Equal Opportunities Page 19

  Again, nothing.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  Oh, shit.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  Isn’t this going well? I really do have the Midas touch these days – if Midas had turned everything he touched to broken-hearted shitty shit, that is.

  Mary has made her feelings clear – she only wants me for my wheels. Physio is awkward, to say the least, now Eleanor justifiably feels used and more or less refuses to speak to me. And now this joy. Finding I can’t even chat up a female impersonator on the interweb any more.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  And I wish I could say that I honestly didn’t remember that, at least have that to salve my conscience, but I do, of course I remember. It was kind of memorable. But I didn’t think she would actually do it. I didn’t think she was serious. I thought we were just messing about. Just indulging in a bit of sexy talk to get each other off. I didn’t think either of us would be giving it a second thought away from the computer screen.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  And when she says that, I think maybe she is still interested. I think for a moment that I might be able to win her round, to turn a bit of sexy grrr and have her drooling and panting hard enough to be in danger of shorting out her laptop. But I don’t do it. I don’t even try.

  And I don’t try because cyberkicks with nameless, faceless Slutbox04 just don’t appeal any more. Five minutes ago I thought this was what I wanted, but now I realise it isn’t. So I’m going to tell her the truth. In fact, I’m going to tell her the very thing that made Mary hot for my rollerboy action. And not to get her off. My world view hasn’t done so much of a three-sixty that I now think all I need to do is flash my tyre treads at a girl to have her fainting all over me. But maybe I’ve decided that hiding who I am isn’t where I’m at any more.

  So here goes.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  I don’t bother coming over all PC police with her and telling her that I am ‘normal’. Apart from anything else I don’t even know if that’s true.

  Slutbox04:

  Oh. Yeah. Kind of forgot I’d have to explain that bit.

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  Slutbox04:

  DragonSlayer666:

  There’s a long pause before Slutbox04 replies. But eventually this enormous message pings up, swamping my message window.

  Slutbox04:

  And before I’ve even finished reading that, she’s gone, offline and out of my life.

  And she’s so right about me needing to get Mary back. Worryingly perceptive, in fact. So I guess that solves one mystery: Slutbox04 must really be female if she can be that incisive about human nature – just a girl with rather unconventional tastes when it comes to usernames.

  Mary

  A while later and I’m alone in my room, working a bit, brooding a bit, replaying my scene with Thomas in my head for a little thrill, recasting it with David in the starring role for a far more guilty but far more thrilling thrill. Essentially I’m just wasting time until I need to get to work, when I hear the doorbell ring. Before I move off the bed, I hear the hall window judder and rattle open (we don’t have an entryphone, so the window leaning system saves us a lot of unnecessary exercise).

  That rattle means someone else has answered the door, which means I don’t have to move from my cosy nest of duvet and laptop. But that someone else has to be Carrie, which means Carrie’s at home. I wonder how long she’s been around. I’ve hardly been out of my room since Thomas left and I never heard her come in in all that time. I was sure she was out when Thomas showed up, and I assumed we were alone in the flat. Meaning she must have come back while I was distracted. Gulp. Oops. Were we very loud? I try not to think about it.

  I can’t hear the conversation Carrie’s having with the person who rang the doorbell, but it seems to go on for a while. In the end my curiosity overcomes my desire to hide my head under the duvet, so I get up off the bed and peer into the hall.

  ‘Look, she’s busy. It’s not a good time,’ Carrie is yelling, leaning so far out of the window that from my end she is nothing but a generously padded, purple-velvet-upholstered arse.

  Something is shouted from the street in reply.

  And then Carrie shouts, ‘Look, David,’ and it’s like someone has flicked my instant override switch, because I don’t even think, I can’t. I push Carrie to one side so I can lean far too far out of the window next to her. And he’s right there.

  It feels like someone has put my heart into the washing machine.

  David is sitting on the pavement under the window. He looks very sma
ll and distant in the gathering dark. He looks good. Lean and hard across his shoulders. Better than I remember. His face has a little shadow dusting of stubble. It looks perfect on him in murky streetlight, defining the precise and perfect angles of his face. Oh god, I just fucking want him so fucking much.

  As I appear at the window he cries, ‘Mary!’ with a kind of angry pain in his voice.

  ‘David!’ I shout back. It’s almost a reflex. I’ve wanted him to get in touch with me so much. Now he’s here I just don’t know what to say, or rather what to shout down into the street.

  From across the road a very well-dressed middle-aged woman who has been parking her car shouts, ‘For god’s sake, let him in, it’s freezing cold out here.’

  David swivels his body in his chair and shouts, ‘Fuck off.’ The woman looks unbelievably shocked at this swearing, crippled man.

  ‘He can look after himself,’ I shout at her, and she scuttles off, clearly appalled.

  ‘Mary, look, can I come in or something. Can we talk?’

  ‘I have to be at work in half an hour,’ I say, and realise straightaway how stupid that is.

  ‘Well, phone in sick then.’ David smirks a tiny little smirk. Almost missable, especially with him so far away, but I spot it, because I am looking for it, because I’m smirking too. We used to joke about that. David used to hate me going to work. He never seemed to do any work himself, so he was always trying to persuade me to ‘phone in sick’ because, as he would explain, I really was pretty sick.

  But, as I always used to explain, it’s a shitty, piecemeal, no-sick-pay sort of a job, and I don’t get paid if I don’t go to work. I already missed three shifts at the beginning of the month while I cried in bed over David. I just can’t afford not to go in tonight. I won’t be able to pay the rent. ‘I can’t,’ I shout, my voice losing its hard, hurt edge.

  ‘Well, let me give you a lift then.’

  ‘OK.’

  Oh, yes! Yes!

  I fling myself down the three flights of stairs to street level and find David is already sitting in the driving seat of his red Fiesta, twisting round to fold up his chair. The car is parked right outside, I notice. Right in front of my house on the double yellows, which I suppose is a rather silly dividend for having a disabled boyfriend. (Not that I have a disabled boyfriend at this moment in time.) And somehow Mercury floats into my head at that moment, pointing out that, fetish or no fetish, it would be far, far worse to go out with someone in a wheelchair just for the parking privileges.

  I grab David’s folded chair and shove it in the boot, then get into the passenger seat. As I heave the door closed, David says, ‘I had to get some stupid bloke to ring your doorbell for me.’

  I know he’s trying to tell me what a sacrifice he’s made by coming here. And I show my appreciation by taking the first turn at apologising.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I don’t really know what the fuck happened. Um, I’m really sorry. About the learning-to-walk-again thing. I’m sorry if I didn’t react right to that. I never meant to make you think I’d leave you if you walked.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I think. I’m not even sure if that was the problem,’ David says, pulling away from the kerb and pointing his bonnet in the direction of La Lucas. ‘I guess the thing is they don’t know if I’ll walk anyway. But it is, well, it is possible.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I mean they don’t know for sure if you’re going to get better or not, do they? And even if you do, well, it could be OK.’

  David is quiet for a minute, concentrating on a junction. Then, once we are on the straight and narrow again, he says, ‘Could it?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  We stop at some lights and he looks over at me. His face is still and expressionless in the dark, but his voice is suddenly so bitter and nasty. I feel like I’ve walked right into a trap. ‘Well, forgive me if I don’t see how, because it’s not me, is it? Not for you. It’s just the chair.’ I feel a sudden dread that David hasn’t forgiven me at all. Hasn’t come close. I think he might even have lured me into his car just to have another go at me.

  ‘No. It’s not that simple.’ The lights change and we pull off. My lips feel so dry suddenly that they seem to be cracking like thin ice. I run my tongue over them. ‘The chair is part of you. I want every part of you.’ And that, I know, is true.

  ‘Yes, especially the parts that don’t work.’ His voice is so bitter, so sad, that I can’t believe now that I ever thought this was going to be some kind of reconciliation. Now I’m sure he just wants to tell me how sick I am, fifty million times over, perhaps with an extended dance mix thrown in. Perhaps he’s right. And perhaps I owe him this.

  ‘Admit it,’ he goes on, ‘that was what attracted you wasn’t it? If I could walk you wouldn’t be interested.’

  ‘At first, yes. I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t the first thing I saw. But it’s more than that. You’re you. It’s not like I could happily swap you for any other disabled guy, but I’m not denying that your disability is one part of who you are and a very attractive part for me. But I mean, really, so what?’

  ‘So what! So what if you’re not interested in me for me, just because of some sick fetish.’

  ‘Why is it sick? We have a good time, don’t we? I have a fetish for wheelchairs, you’re in a wheelchair. What’s the problem?’

  We’re at the restaurant now. David pulls up outside. ‘I want you to want me for me. That’s the fucking problem.’ His face is red now, he’s caught somewhere between anger and tears. ‘No wheelchairs. No kinky shit at all.’ I’d make a guess now that this isn’t the conversation he was hoping for either, but Mercury is still too fresh in my mind, petting me for my sins and pointing out that I really didn’t do anything wrong except make a poor unfortunate young man very happy and horny.

  ‘I do want you for you,’ I say, pulling myself up to my full self-righteousness. ‘And that includes all the things about you that make you different from other people, including the fact you can’t walk. So can’t you want me for all the things that are different about me, including the fact that your not being able to walk turns me on?’

  And that argument is my best shot. That is what I’ve been wanting to tell him for a month. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got nothing else.

  He looks at his lap for a long time. I hold my breath. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly. ‘Maybe.’

  Suddenly something bangs on my window very loudly. I look up and Thomas is there, peering at me earnestly. I wind the window down.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’

  Thomas looks suspiciously at David, then back at me, ‘Good, OK, it’s just you looked a little bit upset.’

  ‘Um, well, no everything is fine.’

  And maybe it is.

  Thomas nods at me and turns away, walking back into the restaurant. I don’t know what he thinks. I don’t care what he thinks. And what he thinks becomes even less relevant to anything when David says, ‘I need to tell you something.’

  David

  I didn’t have to tell her. I could have taken it to my grave. Except I couldn’t, could I? Not really. I couldn’t forgive Mary without giving her the chance to forgive me. I couldn’t let her believe that she was the only sick, selfish fucker in our relationship. And now I know for sure that I really have changed.

  Anyway, I hope she gets some comfort from that fact, because nothing else about the story of me shagging Eleanor in a public toilet is going to brighten her day.

  ‘Have I ever met her?’ Mary says when I finish the stupid sorry story.

  ‘No. And I think it’s best if you don’t. In fact I could and probably should move my physio sessions. Damnit, I could stop going to physio. It’s going bloody nowhere anyway.’ I’ve never even thought that before, let alone said it out loud. I suddenly remember Callum, and the conversation that made me start to question everything. I remember him saying something about learning to live with my dis
ability.

  Mary is frowning at me, as well she might. ‘I thought you were getting better, close to a cure or whatnot? Didn’t we have, like, a huge row and split up over that?’

  I shrug. I come close to a bitter laugh. ‘Who knows?’ I say. ‘Apparently it’s all up to me.’

  There’s a pause and then Mary says, ‘I don’t really know what to say, about Eleanor, that is.’

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘Well, yes, obviously, but I think I understand too. God, this is going to sound so lame-arsed. I know I ought to be slapping you round the face, but, god, I don’t know. It’s just that you used to be so certain no one would ever want you. It didn’t matter what I said or did, you were so convinced that I had something wrong with me and no one else would ever … So, in a way, I’m glad.’

  I swallow, hard. Is this a dream? Is she going to forgive me?

  Then her expression changes and she adds, ‘And you did think of me, right? While you were with her?’

  ‘Oh god, yeah. I so did think of you. I didn’t want to think of you, but I did. I couldn’t help it.’

  Mary’s face comes alive in a way that makes my heart soar and sink at the same time. ‘Course,’ she says smartly, ‘I will have to punish you for it.’

  ‘Course.’

  I meet her eyes – with some difficulty – and say, ‘How can I make it up to you? Tell me.’

  I know she could say that there were (and still are) faults on both sides, that I don’t need to do anything. But, oh, I’m so glad she’s not that kind of girl.

  ‘You know what I want,’ she says, her voice dropping right down to the bad place.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I reply. Oh good. Oh god.

  And then she thinks for a moment and says, ‘Actually, the price has gone up since then.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mary

  One week of madcap planning later, David is tied down on the bed. Face-down. All four limbs stretched out and roped down. And, because I can never resist overdoing it, I’ve buckled a thin black collar around his neck, which is doing nothing in particular bond-age-wise but looks so very pretty.