She, Monolith

Leaning against the pillar on his ledge, she rolled the Coopers gently along the concrete. He loved watching her smoke, her cigarette hanging over the left side of her mouth, the smoke splashing in slow motion and disappearing into the hair that bled over her shoulder. She barely moved to inhale, and she looked up to meet his goofy gaze, giving him a wink as she exhaled. He offered his hand to help her off the ledge, but she gave him his beer instead and hopped off by herself like a girl jumping off a milkbar stool in search of the next bit of fun.

The last time he saw her was when he ran the sound for a charity benefit three months earlier, and he almost didn't recognise her. A cascade of curls that could never have been intentionally set, she wore a red dress that made her look like he could have only ever been a drunk fuck, a mistake that she would have had no trouble forgetting. He watched her cradle her martini as she nodded in agreement to recidivism statistics quoted by the esteemed psychologist Dr Ken Finch, intent without insinuation. She managed to walk away with a $$$$$ personal cheque that was going to go towards rebuilding some essential building that some country needed after some big natural blowout. He felt he didn't know her at all until she peeked over the sound stage with a whispered "Boo!" and asked him to dance. When he didn't know how to hold her, she laughed and broke into the Running Man and then jigged like Blind Tom's sidekick when she ran out of breath. Nobody knew what she was doing but it didn't bother her.

Now he watched her talking to his own mother, her laugh was a bomb that shook the windows and filled the room with light, scaring the cat who was sleeping in the cupboard above the kettle so suddenly it twisted itself onto the counter and bolted under the TV unit. She threw her head back like she meant to snap her neck, and she held her sides in a poor attempt to regain her composure. She wore forgettable singlets and hoodies and her jeans were frayed and darkened by the dirt she trailed as she walked, but wasn't the clothes at all. It was her. She was so adaptable. She listened intently to his mother's generation-by-generation stories of struggle under Communism that he had long since blocked out because he'd heard them all before for the millionth time, and she praised without any hint of pity. She poked her tongue out at him as he gestured for him to come back to her and leave the crazy cat lady behind. She poured herself into every moment, whoever she was with.

He wanted to know her, but she was guarded. He didn't know where she lived as she always insisted on meeting him at his mother's duplex in the west, always. She never wanted to see his apartment in Surry Hills, she said she wasn't that kind of girl. She baulked at any direct questioning about her past, and made off-colour jokes to divert the conversation and he always fell for it because he wanted to. Surely she couldn't be anywhere near as damaged as she suggests she is if she's this cool, he's thought over and over and over. He watched her watching him as she rode him gently, her fingers locked with his, leverage, as she rose and fell. Her wide chocolate eyes saw through all of his defenses, stripped him bare. He watch her lips kiss their way down his stomach, making him bite his own hard that he tasted blood. When they were together it took everything in him not to give her everything. She fucked him every time like it was her last. She made jokes during sex. He felt inferior but safe to be himself around her, and he had a feeling she knew and enjoyed the uneven playing field without being sadistic or degrading about it. Everything about her made him want, clothed or not. She didn't play games that other women played. She played practical jokes. She was crass. She was classy. She was unashamedly herself.

He woke up to find her sitting next to him, putting her shoes on.

"Stay."

"You get the best of me when we're like this, my love."

"Am I?"

She pulled her hair back into a messy bun, then reached back to pull her hoodie over it. She was Sanrio's answer to the Unabomber.

"No, but enjoy it for what it is until you find it."