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He gets the top over his head, he drops it to the floor, I drop the jumper and I push the towel towards him.
I push the towel up against his chest, and I feel a sudden warmth, I say you need to get dry.
I spread my hands out, holding the towel up against him, holding one hand still, moving the other in a slow arc, my little finger tracing a line around the curve of his shoulder, down the side of his chest.
My thumb, like a compass point, pressed onto his nipple.
But I am not touching him, not really, I am not touching his skin.
It’s as though the towel is a pair of gloves that makes what I’m doing okay, innocent.
I look at him, his eyes are closed, tightly closed, his bottom lip is taut and colourless.
I carry on, I sweep the towel down across his stomach, around his waist, up each side of his chest.
I bring the towel up, slowly, softly, draping it from shoulder to shoulder, my hands holding it in place, my fingers curling across the ridges of his collarbones.
And even through the damp cloth of the towel I can feel his heart, beating quickly against the heel of my right hand.
I look up at him, at his closed face.
I say is that better, I say it quietly and I move closer to him as I say it.
He opens his eyes, he opens his mouth to speak, and as he opens his mouth there is a half-kiss of sound, a sound I recognise.
He says yes, thankyou, and I move closer still, as if to hear the words.
I look at him, I lift my face and he lowers his.
He looks at me, he moves a breath closer, I feel his hands hovering around the sides of my face.
Our mouths are as close as the closed wings of a butterfly. We each move closer, and the distance between us thins further, a veil of silk, a breath. Everything has stopped.
I close my eyes, I breathe in the sweetness of the hesitation.
He moves away, a sudden release of breath gasping out of him, he pulls back and the towel falls to the floor, he turns away and he lowers his head and he puts his hands into his hair.
He says, I’m sorry, I can’t.
He says, my brother.
He picks my jumper off the floor and puts it on, it’s too small for him and when he picks the towel up to dry his hair the sleeves only just come past his elbows.
The neckline of the jumper leaves a pale triangle of skin, it flushes pink as I look at it.
He says, I’m sorry, my brother.
I don’t say anything, I look at him, he looks at me, he looks away, he looks at me, he says I have to go I’m sorry, he picks up his coat and then he is gone.
On the floor, a puddle of water and a crumpled t-shirt, wet footprints, a towel.
Chapter 30
The boy with the pierced eyebrow sees the man with the carefully trimmed moustache making his momentous fall over at the club. He doesn’t realise who it is, or what he is seeing, all he sees is a figure falling from the crane, falling through the air and disappearing behind a row of houses.
For a very short moment there is a lump of shock in his mouth, his concentration sucked into the panel of sky the man is falling through; and in that moment, in the time it takes for the orange juice from the carton at his mouth to gush down and fall from his chin, to turn in the air and catch the light and splash into his lap, in that moment his bloodstream is infused with a damburst of adrenalin and his eyes widen and his fingers twitch with the energy of it.
But then he sees the trail of cord hanging loose in the sky, an umbilical from the falling man to the crane above, and he smiles as he sees the cord tighten and recoil, pulling the figure back up, slackening like a question mark against the brightness of the sky.
