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Adam Thorpe
32
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