, but they should fit.”

“Thanks.”

“Go wash up. You smell like a sewer and I’ve got deadlines.”

She picks out Donna Summer’s Once Upon a Time... record. Donna looks like a goddess on the cover. Hair like ocean waves. Lips parted suggestively. Eyes soft. Skin dewy. Lily

holds the record up next to her face. “Do I look like her?”

“You do. A little.”

“Why? Because my skin is black and my hair is big?”

I feel my heart sink. I’ve upset her. “I— No— Just—”

She cackles. “Relax, kid. I’m teasing.”

She puts the needle on the record. Approaches the sewing machine.

I enter the bathroom. Close the door behind me.

The opening strings of the title song lead to her crystalline voice.

Once upon a time there was a girl, who lived in a land of dreams unreal.

I imagine Lily is that girl Donna is singing about.

It pleases me to think of her story being told by her goddess. I turn

the shower on. Family in name alone, no place left to hide. I think perhaps the song is about me now. Family in name alone. Exhausted by hiding. Escaping. Creating new identities.

The shower feels heavenly. The warm jets relax me. Lily has a seemingly endless collection of bath products. Lemon shampoo.

Lavender soap. Some kind of shampoo with nine herbs in it. Rainwater-soft rinse. Antiaging this and that. Even baby shampoo.

That’s what I choose. Shampoo for a baby. I feel like a kid again. Like someone else is taking care of me.

The song changes as I linger in the shower. The next song is far more dramatic than the first. It’s about the city closing

in on Donna. Help me. I want to get out. I think to myself that I never want to leave this place. I wonder what Oliver thinks of disco music.

Do they play it in Buenos Aires?

Does it remind him a little of his beloved classical music with its instrumental breaks and recurring motifs?

Does he go out dancing?

Does he have a dance partner?

My mind has worked this way for fifty-nine years now.

Always wondering after Oliver. What was he doing when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated?

When Kennedy was shot? When Marilyn took her final breath?

When Judy died? During the Stonewall uprising?

What does he make of jet engines and the atomic bomb?

Of birth control pills, Barbie dolls, heart transplants?

When I first heard that a successful heart transplant was performed...

I dreamed that they could take my heart and transplant it into his body.

Make us one forever.

Did he have the same thought?

Does he think of me like I think of him?

Has he loved another?

Does he feel like I do? Desperate to love. To be cared for. To find his place in the world. To belong. To be of his time.

Not out of time.

I make the water as hot as it can possibly get without burning me. Let the heat bring me back to life in some new form. I

don’t know why I first came back to London. It wasn’t to see any of my old schoolmates. They would all be over a hundred years

old at this point. Either they’re all dead or they’d think they were suffering from dementia if they recognized me. Perhaps

it’s the haunting memories that brought me back. Some need to track my past. To reconsider it. See it in some new light. I

needed to see the streets where James and I walked. The hotel where my father burned me into youthful immortality.

A knock on the bathroom door. “You all right in there?”

I turn the water off and yell out. “Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to use so much water!” I wrap myself in a towel and open the

door a crack.

“There are clothes for you outside the door. Breakfast is ready. And please moisturize your skin. You’re cracked all over.

You’ll look my age soon if you don’t take care of yourself, kid.”

I dry my body. Rub myself silly with lotion that claims to have egg yolk in it.

Grab the clothes she left out for me. A pair of boxer shorts.

Baggy cotton pants with two strings near the waist. A white T-shirt.

A light denim blazer with bright graffiti on the back. The National Front Is an Affront .

“Hi.” I find her at the sewing machine. Doing something that looks like magic to me.

Lavender fabric glides through her fingers like a gleaming river. She doesn’t look up at me as she speaks. Too focused on

her work. “Eat your breakfast. Porridge and banana fritters. Rich in fiber and potassium. It’ll give you energy for the day

ahead.” She laughs to herself. “You sound just like your mother, Lily.”