Melissa took me on walks to strengthen my ankle. She loved Hampstead Heath and Regent’s Park. The Heath and Queen Mary’s Rose Garden were full of frost. Nick and I had both been staying at Melissa’s until a mate of Nick’s came down to London for a visit and she returned to her own flat. I stayed on, citing the cold weather and the urgent need to continue recording my songs.
We walked in Hyde Park one day, past the empty green-and-white-striped chairs by the water, looking at the ducks, their bums in the air as they dunked their heads to scavenge for food. The city of London was piled high all around us and I felt tranquil. I looked up at the Post Office Tower. Melissa took my hand and smiled at me. Many times she had taken my hand to warm up my fingers or in friendship, but today it felt different. I was getting a different vibe from her. Or I imagined I was. Maybe it was only my own vibe folded over on itself. I concentrated on watching my breath turn white as I exhaled and not tripping over my own feet.
I looked at Melissa in her familiar raincoat, thick-soled, black vegan creepers on her feet, and thought about what a good person she was. I had on a blue Nirvana sweatshirt, the hood pulled over my head. Melissa was a few inches taller than I was, and now she draped her arm casually across my shoulders. I tugged on the belt loop of her faded, black trousers, pulling her closer. Mist hovered over the grass, and I felt romantic. We passed a flower seller, and I stopped. I bought a bouquet with as many roses in it as I could afford and handed it to Melissa.
“This is for me?” she asked, taken aback. I nodded, nervous she might misinterpret the gesture. God forbid she thinks I’m coming on to her. But Melissa wasn’t like that. “Cheers so much, love,” Melissa said. “I can’t even remember the last time anyone’s given me flowers.”
Then what a shit-arse Martin must be to go out with you all this time and not bring you flowers, I thought. “It’s a token of my honest admiration and affection,” I said rather formally, embarrassing myself.
Melissa said, “You’re very sweet.”
“And you’re the coolest straight woman I’ve ever met,” I said to let her know I respected her boundaries.
Melissa’s eyes were gentle. “That’s quite a compliment,” she said finally. We continued walking, bent forward against the wind and the first drops of water. With the hood of her own black Joy Division sweatshirt pulled up, Melissa looked like a dark tulip in the slants of rain.
At the flat, Melissa put the flowers in water. “I know I’m the reincarnation of a rat,” I said, having once explained to her that I was born in the year of the rat, always had rats as pets and felt a strange affinity to them. “But you are the incarnation of a rose.” Or a rain-soaked tulip, I amended in my head.
“Come here, sweetie.” Melissa gave me a hug and I felt her soft cheek against mine. “Watch you don’t cut yourself on my thorns.”
I laughed. “Stigmata of the highest order.”
“No more stigmata for you,” Melissa said firmly. She’d only just removed the sutures from my hand.
Puncture wounds reminded me of the biblical story of Abraham, and how God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, his son. Abraham had lifted the knife and God had stopped him. But Abraham had already killed Isaac in his heart. I wondered what that meant. What was God’s point? Maybe it wasn’t that we should do anything God tells us, but that we should have a loyalty to life, whatever life we’re living, while we’re here.