Solid and Liquid

Solid and Liquid

Raymond Phelps could have been God as far as the world was concerned. He was the highest paid model in Hollywood, regularly voted as the best looking person on the planet and this evening he had been to a ceremony in Berlin crowning him ‘Man of the 21^st Century.’

His advert for Calvin Klein was even on the wall of Sonya Monfis, the French actress, who had seduced him that evening.

‘It’s your eyes,’ she said, stroking the paper with her fingernails. ‘With eyes like that you can have anything you want.’

But Raymond Phelps didn’t feel like being seduced. Ever since he had been in Berlin he’d had something on his mind.

‘Don’t you want me?’ she’d said, leaning over him and letting her breasts rub slowly over his chest. ‘Don’t you want me to make you happy?’

Raymond traced his eyes over her, the perfect undulations of her back and legs, the measured tip of her nipples as they rubbed gently towards his groin.

‘Come on Raymond. Let us be happy together.’

He had wanted her, but now she seemed pathetic like a child crying in the supermarket.

‘Come on Raymond. Let me feel you.’

Under the hotel duvet he sweated and shook, then writhed his legs loose of her body and finally threw the beautiful actress onto the Kashmir carpet. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I...this isn’t what I want.’

A thousand eyes stared at Raymond as he walked through the city. Couples in cafes interlocked limbs, politicians stormed through doors, tramps looked up from under bridges. Berlin was a line of dummies in a shop-window

‘Why?’ their faces said. ‘Why don’t you want her? What are you doing?’

Raymond drew out a cigarette. The smoke rose around the cold evening air and formed a cloud over his head. He dragged again and again, letting the cloud build and stinging the dummies’ eyes. Then he ducked down a side street into the political quarter, through lines of plush white blocks and speaking translucent windows, and crept under the spinning dome of the Reichstag.

Above he could feel bodies start to turn and lips utter whispers of recognition, and before he had time to light another cigarette it was too late.

‘Here! Here!’ they said.

Look here!

Here.

Not there.

Here.

Here.

Over here Raymond.

Come this way.

Come here.

Look at him.

Me.

Her.

Them.

Look.

Look.

Look at us.’

The eyes multiplied into a million lightbulbs all illuminated at once.

‘Here.

Look here.

No here.

Here.’

Concrete walls sprouted - left and right, up and down. The dome of the Reichstag circled and started to suck out pieces of his flesh into its glass vacuum.

Raymond lit a cigarette, exhaled with as much force as he could and ran into the darkness.

The girl leant over a bridge and looked down at the River Spree as it slowly meandered into the east of the city. She wore a light dress emitting a purple glow like phosphrous out at sea.

Raymond’s legs drew him to her through the dark streets.

‘Hey,’ she said, without turning around.

‘Hey, said Raymond, now next to her on the bridge.

‘It’s a nice evening to be by the river.’ Her skin was like a strange cream that hovered in the air. Raymond wanted to reach in and touch it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is.’

She opened her mouth and smiled, turning the liquid into a solid mass and kindness. ‘Hey,’ she said again, letting her hand rub and down the nape of his back. ‘I know. It can get pretty horrible out there, don’t worry.’ She continued to stare down at the river. Raymond noticed her reflection rippling on the surface of the water.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘Come and see yourself.’

Raymond blinked and looked down. On the surface of the Spree he saw a form beginning to take shape - closely shaven hair, dark tan skin, light blue eyes like the arctic sky – the construction that received so much attention – women, money, fame, envy, hate – and that he could do nothing to disguise. For a moment it lay there, looking back at him, before being washed over by the current of a passing swan.

‘It’s you,’ the strange girl’s reflection said. ‘And then it’s not you. It’s someone else, floating amongst water and the sky. No-one really at all.’ The girl’s hand gripped on his shoulder and turned him towards him. Her skin had changed again, glinting like sun on a cobweb. ‘Here’s you, Raymond Phelps. The one they all want. And then in the water there you are as well...until you go, and come back again.’ Her eyes looked through him, at the thoughts behind the skin and the bones and the eyes.

Raymond felt the walls melting into milky syrup.

‘The one they all want.

The one they all want.

The one they all want.’

Her liquid glow moved around and Raymond found himself enveloped inside. It was warm, luscious and luminescent, releasing him from prison into a lightness of being. Her blond hair waved around like the wind and her eyes swallowed him into blue pools. Then she whispered, inside his ear. ‘Raymond. My name is Sophie. I am the smartest girl in Berlin.’

Whisper.

Whisper.

‘They used to write about me in the papers. I worked at the University down the road, doing research into Neuroscience - Quantum self-representation, movement between physical realities – and now I don’t know what to do.

Liquid girl, they called me.

I think I will jump into the river. Would you like to jump with me?

I don’t know.

Come on. It will be nice. It’s fun to be liquid for a while.

Will we die?

I don’t think so.

What makes you so sure?

I don’t know. I feel...like we are drowning right now and that there in the water we will be okay.

And float around.

Yes.

And become something else.

I guess. A new solid form.

I don’t want to die, you know Sophie.

You won’t, I promise.’

She took him further inside, to a revolving world of yellows and white.

‘You are the most beautiful man in the world yes Raymond? That is what everyone says. Am I right?

I guess.

You can have anyone you want, do anything you like.

Yes.

But in your mind what do you find? What do you see when you walk down the street?

Walls.

Walls and lights. Blinking lights.

Yes.

That’s all a beautiful man sees?

Yes.’

The yellow and white expanded into a great halo and in the centre of the ova sat and Sophie, a blond solid form, folding her arms around a book.

‘All a clever girl sees is water. She floats and floats and never finds anywhere to land.’

Splash.

They jumped into the Spree together, the clever girl and the beautiful man.

An ovum burst and Raymond was expelled into a giant ocean

‘Why don’t you leave the walls? Why don’t you come and find me?’

Raymond looked around, right and left, up and down, but he could see only blue and feel only water growing heavier and darker around. Slowly he started to sink, deeper and deeper, into indigo, navy, brown then black. Black. Black void.

‘Where am I?’

His voice was flat, like he was shut in a box.

‘What’s this pla...’

‘Wha...

Wh

W.’

A black solid mass where even words could not find a sound.

‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’

A heart began to beat.

‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’

And Raymond could see something through the darkness.

‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’

Raymond Phelps sat on the side of the Spree. Over the bank a hundred faces looked back - dumbfounded. He stood up, rubbed the water out of his hair and began to walk.

The faces from the deckchairs didn’t move.

He turned off the path and walked towards the city. Cars stopped in the middle of the road and cyclists slammed their feet to the floor. In cafes and bars men and women put down their drinks and in shops everyone stopped looking at clothes and CDs. Office meetings were put on hold and computer screens turned to black.

A million eyes stopped and stared at the figure walking down the street.

Raymond Phelps didn’t look back. He didn’t feel their eyes burn into his skull, he didn’t hear them crowd around and grab at his face.

No walls or lights. Raymond saw a different world now.

‘Hey!’

‘Hey you, over there! Come and talk to me.’

In the centre of a perfect square of grass sat a girl. She was had been reading a book but had put in down and was now waving at Raymond, her hands dancing up and down like ballerina. She wore a small yellow dress and glinted like the sun on a snowy peak.

Raymond stopped, looked around at the cars and the offices, the shops and the restaurants, at the staring faces, and then ran over to her.

His heart beat over and over.

‘Hey,’ she said, brushing her hair from her face.

‘Hey,’ Raymond panted.

‘You know, you should really give up smoking’ she said, folding her arms like a teacher.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I have.’

‘Sweating is very bad for your skin,’ she told him.

‘Do you know everything?’

She rubbed her arms up and down her side and jumped up on the spot, a yellow halo forming as she did.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I know anything at all.’

Raymond took her hand and clasped it tight into his. It was warm and soft like a child’s.

‘Where shall we go now?’ he said.