Lily's Room

Lily's room smells of talcum powder. Lily drifts it in clouds which
thicken the air, then settle on the surface of her dressing table.
Lily, I think, is too pale and fine for this life.

"Don't draw in it," she says, sharply, to me. I have made a heart in
the powder on her bedside table. I am just piercing it with an
arrow.

"I am pierced, Lily," I tell her. "You have done that to me." And she
has. Lily laughs and as always, it is the sound of blossom
falling.

The first time I saw Lily was in the library. I work there, see. Lily
came in and I thought she was a ghost, she had on the palest shades. A
lilac coat, the lightest pink of chiffon at her throat, I thought her
shoes were satin ballet slippers. I had the greatest lump in my
throat.

"I need something," Lily said to Margaret at the desk. I almost fell
over myself, jumped up from the table and hit my thighs against it.
Both the women turned to see what the commotion was and I saw Lily's
eyes were such a pale shade of blue and her skin was etched glass, her
lips were chapped.

"I can't wear strong colours," Lily says to me. They make me feel
tired." She is standing by the wardrobe, looking at herself in the long
mirror. "This isn't my era," Lily says.

I am lying on my side on Lily's bed. Looking at Lily. Sometimes she
reminds me of an exhaled breath in winter air. Or someone's
half-thought idea. Sometimes I think about kissing her. I don't think
she would want me to kiss her.

"I am not what you would call pretty," Lily says. She is peering
closely at her face. She draws back her lips and shows her teeth. She
has a gap between her front teeth that she can fit a matchstick in. She
proved it to me once. "I should only be viewed by candlelight."

I followed Lily. For weeks. I wanted to touch the things that she
touched, to look at them and see if dust had come off her hands, like
from a butterfly wing and transferred itself. I wanted to see if the
racks of clothes in charity shops were silvered somehow where she had
run her fingers along them.

One day I trailed her into the antiques market, followed her from stall
to stall. Watched how she handled things. I saw her touch a piece of
glass, pick it up, hold it to the light and look through it. Then put
it down and drift on. I picked the glass up, too, carefully by the
edges. And I saw her fingerprints, I was sure of it.

"From a chandelier, that is," the gruff woman behind the stall said.
"One of them country houses." She was bundled in her coat and scarf,
she had her hands linked over her belly, I saw thick fingers, yellow
nails. "?3.50," the woman said. And I got the money from my pocket.
"Shall I wrap it for you, love?" I shook my head.

At the end of the aisle, Lily was waiting. I had the glass in my
pocket, a sharp secret wrapped in my own handkerchief. Lily was looking
at me. I felt hooked on her two eyes, panicked.

"I saw you buy that," Lily said. I couldn't speak. Her voice was like
that light, really wetting rain. Insistant. Soaking. "Why do you follow
me?"

I thought she might be angry. I couldn't make my throat work. It felt
plugged like I had swallowed that glass and it had stuck there,
wouldn't go down. I shrugged.

"Come on," Lily said. She stuck her arm through mine, a surprising
human limb. She steered me through the streets of the town. We didn't
say a word. She took me to her house, a house she shared. Made tea,
carried the two cups to her room and sat me there in the chair by her
talc frosted dressing table. Made me drink it.

"Did you think I wouldn't see you?" Lily said.

And Lily is right, she is not what you would call pretty. But to me she
is like an opaque thing, lit from within. I can see all the things
inside Lily playing on the outside of her like shadow puppets. I can
see her.

"I can see you," I say to Lily. And Lily turns to me. Pins me on those
eyes. Lily comes towards me, there is no sound as she comes. I think I
hear my heart stopping inside me, train brakes squealing. Smoke behind
my eyes. I can't hear her feet on the boards of the floor of her room.
I can't hear anything as Lily bends.

"You funny thing," Lily says. She places her small cool hands either
side of my face. "Funny, you are." I want to make this moment stretch
for ever. I want it preserved in amber like a tiny prehistoric insect.
I want it wrapped in a handkerchief and kept in my pocket. I close my
eyes to hold it, Lily filling my vision, a fog. The smell of talcum
powder, her skin on my skin. Lily.

And then Lily kisses me.