Obsessed by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Author:Rachel Kramer Bussel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2011-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

She thinks of Dan as “the boy” because that’s how she first knew him: the boy busking in the long subway underneath King’s Cross Station, his music a daily theme song to her evening commute. Because she can’t play an instrument, she could never tell if he was any good. All she knew, even back then, was that his music made her soul unclench. His voice was chocolate and velvet, but not so special that he’d ever be a stage sensation. It worked on her, though. From time to time, she dropped coins in his guitar case, and fancied herself a patron of the arts. Most times, she was more broke than her City suit implied and took pleasure in his songs with no recompense.

In early January, when frozen rain hammered down for days on end, turning into black slush underfoot, she noticed, unsettled, that the boy wasn’t there to serenade her out of London with Bob Dylan covers. She suspected he’d been missing for a few days before she noticed.

Was she worried? She doesn’t know, but she fancies now that she did fret for a while. It must have been the unconscious worry, she thinks, that made her notice him in the Starbucks queue upstairs and made her bold enough to offer him a drink.

His spoken voice had safe, middle-class vowels, and instead of the hipster coffee she’d expected to pay for, he asked for a mug of tea.

They talked about London: a Victorian monster hiding still behind the city of air and glass. They talked about the bewilderment of growing up; she was his elder by two years, but he had walked out of the parental home when she still had a monthly allowance, and so her seniority didn’t count for much. They probed the soft edges of getting-to-know-you topics, and continued to do this over extravagant burgers in the freezing St. Pancras terminal. Marian forgot to be embarrassed by her appetite. She took pleasure in watching the boy fold fat fries into his mouth. When finally she suggested that it was time she took herself home to bed, he said, “My bed is nearer.”

Although his voice rose at the end, making it sound like a question, there was no question in her mind that his bed was where she wanted to be.

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