Sashahad never learned to drive.He did know how to swim, though.Hejust couldn’t remember where he’d learned.
Hepaused in his efforts to extract coffee from the restaurant-sizedGaggia machine in the kitchen.Beyond the arch of the window, bluewater gleamed.Setting down his cup on the marble counter top, hefelt the shift of knowledge in his arms.He would put his handstogether, thumbs touching for a moment as if he were about to makea bird-shadow on the wall for a child.He would stretch out hisarms.Then his hands would part.He would launch his body forward,spine straightening, gravity letting him go.He remembered the feelin his belly, the tickle of weightlessness.His legs would rise upbehind him.A moment of fear would turn to sheer joy as he kickedoff.
That's it, Alexandru!You're swimming!
Hedropped the cup into the sink.Where the hell had that come from?The voice inside his head had been female: English accented, sweet.It could have been his mother’s, if he’d ever known her.If he’dlearned to swim in her arms, not by falling into some dirtyBucharest waterway, as had probably happened.He pressed hisfingers to his lips and stood looking out at the pool.
TheGaggia was beyond him, but he found the remains of the hospitalitypack that had been left out for them, instant tea and coffee fordisoriented newcomers.There was no electric kettle, and theenamelled pot on the oven top seemed almost too pretty to use.Soon, though, he had a mug of coffee with enough sugar in it tojolt himself free of visions, memories and dreams, and he found hisway out of the kitchen and into a kind of courtyard cloister, archafter arch framed with wisteria and heady with scent ofjasmine.
He thought it strange that there was no breeze, until he putout a hand to the space beneath one arch and found crystal clearglass in his way.How was he meant to get out?The pool was in thecourtyard, and he wanted urgently to be near it, to feel again thestir of swimming muscles in his arms and legs.That's it, Alexandru...She’d haveput a hand beneath his stomach, holding him briefly.Then she'd lethave him go.
Hefumbled almost in panic for his set of key cards.Laurie had beentoo tired to show him how to use the Gaggia machine, but had kneltover him in their Spanish oakwood bed, smiling and coaching himabout the locks.You just had to swipe to let yourself out.But thedoor would lock behind you—if you propped it, you would trigger analarm—so you had to keep keys with you at all times, and rememberthe thumb-print scan to get back in.Fighting a sense that hisbeloved partner had gone quietly and considerately nuts, Sashafound the right card and pushed open the heavy door.
He took his coffee to a white marble table by the poolside.Itwas quite late, a big delicious heat beginning to build in the air.Sasha's feelings on waking alone had been mixed.Laurie treatedSasha's sleep as a precious commodity, and Sasha appreciated that,but still he'd rather have been woken for a parting kiss, asee you later, becauseright now he felt like the only living creature in the world, andthe prospect of seeing Laurie ever again a theory only, a distantprobability.Then, when he had woken, he'd done so bolt uprightwith a dying scream in his throat, and so his relief at Laurie'sabsence had been profound.No more Londonrain, Laurie had said, setting up thisparadise in both their imaginations.He hadn't added no morenightmares, but Sasha had heard the hope of that in hisvoice.
Nightmares, and now false bloody memories.Sasha leaned hiselbows on the warm marble, gazing at the pool.God, it wasbeautiful—a sapphire oval, edged with tiny mosaic tiles, big enoughto work up a good long stretch underwater, which apparently Sashaalso knew how to do.He drew a breath and held it, counting.Onestroke, two, three, four.He might get to ten sometimes, but bythen she'd have been calling him, worried.Alexandru!Sasha!
Shewould have taught him, perhaps in secret, on the days when shecould get away from Stefan and take him into the city.She'd dressthem both carefully, wash and comb away the signs of the ghetto sothat the people in the Pescariu baths would let them in.Yes.Allthese things, if she hadn’t fled before her son’s brain could evenshape a memory of her voice.If she’d ever been there atall.
He gotup and walked to the edge of the pool.He had brought swimming gearout from England with him, perfectly aware that such things couldbe purchased in LA, but Laurie had had so much fun in Lillywhitespicking him out the smallest pair of designer trunks available thathe hadn't been able to resist.A benign despot over things likethat, his Laurie.Sasha had closed his eyes at the checkout whilethe bill was being rung up.He didn't want his damage to define himfor the rest of his life, didn't want to question how a Lycra ragcould cost so much when people were still starving in thestreets...
Thetrunks were upstairs, still packed.If he went to fetch them hewould lose the impulse stirring in his blood.And who was there tosee him?Laurie had called the Fitzroy Mayfair mansion a gildedcage but really that house had nothing on this one; the terracottawalls glimmered like the ones in Gaudì’s Barcelona park but werebarriers still, eight feet high and curving out of sight into thebougainvillea.None of the neighbours could see or be seen, andSasha had stopped believing in their existence anyway.He wasutterly alone.
He lifted the hem of his T-shirt, the Biffy Clyro one Lauriehad bought him after a gig at the Swindon Oasis.Thirty pounds for a T-shirt, Laurie?Shuddering, he pulled it over his head, andinstead of folding it carefully and finding a dry patch for it onthe steps, he dropped it where he stood.He tugged off his jeansand briefs as roughly as he’d torn down Laurie's last night,stepped out of them and tossed them aside.
Laurie,writhing in pain and ecstasy, Sasha's fingers shoving deep insidehim with only the water to ease the fuck.It was strange, Sashathought.They were typical young men in many ways, no more delicatewith one another in the sack than anybody else, but it was only inrecent months that they'd begun to play a little rough, to exertmuscle and force.They'd been so desperately awkward, diffident,their first few times!Sasha supposed it was the difference betweenthe lovemaking of boys and of men.And he adored it, of course.Thevery thought of it was giving him a hard-on, swelling and raisinghis cock.
Just aswell the neighbours couldn't see.Sasha, solitary in paradise,pushed away the idea that he'd rather be back in Birchwood Heath,with a dirty mattress under him and Laurie on top.A man whothought such things had no place in the California sunshine.Possibly didn't deserve to exist.
Notquite sure that he did, Sasha folded his arms over his chest.Hetouched himself on each shoulder, fingering the bony crests on top,then the too-prominent arcs of his collarbones.They'd been likethis when Laurie had rescued him.He'd put on weight for a while,and he ate what he could even now, but the headache drugs killedhis appetite, except when they unleashed on him one of thosemortifying episodes when he had to devour junk food immediately ordie.
Uncrossing his hands, he brushed them lightly down his chest.His nipples tightened obediently at his own touch.He hardly evermasturbated, he realised.Was that odd?It wasn't something hecould ask about in the Guidance Council restroom when he sat downwith his colleagues for a break.He and Laurie made love so oftenthat he never had the chance to build up that kind of hunger, hesupposed, but it fed into his theory that he might not be quitereal, not alone in his own right.He ran his palms over his waist,his narrow hips.He was nice, Laurie said.Laurie, caressing andkissing, used words likepeach skinandsuede.Sasha tried to feel it forhimself, but although his nerves fired and reported sensation tohis brain, in some lonely way he was numb.
Hiserection had subsided.The pool glittered still, though, ceruleanand gold.He put his hands forward, thumbs touching lightly, justas his mother's had when she made bird-shadows for him on thestained wall of their flat in the mahala.Oh God, that memory wasreal.He was sure of it.He tucked his head, stretched out hisspine and dived in.
He swamand swam.The water was pierced like a cathedral with shaftingcolumns of light: like Sagrada Familia, another Gaudì miracleLaurie had shown him in Barcelona during their holiday there.Sasha's head was full of all the things Laurie had given him, shownhim, done for him.Laurie had opened up the world for him like atreasure chest, and it was Sasha's fault if his own dirty rags andbones lay at the bottom of it still—old parkas, baddreams.
He swamfaster.He found that if he kicked off hard enough from one end hecould make it to the other without coming up for air.How beautifulit was down here, the gentle press of silence on his ears!Heplunged deep, and felt the scrape of his hips and ribs on thepool's mosaic floor.He skimmed along the bottom to the end.Hisheart was pounding but he didn't feel breathless, not yet.He hadso little sense of up and down that he could curl round in asomersault and hardly know which way he would come out of it, andthat would be fun.He could try.
Therewas the far wall.He pulled up just short of it and ducked his headdown—misjudged his distance and cracked his brow hard on the tiles.The pain and the shock broke his trance.Shit, he needed air afterall—desperately, right now—and before he could think or controlhimself, had sucked in a lungful of blue liquid light.
Sasha!Sasha!
Hischest and guts seized.Stars burst at the back of his eyes.Hecould still hear, though, and it wasn't his mother calling to himfrom the poolside.It was a male voice, high and tense.Joy andembarrassment hit him.Laurie was back.Something had gone wrong—aburst tyre, a cancelled shoot.One other possibility for anoxygen-starved brain—Laurie had packed in this whole stupid ideaand come to take them home...
He brokesurface, gasping.“I'm okay,” he managed to choke out, thensubmerged again so he could have the worst of his coughing fitunderwater.By the time he reached the side he was almost incontrol, near enough anyway to convince Laurie that he hadn't gonenuts and jumped in here naked to try and drown himself.He bracedhis hands to the rim and got ready to haul out.
No, not his mother, of course.Not Laurie either.The poolsidewas empty, and when he played back that voice, just what the hellhad he heard?NotSashaat all.
Señor!Señor!
Thejacaranda tree in the corner of the courtyard rustled and shook.Sasha dragged himself out of the water and knelt coughing, wipinghis hands over his eyes.When his vision was clear again, itbrought him an extraordinary sight: their handsome pool boy fromthe night before, halfway up the wall, making athletic use of thejacaranda to clamber the rest of the way.
Sasha staggered to his feet.“Stop,” he called, then had tobrace his hands to his knees and choke up more water from hislungs.“Stop.It's okay.No tevayas—I won't hurt you.”
The boy reached the top of the wall.He started to vaultacross, then glanced back.He was wearing next to nothing, just thesame denim cutoffs and sandals.It was still twice as much as Sashawas wearing himself, and for a long moment the two of them staredat one another.Then Sasha grabbed for his T-shirt.“I'm sorry,” hesaid.“Lo siento.Please come back down.”
Cautiously the boy let himself down through the branches andbright purple flowers.Some of their pollen had adhered to hisskin, gold dust on deep olive.“¿Hablasespañol?”he said, emerging into thelight.
