CLEANER: Chapter Six - Part Eighteen

DAHLIA 

What did I hate most about this - this awful new status quo? 

That Melissa had thrown off her cloak and unmasked herself as someone manipulative and even cruel, trying to use me to achieve only what she wanted? 

That she had told me how trapped I already was in her cast-off persona? 

That she had threatened to use all my stolen resources to keep me stuck and never let me be myself again? 

Or that she was fundamentally right? That her actions didn't matter? That I had long since trapped myself like this? 

I did hate the fact that she had been so unkind. I couldn't hold back that thought I: my new identity as being real, however close the contrary memories were in functional time. Once upon a time, with my wealth all about me, my life could have been perceived as a great flotilla of white sail boats, stretching up the river toward the sea, untethered; unhindered by any practicalities or concerns. 

But there had been so many disruptions and distortions of that; my brother's and parents deaths,' the collapse if my career... With that fleet breaking up, Melissa had been the only person standing back on the last remaining raft, tossing me a life ring tied to a rope while the rest of the people in my life had been turned away from me. And it didn't matter that the name on the ring said HMS INSANITY, I was drowning - I had been for years - and she was there to save me. 

How could that entire save have been a fallacy? Had she really been plotting against me all this time? Surely that wasn't possible, though from her own words there seemed no other possible interpretation. 

Melissa couldn't have planned it all - it was me that approached her in the first place about swapping - but it seemed as though she had gone on pressing; encouraging me when I faltered and pushing me toward what she presumably hoped was an inexorable conclusion: where I would end up surrendering my identity in its entirety. 

Was that what she had meant in her tirade? It was so confusing to me now, to leech out the shocking truth from the expected fiction. 

How long had she been plotting actively to usurp me? And how did I feel about that? 

Because it was more likely that I felt I that I ought to be angry than that I actually was. 

This was what I had wanted, deep down, after all. 

From the beginning. It was what I had wanted. 

I could pretend that wasn't so, but who would I be pretending it to? There was only me and the restaurant owner here and he didn't care as long as I paid for my food and ate up in good time. 

He set my plate down on the table and politely withdrew. The glistening meat looked (and smelled) even more delicious than it had in the menu, drawing instant moisture from my salivary glands. God, I wanted it so badly. 

How could I go back to being Dahlia? Surely I was too far gone now. 

I tucked in, loving the taste and the texture so much. It was delectable. I gobbled at it, letting each chunk enter and fill my mouth, the juices seeping into my every crevice. How could I have ever let food retain the distance it had for me, all my life? Playing out the part of a dainty sparrow-like model simply wasn't me. This was me; this voraciousness; this desperation to fill and fill the ever-gaping maw of my squirming, smiling mouth, as I struggled to cram as much as I could into what felt like the little time I had. 

Was this how gluttons the world over felt? That there really was a limit... To the time... To the resources... To the health? 

Suck it in! Devour! Before it was too late! A netted curtain laid across my life of struggles and stresses, blending one feature into the next such that there was little to no definition left; no stress; no conflict. No horror. 

The restaurateur produced more cider, sweat gliding down his curling cheeks as he mumbled supplication. I accepted, asking for mayonnaise and pointing artlessly at a picture of some juicy garlic bread in the side order section of the menu.  His smile widened and he went to go fetch. I kept tucking in. 

Now when I thought of Melissa, I felt a strange gust of that old wantonness. I felt the charge of arousal. It shocked me; especially with the other evocacies that had come to light in the intervening months since that had been what it had all been about. It made me stop with the next greasy chunk resting on my lower lip, gazing away down the street, questioning myself and my own quest; where I was meant for be going; who I was meant to be travelling with. 

It was a revelation, suddenly as impactive as anything else that had happened, tantamount to something earth-shattering within me. 

Because surely I was doing something now that Mlissa had fallen into too when she had entered my room. 

Both of us were victims of it. I could see that now so blatantly, but especially for me. 

This - all of this - the decision of what to happen next - what our lives would become. 

It had nothing to do with the other person and their needs or desires. It couldn't have. It shouldn't have. Our smouldering destinies should never be allowed to be determined by any such casual acquaintance; perhaps even beyond that and into the deepest kind of intimacy. 

It wasn't up to Melissa to determine my future any more than it was up to me to determine hers. 

We were two individuals on this earth, joined, but also far, far more separate. It was that distinction that needed to stay the path for us now, now the ever-entangling complication of our connections and pasts. 

"My God!" 

I clapped my hand round my mouth. 

It was all so clear to me now. So clear. 

I set my knife and fork down. I emptied the first glass of cider. 

I reached up and took hold of my thick pebble glasses and took them off, lowering them to the table. 

With my eyes closed, I lay them on the table to the side of my place and pushed gently back in my chair. I raised my head and looked up onto the street, knowing exactly what... exactly who I would see... understanding now about that perfect, swirling synchronicity that was around us at all times. 

And through the tears and blur of my immaculately maculate vision, I saw her; the woman I knew I would. 

Melissa; cheeks flushed, tears in her own eyes, her gaze bright and questing; yearning; desperate and frighteningly naive in its openness. 

She saw me too and we shared a quietness, and then, with a gesture, I drew her on into the cafe.