Her Name was Lola
Part 3By Steve Finbow
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Click here to read from Part 1
He didn’t expect to hear from her again but on the following Wednesday at 4pm he received a text saying, ‘Finished. Had shit day. Want to meet?’ To his surprise he texted back. ‘Yeah, but not POW. How about Pembroke?’ She replied ‘Perfect. See you in 10.’ ‘Shit,’ he thought, ‘I won’t have time to read.’ He grabbed a book, Colm Toibin’s The Master and headed to the pub. He bought his drink and a bottle of house red and sat at the back of the pub. The music was loud – drum and bass – he opened his book and as he did so Lola arrived. Her hair was down and windswept and she smiled at him. Her eyes filled with tears as she took the chair opposite. He got up and she bent to kiss him on the lips and he sat back down happy he had agreed to meet her. She told him of her day, how the director was a bastard, about the prosthetic limbs she had to wear, and about the struggle she would have getting into her costume if she carried on eating and drinking too much. He told her that a company was interested in publishing a book of his short stories and that he had to get home early as he had a deadline of midnight for an article he was writing on yachts. She drank quite heavily and their conversation was easy and flowed and he enjoyed himself. At nine, she told him she had to leave as she wanted to get up early for rehearsals, she seemed to have forgotten about his deadline, and so had he, and she said:
‘The name of the road where I live is King Arthur’s – do you know it?'
‘King Henry’s you mean. Yes,’ he said, and pointed.’ Right behind you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shit. I’ve been walking miles to get there.’
‘Want me to walk you home?’
‘That would be nice.’
They left the pub and this time she took his hand. Her fingers were slender and they interlaced with his. He preferred holding hands the other way, or the only other way he could think of, palm against palm; but she had taken the initiative and he liked the feel of her bones against his and he imagined their architecture.
‘There it is,’ she said. ‘By that Foxtons sign.’
‘Is Fred home?’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
They reached the sign and stood and he let her fingers drop from his and he said:
‘So. Wanna meet later in the week?’
‘Yeah, but I’ll have to let you know. I’m not sure when we’re rehearsing.’
‘OK. Text me,’ he said.
‘I will.’
She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips and lingered there. He put his arm around her waist and she put her arms around his neck, it was only then that he realised they were the same height. He looked her in the eyes and then tilted his head. They kissed for a long time, he bit her top lip gently and slid his tongue into the exquisite kiln of her mouth, she wound it in her tongue, his hand was beneath her T-shirt and he uncupped one of her breasts from her bra and caressed the nipple with his thumb, her breasts were firm and larger than he had imagined, his other hand moved down the inside of her jeans – she was not wearing panties and he stroked her ass which was equally firm, she pulled back, looked at him and then kissed him again a little more fiercely, and he moved his hand around to the side of her jeans, feeling her hips, and then round further and he could feel the inside of her pelvic bone, and then they toppled and were on the pavement and he was on top of her in the middle of a street in the neighbourhood where he lived and she laughed and said:
‘I’ve had too much to drink.’
He got up and helped her to her feet.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It was me who fell,’ she said.
‘Sorry,' he said.
‘I gotta go.’
‘Text me.’
She kissed him on the lips.
He turned and walked away.
‘Sweet dreams,’ she called.
‘And you,’ he said, feeling the ache of his erection.
She texted him a week later, and he had spent that time working hard on a series of short stories and although the ache had subsided, just, he hadn’t really thought of her in that way but enjoyed her company and thought she was interesting, intelligent, and funny. He believed half of what she told him but the half he did believe was either well practised half-truths or the truth romanticised, and what was wrong with that? After all, it was what he did for a living. He could invent these stories, with little digression from the truth, from his own background. At twenty, these days, you had to appear worldly, slightly different from the rest, and her tales of drug-taking, overeating, attempted anorexia, and sex were urban tales. She said her favourite book was Lolita, and they talked about this, and later he bought her an annotated copy and gave her his paperback of The Enchanter. And he thought of Humbert and Quimby and their nameless predecessor and he then thought of her ass, and he had to spell it thus, as it was an American ass, not a skinny English arse; it was firm and powerful and abrupt and he then remembered something she said one night…
‘I will conquer the world with my ass.’
...and it had made him laugh out loud and he never laughed out loud. She had also said that last summer in the Vineyard she had bought a Kinder egg and found within it a figure of death, and the figure of death walked and left tiny prints in its wake, tracks that looked like they’d been left by chickens. From then on, he could no longer picture death other than as some gigantic farmyard bird with wings for scythes and beady eyes that looked deep into his soul; that or death was wedged into a small cage, beakless, unfeathered, reeking.
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Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2005 Me Three
