Drones

Her fur is black like tar. She’s hungry. When meowing failed, she jumped on the bed and climbed my bedsheet-wrapped body. Keenly aware that I am not asleep, she pats my sweaty forehead with the tip of her paw while I half-dream of guts and pearls and lost teeth and waves and robotic bees.

It always feels eerie waking in this place. Maybe it’s the white carpets and custom-made furniture, the paintings, the coffee machine I could never afford. She purrs and rubs against my legs as I cut veal liver into thin slices. I leave her at her bowl, wash blood off my hands, then take my coffee and laptop and rest on the sofa. The Wi-Fi’s down. Maybe they forgot to pay the bill.

I fell in love with your fields and valleys. While I clean out the litterbox, I recall the holiday we spent on that secluded beach, holding hands and drinking beer and looking at the waves. That was when you told me you’d never felt so safe. I pick up my phone to check my email, but the app fails to connect.

They were taking photos at the protest. Later, I saw some of the faces in the local newspaper. Banners above heads, mouths chanting, black umbrellas against the pouring rain. I felt relieved my face wasn’t among them, then immediately ashamed to feel that way. Walking around the living room, I collect items from my list: the socks and the underwear, the charger, the toiletries, the jumper, the pepper spray I’ve never parted from since that late summer evening.

Calling you is not an option, not after last night. My only friends are on the road somewhere and lately I see them less than I see their cat. It’s always been the simple things that separated us: the restaurant they liked that I found too fancy, the overseas travels, the meetings with an interior designer. Last night, when you woke me only to say you were leaving, completely drunk and furious and unwilling to explain, I remembered how hopeful we were when we moved to this city. They warned me the TV was broken, but I try to turn it on anyway.

I should have taken that job and left the country. It could’ve worked. I borrowed enough money, and the company offered me a place to stay for a month or two. Then you told me, as you always do, that you’d change and quit drinking, that we’d go to that beach again, revisit those fields and lakes and valleys, that you loved me and that, please, you couldn’t live without me, and once again I believed you.

Why’s there no radio in this flat? Radios always work. I put on my shoes, my coat, and my backpack. I make sure all taps and lights are off. I straighten the bedsheets. I stroke the cat goodbye. I grab the rubbish bag, take one last look around and leave. The key grates in the lock, and suddenly it’s that late-summer night again.

They didn’t use the word faggots; they hardly spoke. The shorter one asked you for a tissue, waving a fist with bleeding knuckles. Two twenty-year-olds in shorts and tight-fitting T-shirts, their muscles twitching, their faces now so blurry they could’ve been anyone. Guts like offal, bones like china. The crackle of joints and the stretching of tendons. Skin soon to be painted all over with bruises. We moved as if in a badly choreographed routine, taking the blows and losing teeth.

I leave the rubbish by the lift and go up to the roof terrace. The city is still. It’s just stopped raining. I light a cigarette, surrounded by tenements, high-rises, and distant blocks of flats. It almost feels as if nothing’s changed. There’s the steady sound of traffic, the squeal of gulls heading for the landfill, a ghost-like plastic bag flying above the roofs. The church bells start to ring.

I take a deep drag, waiting for the drones to come.