1 Elaine patted her furry mound as if it were a dog's noggin and said, "Good girl." In a shaft of the day's declining light she lay on the bed in a dramatic--almost poetic--Rrecline, head sunken amongst the pillows, body heavy and flung apart, a golden glow upon her face. Outside, a fuzzy drizzle fell, as it had fallen all day, intensifying the mugginess of the bedroom, dampening the sheets, thickening the smells. Praised enough, the mound was gently stroked in an absent-minded way, pubic hair slicked, then boinging back up as the hand brushed over it. The room was finally still and quiet; all the buzzing and muttering and squelching was over, and both women fell into separate places of contemplation. For Elaine, it was a feeling of sleepiness, drained as she was by the repeated pulses of ecstasy. For Frances, this was nothing but a brief period of bodily respite because Elaine was finally--though never permanently--satisfied. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands on her knees, aware that behind her Elaine was petting herself in the strangely self-congratulatory way she was accustomed to after sex--as if her vagina alone had done all the work--but Frances' mind was already elsewhere. Normally by now she would be covering herself--joggers, shorts, bathrobe, beach towel, bedsheet, anything--following her outstretched arm in the direction of a cold beer, but today she didn't move, and suddenly, in a moment of uncharacteristic perceptiveness, Elaine's hand paused mid-pet as she said, "Are you okay, babe? Is something wrong? You're just sitting there." "I'm fine," Frances said. But Frances was not fine. All day she had been troubled--more troubled today than yesterday, but not as troubled as tomorrow, as is the way with problems we think we can ignore, wishing them away, but they refuse, and grow, double, quadruple. In a strange way it had been useful to have the distraction of a dilemma, something else to focus on throughout the day as Elaine whittered and bored her with stories and thoughts and endless enthusiasm. A letter had arrived which had so occupied her mind, she had managed to survive the whole ordeal--brunch, shopping, drinks, the movies--so utterly consumed with worry that Elaine might as well not have been there. It said a lot about Elaine that she had not noticed anything was wrong. Even as they had tumbled through the door and Elaine had scooped up Frances and spun her round, because Elaine seemed to live in a permanent Lindy hop, Frances' eyes had landed repeatedly on the letter, propped up against an empty picture frame on the hallway sideboard, so that as she went round and round, looking over Elaine's shoulder, she saw it repeatedly, like a message flashing before her: "You're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked." She was amazed--proud, even--that she had managed to concentrate enough to have sex but, to be fair, her body and tongue were so well trained she could have done it semiconscious. She had done so many times before. Elaine poked Frances with her big toe. "You don't seem fine," she sagely observed. "What's wrong?" Oh, where to begin? Frances sighed theatrically. She most certainly was not going to confide in Elaine about her problems, not when Elaine was a problem in herself, another issue Frances had been trying to "sort out." Elaine was of course completely unaware that Frances had been thinking of dumping her, that she had in fact tried many times, but somehow it always went wrong. They would meet in a pub or a park and Frances would steel herself, take a deep breath, and say the words, "Look, Elaine, we need to talk," but Elaine either mocked her or changed the subject or--worse still--took it as a joke: "I know, it's about time we did something else with our mouths," then suddenly they'd be kissing, and a short while later they'd mysteriously appear back at the flat, lurching in bed, and Frances would be left wondering what the hell had happened. But she knew the answer: She'd heard of men being led by their cocks and here she was being led by her clit, brainlessly and helplessly, like a shopping trolley dragged about. This fact made her bubble in self-hate, self-pity, and she resented Elaine even further for causing it. "Just back off, will you," she often wanted to say, but before she knew it, her groin would be overheating, as if it had been plugged in for too long and needed to expel some energy, and then she couldn't remember what she'd been saying. I'm at its mercy, she thought glumly, looking down at it. She laughed when comedians and frustrated husbands complained about women having low sex drives. They'd obviously never met the likes of Elaine. Sitting on the edge of the bed, with the letter in the hallway and Elaine behind her, Frances felt imprisoned in the situation: no way out, no help, no suggestions. She owed money to a dealer for drugs Elaine still had no idea about. And although this was a dealer she had known for many years--one she would even say she liked--everyone has their limits, and he had evidently grown impatient. The debt had been slow to accrue but accrue it had, and over the past few weeks he had sent messages, left voicemails, and generally probed her to commit to repayment. Only one thing to do: She ignored him. She didn't have the money. And the longer she ignored him, the more threatening the messages became. Not that he wanted to--she could hear it in his voice when he said, "Don't make me do this"--but he had a reputation to uphold, she supposed, and quite possibly owed the money onwards, to whatever boss was above him in the complex hierarchy drug dealers operated in. Then, today, she had received the letter, if it could be called that: a scruffy note which simply read, "Remember, I know where you live," hand-delivered without a knock at the door or a word uttered through the letterbox. She'd scoffed when she first read it--it seemed so overdramatic--but very quickly the truth of the fact sank in and her incredulity was replaced with this horrible, haunted dread. He knew where she lived. She put it on the sideboard where it blended in amongst the pile of junk mail and was better hidden than in the wastepaper basket, which Elaine frequently emptied as part of her efforts at homeliness, a gradual filtering-in of herself, like leaving her toothbrush behind or buying slippers for the both of them. And throughout the day Frances had imagined it there, waiting for her, full of threat, and now she thought of it again as Elaine hummed and the rain smeared the window with fat, clownish tears. Elaine poked her big toe into Frances' right buttock again and she leapt up, as if bitten, and started pulling on some discarded and dishevelled clothes from the floor. "Where are you going?" Elaine whined. "We don't have any beer." Elaine watched with her typical head-tilt of amusement as Frances struggled to get arms in sleeves and legs in trousers, a hurried little dance resulting in much hopping and stumbling. "We have wine, you know," she said. "I brought some with me--it's in the fridge. And there's that ginger beer from when I last stayed over." "I want a real beer." Frances stood up and quickly brushed her hair. "No bother--I'll be back in a little while." As she turned, Elaine was still smirking, shaking her head side to side in fondness at her girlfriend's quirkiness. Frances stepped out of the bedroom into the smell of a sumptuous, garlicky stew coming from the kitchenette, suddenly and deeply wishing she could just sit alone with it, a chianti for company, and a spliff as fat as a frankfurter. She stuffed her feet into her boots. "Funny Frances. Don't be too long," Elaine called as the door to the flat swung shut. Frances sprinted down the five flights of stairs to the ground floor, then swept out through the door, the wind barging into her like a spirit, blasting her hair, jacket, and shoulder bag outward as if ready for flight. The end of spring, and the weather was its usual calamity, pleasant one day, wild the next, newly formed leaves no sooner yawned into life than ripped from the branches by a morning storm. People dressed with the eccentricity of uncertainty: shorts, raincoat, trainers. Or Wellingtons, T-shirt, sunglasses. Unopened umbrellas carried with trepidation in a gale, hoping there would not be a spot of rain lest a jousting match begin, but no worry, suddenly the sun appears, and they all become hot and foolish, umbrella dangling from a hooked arm or shoved, with a jumper, into a carrier bag. You'd think they'd all be used to it, as this was the constant quandary of true British weather--any season, on any day, at any moment--but instead there existed a state of befuddlement and tardiness, forever caught off-guard by whatever happened next, as if weather had never happened before. Frances cupped a cigarette with her hand and attempted to light it. With a well-timed flick of her thumb in a brief lull amidst the gales, she succeeded and inhaled three times, deeply, in quick succession. Bliss. Then she strode round the corner and pulled out her phone. "You're alive, then," Dom's voice answered. "Wise of you to call." "I got your note," she said bitterly. "Dom, you've known me for years--was it really necessary? I'm well aware of how the land lies." "Hey. I can't make special allowances for you, you know that. This has been going on too long. I don't want it to be this way but you're not helping me. You're not helping yourself." She sighed. "Where are you?" "You got something for me?" "No, I need something from you." He scoffed, "You're unbelievable." "I know. Just a twenty-bag of bud. Last time, I promise. Where are you?" "Getting in my car." A brief silence followed. Then, tetchily, "Okay, fine. Jesus, the shit I take from you. The usual place in fifteen." "Thanks, Dom." "Yeah, whatever." He hung up. The usual place was a metal bench in a tiny nook set back from the main road where a few bedraggled flowers and a bin for dog shit was somehow supposed to form a vista of relaxation. The road was only a few metres away; buses stopped, stinking up the puddles, growling to be underway, and cyclists slid along cautiously beside them, one foot on the pavement. She was early, so she sat on the frigid bars and smoked. A small plaque was screwed into the back-rest, if it could be called that. Frances knew what it said: in memory of jane hopson-smith. She often wondered, as she sat here, what Ms. Hopson-Smith had done in life to upset her relatives so much that they doomed her name to this place where flies buzzed by the bin and cigarette ends poked out between the petunias. The traffic moved off. She watched expressionlessly as cars and taxis sloshed by, and she wondered what Elaine was doing--not a caring thought, more a sense of fretful inescapability, like wondering what work the next day would bring. She might still be in bed, waiting, stroking, preparing to go again. Frances shuddered and lit another cigarette. Finally, Dom appeared, hurrying as usual, arms straight and stiff, as fists plunged into pockets and shoulders hunched up to his ears like a vulture. He raised his eyebrows once in greeting and sat down beside her. Excerpted from Sedating Elaine: A Novel by Dawn Winter All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
