‘Will you come with me?’ she asks.
‘Of course I will.’
Some movement. A song begins to play. The Kinks. Neither of them speaks for a while. The decking creaks. Are they dancing? The neighbour stares out over a still night, the murmurs of south London muffled by the music drifting down from the balcony above.
‘I love you, too,’ the guy says, abruptly. ‘I should have said it back. I should have said it first.’
A smile creeps into his partner’s voice. ‘You’ve said it now,’ she says. ‘And I still feel the same. Luckily for you.’
A contented silence falls over them, and the conversation melts away. The neighbour sits down here, alone with their music. He doesn’t know anyone else in the building. They wouldn’t know it, if he was gone. The song plays on.Strangers on this road we are on. We are not two, we are one.
‘What was the most painful one?’ the girl upstairs is asking, now.
His thoughts had drifted. The song has changed, and thecouple are sitting again. Though the conversation has moved on, its warmth still lingers.
‘Knuckles,’ says her partner. ‘Ribs. The inner thigh was a son of a bitch.’
A wincing intake of breath, then a short laugh. The guy is speaking again now.
‘You’ve never thought of getting one?’ he says.
‘I’m scared of needles,’ she replies.
‘The piercings say otherwise,’ her partner says.
‘I’m afraid of commitment, then.’ She’s only half joking. ‘A tattoo is for life.’
Two creaking chairs, two bottles sipped from.
‘What would you get?’ asks the guy. ‘If you were to get one.’
She’s thought about this before. Her answer comes too quickly for her not to have. ‘A line I like, from a book I love,’ she says. ‘Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s an illustration, really.’
A pause, which must involve her picking up her phone, showing her partner a picture of said illustration. He reads the words aloud.
‘Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.’
He doesn’t ask anything else. They sit in silence for a long while, until she breaks it. A question, framed as a statement.
‘You’ve never told me what this one means.’
Her partner shifts in his chair. ‘Which one?’
‘This one,’ she says. ‘The “E”.’
The resulting pause goes on for so long that the man below wonders if the man above will ever answer.
‘Oh,’ is all he says, when he finally speaks.
‘You don’t have to—’ his partner begins.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I want you to know.’ Still, he struggles.
‘If it’s an ex, or—’
‘I had a sister,’ the guy says, finally, abruptly. ‘She died.’
A long silence. Within it, another song begins to play.
