Coma White
MIRACLE MILE
1994.
New York explodes in fireworks, fluorescent and angry, which soar above the heads of the onlookers and reach for the darkened heavens above, shrouded in atmosphere. They force their way through, fight their way to the top, all hardy energy and man-made determination, racing, flying and - click.
Pink.
Blue.
The colours swirl over the glazed surface of her eyes, twirling in inconceivable patterns finer than an artist can capture, vibrance where there is a distinct lack of it. Faded red lips don’t pull up into smile, don’t even twitch in their frozen perfection- and she’s not crying. She’s not. She’s a captured image from a reel of your grandpa’s old movies, she’s the smiling bride, the happy bridesmaid, the teary mother in law. She’s on pause - you can hear the ticking of the projector as it struggles to move onto the next section, the next slide.
You won’t let it.
You can’t.
When you first meet her, she isn’t high. It’s the only time you ever encounter her like that.
You’re buying eggs, for your sister. Three brown eggs, if there’s a sale on single eggs, or just a carton of four if they're not. Make sure they're brown. Mummy doesn’t trust the white ones - a change, you think. It’s usually the other way round, and mother dearest will clutch her pastel coloured purse to her matching outfit, and watch her white detective programmes and dream of knights in shining armour that never came.
And that’s when she walks in - her - when you're holding onto a brown egg and thinking about your baby boom mother. She’s a daydream, blended into the ray of light that shines in through the door with her, and you feel like you're one blink away from never seeing her again. But you do. The door closes with a groan appropriate for the downcast mini-market, and she comes into a clarity you think no human should ever be cast in.
It’s repulsive, the way her hair falls over her shoulders in tatty knots, and you hate her flat shoes - the only pair she owns, but you didn’t know that then - and her translucent tights and cheap, so horribly cheap, leopard print coat. She’s not wearing make-up, and her deathly pale skin is your mothers daydream, but cast in uneven reds near her cheeks and a scratch down the side of her eye, like someone’s nails had raked down her face.
Her own nails, you don’t notice then, are quite long. And sharp.
You would know.
But you didn’t.
You pick out three brown eggs and a stick of gum, and let her go first with her gin and long cigarettes. She says ‘Thank you, darling,’ and you’ll write that in notebooks for years. Thank you, darling. The first words you ever heard her say. Her voice is nothing special, unmemorable and the same girlish tone the girls down at The Strip used when your old man took you down there last year.
Thank you, darling.
And she walks out of the door, tripping over the brick door stop just outside, blinded by her own sun, and you’re home early with all three eggs in tact and a bruise on your shin where you tripped over the same brick, staring after her tatty hair and dollar coat.
The twelfth time you meet her, she’s at a party of your friends friends cousin, and she’s in a ninety-nine cent dress from a second hand shop, getting cheaper every time you meet her, and she’s dolled up like she’s fucking Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn smiles at you. You know each other, sort of. You don’t know her real name (never will) but she’s there at every party, running the same drug circles in a bone-coloured shock of white, death itself rattling in her eyes and pulling at her dry flesh. Scythes in her tongue and tombstones threaded in every stitch of clothing she takes from someone else’s old life.
"Oh, Marilyn, Marilyn," you hear someone call, and she whisks over like she’s the film star herself, bones instead of hips, and she’s so high, you think, she might actually believe she’s the real thing.
When she bats her lashes, her fake eyelashes droop down and she laughs, red lipstick stretching out over her hidden sorrow. What she says to you later (never now) is that she’s falling apart piece by piece, and you learn she’s thirty, she’s thirty years old and grasping onto youth like she ever had it. She says - “Darling, do I look a day over twenty-five?” and smiles viciously when you say no, lost in her grey eyes, and puts out her cigarette to kiss you.
But not today.
Right now, she catches your eyes and winks, her eyelash falling down to her cheekbone, and the man in front of her steals her lips. You see his tongue shining against hers, see the glass form fast over her eyes, pale hands reaching for more than a high, more than the temporary. No one in the room can give her more than five minutes, and that’s something you all know. Five minutes of love, five minutes of friendship, five minutes of utter numbness to the reality that curls in with police sirens. She’s so desperate.
God, you hate cheap beer, but it tastes better than her mouth ever will.
Your jeans are dirty from where you fell, where everyone fell, and her prickly fake coat is smeared in thick mud, the same mud that mats half her hair and is lodged in the gap of her heel. She’s smoking those long cigarettes in a broken cigarette holder, the jutting edge of it digging into her palm.
She looks like she stepped off the red carpet of a film you’d pay the world to see.
Instead, you pay in pills, and drop two down on the metal railing of the overpass she overlooks. One’s blue and one’s an off pink; you have no idea what they are, but you took two pink ones and the light through the clouds is burning, burning. The cars below seem far away to you, in between as they are, but if you squint at her face, at the lines you can never quite see when she’s hitting the ceiling in a strangers house, you know the cars are all too close to her.
Too real.
"Should I?"
And it’s happening then, happening now, and you're there. Right next to her. Should I? Your mouth is dry - because of the pills, you want to think. It’s because of the pills. Not her. Never her.
She doesn’t let you answer.
The fireworks die in her eyes. Cheers rise in the street below.
You reach over to her, your shaking hand yearning to touch her face, to ghost over her cheekbones. She’s not beautiful - she was never beautiful, never like in those movies. You smooth your hand over her eyelids, bringing the delicate flesh down in small trembles, and you stare hard at your lap.
You brought roses, like it was a wedding.
She doesn’t laugh, though you know she would, and you stand, letting the flowers fall onto wooden flooring. They'll move her body first thing in the morning, when the holiday is over, you think to yourself numbly. They'll move her body and she'll be gone forever.
You don't look back. They dressed her for death in something someone else used to love, and you wonder, hands on the church doors; where were they now? Middle aged, fading out, coughing to oblivion in a sickly scented retirement home? Or were they, were they -
New fireworks blossom and bloom in front of your eyes as you step out into the cold, their sparks green and fresh and painfully alive. You close your eyes to them as they inevitably wither in on themselves, consumed by the pressing darkness. You feel a wetness press against your cheek.
Were they dead now, too?
New York explodes in fireworks, fluorescent and angry, which soar above the heads of the onlookers and reach for the darkened heavens above, shrouded in atmosphere. They force their way through, fight their way to the top, all hardy energy and man-made determination, racing, flying and - click.
Pink.
Blue.
The colours swirl over the glazed surface of her eyes, twirling in inconceivable patterns finer than an artist can capture, vibrance where there is a distinct lack of it. Faded red lips don’t pull up into smile, don’t even twitch in their frozen perfection- and she’s not crying. She’s not. She’s a captured image from a reel of your grandpa’s old movies, she’s the smiling bride, the happy bridesmaid, the teary mother in law. She’s on pause - you can hear the ticking of the projector as it struggles to move onto the next section, the next slide.
You won’t let it.
You can’t.
When you first meet her, she isn’t high. It’s the only time you ever encounter her like that.
You’re buying eggs, for your sister. Three brown eggs, if there’s a sale on single eggs, or just a carton of four if they're not. Make sure they're brown. Mummy doesn’t trust the white ones - a change, you think. It’s usually the other way round, and mother dearest will clutch her pastel coloured purse to her matching outfit, and watch her white detective programmes and dream of knights in shining armour that never came.
And that’s when she walks in - her - when you're holding onto a brown egg and thinking about your baby boom mother. She’s a daydream, blended into the ray of light that shines in through the door with her, and you feel like you're one blink away from never seeing her again. But you do. The door closes with a groan appropriate for the downcast mini-market, and she comes into a clarity you think no human should ever be cast in.
It’s repulsive, the way her hair falls over her shoulders in tatty knots, and you hate her flat shoes - the only pair she owns, but you didn’t know that then - and her translucent tights and cheap, so horribly cheap, leopard print coat. She’s not wearing make-up, and her deathly pale skin is your mothers daydream, but cast in uneven reds near her cheeks and a scratch down the side of her eye, like someone’s nails had raked down her face.
Her own nails, you don’t notice then, are quite long. And sharp.
You would know.
But you didn’t.
You pick out three brown eggs and a stick of gum, and let her go first with her gin and long cigarettes. She says ‘Thank you, darling,’ and you’ll write that in notebooks for years. Thank you, darling. The first words you ever heard her say. Her voice is nothing special, unmemorable and the same girlish tone the girls down at The Strip used when your old man took you down there last year.
Thank you, darling.
And she walks out of the door, tripping over the brick door stop just outside, blinded by her own sun, and you’re home early with all three eggs in tact and a bruise on your shin where you tripped over the same brick, staring after her tatty hair and dollar coat.
The twelfth time you meet her, she’s at a party of your friends friends cousin, and she’s in a ninety-nine cent dress from a second hand shop, getting cheaper every time you meet her, and she’s dolled up like she’s fucking Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn smiles at you. You know each other, sort of. You don’t know her real name (never will) but she’s there at every party, running the same drug circles in a bone-coloured shock of white, death itself rattling in her eyes and pulling at her dry flesh. Scythes in her tongue and tombstones threaded in every stitch of clothing she takes from someone else’s old life.
"Oh, Marilyn, Marilyn," you hear someone call, and she whisks over like she’s the film star herself, bones instead of hips, and she’s so high, you think, she might actually believe she’s the real thing.
When she bats her lashes, her fake eyelashes droop down and she laughs, red lipstick stretching out over her hidden sorrow. What she says to you later (never now) is that she’s falling apart piece by piece, and you learn she’s thirty, she’s thirty years old and grasping onto youth like she ever had it. She says - “Darling, do I look a day over twenty-five?” and smiles viciously when you say no, lost in her grey eyes, and puts out her cigarette to kiss you.
But not today.
Right now, she catches your eyes and winks, her eyelash falling down to her cheekbone, and the man in front of her steals her lips. You see his tongue shining against hers, see the glass form fast over her eyes, pale hands reaching for more than a high, more than the temporary. No one in the room can give her more than five minutes, and that’s something you all know. Five minutes of love, five minutes of friendship, five minutes of utter numbness to the reality that curls in with police sirens. She’s so desperate.
God, you hate cheap beer, but it tastes better than her mouth ever will.
Your jeans are dirty from where you fell, where everyone fell, and her prickly fake coat is smeared in thick mud, the same mud that mats half her hair and is lodged in the gap of her heel. She’s smoking those long cigarettes in a broken cigarette holder, the jutting edge of it digging into her palm.
She looks like she stepped off the red carpet of a film you’d pay the world to see.
Instead, you pay in pills, and drop two down on the metal railing of the overpass she overlooks. One’s blue and one’s an off pink; you have no idea what they are, but you took two pink ones and the light through the clouds is burning, burning. The cars below seem far away to you, in between as they are, but if you squint at her face, at the lines you can never quite see when she’s hitting the ceiling in a strangers house, you know the cars are all too close to her.
Too real.
"Should I?"
And it’s happening then, happening now, and you're there. Right next to her. Should I? Your mouth is dry - because of the pills, you want to think. It’s because of the pills. Not her. Never her.
She doesn’t let you answer.
The fireworks die in her eyes. Cheers rise in the street below.
You reach over to her, your shaking hand yearning to touch her face, to ghost over her cheekbones. She’s not beautiful - she was never beautiful, never like in those movies. You smooth your hand over her eyelids, bringing the delicate flesh down in small trembles, and you stare hard at your lap.
You brought roses, like it was a wedding.
She doesn’t laugh, though you know she would, and you stand, letting the flowers fall onto wooden flooring. They'll move her body first thing in the morning, when the holiday is over, you think to yourself numbly. They'll move her body and she'll be gone forever.
You don't look back. They dressed her for death in something someone else used to love, and you wonder, hands on the church doors; where were they now? Middle aged, fading out, coughing to oblivion in a sickly scented retirement home? Or were they, were they -
New fireworks blossom and bloom in front of your eyes as you step out into the cold, their sparks green and fresh and painfully alive. You close your eyes to them as they inevitably wither in on themselves, consumed by the pressing darkness. You feel a wetness press against your cheek.
Were they dead now, too?