STRETCH

by Nick Black

After a rather lovely evening, involving foaming pints and burning-hot buttery crêpes from the stand outside, (Cecil’s treat), Cecil brought someone home from the King Fred and got them into his bathtub.  This being Cecil, who didn’t often do this sort of thing, he then slightly panicked about what to do next.

“Get in with me,” suggested the man.  Clambering ensued.  The clothes on the floor soaked up slopped water.

 “...I never knew I had so many legs...” - not knowing what to do with them, one slippery foot halfway up the wall, not a good view.  Cecil’s shin was quickly, gratefully, grabbed and tucked under the other’s armpit. 

“There we are,” the grabber smiled, and they both laughed.

Holding this ridiculous pose, they looked around the narrow galley of a room, which the tub all but entirely filled, and then at themselves, all but entirely filling the tub.  Eventually, the man raised his arm, dropping Cecil’s leg with a splash.

They listened to Vaughan Williams, playing faintly on the kitchen radio through the wall.

“Wash me,” said the man.  Shifted himself onto his knees to allow for that, displacing more water.  Turned around, when necessary.  Feeling Cecil’s soaping fingers linger in places, said, “You’ve found my stretch marks...  I grew too fast,” placing his own hand over Cecil’s murmured “but maybe you can try kneading me back into my skin.”

He never quite got the man’s name and it changed every time Cecil enquired. He was Flynn. Montgomery.  Faroud.  (The last seemed least likely, Cecil thought.) He had been in no hurry to leave, which had surprised Cecil almost as much as his being there in the first place, and as the weeks went on, Cecil thought he might ever need to introduce him to the neighbours.  As it transpired, the man never crossed the threshold of the front door and so was never seen.  Instead, he sent Cecil out with lists of what he required, cigars, books reviewed in that Sunday’s papers, fresh flowers, pâtés...  Every time Cecil returned, he found himself relieved to find the locks unchanged.

By the time most of the windows in the street were warm with blue, green, red, and gold Christmas lights, Cecil had built up the courage to ask, (while dressing his own tree, his back to the man), “Do you not have anywhere you need to be...?  Anyone who might be missing you...?”

The man, watching the entangling of Cecil’s decorations from a chaise longue, said

“No.”

Cecil tried again, in bed.  The man laughed, shaking the frame. “You are a persistent fellow, aren’t you?” he said.  “Well, I’ll tell you.  I have nothing.  Poor as a church mouse.  Alone in the world.  Had you not brought me home that night, I’d probably have ended up sleeping in a doorway.”  He patted his hand on Cecil’s hip.  “So things turned out rosy, us meeting when we did.”  Visible through a crack in the door, the lights in the living room blinked and alternated, blinked and alternated.

Having inherited enough to live modestly and – in truth – having absolutely no aptitude whatsoever to supplement that fund with employment (he had dallied, it had never ended well), Cecil was an active presence in the local community where some change in him was noticed and remarked upon.  Weight loss, or gain.  A grey halo around the eyes.  He’d maybe grown his hair, or else had it cut.  The greengrocer pointed out what looked like teeth marks on the back of his neck.  “A mosquito,” said Cecil, unseasonably, “I react to them terribly,” hurrying out with his bags.  One night, he stopped on his way back from the off-licence to stare at the bookshop’s darkened doorway, myriad thoughts in his head.  The crêpe vendor, packing up his stall, watched Cecil standing there and insisted on him taking a banana and chocolate spread, allegedly, unconvincingly, requested but then not wanted by a final, now nowhere to be seen customer.

Not long after New Year, Cecil walked in on the man speaking animatedly into the telephone, right hand rising up and down, whipping the cord against the wall as he spoke.  On seeing Cecil, he held the other hand out at arm’s length and walked his fingers around in the air in a circle, not slowing or lowering his conversation for a second.  Cecil took the hint and went back out.  “I thought you didn’t know anyone,” he ventured later, during their bath time.  “Oh, that was nothing,” pooh-poohed the man.  “Someone else I used to stay with, who I thought might have my umbrella.”

Months blazed past.  They worked their way through a Robert Mitchum season on the telly.  The man taught Cecil how to make doughnuts.  Cecil, in turn, lured the man out onto the tiny garden patio, where he’d listen to the afternoon concert, radio in his lap, while Cecil did the weeding.  Somewhere around St Swithin’s Day, while combing his hair in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to Cecil that he might in fact be happy.  That the man made him happy.   He realised he liked having flowers around his home.  He recalled that the man read aloud the books Cecil bought for him, and made pâté sandwiches for them both, and he liked that, too.  The moment this realisation happened, it was almost instantly replaced with a new and sudden fear, of the man leaving and taking the happiness with him.  No, no, no!   He conjured up the man’s sonorous boom (even speaking to Cecil from the neighbouring pillow, he boomed), the smell of his port-dark breath in his face.  He pictured the man naked, his folds and expansions; mentally dressed him again, decided to buy him a new necktie.  Perhaps they could even go on holiday, a short trip—the Lakes or the South of France.  Breathing fast, he lay the comb on the edge of the basin. 

All in all, Cecil had never felt worse in his life.

BIO: Nick Black's writing has been published in lit mags including Okay Donkey, Splonk, Lost Balloon, Ellipsis Zine and Jellyfish Review. His debut collection 'Positive and Negative' was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2022.