Quintessence of Dust Read online

  ***

  When Perry was twenty-five, a work colleague told him about the many worlds theory.

  “Imagine that time is a train track, and you are the train,” said Brandon Mallinson.

  Brandon was, by his own admission, as bent as an Arab’s knife with a tongue twice as sharp. For this reason, many who knew Brandon did not wish to know him well, lest they find their confidence shaved off in pounds. It was sheer happenstance that Perry found himself being measured by Brandon that afternoon. Each day Perry postponed his dinner until everyone finished theirs. He would then retreat to the kitchen area on the third floor of the office building and sit alone eating from a small plastic Tupperware box with plastic fork and knife. Perry would take a book and eat in silence, the air around him a sickly cocktail of heated food and burnt coffee beans. That day, Brandon had postponed his dinner too, and was waiting beside the microwave that was heating up a Thai Curry.

  “The stations you travel through are significant moments in your life,” Brandon carried on, ignoring the fact Perry was still reading, “the first station is birth, and the last station on the train track being death. You with me?”

  Perry looked up and nodded before continuing to eat his homemade tuna pasta.

  Looking through the microwave’s door where a yellow hue illuminated his pretty face, Brandon continued, “Every now and then you hit a switch in the track, and change lanes. These switches are decisions, decisions you’ve made that carry you along a different track. Say there was a point in your life where you fell in love, but, for one reason or another, that person didn’t love you, or, when you asked them out, they said no. That is a switch. One track leads along a path where they said no, and there exists another track where they said yes.”

  Perry stopped reading his book and Brandon turned to face him.

  “For every decision we make in life,” he said, “there is a switch, and where there is a switch, there’s another world where things go your way.”

  Brandon produced a fork from his back pocket and began picking at the dirt under the nails of his right hand.

  “Take some solace in this, Perry” he said, holding long fingers to the light above his head, “you may be the most pathetic and repellent man in this world, but somewhere else you are happily married with a beautiful wife.”

  Perry ushered around the penne pasta shapes, avoiding Brandon’s eye. Brandon glanced at Perry’s loafers, the stitching coming loose around the toe, the flanks scuffed. The grey Teflon suit Perry wore was too small. Black socks festooned with bobbles, lank hair, sallow skin, bony features and National Health glasses. The impact of a cold shave and blunt razor peppered the white collar of his shirt with tiny blood spots.

  “There was one station where you made a fatal decision, Perry. Can you remember which one?”

  The microwave pinged and Perry looked up to find Brandon’s eyes burrowing into his skull.

  “Your dinner is ready,” Perry said.

  “It has to stand for a minute.”

  Perry knew the station well. It was the one where Aneil handed Lauren Cowie the box containing the pearl necklace. His life continued from that moment drenched with a sense of desperation, of insecurity and hopelessness. Of the women he found himself around, Perry adopted a self-depreciating demeanour, his words soft and uncertain of their conviction. His back arched at the neck, forming a slight stoop to his walk, giving the appearance of a man who took solace in the flotsam that swam in the gutters, oblivious to the beauty within the sky. His heroes were fictional characters from books; Atticus Finch for his strong values and wisdom; Vito Corleone for his power and influence; even Victor Hugo’s deformed but brave Quasimodo was someone to aspire to be. As his mind was stretched by mawkish stories by the likes of Diana Gabalon, Daphne du Maurier, Gabriel García Márquez and E.M. Forster, his body too became taut and wiry by a violent hunger to be loved. And it was upon this track his life continued where stations passed of moments too pathetic to be dredged up, or so pitiless in design they were almost comical to render in the mind. His famine bore a hole in heart, which is why when the first woman who took the slightest interest in him, he married.

  She was a friend of Perry’s cousin. As her name suggested, Jane was unexciting, ordinary and plump. The lenses in her glasses magnified the crow’s feet around her eyes and unkempt eyebrows that rested precariously on the ledge of a masculine brow. There was little in Jane that interested Perry. They bought a small flat within a maisonette that was as dank as their feelings for each other. Mould festered upon the windowsills, around the chrome taps and within their words which they shared little of, save for the habitual need to validate each other’s welfare.

  “Are you okay?” Perry would ask Jane if neither of them had spoken for a while.

  “I am fine,” Jane would always reply.

  And on occasion Jane would turn to Perry while he read a book and ask, “Do you still love me?” and Perry would convince himself he did and say, “Of course.”

  When they ate out in a restaurant, Jane would observe the other patrons and earwig on their conversations. She would repeat the dialogue under her breath to Perry to see if he found it interesting, as if the act of mimicry would change them into a new couple. But Perry never enjoyed this and remained mute, his eyes surveying the room to find the hips of a pretty waitress, the bosom of a young woman, or the smile of a lady deliriously in love with the man before her. When they had sex, it was inelegant and passionless.

  “You’re married, right?” asked Brandon.

  Perry assumed he had seen the gold band on his finger and so nodded.

  “Things not working out?”

  Perry tore his eyes from the paragraph he had glanced and read five times without taking in a single word, the strain of pulling tight his brow quite tiring a task for the afternoon.

  “I assume things are not going well at home because of all the chocolates,” said Brandon.

  The chocolates. In his first week as a Desktop Support Technician at the small but prominent Advertising Company called EcO, Perry had enrolled in a night class aimed at would-be chocolatiers. It was a five-week extensive course covering all aspects of confectionary creativeness, at the end of which each student was given a certificate and syrupy words of encouragement to become the next Willy Wonka. Perry learnt in those rich and sugary weeks that hand-made chocolates contain three times the amount of cocoa used in mass produced chocolate, meaning it was less fattening and reduced tooth decay. The room had to be the right temperature lest it ruin a batch, and that to conquer all the variables one had to be methodical and patient. From the simple soft centres, to the more complex flavoured ganache and truffle, Perry committed himself wholly to each recipe, for to him the monetary value of each perfect little treat was less significant than their service.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Brandon continued, “for a man of such sour expression and bitterness, you produce the most sweet and delicious chocolate. It’s a gift, and one these hips resent you for.”

  Perry replied, “You don’t need to eat the chocolate.”

  Brandon stopped excavating under his nails and looked to Perry, “And miss out on all the fun. You know she doesn’t even see you?”

  Perry’s faced blanched.

  “That you go to the trouble of making all those little chocolates and handing them out to everyone in the office just to get close to Louisa, it’s not going to win her over. You should forget about her and set up an on-line company selling your chocolates.”

  Perry gripped tight his plastic fork and imagined for a moment its prongs piercing the aquatic blue of Brandon’s left eyeball.

  “Louisa’s married, has two children,” said Brandon waving the fork around like a conductor’s baton. “Though word is the first child was a mistake and the father ran off.
Can you believe she’s only thirty-five and has a seventeen year old son? He’s cute though, the son. Nice bone structure and smoky eyes. Will be quite the catch in a couple of years.”

  Perry finished off the contents of his tuna pasta, shut the book he was reading and made his excuse to leave. As he walked from the small kitchen area, he heard Brandon shout, “She is too much in love to be bribed, Perry.”

  The office was open plan, cubicles divided by blue cloth board partitions. Each person of average height when sat at their desk revealed their nose and everything north of that point. In the three years since working at EcO, Perry had learnt to read a person just by their eyes. He had studied the relationship of his fellow colleagues and measured their temperaments and character by the slightest raise of an eyebrow, the furrows on their brow, the narrowing of eye. If a person looked up and to the right they were accessing the visual part of their memory; colours, objects, and movement. If they looked to the right they were drawing from the auditory part of their memory; a song or noise. This optical study outspread into the realms of body language. To publicize one’s feeling without words was a poignant act that Perry had mastered, and therefore found consolation in its subtlety. So ardent is infatuation that if not brought to the lips, it will manifest elsewhere. It was knowing where to look. As Perry discovered in a book called, The Heart of Seduction, in the first stages of attraction, a woman’s eyes become animated; they widen upon hearing the man’s voice, roll upon the punch line of his joke, and catch fire when they smile. They remain fixed and diverge only to assess the attire of the person before them. Among other revealing traits is the gentle lift of her voice while talking, the rise and fall of her intonation auditory gestures that she is enjoying herself. She will play with her hair, and gently graze her hand upon the man’s forearm. In the three years Perry had been working on the same floor as Louisa, she once took her designer reading glasses off to acknowledge the chocolate he placed before her. Perry interpreted this as a sign.

  Louisa Bracknell was petite and toned. She wore skirts cut above the knee, her shoes patent leather, high heeled and round-toed. The top four buttons of each blouse were virgins, never penetrating the tiny holes that lay across the divide of her modest but perfect breasts. When she clipped her hair back, dark storm clouds of hair the colour of burnt umber swirled upon the nape, her fingers at times searching out its eye. Her step was heavy, deliberate, which considering her size and slim figure appeared inappropriate. Perry, while drinking tea at home and watching his wife finish off an old batch of his chocolates, would later deliberate Louisa’s step, and it would be his conclusion that Louisa had grown up within a large house where such noise is absorbed by long corridors and thick interior walls. While alone in the toilet, Perry would rehearse dialogue where he and Louisa would be engaged in unassuming curiosity towards each other. He practiced his smile in the mirror while washing his hands, and would comment upon his shirt as though asked the question by Louisa. While shopping with Jane for food, he pushed the metal trolley around the aisles and pondered over items he felt Louisa would approve of. Sometimes, he placed these items in the trolley, and when questioned by Jane toward the casual purchase, he would comment in the same diffident manner that all he wanted was a change. He would later masturbate in the bathroom before going to bed, the cool vestiges of his mental infidelity dampening his oversized boxer shorts, leaving him uncomfortable and irritated in the night. With the exception of her touch, Perry was as much with Louisa as he was with Jane. And in those moments of reflection, he was happy.

  Perry’s daily chocolate donations required him to work most nights producing new treats. He followed Louisa’s partiality for chocolate by how quick she devoured what was placed before her. For this reason, Perry knew she favoured soft centres to hard, and that her individual taste lent towards flavoured ganache, such as coffee and orange. He would buy slithers of candied orange peel and Florida oranges each week, something Jane detested, but her complaints were of little influence. As Perry mixed the rind of the orange in with extra thick cream, and added the cocoa, Jane would sit and observe his proficiency with the awe of a child watching a magician produce a startling white dove from thin air. At the threshold of her mouth, words were held. Jane did not wish to disrupt the process, or be the one to ruin a ganache with a hollow question. It was easier to eat, and have her words crushed into the sticky mix of cream, butter and sugar, than be spat out, insipid and anodyne. And so the more Perry baked, the bigger Jane became, and in contrast, poles apart from the slender Louisa. Perry began to notice the weight gain and made spiteful comments about her jeans looking too tight, and that she should refrain from wearing roll neck sweaters because it made her face appear fuller and rounder. He would wait until Jane had undressed for bed before entering the room, for fear the sight of her bloated alabaster skin would remain with him into the night, forcing his thoughts from the coffee skin of Louisa’s legs. During sporadic trips to clothes shops, Perry would pick out dresses similar in style to those worn by Louisa, well cut, tight and expensive looking, and then grow annoyed when Jane said they would not suit her, or compliment her figure. When Louisa arrived one day with a new haircut, Perry went home that same night and suggested Jane have a fringe, and to straighten her hair. He hovered over articles concerning healthy eating, cellulite control and skin care, and would cut out advertisements for gym memberships and offer them as gestures of concern toward her well-being.

  At work Perry’s weakness inflated his imagination. Sat at his desk, Perry’s attention drifted over the many partitions to where Louisa addressed admin issues on her computer. Songs from a distant radio germinated in his mind and such maudlin reverie took over. It was common during these grand hallucinations for Perry to find Louisa draped seductively upon his desk, kicking her high heel shoes in the air to reveal more of her leg and the darken apex that lay between her thighs. Surrendered from her aubergine wine red lips, syrupy pop lyrics delivered an amatory charge that bloated Perry’s heart and his trousers. In apparel of nylon tights, lacy brassieres and warm orange feathers, a chorus line of female colleagues danced erotically in pairs behind her. Natural light shivered under the blanket of striking shadows, of which stage show lights of garish reds, blues and greens lay at their feet in pools. Men of all sizes and ages pirouetted and leaped in the background, while white sheets of paper were thrown in the air to the beat of a drum. Her breath was upon him in waves, a heady concoction of fine wine, orange and promise. She sang and each tormenting word delivered was a fine mist that enveloped him and left him sodden and adrift. And in that moment the office became a tableau vivant, an attractive menagerie of colleagues frozen in time, petrified some might say, so each could witness the offering of Louisa’s lips upon Perry’s.

  Nurturing his feeling for Louisa had for Jane left him indifferent and formal. They sat quietly at the table, and when Jane asked if he was okay, his reply would be frosty and vague. He did not see the fresh vegetables and chicken breast on her plate, nor did he notice the squeezed fruit juice she had poured for herself. As he simmered butter and cream, he failed to realise Jane was gone from the house and that she had left with a gym bag. In the months that followed, the plastic bags filled with Jane’s old clothes beside the front door, those too big for her frame, never registered as they awaited the trip to the local charity shop. The fact there were more chocolates at the end of each week left Perry doubting his calculations, not that Jane had stopped eating them. Sat on the toilet one day, Perry picked up a magazine aimed at those wishing to improve their body structure, tone their muscles and radicalise their inner-self. As he flicked through the pages, he did not read a single word, but instead looked at all the pretty women and measured each against the other, and when two or more appeared on the same page, he deliberated over which he would choose to sleep with. Jane did not think to seek it out, but had found contentment in acrylic nails and deep tanni
ng sessions. As the beauticians plucked and shaped her eyebrows, she felt connected to life. Women with carroty skin and flawless complexions would talk to her, and ask about her day. As they filed her calcified nails and waxed her masculine legs, they enquired about her clothes, where she grew up and what plans she had for the summer. She found familiarity warm and exciting. In her weekly aqua aerobics sessions, she grew to know Megan and Stephanie, both of whom had just had children and were hoping to tone up their stomachs. In the changing rooms, they would later exchange numbers and beauty tips, and on a warm day in March, they all arranged to meet for coffee. To avoid any awkwardness, Megan and Stephanie never spoke too much about their children in front of Jane, and would, in the main, refer to their careers and shopping expeditions instead. When talk came around to their associated partners, Megan would tease Jane based on the unflattering portrayal of Perry. “I have a brother who would love to date you,” she would say to Jane. “He’s very attentive.”

  Seasons ebbed; each appraised in inches lost and confidence found. From the austere flatlands of dreary conversation and detachment, the landscape of Perry and Jane’s marriage began to shift, and from the bleakness came a swell of curiosity that blossomed into mistrust. “I believe this Megan and Stacy are a bad influence on you,” Perry said to Jane after she returned from a long run. Jane corrected him on Stephanie’s name and retorted, “At least they’re having an influence on me.”

  In an unanticipated change, Perry began to notice Louisa’s shape more and more. Her clothes, which he once considered satisfying to his eye, appeared to be struggling as they tried to contain the flesh beneath. The seams were stretched tight as a foreign mass pressed against them. With the excess of chocolates not being consumed by Jane, he had upped the quantity to five a day for his colleagues. As he sat at his desk, he noticed that everyone was looking a little rounder, plumper. People who never spoke to him would pass by his desk, smile and request more chocolate. Soon Perry had a list of names, detailing their favourite indulgence, quantity and when they were taking annual leave so he could bring in more to help tide them over the break. Even the lissom figure of Brandon had cultivated a paunch and flabby chin, a noticeable change even to him. “I look like a Teletubby,” he once proclaimed to Perry as he disposed of a coconut truffle. Everyone moved slower, seemed less focussed on their tasks, and only appeared excited when Perry approached their desk with the box of chocolates. Because of her size, the affects were more noticeable with Louisa. The slender legs had gained shape causing her to lumber from room to room, even more so than before, and if Perry was ever close enough, he could distinguish the whisper of her thighs as they relentlessly stroked each other in transit. When he handed her the box of chocolates to choose from, he noticed more concealer and foundation that masked the inflammation of skin. Her eyes were dulled by the sugar and fat, her teeth yellowed by the abuse.

  Most nights Perry would return to an empty house. A note next to a casserole dish would be waiting, mostly relating to heating instructions. When Perry and Jane were together, he would ask about her day and she would reluctantly commit to a few sentences, little of which had sincerity. He began to undress in the bedroom at the same time as Jane, and slyly glance to her as she removed her skirt and blouse. Like shifting dust blowing over a cobbled road, her once rutted grey skin had been replaced with a smooth tanned veneer, flawless and toned. He would offer his hand to the beads of her spine while they lay in bed, his touch rendering her cold and irritated. When he found himself alone in the bed, he closed his eyes and saw Jane, naked in all her unassuming beauty. Pressing her pillow against his face, Perry breathed in the satisfying scent of Jane’s hair, of expensive serums and conditioners used to add sheen, and without thought his hand would drift beneath his waistband.

  Three years after getting married, Perry Rankling fell in love with his wife, and about the same time, she fell out of love with him. He did not see the switch in the track, but he remembered leaving the station, and wondered, maybe, would there be another stop.

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