~~ Interlude ~~

You dance with your beloved and the whole world spins in light.

Over and over, around and around. The music so loud it hurts, the darkness pulsing with life. The people around you wear masks, or maybe it is just their faces, drenched in ecstasy and sweat. There is a ringing at the peak of your consciousness, a brightness of delirious clouds. Your feet move, your chest throbs, your neck sways.

And in front of you Melody. Melody.

She wears white again, star-kissed sequins sparkling in the strobe-light. Your hands are on her hips and she’s leaning into you, breathing into you, pushing back with yearning, cooing warmth. She turns and stares into your eyes, your arms resting on her sparrow-bone shoulders, heavy, intertwined. You draw her closer, swaying in time.

Her eyes are black holes and her breath tastes like strawberries.

Back upstairs and you fall into each other. No prudence, no privacy, why hide, what's the point? In a darkened corner of a throbbing bar you enmesh and interweave, and she whispers “Baby… baby…”, moaning where no one else can hear and sending sunlit shivers down your spine.

Another bump? Another?

Anything to keep this going. Anything to swim another moment deep.

She throws up in a stall. You hold her hair. She washes her mouth with water, vodka soda, then goes right back to kissing, laughing. Nothing tastes any different. Nothing feels any worse. Downstairs again, dancing, drowning, caressing her neck with your teeth and tongue. Shimmering, ghostly goddess. She calls your name and you come.

Someone has put you in a taxi. Friends. Who needs them? You pay the man what he needs to get you where you're going. The night is still young, its fruit ripe, her lips quivering. Stay with me, she begs, as she slips white light beneath your tongue. Stay with me.

You awake in your bedroom amongst scattered silk sheets, watching the sun rise over the bay. Melody is there, sprawled pale and naked as morning snow. You are a king. A conqueror. Whatever pain rattles in your head, whatever assails you, you can surmount it. Melody murmurs in her sleep, sleeping soft against your chest.

You pay a healer a working man’s weekly wages to come to the penthouse and purge your hangover, so you can trade today’s lives with impunity and be ready to go the next night.

*****

“No. Please. No.”

The night is dark. The nail-moon blinks, a distant streetlight. Behind a building, in an alleyway, in a district you don’t know the name of, the love of your life lays dying.

“No. No!”

You push her chest, clumsy, hands slick with vomit, kneading the thin white pleats of her dress. Behind you, the taxi driver has stepped from his vehicle, his face a mask of concern.

“Hey man, should I- I think you need to call an ambulance-”

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But it’s too late. You know it’s too late. Your mind is thick and clouded and you’d fallen asleep only momentarily, just closed your eyes to rest for a second your overloaded senses, and you thought she’d done the same. Thought that’s why she wasn’t moving. You never heard her vomit, didn’t hear her choke.

And now you are in the alley. Now crying, screaming, your muddled brain trying to figure out how to save her, always two steps behind, always two minutes too slow. Your shaking hands scrabble to scoop bile from her airway and only succeed in pushing it further down. Your mouth closes around hers, trying to block out the putrid acid sting, but her lips are too slick and you cannot make a seal. Finally, against a bed of garbage, in the pouring rain, you pound on her chest, trying to keep her heart beating, trying to fill her blood with life.

A line is crossed. A stillness comes, her flesh already ceased twitching, her eyes rolled back – yet you know. Somehow, when the moment comes, you know.

Instinctively you recoil, heart in your chest. Her arms slip from your hands, track marks glistening atop the veins.

“Hey man.” The taxi driver. “Dude, what the hell, we need to call someone, you can’t… holy crap, what the hell are we supposed to-”

Slowly, slowly, kneeling in the mud in your Gucci shoes and ten-thousand-dollar suit, rain cascading down your face, thoughts drip from your mind like clockwork. Cold, slow. Gurgling. Ceaseless.

Drip; drip; drip.

Your eyes turn back to the taxi driver. You climb unsteadily to your feet, staggering a few steps before righting yourself. Your guts clench hard. You shrug off your white jacket, revealing the black silk underneath.

“Get her turned over,” you command. Somehow, you know to do this now, somehow there is clarity in death. That old remorseless friend. “On her side. Quickly.”

“Sir, I don’t know, I don’t know if that-”

“Quickly,” you reiterate. Your eyes never leave her. “Quickly. She’s just unconscious. Here-” you hold out your jacket, “-use this. Warm her. Turn her over.”

“She’s just…?” The driver looks at Melody, and perhaps he is uncertain – but the way you say it, and the money you’ve paid him, and the sheer desperation means his doubts are quickly discarded. He kneels beside her, ignoring the wet newspaper and rotten vegetables, and he cradles and rotates her gently over, as you should be doing – as you should have done.

“Pat her back,” you tell him, your limbs cold, your voice hollow. The driver does not hear the desolation, just glances at you briefly then turns back to Melody, obediently obliging with measured slaps like a father trying to burp their suckling babe. Nothing happens. “Firmly. No.” You lean down, splay your hand to show him. “Like this.”

And with a single, fluid movement your right hand strikes the back of your beloved as your left hand touches her cheek.

“Hngh!” A sudden intake of breath, followed by a rapid shuddering, coughing. Melody’s body jerks to life, doubling over, spasms surging through her thin frame. She rolls over, crawling unsteadily onto her knees, hacking up chunks of vomit. The noises she makes are like a weak, wounded animal, but the sudden rush clears her airway. She is breathing. She is alive.

“Holy mother of God,” the driver gasps. Palpable relief. He leans back onto his hands in the alleyway, giving the girl some distance, letting her cough and splutter it out. “Okay. Jesus. Scared the hell out of me.” He shakes his head at you, relieved, as you bend down and gently wrap Melody in your embrace, holding her steady on all fours. “Get it all out kid. Seriously, get it all right. And then I can take you to the hospital, both of you, no charge, seriously, I’m just relieved you’re not-”

The man’s voice stops without any word or warning, and in the silent street he drops dead.

Melody moans. The cab lays abandoned. Distant streetlights flicker.

“Come on,” you whisper. You clench your arm around her, feeling panic race down your spine as you try to pull her to standing. She sways, groggy, but succeeds. “We have to- we have to-”

“Baby I don’t…” she whispers. Her feet falter as you drag her away. Her words slur, her eyelids flutter. But she’s alive. Alive. “Baby… baby…”

You limp into the dark-drenched night, a wretched, soaking little man, clutching your desperate prize. The rain falls, stinging, blurring your vision, washing your hands clean of vomit. Your heart pounds with a gnawing fear like none you’ve ever known. There is a hollow in your chest. A trembling in your eyes.

And a taxi driver lying dead, not ten metres from his cab, silent and unmoving in the dark.

~~ End Interlude ~~