Infinity Nights

The dance floor crashed blue and black with the stamping of feet: students, newly free. Everyone in the centre of the room was only shades apart in age. Eighteen and semi-learned. Everyone had a reason to celebrate, and not one among them was grounded by the glaze of drinks and bodily fluids on the floor; sugar and salt offerings to whichever bruising god guides kids through school. Now there’s a deity who drew the short straw. 

Skin tingled; the air was acidic; lemon and lime sliced on the acute certainty that nothing existed beyond that night. The night will go on forever and ever, said lips brushing anonymous lips. The night will go on for ever and ever, and the walls move back into darkness. The night will go on for ever and ever, the bass line the undertow dragging and pulling everyone into that, that forgetting of tomorrow, the commonest collective suspension of disbelief. 

Mirie drew infinity signs in the air with her middle parts and raised her glass. After months of studying, she gloried in the triumph of being solely at her body’s beck and call. She’d worked illogically hard. She wasn’t going to university but she had a bet on with herself for three A*s, and defied herself, dared herself, to fall short. A little of her drink spilled on to the floor. Cheers. 

She rolled her shoulders back and pressed her sternum forward into the timeless night, barely afraid of being wounded. She pushed back against the heat, imagining the sweat evaporating from her. 

--- Mirie what are you doing? You look dead.

--- C’mere.

She grasped the person speaking and kissed them a sugar-and-salt kiss; pulled the girl in, warm, legs tessellating. They moved in infinity eights. The girl drank but did not break eye contact. Mirie, a side smile.

--- A middle leg for ya.

Mirie moved her leg to make sure she didn’t miss the joke.

She sputtered, sprayed fine vodka tonic laughter all over Mirie’s face.

--- Kiss it off me, she demanded. Absolutely nobody is watching.

No one had ever been friends like this before. Mirie and Sophia occupied a strange territory between sisters and something entirely unfamilial, borrowing aspects from both but levelling out as friends. Obviously, there wasn’t a single person who hadn’t been through this who could understand what it was. They adored each other, fiercely, spent long times away from each other, only to return, to adore with everything they had – although not equally. One’s adoration was greater: different, and greater. Sophia’s boyfriends narrowed their eyes at Mirie from outside the doors of their cellar-jazz-club of a friendship.

Their history stretched, reached back to twelve, thirteen years old, and they found each other in time when the question of who you are turns you as essential and fickle as the ocean, subjecting all the things you could be to a voracious series of welcomes and rejections. Whatever Mirie was, linked inextricably to whatever Sophia was. Sophia’s family were Mirie’s. Mirie had no family to give Sophia. They had spent their lives playing imaginary games, crossing boundaries one step ahead of those appropriate for their age, falling out of trees, smoking in playgrounds, collaging character through lyrics and being the ultimate cover up artists for each other.

Mirie stared into the blackness of Sophia’s cosmic eyes. Her I-always-knew-you-were-like-that eyes. She could not understand how this – them together – worked. S, the mathematician of the two, could no doubt have worked their curious algebra. Wonder-soaked and tonic-struck, Mirie was taken back to a memory of drawing parabolas in class, S mislabelling Mirie’s work purposefully. You. Me. Axis of symmetry. Arrows brought the lines swooping together, gliding towards their meeting point. The complete parabola has no endpoints, S had written. That scrap of paper, hidden in a copy of Antony and Cleopatra, intentionally placed to be forgotten and then rediscovered by chance later.

A rush of wings and she was gone.

Mirie’s gaze followed her slowly, drunken eyes compelled to focus, sluggishly trying to push them round, round – she blinked hard.

Had she said she was going? I’m sorry, I’m going outside… no, that hadn’t happened. Had it?

She noticed a path cut in the people in the dancefloor, a river winding through the dancers, still pounding the floor with their feet. The sound of snythesised drums took over. Setting herself on the course down the path, the ground seemed to carry her through the crowds – gliding around heavy-footed people, them trying to stay aground despite the relentless drum, thudding so greatly as to change your heart rate – but she glided…

A drinks tray to her right: her light fingers relieved it of two shots. And out she goes.

She knew Sophia would be in the smoking area. Most of the best conversations they’d had fit in the lifespan of a lit cigarette, Mirie racing its smouldering end – she could count four minutes to the second, trying to get in everything she wanted to say before that last breath and the exhalation, smoke-screening out her expression and any answer: any clue at all.

A few people huddled in groups, not really paying attention to the girl leaning against the wall. She leaned in to Mirie.

--- They know I’m just a drunk smoker. No commitment. 

Mirie handed her the shot.

--- Salut.

--- Santé.

They downed them, then let the tiny tumblers fly from their hands, plastic skating across the concrete steps, discarded, no thought for the next day; later that night; the cleaners.

--- You gonna remember me in Cambridge?

--- No, I’ll forget all about you. On purpose.

--- You’re loathsome.

--- I don’t think you quite mean that. Those aren’t the right words.

--- Don’t tell me about words Loathsome. Oathsome. You – you have to swear an oath to me –

She stood behind her, taking her two hands in each of hers and interlocking all of their fingers.

Sophia suddenly snorted, contorted with laughter.

--- Do you remember when we went in those chat rooms…

Mirie concertinad to the floor, grasping the wall for support.

--- Oh, oh

--- Oh it was so good

--- Luring all those guys in, thinking they were gonna get some cyber, then -

Mirie shouted with laughter.

Narrowed eyes of other smokers lasered onto her.

She began to roll around on the floor.

--- We wouldn’t even mention it for ages – set the scene –

Sophia mimes closing an imaginary door.

--- Hey baby. I’m just coming in through the door. (Do you like how literal I am?) I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been thinking about you all day. Let me just take off my cargiyam – SORRY – cardigan, typooooo… Is that? Are you? Oh, you look so good. How are you feeling? Me? Iyam feeling horny baby. Oops, *am, *am. I’m so wet. No, you can’t do that, I’m still wearing all my clothes. Oh baby, yeah I’m really excited for this, but I just have one request… it’s kind of a weird one, I hope you’ll do this for me. How do you feel about food in the bedroom? ‘Cause I’ve got this, it’s a

--- IT’S A YAM!

Mirie laughed so hard her abdominal muscles burned.

--- I’ve got this YAM

Sophia sits down with her hand on Mirie’s side whilst they laugh.

--- And they’d try and stay in character –

--- Get more and more confused –

--- The whole thing would descend to me just crashing down on the keyboard

--- YAMYAMYAMYAM

--- Yum yum

Mirie laughed, a crow’s caw.

--- You can’t even do that any more. Too easy to get pictures online. Nobody wants to cyber with words.

--- You’re so fucking clever, but that’s what I’ll always remember you for.

She looks up at her face, which always looks so gallant – elongated, high forehead and an ever-so-slightly pointed chin. Velvet lips. Velvet. Mirie can’t help but think –  

--- Mirie, my friend. I don’t think I’m much longer for this place.

--- You sound like someone from a play.

--- It was an impression of you, you oathsome creature.

She held out a hand, which Mirie left untaken.

--- You really going?

--- I will see you tomorrow.

--- For the goodbye party.

--- Fuck, Mirie. Come with me now.

--- I’m going to dance.

If she didn’t watch her go, she might not do it.

She might not.

Mirie looked up.

She had.

Should have gone with, Mirie thought, using gritty palms to dry her eyes. Should have gone. The smokers watched her go back in, swallowed up by the cavernous dark of the dance floor.

She grabbed an abandoned beer bottle, one third full, warm. The music, previously an unending dirty beat, hypnotic and monotonous for five hours straight, now sounded as though it was edging towards a chorus. Mirie pushed back against the place where Sophia had gone – some place where the sun would eventually rise. A stray dancer rammed into her.

--- Hey, watch yourself!

His big, square face too close, she felt her fingers itch. Sipped her drink righteously. Sophia, where did you go? The dance floor appeared to be anticipating a chorus, or a drop, or something, and Mirie felt caught in a web of something about to happen. Sophia Sophia. The only one here that she wanted to know. 

She passed through hands that touched her shoulders, her arms, her hips, her waist. She knew most of the people here, although there were strangers too. The dance floor sat in a sunken circle in the middle of the room, surrounded by onlookers. A girl wearing fluorescent tights on her hands juggled four drinks, apparently looking for an owner for each of them. Two men leaned against a back wall, both staring forwards and parallel. The one with his hand behind the other as a ventriloquist with his doll. One couple kissing. Two couples kissing. One trio kissing. Bravo, thought Mirie. The chorus was still on its way. By and large, the majority of the onlookers were unreadable. 

It was like looking at an array of mannequins in a shop window. She backed up to the bar and held on to the rail underneath it for support. The air no longer felt sharp and acidic, but thick and oxygen-poor. Was this a panic attack? Everything seemed to become suddenly and impossibly unreal. She felt time’s absence and wanted it back. Reached for it. Stretched out for just a few seconds, and one … two … thank fuck. The bar. She looked into the eyes of the bartender. Human. She looked into the eyes of a woman over on the side of the bar – quite obviously a Barfly. One who thinks movement is anathema. Not drinking is anathema. The Barfly did not meet her eyes, so Mirie looked back at the bartender.

--- Double vodka and orange.

The mirror behind the bar moves across, moves, bends stretches, blurs reaches out and no, no it’s back and there’s only one. The Barfly fingered the rim of her glass.

--- Ice?

Mirie hung on to the underside of the bar and tugged herself forward with every heavy beat. In the far corner, The Barfly downed the rest of a glass of wine, then slammed it down like a whisky chaser.

--- Always running here, always running there. Why can’t they help themselves?

The bartender put down Mirie’s drink mid-pour and ran like lightning for the wine bottle.

--- That’s what you get, you see, when you can’t see far enough into the future. Why am I the one with the two eyes?

She was wearing a Camden market zip up hoodie in rainbow colours, which was half undone. Her hair was in the dying days of a tight perm. The fuzz was so monumental that it looked like all the hairs hated each other and couldn’t bear to be touching each other. Her body twitched like she was enjoying the music more than Mirie was.

--- And look at these lot too.

She gestured around the room.

--- They’re just the same. Living like there’s no tomorrow.

Mirie enjoyed listening to strangers. No repercussions here.

The woman accepted an overspilling glass of wine from the bartender and started to gulp it down. She was round the far side of the bar, and Mirie thought, for a second, what if she has no body below the ribs? She was leaning on the bar as if her life depended on it, her body folded in around itself.

--- What’s with all these bloody kids?

--- Exams are over, said the bartender. They’re all free.

The bartender suddenly remembered Mirie’s drink, and started making it again.

Mirie began to sing to herself.

--- Oh, hey, I see you / she goes from the sea to you / she’s sure, sea sure / Sophia Sophia, where are you? 

The song was literally never going to get to the chorus. The song was a fathomless eternity of verse, verse, verse. Standing up was hard.

Mirie knew it was time to ghost away. Day and night alike were being taken from her. There was nothing more sensible or sensational to say. Sophia was gone. In times like these Mirie never sought help.

She sat in the toilet and pretended to herself that this was all going to end well. She knew straight away it was a stupid move. If there’s anything which makes you realise how you’re feeling, it’s isolation - but it was here or the jerking, tactile horde out there. What whispers had made them all so strange? Desperate not to end a desperately good day. Mirie didn’t understand the fuss. Good times had been, and good times would come. They were all going to university. Everybody’s going to university. What was there to worry about? Perhaps unseen forces were at work. Perhaps an earthquake was coming. She cawed.

She fell sideways into the wall.

--- Look around Mirie. What can you see? What can you see Mirie? Well, I can see some drawings. That’s good. What are the drawings of?.

She spat on the floor and groaned.

--- Hearts. Hearts and loads of words. Perhaps I should just stay here and read all the words. 

Mum, I’m sorry. 

I fancy Matt Graham.

Free the people of my heart.

I ♥ Polar Bears – who are you?

She took out a pen and scrawled ME TOO next to this.

--- There are so many feelings on these walls. How many of you feel that way when the morning comes?

She got out the pen. It was, all in all, a recognisable rendering of polar bear. Triumphant, for a person careering ever closer to drunken paralysis.

---One bear sits on an ice block and floats out, floats away. Another one waits on the shore.

The world was changing beneath her.

She found a blank space of wall and wrote one last thing.

i know how she feels

The graffiti began to swim and blur a little more. Mirie found it increasingly difficult to read and the messages all became unified and indistinct. She wasn’t sure that the pictures even came back the same. Bear’s ice block melted and sank into the sea. A few words written at the bottom of the door suddenly became clear to her, in her last few seconds of consciousness.

MIRIE, THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOREVER.

She fell asleep with her cheek on her knee and her knuckles on the floor.