And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die
Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol
Coakes’ dreams were fitful. Images of left-wing American politicians, liberal loons like McCain, plagued him. They mixed with sea-sick montages of the whore’s body twitching and succumbing to his saw. Coakes always dreamt badly, but tonight his sleep was stalked by ghouls. When the skin tore and he, weeping, groped one of the girls legs till it cracked like a drum stick and loosed the moorings of her thigh, the horrid thin dusky face of Hussein was there, and he’d started in on it with the hack saw, till the moor screamed with Melodies voice, his breath stinking of cold oily dead cunt.
Coakes had never trusted women. Mostly, it was because of their poons. Deep red slits, snide second mouths, lurking terribly between their legs. They appeared so threatening, as if they might bite your hand off. Only a fool would put his dick in there.
He was too hot in the deep white bedding and tossed about, pushing the covers off, his naked body glistening with sweat. A deep earthy stain from unrestrained nocturnal flatulence had spread peanut brittle on the sodden linen. He awoke slowly, the horror thick within him.
Groggily, Coakes looked about the room. He was unsure where he was, and what the fuck was that? What Coakes on waking had presumed to be the laundry basket, had begun by itself to move. Something like eyes, beady lumps staring up at him. He meant to scream, but his voice was a hiss, thin and high. Coakes scrambled back, pushed himself into a crouch on the bed, ready to jump if it came at him. It was the girl, the dead whore back to kill him.
“Mr Coakes?”
He did scream then. It was real. He backed against the wall, away from the shuffling flesh pile.
“Mr Coakes are you OK? Would you like me to leave?”
Coakes nodded shakily, his mind performing athletics in which he leapt off the bed and kicked the bitches head right off. That would be good. He’d killed her once, he could do it again. It wouldn’t work though. The whore was reanimated somehow, and would be harder to kill the second time, surely. His arms looked beefy and strong, rattling there by his sides, but Coakes hadn’t really seen her move, didn’t know her speed. She might be a sprightly Danny Boyle zombie, ready to jog him down, to puke acidic undead blood right in his eyes.
“Mr Coakes..?”
The bin thing shuffled forward on her hands, and Coakes finally recognised Maria, the housekeeper. He sat down hard on the mattress, stress and farts leaking out of him.
“Oh…” His hands were shaking as he patted her on the head. “What the fuck are you doing in my bedroom?”
“You were screaming Mr Coakes… I thought you were in trouble.”
He inspected her, clad only in a t-shirt, her stumpy flesh bare. She noticed his stare and pulled the Tee down. Coakes nodded to the door, and dutifully the girl began to shuffle out. He wanted to cry, lay down till it passed. The thinnest stripe of sunlight had begun to struggle through the pale cheap curtains. He wouldn’t sleep again. He stood, naked and damp with sweat, and passed into the cottages loan bathroom. The housekeeper had levered herself onto the john and squatted, pissing. Dirty pink underwear bunched at her knees, just before the skin folded in on itself at the stumps. Coakes ignored her, waiting for the water to heat up, bollock naked. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it. Coakes stepped into the shower, and she flopped off the flushing bowl and shuffled out.
“Coffee and croissants. Fresh croissants!” Coakes shouted after her, soaping his balls, cold water searing away the night.
Coakes lay on the beach. The skin of his body was smooth and golden brown. The flaking near his preternaturally deep belly button had cleared up. His stomach, with it livid purple scar, was flat and hard. His arms and shoulders were ripped, toned. His hair was a streak of blonde to his shoulders, gathered in a tight tail, and the sun had bleached his eyes to a pale muddy blue. Which happens. In one hand, he held a piece of scrap metal, an old anchor, to be used as a dumbbell. Coakes other hand typed terse masculine sentences on the now scuffed, yellowing mac.
Coakes loved the changes in himself. He could lift things, and feel the burn in his various muscles. He prized this yang, having been unmanned for so long. His ex-wife and that fuckin’ vibrator. The whirl of an electric motor still retracted his balls. His daughter, a better father to herself than Coakes ever could be. Even the sweet dear waiter, played by Tom Conti, who’d dressed him in make up and played with his hair. Castration after castration. He understood Muscle Marys now, the most effeminate of men, rooting their self esteem in brutish physique. Brothers in arms.
Coakes didn’t care, he felt healthy now. He had managed to push that whore from his head. He could maintain a hard, enough to weep whitewash of joy, without seeping from eyes or arse – no more great shitty tears, conjured by panic and loathing. Coakes was back in his comfort zone.
Flicking his finger across a sensor, he saved his words and launched iTunes. He selected the Yoga Mix, and music tumbled out of the small white machine across the sand. He’d chosen the playlist for its mind numbing banality, it helped him to focus on his breathing. Cold war kids followed Zero Seven, followed the Beatles. Melody had set this up. Precocious little bint. He guffed and assumed the position ‘Worm Salutes the Sun’. Coakes loved Yoga, it was the perfect exercise, you were mildly uncomfortable when you did it, and you finished reinvigorated, as you’d been lying down for an hour or so.
Afterwards, he jogged back to the cottage and showered. The housekeeper, that legless wonder, was cleaning the kitchen, pulling herself along the worktops as she polished. Coakes sat on the sofa in his towel, and called her.
“Honey, can I get an ice-tea?”
He chuckled to himself. Last night, as she hid in her room, doubtless oiling her chair, he’d moved all the drinks to the top shelf of the fridge. After a few moments, the house keeper emerged from the kitchen with a glass in her hand. Coakes was infinitely disappointed.
“Thank you. Sit by me bambino.” He patted the cushion next to him. A puff of dust rose. She looked at him a moment, then clambered up ungainly. Coakes gave her a firm prod, unbalancing the girl. Her head landed on his groin, the thin white towel twitching in response. She started to rise, pushing herself up on hairy arms. Coakes’ firm hands pulled her back down. He could tell she didn’t really mind, she didn’t struggle much. He could have wet with happiness as he introduced her to the humbler. He loosed great onion farts, casually swallowing his ice tea. It was good. Afterwards as he heaved himself into her arse, tonguing her stumps as they flapped uselessly in the air, Coakes came to a decision. It was time to go home.
The long walk back up the hill to the cottage was always Coakes’ favourite part of the day. Physically and mentally exhausted after his rigours at the beech, he’d puff up the climb, his mind close to blank, reaching toward that state of nothingness Buddhists imagined to be perfection. His thoughts were white blank, empty as his body moved of its own accord up the hill. His mind could not linger and his woes, many and deep – his yearning for television, the great bushy pubis of the Greek waiter, the red tilled restroom of a desert motel – could not impact upon him.
At the apex of the hill the view over the island could steal your breath, but Coakes didn’t care. He did not notice the mountains, the old temple where local kids went when they wanted privacy, like their parents and grandparents and grandparents’ grandparents before them. The olive trees, wild and unkempt, the sweep of the landscape down towards the fast crescent of white buildings at the port. Above it, the squat wee fort, pock-marked from shelling during the occupation, the only time violence had impacted the island. Coakes flat feet ached, as ever, slapping against the tarmac of the slope down toward the cottage. He was hungry too, images of grub eroding his zen, and he found himself hoping the girl had cooked something. She’d better have changed the sheets in his room, too.
The pitiful creature had knocked over a vase as he’d left that morning. Striking a table with the axels of that chair she lounged in. He’d decided then to forbid the infernal machine. Her LA-Z-Boy was no longer to be allowed in the house. He’d seen her fly round the place on her hands, and he’d be damned if the bitch would spunk his deposit on broken crockery. Her dragging legs would give the floor a good brush too.
She’d stared at him, sullen and fat, then done as instructed. He patted her on the head then, to let her know she’d pleased him.
Now, as he walked down the hill, the sun beating on the back of his neck, making him look Texan, Coakes noticed a man lounging on his bench, under the dying lemon tree. Coakes’ breath caught in his throat. It could only be the waiter. He hadn’t been up in almost a week, not since that night. The Greek lent forward and shading his eyes from the sun, stared up at him. Coakes giving a nod, reluctantly approached. The sun felt too hot on the back of his neck, and he was very conscious of his copious sweating. He sat down next to the waiter, not looking at him, not at his face anyway.
“Mr Coakes, how are you? We have not seen you at the café for a number of days now. We all were concerned. I was concerned.”
“I have a housekeeper, now. She cooks for me.”
“Ah yes, the wheeliegirl.” The waitor smiled, running his fingertips over fat black lips. “I am sure she serves you well… Only, how does she reach the cooker?”
“She jumps.” Coakes let out a long breath and stretched the toes of his feet out of his sandals. He was growing increasingly uncomfortable. He couldn’t get the image of the deck’s wooden boards out of his mind, couldn’t forget the bloody seaweed tang of cave water.
The waiter seemed to smile beneath his great moustache, “Will you dine with us this evening? My wife is preparing wild boar.”
“Your wife?” Coakes was startled.
A silence, the waitor watching him, his smile unwavering as Coakes stared straight ahead.
“You thought perhaps I was a homosexualist? No, there’s no such thing. We did something all friends do here.” He laid a hirsute hand on Coakes’ thigh, “You have no need for shame”.
Coakes watched the waiter stand and walk down the hill towards the town. He scratched at a flaky bit of skin on the back of his hand till it bled. As the sunlight died across the hills, he surrendered awkwardly inside.
Coakes sat on the very edge of the flat brown sofa where the maid slept. He was farting rhythmically into a pillow, pleased with the familiar sensation, his ane opening and closing like a guppy fishes mouth. The pillow was a yellowing duck-down affair he allowed the housekeeper to use at night. Coakes’ notebook lay open in his lap. A mechanical voice, like the one Hawkins affected, read his words back to him. A verbose grandiloquent durge. He wasn’t sure where it would go in the novel, or whether it would become a review, whatever. It was fucking good though, even with that mechamong voice reading it to him. He almost stiffened over how good it was. He lent forward, his arse cleaving a bite of the pillow, pulling it forward with him, and changed the a bit about ‘toasting bread’ to ‘a eulogy to cereal’. It resonated more with him. Coakes had never had those fancy coloured breakfasts as a child. He’d had the dour tasting beige ones, the functional ones that made you shit round lunch time.
He half stood, making sure the table hid his nakedness, and watched the cleaner huff about the kitchen on her stumps. He glanced down at the pillow and swore. A brown wet patch had blossomed in the centre. He felt at his crack. It was slimy warm. He’d definitely shit himself again. It was happening much too much since his evening on the boat.
Sighing, Coakes flipped the pillow over and moved to the bathroom to shower. When he emerged, dressed and groomed from the cottage, the Greek was there, seated at his bench in the cool evening breeze. As Coakes left the house, his sandals crunching at the gravel, the waiter rose and walked to the small grey seated scooter standing just by, straddled it. He patted the seat behind him. Coakes coughed a laugh, and climbed on, resting some wine in the wire basket just above the solitary head light.
They grumbled off down the hill, free wheeling over the potholes and bumps. Coakes soon had a healthy hard, pressed fast against the waiters arse. The Greek laughed and pushed back against his firmness.
“You see Iago, we’re friends now.”