A short story by Helen Oyeyemi I’ll tell you exactly what happened, I really will, only you better promise not to get cross at any point
4.13am: love you, love you, love you. I’ll do that now, be good, be better, be in love with you. Yes, for always, but I solemnly swear that I will love you most especially and fondly at all the different 4.13s from now on. You’re wunnerful. I’m not drunk. Thank you for always wearing that digital watch. When you came to get me you cupped my face in your hands and you kissed my forehead, and I kissed your shoulder and wished it was bare. You brought me a coat, which I was grateful for because of the rain and because I was already bedraggled with wet. My braids fell down my face in crumpled tentacles, the taste of my own mascara was in my mouth; there, now you can taste it too. Also The Dress was dirty. No amount of weak winter lamplight was going to disguise the dirtiness of The Dress. This Dress is the sort that women pass down to other little women that they love – in my case I’m thinking a niece, perhaps, in which case I’ll need to find a sister – and now The Dress is so dirty that I know it will never be clean again and nobody else will want it, and now what will be the fate of The Dress once I have shuffled off this mortal coil? Beauty is a dress’s only security in this world. I have callously ruined The Dress’s prospects. Once we’d kissed you remembered to be cross with me, and the policewoman on front desk duty seemed to relax, probably because you were beginning the sort of boring scene she was used to when people are reunited with other people that they’ve reported missing.
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