Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Adam Thorpe

advanced cave drawing. He’s taught her how to blend marker colours, blender fluid applied first: lawns, trees, flowers. It’s like watching springtime happen at top speed. He can do a whole tree in five minutes. His own face in three, always with something weird attached – horns, an eyepatch, a crown, a mammoth dick. He touches in the creature’s navel with an afterthought: a few concave squiggles. Then he taps the silver stud in her own navel with the end of his pen. Because her midriff is bare, she doesn’t have to lift anything up. Tappity-tap. It gives her goose-pimples. Why is she always so tired? ‘Stratford-upon-Avon,’ he says. The newsprint blurs the

lines nicely, gives them texture. He pops the cap back on the pen and cocks his head, admiring his own work. ‘You’ve got those pamphlets on your brain,’ she sighs. ‘I am beyond genius.’ ‘You could be wrong, though.’ She feels like she’s coming down with brittle bone disease or something. Too much drink, not enough shut-eye. ‘When’s the deadline?’ ‘Er, I’d like it tobe tomorrow instead of three days ago?’ Suzie says, in a Dalek voice, ‘Ne-go-tiate, ne-go-tiate.’ Jazz shrugs. She turns back to the view beyond the empty seats the other side of the aisle, away from him, cupping her

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