Tilt

Karen Onojaife

 

If Heaven truly was a place on Earth, Iyere wondered, who was to say that that place couldn’t be a crappy little casino on the top floor of a shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush?

 

 

If she really thought about it (and generally, she tried not to think about it), she understood that there wasn’t all that much of a difference between her and the patrons of the betting shops that seemed to sprout in every empty space on the high street. And next to the betting shops were the pawn shops, their windows emblazoned with bright posters depicting people inexplicably joyful at the idea of having to put prized possessions in hock. But those places, grubby with daylight and disapproving glances from passers-by, could make a girl feel like she had a problem, whereas a casino at two, three, or four am, while not necessarily a sensible choice, at least made Iyere feel like she had taken a considered decision to court decadence.

“Decadence,” she could imagine her sister, Ivie, scoffing. “This place is called Barry’s Casino.”

Which, fair enough. But until Iyere could figure out a way to make it to the neon-lit hiss of the Bellagio’s fountains, Barry would have to do. Besides, she had come to appreciate the fake solicitude from the liveried doormen; the powdery sweet scent of carpet cleaner that perfumed the tired shag pile lining the mirrored hallway; the complimentary warm, sugared pretzels that staff brought round on silver platters, presumably on the nights that Barry was feeling especially generous, and the unpredictable choice of soundtrack piped onto the casino floor—this early morning’s selection being a run through of Gloria Estefan’s greatest hits.

What she liked most of all was that the two, three or four am crowd at Barry’s Casino knew what it was about; a loose camaraderie of sorts but essentially, people would mind their own business. No tourists wanting to distract with chatter, or rookies taking up valuable space at a table while they fumbled over their chips and mixed up their bets. No, the early morning crew just hummed like a hive; gentle sighs and sometimes light taps on the back from a neighbour, either in celebration or commiseration depending on the cut of a deck.

“What the fuck is it?” Ivie had asked her once, simultaneously incredulous and despairing on one shameful afternoon when she had caught Iyere rifling through her handbag for money. “What is it that you get from doing this? From being at that place?”

Iyere, face flushed and eyes bright, hadn’t known what to say. To explain that she liked the sweat of cheap plastic chips in her hand seemed small. She liked to stack these totems upon the green baize of a table, liked to listen to the rattle of the ball as it skittered across the wheel as lightly as a girl skipping rope, liked the swish of cards through a croupier’s gloved hand as they fanned the deck this way and that, the flicker of white edges like breaking waves.

She could have spoken to the science of things; the ticker tape parade of dopamine lighting up in her brain and the rerouting of neural pathways.

Or she could have dealt in practicalities, for example, the fact that she had been borrowing money from the petty cash account at the community college where she taught so she needed to win some back and win big, so that she could replace it all before anyone found out.

Or perhaps this: you and your little girl, Ofure, are in a local park one day and she is playing on a swing while you are reading a book. This playground is nothing special, just something that’s there on the walk home from school and there’s no way of telling, just from looking, that somehow the local council has missed the last three annual inspections, or that screws in the swing’s frame are coming loose, or that when Ofure clambers to a standing position on the rubber tyre, mittened hands clutching metal chains, the whole structure will groan and pitch forward, tipping her, your little girl, onto the hard ground, head first. Bright red blood splashed across snow.

Iyere had always liked the things she liked too intensely. If it wasn’t gambling, it would have been other things, it had been other things—food, sex, or telling lies just because. But after Ofure died, the casino seemed the only place where Iyere could comfortably exist in time. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the losses—in fact those made her panicked and sick, and aside from an ephemeral flare of glee, she didn’t really much care for the wins, but these swings of fate either way seemed at least conceivable and therefore manageable, and matters that she had a hand in, as opposed to the loss of Ofure, which had been so complete, so profound and so unexpected that even years later, she could scarcely allow herself to accept that it had in fact occurred.

So Iyere had said nothing, and Ivie had just stared at her. Iyere had known that if her sister hadn’t been tired from chemo, she might have tried to fight her right there in the hallway until, as Ivie had put it once, “you saw some fucking sense.” As it was, Ivie had been exhausted, giving a mirthless chuckle before sliding onto the nearby sofa in defeat.

“Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not there,” Ivie had said, fixing Iyere with a hard gaze. “She’s not there. Not in a fucking casino.”

“She’s not anywhere,” Iyere had said and then she had walked out, a stolen twenty pound note still in her hand.

 

 

Iyere always knew what time it was, despite the casino’s attempt to dissemble by the regular flow of free drinks and the complete absence of clocks. Even without her watch she knew because she had always preferred the night hours, enjoying their relative quiet and the softness of possibility that sunlight tended to burn away.

She had been there for about an hour, having had a couple of uninspired rounds of blackjack and Texas hold ‘em, when she noticed the croupier standing at an empty roulette table across the room.

Iyere knew all the croupiers there by now and this one was definitely new. The woman’s hands darted into the thick fall of her locked hair, fingers moving swiftly as she arranged it into a messy bun. The action made the crisp white of her shirt draw tightly across her breasts and Iyere scolded herself for noticing; she looked away, her face feeling warm and her thoughts suddenly scattered. She made herself count to ten, made herself engage in boring chit chat with the dealer at her table, and then counted to thirty before she allowed herself to look again.

The croupier was already looking at her, her head tilted to one side, one side of her mouth beginning to tilt in amusement. She let her gaze travel the length of Iyere’s body before it returned to her face and then she nodded once, mostly solemn but that half smile hinting at a degree of mocking in her assessment, or her invitation, or whatever this was.

“Morning,” the woman said as Iyere neared her table. Iyere just nodded, not entirely trusting her voice to speak until she had taken a sip of her drink. “And how are we today?”

“Oh, you know,” Iyere shrugged, letting her eyes fall on the woman’s name tag; ‘Essy’.

“Oh, I know,” Essy said, allowing a grin to bloom across her face, leaving Iyere bewildered enough to glance behind her to see if Essy’s smile had been directed at someone else. But everyone else seemed far away somehow, although she could still see them and hear them, everything dulled as if with a thick veil and when she turned back to the table, Essy was closer, leaning forward slightly with one hand positioned on either side of the wheel.

“Bets, please,” Essy said, looking at Iyere expectantly.

Iyere placed a chip on a numbered square, barely even checking where she’d left it, preferring instead to watch the flick of Essy’s hands as she spun the wheel one way and tossed the tiny ball the other. They both watched the ball stutter and skip until Essy murmured ‘rien ne va plus’ and a moment later, she swept Iyere’s losing chip away from the board.

“So, you’re new?” Iyere asked. She had the sense that Essy barely managed to avoid an eye roll, surely having heard the question a thousand times over by now from various lecherous parties. Still, Iyere liked to think that there was a significant difference between being a lecherous party and an interested one.

“Not really,” Essy said. “Was on days before. I asked to switch shifts because I prefer the night time crowd. They’re more—”

“Desperate?” Iyere offered.

“If you like. Bets, please,” Essy said, placing the tip of her right index finger on the polished chrome handle of the wheel as she waited. Iyere wasn’t sure how old Essy was; she was one of those women whose skin was so dark and unlined that it was always hard to tell. Younger than her at least, despite the wrinkled skin of Essy’s large hands and Iyere was seized with the abrupt desire to lose herself in every single fold of them.

Iyere put a stack of chips on the table.

Essy nodded and then started the wheel with a brisk whisk of her wrist. They both stared in silence at the ball, Essy eventually making a soft sound of consolation in the back of her throat before sweeping Iyere’s stack away. “Let me guess,” she said, pausing for a moment to survey Iyere once more. “Teacher?”

Iyere gave a surprised smile and tipped her glass in acknowledgement.

“Working here gives you all types of party tricks,” Essy said. “What do you teach?”

“Fairy tales,” Iyere said. “The taxonomy of them. For example, did you know that pretty much every country has its own version of Little Red Riding Hood?”

Essy considered for a moment before shrugging. “Makes sense. Show me a country where girls aren’t hunted by wolves. Bets, please.”

Iyere lost another stack of chips.

“Desperate, you said? Earlier?” Essy clarified, as she swept the chips away. “But you know what I think? I think ‘desperate’ gets a bad rap. Desperation gets people closer to being honest.”

“Honest about what?”

“About what they’re doing.” Essy said. “Bets, please,” she repeated, waiting for Iyere to place a short stack of chips on the table before continuing. “I mean, who isn’t gambling, really? It’s just that most of you like to pretend otherwise. The girl who fucks a fuckboy because she hopes that good sex might tempt him into being a better boyfriend has placed a bet, no? All of the components are there; consideration, chance and prize.”

Iyere choked briefly on her drink, both somewhat thrilled and taken aback by the boldness of Essy’s language. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand before meeting Essy’s gaze. “Well, I wouldn’t call a fuckboy a prize,” she said.

“Ah, but the girl in our example doesn’t know that yet—no one does, until she lays down the stakes. Schrödinger’s Fuckboy if you will. Bets, please.”

Iyere lost another two chips. “My sister thinks I have a problem,” she said.

“Why?” Essy shot back. “Because it’s three am on a Wednesday and you’re at a casino, wearing pyjamas and your hair is still wrapped? Bets, please.”

Iyere pushed the remainder of her chips onto a number, but her eyes were fixed on Essy’s face instead of the wheel. There was something about her tugging at Iyere’s memory but she couldn’t quite place it, faint as it was and overwhelmed by the flutter in Iyere’s chest whenever she allowed her gaze to rest on the curve of Essy’s full lower lip or the gleam of skin at her collarbone.

Iyere lost again and Essy shrugged, sweeping the chips away with a flourish before folding her arms. “Well, it seems that you’re out of—”

“I had a daughter,” Iyere blurted out, unable to stand the idea of having to leave Essy’s table now that her money had run out. She had never spoken of Ofure to strangers before, not like this and she wasn’t even sure what drove her now. Something in Essy’s gaze perhaps; it seemed soft but also demanding, as if her attention, once bestowed, required great things in exchange.

“I had a daughter and now I don’t,” she continued. “I was a mother, and now I’m not. What do you call that, I wonder? What’s the word?”

Essy’s eyes seemed to glow momentarily, and Iyere watched the pink flicker of her tongue dampen her lower lip. “I don’t know the word in English,” Essy said, her eyes fixed on Iyere, travelling over her face. “But then there have always been other tongues.”

Iyere nodded, considering the idea of a grief translated, wondering if her heartbreak might taste differently in new words. She felt more speech rising in her, almost unbidden as she asked Essy if she could see her after her shift.

“Why?” Essy asked.

“Because you want to take me home with you and the house always wins?” Iyere said with borrowed confidence.

Essy laughed and Iyere realised it was the first time she had seen a genuine smile cross the other woman’s face. Iyere wanted to know everything she could about that unknowable face, kiss everything she could from this stranger’s lips and much else besides but she would be happy with whatever Essy might allow.

“Fraternising with patrons outside of the casino? We’re not supposed to,” Essy mused, making the pale marble of the roulette ball weave through a twist of her fingers as she thought. “But I’m open to persuasion.”

 

 

“Hospitals. Police stations. Mortuaries. Strip clubs,” Essy counted the words off her fingers as she listed other places she had worked. They were sat in her kitchen, drinking hot mugs of peppermint tea. “Always night shifts. It’s just better. I prefer the places and times where you meet people at a crossroads, so to speak.”

“Why?”

That’s how I feed.

Or at least this is what Iyere thought she heard but when she looked up, Essy had her mug to her lips and appeared to still be pondering her question. “I guess you could call me a people person.”

Iyere thought this was both true and untrue. She was not entirely sure that Essy liked people, so much as she liked collecting their stories and there was something undeniable about Essy that made people want to share them. Iyere had already exhausted her own sticky mess of secrets; the stolen money, the gambling, Ivie being sick and what happened to Ofure.

“Grief,” Iyere found herself saying, “has skinned me.”

Essy nodded and leaned forward slightly, her elbows resting on the grubby Formica table top. “Go on,” she murmured, and it took Iyere a few moments to recognise the look on her face; it was the same avidity, she realised, that Ivie would wear on the days that her lips were too cracked, her throat too sore to eat anything of substance. On those days, she liked to sit and watch Iyere eat, her eyes tracing the column of Iyere’s throat as she swallowed, and though Iyere hated it, hated the feeling of being consumed by her sister’s gaze, she allowed it each time.

“Grief has skinned me,” Iyere repeated, “but I think that maybe you might change that.” Iyere didn’t know she meant to say it until she did, but she was struck by the rightness as she uttered the words.

“I think,” Essy said, setting her mug down with a smirk, “that you might be overestimating the restorative powers of a one-night stand.”

Then they went outside to Essy’s back garden, the night lining their skins and their lungs smoky with petrichor. Iyere’s idea; she had half remembered something about a meteor shower tonight and so she had suggested they go out and look.

“The Perseids,” Essy sighed, her eyes scanning the skies as if she could see things that Iyere couldn’t, her gaze somehow able to penetrate the light pollution and constant cloud that hugged this part of the Earth’s atmosphere, to reach the stuttering trail of meteors shaking themselves free of comets.

Iyere knew fuck all about astronomy but she had managed to watch half an episode of the Sky at Night once, and so she’d remembered that shooting stars weren’t even stars at all, just bits of rock, debris and dust burning up as they tore through the atmosphere, blazing themselves into nothing, mostly gone before they could hit the ground.

Iyere took a deep breath so she could exhale her daughter’s name. She sensed Essy shift as she listened. Iyere had noticed this about the woman; she liked to listen with her whole body as if words were vibrations that she needed to catch and recalibrate before she could issue the right speech in return.

“What’s your favourite fairy tale?” Iyere whispered.

Essy shook her head, her eyes gleaming suddenly. “People don’t remember my favourites the way they used to. Some do, but not like before. Maybe not even you, Professor,” she said, her already raspy voice further thickened by a sudden emotion Iyere couldn’t decipher.

Iyere watched the way Essy’s right hand was working, as if she were still making that roulette ball dance through her fingers and without giving herself the chance to second guess, Iyere grabbed those fingers and entwined them with her own, before bringing their joined hands up to her mouth.

“Let’s go back inside,” Iyere said, the words damp against Essy’s skin.

“What now?” Essy said, her hint of a smile unfurling into another grin when she saw Iyere’s sudden bashfulness. “What are you after? Something new for the scrapbook?”

“I’ve been with women before,” Iyere replied, allowing a mild dart of irritation to colour her voice.

“No doubt,” Essy nodded, her gaze pinning Iyere where she stood. “But you haven’t been with me.” She was silent for several long seconds, scanning Iyere’s face while the latter held her breath, scared at the thought of being dismissed, but equally scared of the thought of getting what she was so clumsily asking for.

Essy shifted the hand that was still in Iyere’s grasp so that she could trace a light finger across Iyere’s cheekbone, leaving a tingling warmth in its wake. “You said grief had skinned you…I guess we’ll see.”

“How will we see?”

Essy shook her head slowly. “I’ll need an offering.”

“Alright,” Iyere said, Essy’s hand cupping her face by now, her thumb resting at the corner of her mouth and so she turned her head slightly so she could lick it, kiss it, envelop its oddly nutty sweetness in the dark warmth of her mouth for just a second and Essy smiled, delighted and surprised at Iyere’s fleeting boldness. “Alright,” she repeated, as Essy gently rubbed a stripe of wetness along Iyere’s jaw.

 

 

Essy’s bedroom was quiet, teased with traces of moonlight, and time went elsewhere.

The bed was a mess of sheets and Iyere knew that Essy’s skin was the warmest she had ever touched, heat radiating from its every inch.

Things were different in this kind of darkness; the gleam of her knees on either side of Essy’s head like the curve of smooth rocks breaching the surface of a pond. The curl of Essy’s back as she writhed above her was like the roll of a night ocean and when they kissed, it was sugar and salt on their tongues.

Essy liked to stop and watch whenever she made Iyere come, the look on her face unreadable as she scanned the other woman’s. Iyere never knew what she was looking for but when she found it, there would be a half smile and then she would lower her head and give soft little licks, lapping at the beads of sweat on Iyere’s stomach, or a tear collected in the curve of an ear, or the dampness between her legs, and this is what she had meant, Iyere realised in a half-dazed wonder, when she had said she required an offering.

Essy’s attention was relentless, of a kind that didn’t care if the recipient could bear it or not and there were times Iyere was not sure she could bear it, the sensations so thick that they seemed to slow her breath and blood. Each time she gasped, it was half a show of delight and half a reminder for her lungs to keep working, and she would tear her eyes away from Essy’s penetrating gaze to the window, searching for the night sky with its trails of bruised clouds making distant cathedrals.

Her blood was still thundering in her ears when Essy sat up, her gaze solemn as she wiped wetness from her mouth. She stroked Iyere’s face with the back of her hand and then she placed a cool palm on the centre of her stomach and pressed down firmly. Iyere jolted immediately, her mind transported to a sunlit afternoon in a cemetery when she’d sat by Ofure’s grave after all the mourners had gone, save for Ivie. Ivie who had stood and watched Iyere as she’d sat by the mound of freshly turned over earth and dug her hands, wrist deep, into its coolness as she cried. Iyere had made unintelligible sounds that came from a place within that she had never known of, that she in fact suspected had not even existed until Ofure’s death had torn her open somewhere, concealed claw marks that remained deep and bleeding.

Essy removed her hand and Iyere drew an agonised gasp of breath, sitting up and scrambling away until her back was pressed against the headboard. “What did you—”

“You gave an offering, I accepted, so…you get another spin of the wheel,” Essy said.

Iyere stared at her blankly. “What are—”

“You know what,” Essy said. “And you know how.”

And as she said it, Iyere realised this was true. Maybe part of her had realised it from the moment Essy had spoken of crossroads, because Iyere had heard of Essy’s kind in half-remembered stories from her aunt. While the old woman had called her by a different name, a different gender, Iyere recalled a couple of salient facts: a bringer of mischief and chaos in the guise of teaching a lesson.

This is how I feed, Essy had said.

Iyere had fed her and now Essy would give thanks by giving her a choice.

“I’m sorry about just now,” Essy said, gesturing to her stomach. “I had to see what it is that you really want. People tend to lie, even at times like these. Especially times like these. It’s strange, the way your kind does that. Even if it means you fuck up your chances.”

“A chance to…Ofure?” Iyere stammered. “Back here with me?”

“Ofure,” Essy said. “Although you should know that death has a scent.”

“I wouldn’t care.”

“Hmm,” Essy smiled thinly. “That’s what they all say. More importantly, death will not be denied, which means we’d have to make a trade. No such thing as something for nothing after all. If Ofure comes back, someone else has to take her place.”

“Someone else would have to die?”

“And it can’t be you,” Essy said quickly. “Can’t be some random either. Has to be your blood, or close to it. Hey,” Essy continued, raising her hands in supplication. “I don’t make the rules. But I get them. I mean, if there’s no skin in the game, are you really even playing?”

“No one would make that choice,” Iyere said, her gaze fixed on the knot she had made of her hands in her lap. She was dreaming, she decided. She was dreaming and any minute now she would wake up.

“You’d be surprised at what people would do,” Essy replied, her voice suddenly flat, her gaze dull and Iyere remembered the fevered nightmare of the days just after Ofure had died; all the bargains she had tried to make with indifferent gods for just a second of grace. Iyere would have traded anything and anyone, a whole world perhaps, for one moment of Ofure’s breath against her face, or the press of her chubby arms around Iyere’s leg.

But the only person she had to give up was Ivie.

And she’s sick anyway.

Iyere winced, trying to dampen the sharp voice inside of her.

Ofure was meant to have had so much more time, and if Ivie herself could choose, wouldn’t she want the same thing, in fact, hadn’t she said (albeit when her tumour was still a blossoming secret, even to her) that if she could change places with Ofure, she would?

You’re dreaming, she reminded herself, but her heart was weighing options all the same. If such a choice were even possible, she understood that one couldn’t make it without being diminished, without being punished in some way. No doubt there was a further, final offering that Essy was eager to collect?

“Why me?” Iyere asked, understanding now that it had been Essy who had chosen her tonight.

“Because,” Essy shrugged. “Because out of all the people there, I could tell that yours would taste the sweetest.”

It would be easier at night, Iyere realised, for Essy to find what she needed; people were so much more vulnerable during these hours, hearts tilted so they could spill more easily, wounds so much more visible in the right kind of light.

What Iyere wanted was both of them; Ofure on her lap and Ivie by her side with the years stretching out ahead for all three of them like open roads. But if she had to choose, how to choose? After all, her aunt would always end her stories with the words ‘you can’t out trick a trickster god.’

You could refuse the bet, Iyere reminded herself. You could walk away from the table for once, before you lose what you can ill afford to.

But Iyere knew that she had been maimed by her daughter’s death, grief skinned as Essy now knew, and the existence Iyere had experienced since then was for the most part in a half-light, in half measures, the half-life of her devotion to Ofure one of the few things that allowed her to stand.

And yet, that memory of the afternoon in the cemetery, which had stretched into the evening, then an all-night vigil, Ivie with her the whole time. The following morning had been fresh with dewdrops, making their funeral clothes damp. The spring of grass blades beneath her hands. Hearing the growing tangle of birdsong as her ears became re-accustomed to sound. The weight of Ivie as she shifted, placing her head in Iyere’s lap. The last of the night’s thin trails fading from the sky, taking with it the strange gravity that made hearts tilt. Iyere had felt her own heart quiver and shift as it tried to right itself, but she hadn’t wanted to let it, had wanted it to remain forever tilted, always on the edge of spilling with tales of we loved her, she loved us and the daylight can’t take back what is ours.

What was the lesson, Iyere wondered?

Was it to seize second chances no matter the cost, or was it that your life simply had to be lived, tragedies and all, to make it complete?

Iyere, you’re just dreaming, she told herself again.

But what if I’m not?

“Would I remember any of this?” Iyere asked. “I mean, if I made a choice, how would it work? And would I know what I had done?”

Essy just stared at her, her gaze implacable, and so Iyere took a deep breath, and decided.