The next morning came and when Sam woke she was still lying next to him, asleep on her back, her head turned sideways on the pillow, the palm of one hand sticking out above the covers, a vision of grace.
He reached to his bedside table and toked on his asthma pump as quietly as he could so as not to wake her.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
There was a bolt of shame about his asthma. It made him feel puny. But then, just as quickly as it came, it went away.
‘I’ve got asthma,’ he said, taking another, deeper toke in front of her. ‘Do I look like the Diet Coke man?’
Sarah laughed and reached her hands under the covers for him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’ve got major hangover horn,’ she said, like it was nothing.
In the silence of the morning she rolled over and on to him and arched her back, and the frame of the bed creaked with their weight. As she rode him he looked at her face. Her eyes were closed and he was hit by the impression that she wasn’t really there in the room with him, like she’d withdrawn to some other place beyond the veil, where nobody could touch her, a separate space of her own personal ecstasy. She leaned forward and kissed him deeply, grinding hard with her hips, both still a little drunk, and when it was over they lay on their backs, panting for the longest time, until at last she curled up next to him.
They lay there for a second, Sam deep in thought about how great this was, how all of a sudden they were in bed together having sex when only yesterday he felt so awful. Outside the window birds cawed. He felt her pressing closer to him and an image appeared in his mind of a white sheet hanging from a line, being blown dry by a spring breeze.
After Christmas Day they were supposed to be going home. Instead, they’d stayed for ten days. They’d taken long walks through the estate, past an old dilapidated chapel tucked away in a wooded hollow with a witch hazel sapling poking through a window, and had talked about so many things. As the days passed the number of people at Arcadia dwindled but it only made things more intimate. They found a path made of upturned champagne bottles, which the old owner of the house had made in its heyday, and it had glimmered ethereally in the twilight gloaming. They’d slept together every night, which was in some ways confusing to Sam, who couldn’t understand how someone could want him that way to that degree, but he wasn’t about to complain.
The day after they got back, Sarah took him to see a band called Frightened Rabbit. They went to a pub and drank cloudy cider in a dark corner until their minds were foggy and he couldn’t stop thinking how awesome this was, how new and exciting, and how being out of his comfort zone wasn’t even a thing now. They ran across the busy street, hand in hand, to the venue; dark night sky and bright headlights, rain spitting sideways.
He’d never been to this kind of cramped, sweaty, grimy, ramshackle place. Metal girder columns with huge rivets blocked the view of the stage from the bar, and the mezzanine looked on the verge of collapse. He’d never seen a band like Frightened Rabbit either; amazing in an earthy, aggressive, lovely way, the singer laying himself bare, covered in sweat after a couple of songs.
Sam stood at Sarah’s shoulder and at the end of each song, when the room erupted, she’d turn back to him and smile, and he was so happy it felt like his bones might liquefy. She called him sappy but he didn’t care. At the front people bounced up and down, and the way so many of them knew all the words to songs he’d never even heard made him think he was being welcomed into a secret world.
His T-shirt was slick with sweat, like he was melting into the room. He put his arms around her waist and it felt like an OK thing to do. All borders had come crashing down. Sam watched the back of Sarah’s neck and the side of her face. Her hair tied back, sweat glistening behind her ear, the wet skin catching the orange light from the lighting rig above the stage. He could just see her eyelashes when she blinked.
He was almost completely happy. Almost. Because now the thought of the superhero had been sparking flashes of dread across his chest. He couldn’t tell her about it. When they’d been at the Christmas fayre she’d said it was messed up and over the past week, between the long stretches of happiness, that conversation had played and replayed in his head. He wished the Phantasm could enter early retirement, but that’s what was producing the flashes of dread. The call of the costume was way too strong to overcome.