(play.)
She asks him for a drink and his views on philosophy and he smiles across the table. He slides the drink across the bar and effectively ends her life.
He's the barman. The countertop is slick with spilled alcohol (it's a city of neon lights, where you can buy happiness in a bottle and you can't see the stars).
Clove calls it escape, and longs for coca cola.
(Because that was their drink)
And it brings back memories of happier days. When the sun shone, and Cato was there, and if she closes her eyes then he's burnt into her eyelids, him and her and a smile like the stars.
He was everything. He was hers, the only thing she ever had that was all hers. And now Cato's gone. She can't help but feel that it's her fault, maybe because she knows it is.
She tips her drinks, one two three.
(The barman wonders - she's so young to be so tired.)
Clove drowns. in the alcohol, and the din of the room, she forgets. The storms crash and roll about her ears and the noise of people, carrying on as normal.
(Rock and roll is dead, she thinks.)
And, so, when a man with a smile like the stars approaches her, she leaves the bar with him, and tries to remember. She'll wake up struggling for air in bedsheets and alcohol, feeling lost in her own skin - well, you can see her bones.
The sadness will eat away at her just like she isn't eating anything. and she'll feel guilty, for a while, and then she'll repeat.
(fast forward -
play.)
She watches him breathe for a while before he wakes, and wonders if she could be maybe more than this?
She knows she was more than this once, when she was more than everything and above everyone. (rewind.)
She used to wake up in his embrace every morning. Clove used to drown in Cato's eyes. She never had a reason to feel guilty before now, and she doesn't like the feeling.
She used to be stronger. And she used to have him.
She screams and storms and cries to forget (but she wants to remember.) The only thing is, it's all meaningless without him. So she paints his name on walls so that she won't forget it, like it was just a whisper on the wind or a fleeting dream that flies away when morning light comes.
And the barman smiles.
'You're doing 'graffiti' all wrong.'
In the soft red glow of the cigarette end he kisses her and it means nothing except a childhood friend, one who was loved and lost and loved again, and then the hunger is in her heart and she passes out in his arms.
She's drowning again. She's always drowning, and gasping for one breath of air before the stars are in her eyes and all she sees is blackness.
(pause.)
But this time it's different? Maybe.
He has eyes full of stars (veins full of light, can't she hear them singing?) and she thought he was gone. Maybe he is. But all she knows is that these eyes, these eyes, look just like his.
And, he has a smile like the stars too, and maybe this could be a new beginning for her. Maybe she could remember him, and still forget the pain. She tries. She really does.
But he's the kind of guy she likes, not one who sticks around for long, and soon, he's just another crack in a shattered heart and she curses him hollowly and he shuts the door behind him.
(She wants to be broken, but broken with him here.)
She whispers hello and he's leaving again.
(fast forward.
now press repeat.)
She actually can't help it, maybe it's because she's so broken herself, but she has this sick kind of attraction to boys more broken than her and guys who wear black leather and smoke in the alleyways, and all she can see is him and his face and growing up together. They sat together on clifftops and swung their legs and talked about being twenty one, because life was certain and they were eight and her hair wasn't bleached out yet.
He snuck cola from the store without paying, and she'd pour it in plastic glasses. He jumped and she'd sit and wait for him to come home.
She whispers goodbye and realizes he was never really there at all.
(pause.
now press fast forward).
She misses those days. Misses it so much, she can't feel anything at all. There's nothing but the hollow ache in her heart, the niche where he used to fit so perfectly.
Maybe Cato was damaged, but they were broken together. and -yes- she likes black leather and cigars and the way he looked with the sun glinting off of his golden-wheat hair, and his smiles like the stars and sitting on clifftops, but she hates remembering it.
Past tense. She won't drink cherry cola anymore (unless it's mixed with rum). She never visits the clifftop anymore. Because one time he jumped and he never came back.
Clove blames herself.
She blames it on silly petty things, like the way she cut her hair in a style he didn't like, even though it was expensive and they argued. She blames it on spilling red wine - so much more sophisticated than the shots she does now, she thinks and smiles and drinks - on his favourite shirt so it looked like blood again. She blames it on the sting of fizzy drinks in her nose and now on more than that, light burning in her veins. On the surface, she blames those things.
Really, she blames herself, and fighting and arguing and screaming for Cato to go, to stay out, and she blames him for doing it. She hates herself for blaming him. She's the one who told him to never come back.
And he didn't. Really (come back, that is). But he comes back every day (she sees him), and he reminds her not to forget.
She thinks she's on fire. She's burning up bit by bit.
Her heart, oh it burns. The alcohol stings her throat as it goes down -shot by shot-. And every time she looks in the mirror, or wears his shirt, or remembers the sun on him, she's ashes.
She's the 'girl on fire' the barman says. A new man every night in her bed.
(But she doesn't want to burn if she's not burning with him, and nobody - nobody - can put her out. She burns.) She lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling, and sets fire to pictures of him and to the edges of things that she shouldn't be burning but - shush! she can never keep away from danger.
Clove's going to go out with a bang.
(He slides the drink across the table and effectively ends her life - well, she's been waiting long enough)
She's tired of everything. of burning, and remembering, and forgetting, and drowning. She's going to go out in flames. Clove's just tired. (she's so young to be so tired- she's so young to hurt so much) And she's going to do it, she swears to herself, and she visits the clifftop where everything started (and ended, she thinks bitterly) and she stands on the edge, and takes a deep breath.
i'm coming, she tells him. She tells Cato.
wait for me.
falling doesn't hurt.
falling in love does. falling asleep without him does. falling in and out of clubs and sanity and reason hurts more than she can say. but this kind of falling is easy. for a moment, she feels young and impossible and alive, like the black tattoo wings are going to grow from her shoulders and fly her away to anywhere. somewhere beyond stars.
she hits the sea - or is it sky? - and wonders, dreamingly, if she might be awake.
Clove thinks she sees Cato's face - once, twice, three times. She thinks she sees fire and burning and fault lines. She reaches.
Maybe we have to remember the light to know when it is fading.
Maybe these drugs are messing with her mind because he's disappearing, and no - she's screaming, screaming, screaming - and maybe she's just spinning, and everything goes dark.
it's over.
Everything. She's not tired anymore. And not on fire. And not in pain. And not empty. But, she doesn't see him either. Him and flat cola that fizzled out like her life that was supposed to go somewhere and the starry smile, and the whole heart is all gone. She's left with all she is (which isn't much).
And, her eyes close. Clove sees everything and nothing at the same time.
She thinks it might be her life flashing before her eyes. She doesn't know. Because she can't tell up from down, Cato from Clove, life from death, fire from drowning or whole from hole.
This is the end.
(press rewind,
stop.)