"That Chick" by Adam Carlton

 

She's attractive, curvaceous, petite; she’d trained as a teacher. 

The first time I met her I thought she was cute.

---

I arrive at her school, enter the staff room where she is circulating with her teacher colleagues. Her demeanour is warm and professional, a word here, a touch on the arm there. Then, suddenly, she turns and catches sight of me. Her face is lit by a sudden smile of pure happiness: a release from duty, from dry and mundane pleasantries to enter our private world of intimacy.

---

We would argue in the language of humour. “You think you're so smart,” she'd say, “you don't realise how that makes your bosses feel.” 

“But I am smart,” I protest. 

“And that's why your career has been such rubbish," she continues, ignoring me, running her hand along my arm. 

“It's not been rubbish,” I splutter. 

She smiles at me then with genuine pleasure: "I'm a saint to be putting up with you,” she says, putting an arm around me.

---

We're at an evening event, some work party. I'm talking with a rather flirtatious woman, a discussion which verges on chatting up - (her or me?). Observant as always, she glides across, her hand pressing possessively against my stomach. “I've got something to show you,” she says, disengaging me deftly from the conversation. 

I get her a drink and we sit together on a padded couch. I notice how her skirt inadvertently hitches up a little as she snuggles against me.

---

I hear her laughter and I’m lost. I say something to amuse her and her face lights up. That lovely gurgling laugh, curiously childlike, infinitely endearing. I would lose empires for her then.

We had an argument this morning about some matter. At lunch I was sitting opposite a male colleague of hers when she sat down beside me with her soup and demanded:

“Why do you always disagree with me when you know you’re wrong?”

She then looked triumphantly at her colleague, saying brightly,

“He’s so arrogant you know, so very arrogant.”

At this she gave me an admiring, even adoring smile. Her face lit up, her eyes wide open. I grabbed her wrist in mock anger and she tapped my shoulder in possessive exasperation. Her breasts looked very fine under her tight white blouse.

Except she was still genuinely annoyed with me.

Her colleague, looking between the two of us in confusion, made stumbling attempts to mediate peace.

I thought: ‘This is truly a girl who is not in touch with her own true feelings.’

Later that evening, when she got home, she said: “I gave you a hard time today.” She took my hand: “I don’t want you suffering a long dark night of the soul.”

---

The aftermath of an argument.

The night is baking hot. She has the sheet about her shoulders for modesty. He lies beside her on his back, a faint sheen on his skin in the moonlight. She lifts her eyes to the window to gaze at the stars: their cold, indifferent, pin-prick beauty.

“You're probably just pretending to be asleep,” she whispers to herself, “while secretly stewing in your own anger, fantasising about leaving me no doubt, wondering how easy it would be to get a new chick. You probably reckon it would be effortless.”

He lies motionless: is he even listening? she wonders.

“Before me all your relationships crashed and burned. You were always too aloof, too self-absorbed, too selfish in your needs.”

His breathing has slowed. Perhaps he’s concentrating, attending more closely; but more likely he’s just falling asleep. In her heart of hearts does she really want to be overheard?

“Is it really so hard to see my point of view? To accept that I might have a point too? To show some empathy? This chick is the best thing that ever happened to you: is it really so hard for you to open your eyes, to say those few peace-making words before we sleep?”

She turns to face him - but it appears he is hostage to the land of dreams.

As is she.