Lockstep (Part 1)

Caitlin fidgeted in the back of her Dad’s car.  Her thighs were stuck with sweat to the vinyl seat and she peeled away a leg with a satisfying squeak.  Then she returned to playing with the finger people.  She seemed to spend most of her weekends stuck in inner-city traffic jams and had learned to make her own amusements.  She wrapped the hem of her skirt around her left index finger, so that it looked like one of the ladies she could see through her window, adorned with head scarves the colour of jewels.  Her left hand finger bowed to her companion on the right hand.

“How are you Mrs Pointer?” she asked.

“Oh, very bored Mrs Pincher,” the finger nodded.

“Shut the fuck up, you little brat.”

It wasn’t her own voice, but that of her father and it was accompanied by a slap of his hand on the steering wheel.  Caitlin cringed and blinked away the urge to cry; it would only get her in worse trouble.  She abandoned her game and stared out of the window at the crowds of strange people and grocers' shops selling piles of what looked like unripe, green bananas and vegetables resembling spiny-skinned aliens.

She eyed the parcel on the front passenger seat and cursed it inwardly.  It was always the same – off to “see a man about a dog”, sitting in traffic, dropping off packages, Caitlin told to wait in the car, or worse, go inside. 

There never was a dog to play with, the girl thought sadly, as she placed a hot, sticky hand on the glass between her and the outside world.

………………

Inside the post office, a line of disgruntled customers wound around the display of stationery, past the self-service machines and towards the counter, where only two windows were in use.  Caitlin joined the queue, thinking how little remained of the world in which she had grown up.  They all tried so hard to suppress their anger, too meek to cause a scene, even feeling grateful when the robot voice announced, “cashier number three, please,” and they were allowed to advance a couple of inches closer to their destination. 

The ghosts of her childhood seemed brash in comparison.  Formidable women like her grandmother, with meaty forearms and pink rollers under their chiffon headscarves; curling nicotine stained fingers
into fists at the slightest provocation.  Nan’s stock phrase was that she’d beat Hitler, so she wasn’t going to let any other bastard get the better of her.  Her generation would never have stood for this.

The interminable wait was causing her body to tense and her mind to zone out.  She corrected
herself; unclenching her jaw, dropping her tensed shoulders and forcing her body to relax.  However, her mind soon drifted back into an alpha state, while her fingers beat out a drum roll against her handbag.

A child’s piercing scream shocked Caitlin out of her reverie.  The sound was emitted by a toddler, ahead of her in the queue, her puce skinned face was screwed up with rage and her hair stuck up with sweat from her creased forehead.  The mother was engrossed in her mobile phone and the over-heated little girl had started to wail out of desperation and boredom.

“Talk to your sister, Kyle.”  The woman said irritably to her older son, turning the pushchair so that she no longer had to look at her daughter.  Kyle pulled faces at his sibling, while she screamed and writhed in her seat, straining her pudgy pink flesh against the restraining straps.

Caitlin found the scene of commonplace neglect distressing and so sought distraction in once again checking red delivery card in her hand.  She visualised eagerly tearing away the brown paper to reveal glossy magazine covers, and for a moment, the purgatorial suffering of the crowded post office gave way to anticipated pleasure.  

…………………

Half an hour later and Caitlin was cooling off outside the café opposite, doodling on the brown paper of her parcel with a fountain pen.  Her fingers itched to open it, but she would have to wait for the privacy of her flat.  She excused her porn fixation as historical research.  After all, she was writing a thesis on the subject, but outside of academia her interest was viewed as prurient.  Her quaint preference was for “Vintage XXX” - she was unable to relate to the bleached and trimmed genitalia of modern porn stars and their over-groomed partners.  Triple X, she loved the naughtiness of those letters; it made her think of school - ticks and crosses.  It was always ticks for Caitlin - her exercise books were scattered with constellations of gold stars. 

In any case, her proclivities bore fruit; her dissertation on the history of representations of the vagina in art, earned her a first class degree with honours.  People often thought that it would be a limited field of research, but often the female sex was reduced to signifier and she had spent hours dissecting images from painting, cinema, advertising and pornography.  She felt like a detective, examining scenes for surreptitious sexual content.

Caitlin gathered up her notebook and pen and was about to retrieve the parcel from the table, just as someone loomed over her, engulfing her in shadow.  It was Adrian.  She hadn’t seen him since the party and her skin prickled as she looked up at her own image reflected in his mirrored sunglasses.

“Signs and symbols rule the world,” he said, gesticulating towards the scribbled ink stars, triangles, lips and eyes decorating her parcel.

“Confucius, he say?”  She laughed nervously.

She didn’t want to get drawn into conversation with him and knew that if she didn’t make a quick escape, then he would engineer ways of keeping her talking. 

Adrian’s mouth was set in a smile, but she imagined that his eyes were observing her coldly through dark lenses. 

“Sorry, got to go – appointment with a library book,” she said.

“You can’t fool me.  There’s something far more interesting than text books in that envelope.  How’s the research going, anyway?”

“Great.  Thanks.”

“I’ve been doing some research of my own,” he said, placing a hand on her forearm.

Despite the muggy heat, she felt suddenly cold.  A vague, alcohol-blurred memory flashed in her mind - the party at Adrian’s house, his hand on her arm, eyes locked on hers, and the disconcerting sensation of no longer being in control of what she was saying.