Disease

A Short Story

Jack’s feet were stinging by then, burning against the fabric of his socks, peeling whenever he removed them, black spots against a green stink. Every day he washed them to sooth the pain and every day more of the flesh slipped into his palms.

But the ill-footed hide in plain sight. Now he’s in a restaurant opposite a woman he’s met a few times. He knows she has one green and one blue eye and that her hair’s blonde but he keeps forgetting her name. She was smiling in the low light and the staff in their white shirts and sunflower dicky bows were refined and clean.

‘I just need a quick bathroom break if that’s all right?’

‘Not at all,’ she said.

He left the table with a little bow, past the marble bar down a flight of stairs, each painful footstep echoing in the bowels of that place. With the men’s empty he took off one shoe and peeled away the black sock beneath. It creaked like tape off a cardboard box. The foot looked like a black dog, savaged and bleeding, the rot so strong he had to hold his breath. Hot and painful to touch, though after doing so he picked at his teeth and the roof of his mouth where a new rot seemed to be settling.

He spat into his hand and massaged the saliva into the golden taps and doorhandles. Back upstairs he shook a waiter’s hand and thanked him for the incredible service. Then he sat opposite her again and they spoke idly as they waited for the food to come. She had her hands held together and her elbows on the table and her shoulders slightly hunched.

‘Come to this side of town often?’ he asked.

‘This side…? What other side is there?’

‘Of course,’ he laughed, ‘just testing you.’ He rose a drink as if in celebration, and they clinked, and he sat back in the seat like a man justified, her word the basis of his license.

When the food arrived they fell into a relieved kind of silence. She had a lobster ravioli and he a side of sea bass. Dense white meat with a delightful lemon dressing. After trying it himself he cut away another piece and dipped it in the dressing and offered her his fork.

‘I don’t really eat fish,’ she said.

‘Ah go on. It won’t hurt you. The dressing’s from another world.’

Hesitant, when she took it and ate she seemed baptised in a still contentedness. Her eyes flickered back to his plate as if to weigh up how much more fish there was, then she handed back the fork.

He smiled. He raised another toast. When the bill came he handed over a roll of cash and said, ‘Why not, you’re a special lady.’

Outside they stood under the canopy against a hard rain, falling like gunfire on the concrete.

‘Were you planning to go home now?’

‘Was indeed. We’ve had a fun night though, ain’t we?’

‘You know, Jack, it’s been over a month now. It’s Friday night. We could…well you could invite me to yours or something.’

‘Oh? My place? It’s just all still under construction.’

‘My place then. It’s not far, I’ll get us a taxi.’

She ordered one and clung to his arm as they braved the rain to find it. Within ten minutes of them getting in, Jack stood on the 30^th floor of her building, watching his reflection in the windows of her living room. He watched the night, the lights against the blackness, a wild city erected by a forgotten dead, the palace nestled queasy not too far away.

And he hadn’t had to force his way inside. He asked to take a shower and she directed him to her en-suite and he stood barefoot in the cubicle, letting the blood and the pus linger on the floor. When he was finished he used the towel that was hanging on a heated rack and scrubbed his feet until the towel was reddened and flaky with dead skin. Then he hung it back where he’d found it.

Naked now, he went back into the bedroom. In the bed she lay in a silk nightshirt and no underwear. An old comedy movie she had no intention of watching was already ten minutes in on the TV, and come here, she says, there’s nowhere to sit so you’ll have to lie here. Oh are you cold? Get under the covers. And what’s that smell?

Now as he inserts himself and the noise from the film goes unperceived, he knows his disease, knows what he is spreading, but it does not stop him. Her bedsheets are tracked with blood and pus and they kiss, but he doesn’t love to destroy. Just to even himself. The inverse of infinity is zero. If one man may be diseased why shouldn’t all? Tear it all down and so the jealousy in his heart.

Nice young lady. It’s a shame. Somebody ought to have warned her before she invited a stranger into her home.