A sari hanging on the wall caught the bleaching rays of early morning sun. The pink sequins glinted in stellar configurations - Orion, the Plough - co-ordinates that fixed her in position, their surreptitious logic mapping exactly the position she awoke in, which was exactly the same position she fell asleep in. Even on waking in strange surroundings - staring at the anaglyptic palm fronds on the walls of a guest-house; scanning the plastered ceiling of a room perched on the face of a towering multi-storey; squinting at the angled slats of an institutional blind - she always felt undermined by the familiarity of the feeling, this irrevocable disappointment on waking.
She woke well before the alarm, but jolted nonetheless when the radio clocked on. It selected a commercial station playing Madonna. Not even decent Madonna - "Borderline", or "Get into the Groove" or anything - but the depressing grind of "American Life". From bed, Alison traced Andromeda on the sari. "I'll probably die before Madonna", she thought, immediately fucked off at the prospect. On second thoughts, Madonna - macrobiotically balanced; stretched and detoxified daily; scientifically rejuvenated and reconstituted; technologically deified - was increasingly - perversely - unlikely to die. Period. Ominously, Madonna first made the charts in 1984. She was 26 at the time, performing "Holiday" on Top of the Pops in a long pink acrylic wig. Alison, (divided by 2), was 13. Alison wondered if it was significant that there were 13 years between them, and that she had been 13 when "Holiday" charted. Apparently, Madonna's bespoke daily vitamin drink included proteins derived from human placenta. And wheatgrass. She recalled that Madonna was a Leo, with the same birthday as her former husband, Sean Penn. Geri Halliwell was a Leo. The Spice Girls wore plastic inserts in their knickers. Did Madonna? Wear a gusset shield on stage? Was it true that Paul McCartney owned the constellation "Leo"?
Alison decided to get up, even though it was still early. She switched the TV on to a rolling news channel, sound off, subtitles on, and watched it blankly for a while - there was no news - before padding through to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, though she didn't habitually use it in the morning: she had to put some distance between herself and her bed to actually feel that she had gotten up. Sometimes switching the TV on was enough. Sometimes she had to sit on the toilet. It was just a gesture, and just as well, she thought, noticing the empty cardboard tube, a flutter of mocking shards hanging from it: Alicia, somewhat surprisingly, had used the last of the toilet paper. Alison glanced down to see the neat pile of newspaper Alicia had cut to size lying undisturbed on the floor beside the toilet brush. A nightclub entrepreneur, Peter Stringfellow, grinned up. It was a 3/4 length image and he appeared to be wearing a long black overcoat, looking over his shoulder cheekily at the camera as he walked jauntily down a broad City street. Chances are he'd been to court and won some libel damages. She leant over and picked it up. Stringfellow was fixed smiling with the same professional expression of genuine, if psychotic, jollity that animates holiday camp entertainers; his small, even teeth were sharp and polished, and his famous hair, shades of precious metal, a candied halo. Peter Swingfellow. King of the Stringers, the Jungle VIP. His aura was infused with a catalogue of other images and associations - leopard print thongs, black kimono dressing gowns, cocked bottles of champagne, lovers' manuals. Anyone in their right mind would be wary of wiping themselves on him, in case some kind of horrible voodoo brought him to life and he scrambled squeakily off the page.
Alison stood up, taking Alicia's Philosophy Amazing Grace olive oil body scrub off the shelf. She didn't like the packaging, reminiscent as it was of the Body Shop's refillable black capped bottle, (there was a brand embodying dissipated cachet). The Philosophy bottle looked cheap, though it wasn't. She read the text, set in Times New Roman, a contemporary (mid Nineties) flourish carried in the scale, alignment and use of lower case throughout:
"amazing grace is the person who lives in a state of love, forgiveness and total compassion. It is the person who is not afraid to be wrong and doesn't need to be right. It is the humble spirit who lets others shine and helps those who cannot find their light. It is the person who prays for others and not oneself. It is the person who has let theirself out and the spirit in.
Alison spun the bottle in her hand, wondering if the biochemists in the Estee Lauder research labs were devising a polygraphic version which behaved like joke soap, or chemical detectors in swimming pools. She read the back of the bottle:
"for exfoliating rough, dry skin: helps soften skin: contains olive oil to smooth and moisturise: natural minerals and trace elements help reduce environmental stress, unique long lasting fragrance"
Imagine: bodyscrub dispensing instant skin peeling karma to the deluded and impure. She popped open the cap and inhaled. It was a soapy, familiar scent. Floral. The psychology of scent has it that women who prefer linen to leather, roses to lilies, cheddar to stilton, are predisposed to prefer overtly feminine, floral fragrances, and contrary to popular myth, more likely to give birth to girls. Women preferring florals, are largely competant, well-organised and make excellent executives earning, on average, 13% more than female colleagues who prefer chypre or musky scents. Ironically, florals tend to aspire to occupations that require fewer qualifications.
Alicia had a full set of Philosophy's Amazing Grace body and bath range, an unused and guileless gift from some of the volunteers which flew in the face of Alicia's avowal to eradicate personal indulgences from her life. She hadn't washed properly for months, having forgone coal tar soap for porridge oats when she became concerned that her enjoyment of the former's archaic pungency was a conceit, and abandoning the latter, (and, thank god, the rind it deposited on the bath's scum line), when Alison pointedly asked whether it was unethical to use food to wash with. Alicia sometimes bought Ecover products, although she preferred to clean with vinegar, newspaper and bicarbonate of soda Forties-style. Both were wholly ineffective on bath tub porridge rind.
Alison took a shower. She picked up a bottle of Korres Cedar showergel - "an amalgam of earthy and forest tones with a sunny amber shade" enriched with Aloe Vera to retard skin ageing. It's bottle was from the same school as Philosophy's, but the functional opaque white plastic and label featuring hyper-focus cedar shavings and birch green type, was an exercise in stealth packaging, recalling beachside yoga retreats and blueberry smoothies. The font looked to be Monaco, but it was hard to tell with the Greek alphabet, and the English translation was comparitvely small. It was a mid-range product aimed at young professionals, the translucent amber gel lathered softly, fragrantly.
Washing her hair with Aveda Rosemary Mint, Alison was thinking about an exhibition opening she had attended the previous night. Running late, (too late really), unable to find a cab, she'd caught a bus - high with the smell of fetid water - to the lo-rent enclave where the gallery stood. Hurrying through the quiet streets of ironmongers and pawnbrokers towards it, she passed posters for the show: "If there is Hope" they read. "If there is Hope" she thought. "If there is Hope". Quite out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of an illuminated doorway. There, on chequered steps, blankets draped ineffectually around his body, lay a bloody junkie, bloody naked. He lay absolutely motionless, the residual tension in his body described in chiarascuro, the arrangement of his limbs - an arm outstretched, open-palmed - like that of a Renaissance Pieta, Caracci's "Virgin Mourning Christ" or something. Momentarily transfixed, she missed her footing and stumbled off the pavement. She looked down. In the gutter, her foot, encased in suede Pied-A-Terre ankle boots, was resting milimetres - fucking milimetres - from a large, fresh ochre mound of dogshit: a soft, hot plume, backlit like the steam from a New York Subway, curled into the sharp night air. She gagged as the sour, cheesey stench dissipated across her palate: later, she would compare it to an overripe Crotin. She gagged and brought up some of her dinner into her throat; she'd had puttanesca which didn't actually taste too bad second time around. Maybe that's why it was called "puttanesca". Inspite, or maybe because, of the fecal heap at her feet, she glanced back across the street. The tableau, its colours jewel bright - saturated - and its balletic composition poised, conforming, apparently, to the principles of the Golden Section, seemed to exist etherally, almost in a spiritual dimension of its own. It looked like an altarpiece and put her in mind of a Dior display she'd seen on St Honore-Faubourg a couple of seasons ago which had been based on Gericault's "Le Radeau de La Meduse" as restyled for "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash". Carefully, she lifted her foot, narrowly avoiding the shit. The horror of the milimetres which had prevented a nasty skid preoccupied her for the rest of her journey.
With a drink in hand, she shifted about the exhibition. People came and went (mostly asking about Alicia). Alicia skipped this kind of event these days, but her existence in phatic intercourse pissed Alison off . Nobody had bothered with her when she had come, why should they bother with her now? Alison was sure that - on any given occasion - her own absence would go unremarked. Alicia's strategy was another conceit, just like not washing.
In the exhibition, there seemed to be some sketchy paintings, some pencil drawings, some cardboard sculpture and a single screen video installation which presented a Wearingesque mise-en-scene. She swallowed a decongestant, a non-drowsy Sudafed - she didn't have high blood pressure, heart disease or an intolerance to lactose, neither was she taking drugs for depression, so it was OK. Alcohol had the effect of histamine on her, blocking her sinuses, and this problem had been exacerbated - she thought - by the violent odours of her earlier encounter. Becoming aware of someone standing behind her, she turned around:
"Hey!" said the girl, Nordic and recognisable as Eleanor.
"Hey", repeated Alison. A long pause ensued. They had nothing in common other than the capacity to recognise each other and the same Diesel jacket.
Eleanor inclined her head forward slightly, her crop of coloured hair contrasting with the emerald fractals of her sweat top. She styled herself with resolve: her utilisation of the codes of her milieu (young creative) was exemplary, her latent ambition screaming from the creases of her boyfriend's Wire t-shirt, a pearl necklace, a pair of sno-wash jeans.
"How's it going?" she asked
"Fine" replied Alison. Then the answer seemed inadequate and she added "Yeah, good",
"Yeah?" intoned Eleanor
"Yeah"
"Great."
"Thanks." With an expression of enforced sociability baring her teeth, Alison noticed that one of the figures in the video piece had moved, coughed perhaps.
"I've just got back from Wien." announced Eleanor.
"Really" Alison looked directly at the girl facing her and caught sight of an iridescent green smear above her eyes.
"Yeah. It was great. I was showing a new video. With Horst Hofstadter."
"Wow."
Eleanor smiled, nodding. A long pause ensued. Alison shifted from foot to foot. Eleanor reached out and touched her elbow. It was a parting gesture. "Nice to see you" she said.
Alison glanced at the folded statement in her hand. The artist's world represented a shifting surface of connections, a charismatic and self-absorbed auto-biography played out in HB pencil. She caught sight of Eleanor looking over towards her, she smiled weakly and thought she wouldn't bother going to the aftershow party even though "ExPopTrue" were playing. She glanced down and looked at her Pied A Terre ankleboots. They were navy blue, grown bald at the toe. She'd bought them in a sale for fifty quid. They had been a good buy and she wore them a lot. Gradually, she found herself wishing she'd stood in the shit.
Fiona Jardine