You Will Notice That Hallways Are Painted (short story) Angela Meyer Smashwords edition Copyright 2011 Angela Meyer http://blogs.crikey.com.au/literaryminded A small room made of stone that is nonetheless warm She is sitting on the floor when the counselor brings in her new roommate. He is tall and brown-skinned and has a jacket wrapped up between his arms that are in front of him. Just a whiff of his skin and it’s all summer sweat and mango hands and Ava experiences a strong, familiar pull in her groin. ‘Ava, this is Monty, he’ll be taking Heidi’s old bed,’ says Counselor Dean, and Monty’s hand lifts politely. ‘Welcome,’ she says. Strange, that they had given her a man. Maybe they thought she was gay after the last one, after the thing that got Heidi moved to another ward. She isn’t sure sex is out of bounds anyway – it’s never spoken about. Perhaps changing up the sexes of her roommates is all part of her individual experiment. But what’s his? Monty takes his bag from Dean, she leaves, and he begins to unload a few belongings on his bed. Ava peers out at the Intelligence. You never did know when someone or something was watching from that giant stone tower (with rings of tinted windows) in the centre. ‘So – what you in for?’ Monty turns and sits on his bed, fumbling with a small plastic toy of a skeleton. ‘Ah, this. I don’t know if I can talk about it yet. I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed.’ When he speaks she suspects he would sing well. ‘See, only people in here would use the word overwhelmed for how they were feeling.’ She sits up on her bed to be equal with him, crossing her black leggings so her red pleated skirt fans out. ‘I’m overtly overabundant.’ ‘What?’ ‘My sentence.’ She searches the skin on his neck, those brown eyes – was he Thai? Vietnamese? Strong, almost hairless arms. ‘Overt abundance.’ ‘Oh, I… what does that mean?’ ‘I like people,’ she grins, ‘too much and too often.’ ‘Yes, that must be a problem.’ ‘So they say.’ ‘I like my fiancée.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘I suppose I’ve ruined my chances… to save for the ceremony.’ His head is down, and then he looks up and his eyes burn holes through her. Ava uncomfortably shifts all the hot parts around. ‘What are you doing here? You seem to subscribe, brother.’ But then Monty pulls a flask from his bag and starts unscrewing the cap. ‘Oh.’ ‘My sentence is “highly inadequate”.’ ‘Messy.’ Experiment: the office Counselor Dean, in charge of their wing, leads them down metal stairs to a room which must take up one whole wing. Today it looks like a semi-partitioned office. The lights are so bright they make Ava’s head heavy. She’d avoided these lights, out there. Her parents had been loud, but just slid in under the radar of socially appropriate. When she got into acting, dance, performance poetry, they warned her of diminishing crowds for sentimental works. When she cried in public for feeling the wind like a kiss on her skin she was taken in for her interview. Monty’s lips are tight but he sits at his appointed desk, obedient and familiar. He told Ava last night about Verna, his fiancée, thin and white with one tattoo in a hidden place. Counselor Alex is running the office experiment. He’s dressed in army greens, with a long leather whip protruding from under a stubby arm. Counselor Dean looks on, rapt, as Alex instructs the order of emails and phonecalls. Dean is a curvy woman, like Ava, with a tiny waist nipped in by a leather belt. The counselors always wear one colour, or one pattern, all over. Dean catches Ava’s eye and gives a curious smile, one hand tickling her own thigh. Ava’s tongue darts out and boldly curls her lip, and the mutual attraction is satisfied. It hasn’t been a counselor yet, and she wonders what trouble she could get in to. But it might save her from ever being separated from Monty. (Though she feels if she touched him, she would burn up to nothing.) ‘Any emails sent or forwarded inter-office must balance professionalism and coping-banter. The Intelligence will accept no absoluteness either way. There will be no period of complete distraction, nor will there be a hardcore eight-hour stretch of concentration. The workaholic is vulnerable to disease. In five minutes, we will begin. Your tasks are on the desktop. Power up.’ Ava touches her screen, still squirming under the lights, wishing for grass to roll in or even a metal wall on which to rest her hot forehead. She is soon too cold in the air-conditioning. She takes her hair out at least to cover her neck and when Dean comes past she subtly fingers one dark strand, almost pulling. It is a long night, one that is full of longing Ava is wondering when Dean will come as she sips at Monty’s flask. They are sprawled on the floor in front of their beds and talking like brother and sister. Her foot is three centimetres away from his and there are invisible electric strings. Her skirt is parted slightly, but he is too polite to look. ‘You seemed okay today.’ ‘I worked corporate,’ he says. ‘But I have a degree in entomology. I’m interested in insects.’ ‘What the hell for?’ ‘They’re small.’ ‘Why not bacteria?’ ‘Yeah, interested in bacteria too. Very small, yes. But bugs can be colourful or hairy and there are many different types. There are over 330,000 species of beetle alone. Don’t even get me started on the Orthoptera.’ Bugs crawl on skin, Ava thinks. She imagines the tiny fingers of bugs on his arms, she imagines the flies when you die and she realises how she feels about him dying and where did all this depth in her stomach come from? ‘You okay?’ he asks. And the concern is too much. She has to turn away. ‘Orthoptera?’ ‘Grasshoppers and crickets.’ ‘How’s poor Paul today?’ ‘Totally.’ ‘Oh, man. I mean, I felt shit, like I’d never get used to it, but he only lasted an hour.’ ‘Not even that.’ Paul, who looked like a leg of ham with a fist around the top, had only ever worked in the dark before, he said, in the dark, and he writhed on the floor until they put him in the Big Space. The Big Space’ll learn him, they thought. Ava had been there once, when she got cranky at eating the same lentil patty burger (with no sauce, mind you) after four days. They lead you into a bright, gaping hall where every corner is clear, but after ten minutes you’re still squinting into the corners wondering what else there might be. You’re forced to sit in the middle and far, far above, windows surround it so you can’t be sure where the Intelligence is and when they are watching. Ava’s thoughts naturally strayed to comforting and pleasing herself from the build-up of abundance. Even the thought of them watching made her want to do it. But she thought this was her exact problem and the one they would keep her here for, so she resisted and instead scratched at the floor as though it were her arms. Later, in their small space, Monty lay facing the wall and she stared at his head wondering, wondering at the thoughts, and she stared at the back of his neck, curved gently, and his strong and slender back, encased in a singlet. She had seen it just once. There was a mole on his left shoulder blade and she wanted to put her tongue on it. ‘Hey Monty, what’s it called when grasshoppers sing?’ ‘Stridulation. Achieved by rubbing parts of their bodies together.’ ‘I like that.’ The interview, or the trial, as it may be called ‘I’m aware that you have a fungal problem. How do you feel about this?’ ‘Well, embarrassed I guess.’ The boy shed tears that echoed loudly in the Big Space and the next two people waiting caught them in their net of nerves. Ava thought the boy looked like the one she’d had a threesome with two weeks before, but he didn’t have a fungal problem. Because the boy was crying and he wasn’t defiant or rational about his situation the Head Counselor who looked like a prawn with a wig on threw down his hammer and it also echoed in the Big Space. Ava didn’t cry but she flirted with the prawn and her strap fell down. She imagined giving him a tight, pink erection which would strain against his head-to-toe paleness and perhaps the fact that she did meant she was in here. She cried later but then realised she was amongst all the misfits and oddballs of the state. How easy it would be to love so many of them. She’d had the beginning of a thought about what was in Monty’s pants and she got so turned on she only had to shift a little forward to bite down on her lips in pleasure. She tried to banish the thought, even though she’d never tried before. With him it was just too much. Monty’s visitors They took away their pens and paper one week but Ava was finding a way to write on the white tabletops of the cafeteria in her own blood when Monty’s parents and the precious Verna came in. They were led in by Dean and sat in a corner. One wall of the cafeteria was completely open and you could see Ward F across the air, with the Intelligence tower in the middle. She was sure the Intelligence very closely recorded how you acted around visitors. She imagined eyes and ears and lenses and amplifiers all over the tower walls. She sat with the plastic knife and extended her hearing too. ‘Are they treating you well? Have they said you’ll come out of it?’ Monty. Looking down at the floor. Monty. Looking up at Verna, who touches his short dark hair, a circular motion. ‘It’s okay, so far. Hard.’ ‘Poor baby,’ said Verna. ‘Have they said anything about your progress?’ his mum asks. ‘No.’ He seems exhausted by the visit, disappointed with himself. Certain inadequacy. His father says: ‘You don’t want to be here forever, do you?’ And Monty gives him a look. ‘Of course he doesn’t, Alec.’ His father is light and his mother is the Vietnamese one. There is no accent. They are dressed adequately. Verna is wearing a brown dress with a bow. Vintage? Most people buy recycled clothes now, but some still strive for a look. A look that means, what? And her small hand is in his and they look at each other and Ava feels stupid for her emotions and she walks away leaving a dribbled O on the table. Cooking is not her forte Paul’s feet kinda smell but his shaky little fingers are attentive and Ava imagines he’d be a grateful lover as she watches him chopping the carrot. She’s been partnered up with him for the food exercise, and she wonders why they gave him knife duty as the rumour is, he’s suicidal. All part of the experiment, she supposes. All part of the recovery. Each mini-kitchen is opened out to the centre, so the Intelligence can watch, but the patients can’t see what the other duos are doing. They will swap meals with the duo next door and the counselors will also taste the food. The rules are getting harsher: they cannot drop any cutlery, they cannot spill any food, they will not waste a thing, and it must taste good. Ava cannot stand any longer the thought of Paul’s cock jiggling up and down in his pants as he slices the carrot and she comes around behind him and slips her hand over the front of his pants. He gasps and trembles, but does not drop the knife. He turns. ‘Ava, we can’t.’ ‘Just five minutes.’ ‘We’ll get put in the Big Space. We’ll never, oh God.’ Because his belt was already undone and the sounds he made when she put her mouth on him were worth a day in the Big Space. She loved nothing more than this, the moment of absolute pleasure. The way Paul sucked in his breath and pushed harder into her mouth, completely unable to resist, momentarily oblivious to anything but the ache and burn and the dizzy tingle. Dean pushed the door open just as Paul’s eyes exploded with pleasure behind steamed-up glasses and Ava swallowed before she turned around, covering him while he fumbled with his clothing. ‘Thank you, you lovely, lovely thing,’ his breath whispered onto her neck. Dean’s lips were pink, and Ava smiled at her. ‘We’re just doing the salad, won’t be long.’ Dean said: ‘Paul, Big Space.’ ‘But Counselor – it was my fault…’ ‘I said, Paul will go to the Big Space.’ ‘For how long?’ Paul asked, now trembling behind her in a different way. ‘Two days. When you’re done here.’ Dean walked out. Paul returned to the carrots. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I think I might love you, or something.’ He wasn’t looking up. ‘Well, I think I love Monty. I’m sorry.’ And the o in love, when she said it, was longer and deeper than any time she’d said it before. Soul brother Monty could sing. He whistled and sang sailor ditties and Disney songs like ‘The Bear Necessities’ and musical numbers like ‘Good Morning’. ‘We could write a musical about this place. With your acting background, and my, well, we just should. There could be bugs in it.’ ‘Solo numbers in the Big Space.’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘I put Paul in the Big Space today.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I wonder what you might think of me.’ ‘Were you… amorous towards him?’ ‘You could say that.’ Monty licked his lips and then, the strangest thing, he put his hand on her thigh. ‘You okay?’ She stared at it, wanting to fold over it completely, like origami. ‘What are you going to do when you get out?’ she asks. ‘Drink myself to death, or something.’ ‘Leaving Las Vegas style?’ ‘Yeah.’ This was probably only the second of admissions of a bleak but desired future without someone in a brown vintage dress with a bow. ‘I hope you don’t, or – I wish I could do it with you.’ They look into each other, and then away. ‘I don’t feel like I’ve changed at all. I haven’t figured out what they want yet.’ ‘Me neither.’ They look at the tower at the same time. ‘Reckon they’re watching right now?’ ‘For sure.’ Later that evening when she is staring at his back and the world has gone dark and quiet and she is uselessly throbbing in all directions, Dean appears at the bars. Ava puts down the hair she’s been fingering that she found on the toilet room floor, and sits up quietly. Monty isn’t breathing too deeply, and she knows they both don’t sleep well, but a part of her wants him to hear it anyway. To hear it, to think about her in that way, even just for a moment. Dean unbuttons her fly, slides down her zipper and cups the area in a cruel loveheart. Ava stands and walks over to her. Dean’s hand slips confidently up under Ava’s slip and finds her sticky and open. She closes her eyes and thinks of Monty’s eyes, the second they turn away from her; his neck, the mole on his back, and his ankles, three centimeters away from hers. She hears his voice in her head, singing of voodoo men and bugs and lovers left on islands. She reaches her own fingers out, politely, to the attractive older woman. She finds her lips through the bars. What would they do to her? From the back, and in the dark, would she get away with this? Did the Intelligence allow this in their idea of a healthy balance? Was it part of the experiment? Ava’s moan is high and sad and she slides back into her bed, released from nothing. Painting hallways Long hallways and cement stairwells are painted, says Counselor Alex, in everyday life. This one has a mirror for a ceiling so the Intelligence can watch. It is indeed long and made of cement and each patient has a large bucket and a brush and roller. The colour is pastel blue, which will remind them of a calm sky, and Ava and Monty start to paint back-to-back. He says sorry every time they touch and she says, ‘If you say it once more I’ll beat you up.’ And then they keep laughing when they touch because he almost says it and stops himself. She really just wants to sit on the floor and watch the motion of his arms, but at least the physicality of the job burns off some of the tension. ‘Wonder where Dean is?’ she says, and Monty ‘hmmm’s in a way she knows he heard it all. Someone else pipes in and says she was moved to another wing. Ava feels again the pang of guilt and wonders how she can stop being a magnet for attraction and trouble. It is one of the many reasons she hasn’t tried to slip into Monty’s bed. He is the most difficult resistance she’s ever faced, besides the fact she feels sure she would spontaneously combust, and she is trying so hard to be happy for his life outside. How long has it been, though, since he’s talked about Verna? They bump again and everyone is starting to giggle more because of the fumes, and then Ava realises how contained they are and how tight her chest feels. ‘Hey,’ Monty says, distracting her on the verge. ‘Look.’ He picks up a small gaudy green beetle on his finger. So gentle, so fascinated. He sings: ‘I think a bug flew in my eye, was it a beetle, was it a fly? There’s also a spider in my cider, what a hairy blighter (beetles are nicer). I think an eye flew in my fly, oh cider! I’ve had too much spider.’ Then he smiles right into her eyes and she’s dizzy with all of it. ‘What’s holding you up there?’ Counselor Alex asks, today in a head-to-toe pastel blue safari suit. ‘Nothing Counselor.’ Monty puts the beetle on his arm, but just two seconds later is recoiling on the floor as Alex whips the little critter from him. Alex makes it a shell on the cold stone floor. Alex makes everyone get on with the job, but soon Ava faints, her wrists spilling paint beads all over the floor. Later they talk about galaxies ‘Why do they let you have it?’ she asks, as he sips deeper from the flask. ‘I don’t know, Ava, why do they let you get away with fucking around?’ She looks at the floor. ‘Can I have some?’ ‘Only in moderation.’ He grins. ‘Fuck off.’ They drink too much and Ava’s movements are loose and she comes over to his side of the room and sits beside him. She wants to nuzzle her head into his clavicle. ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ she says. He sits the drink down. ‘That’s it.’ ‘What?’ ‘Don’t you see? That’s the point!’ He sits up straight. He stares into her. ‘They want you to realise that you have no control. We never know when they’re going to take away my flask, or punish you or the person you’ve been with, or how we’re supposed to perform in the experiments. They want us to be okay with not knowing.’ ‘Fuck. Maybe. I don’t know.’ ‘See!’ ‘But now that we know, right now, that we don’t know what’s going to happen, what will happen to us?’ They peer over at the tower. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘We haven’t accepted it though, really, have we? Even though we know?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Sometimes the toilet door is closed for a long time and she imagines what he might be doing, and if he might, even a little bit, be thinking of her. She has to push the thought deep down because it fills her up with desire and she has to bang her skin against the stone wall. She’s seen him looking at her bruises but he’s never asked. He has things like that too. But this night, just as she’s drifting, she sees movement at his back and his upper arm. The sheets are pulled around him and it takes all her strength not to pounce like an animal upon him. She slips her hand below and knows it will take only the slightest touch. She waits until she hears a strangled sigh, almost like a cough, and his body crunches up into itself, and then her own breath of sweetness is expelled. Surprisingly, he rolls over. ‘Goodnight.’ ‘Goodnight.’ They write a musical together about the place In the musical, Paul is the main character, and he is there for many years and participates in experiments and has much time alone in the Big Space until he accidentally steps on a bug and realises in that instant that he has no control. The Intelligence lets him out and he accepts a small apartment and a job in nanotech pharmaceutical implant testing. The first implant they test on him makes him a super (monogamous) sex machine and then the second one reacts badly with his biology and he melts on the first of January when it is exactly 47 degrees celsius. Ava and Monty know it’s is a bit silly but they accept this fact, and they read it and perform the songs a little for Paul (the ones they’ve made and borrowed a bit of a tune for) and he thinks it’s the greatest. He is mostly staring at Ava and Ava is watching what Monty does. No control Counselors Alex and Dean, and the prawn with the wig on, are standing around her and Ava is in a chair with a high back made of dark wood. They hand her a black telephone and tell her to call her parents and tell them she is going home. Ava doesn’t ask why, and it is precisely because of this that she is going home. Ava stares at Monty across the cold floor of their room. He is humming one of their musical numbers. ‘They’ve been watching us alright.’ ‘Hmm?’ ‘I’m going.’ ‘Oh.’ The look of sadness doesn’t surprise her. But it is nothing to what she has pushed down inside herself. ‘I didn’t realise I’d accepted it, but I guess I have.’ He doesn’t ask what ‘it’ is. She walks over to his bed. She has thought for a long time about what it would be like to have the sweetest kiss in the world – the kind where your lips only have to touch and their tiny throat-moan sends reverberations down through your heart to your pubic bone. And when the insides of your mouth come together you think you will never eat again because nothing could ever compare to the taste. She leans in to hold him and his lips come into her cheek, softly, like the tickle of a beetle. She can feel his breath on her neck. She pulls away. Tomorrow she will be gone.