Free The Last Summer of the Water Strider by Tim Lott

From my own
personal
experience.’
    She kissed Henry, and flung her arms around his neck.
    Henry smiled at me and said, ‘I thought you’d be more comfortable if you knew.’
    When I came down from the roof, an hour or two after Henry’s theatrical attempt to offer proof of his heterosexuality, I went to my room and put Nick Drake’s
Five Leaves Left
album on. His voice hung suspended in sadness like a skeleton leaf on a cold winter pond. I lay there in my room until the late afternoon, floating with the leaf, when I
became aware of a gentle knocking at my door.
    I ignored it at first, having been embarrassed by the double-act on the sun deck. My feelings of vague hostility towards Henry had not been allayed. It had seemed that he was mocking me. Also I
felt humiliated that my admittedly absurd presumption had been proved wrong so forcefully. The knocking continued. Then I heard the sound of a woman’s voice.
    ‘Adam?’
    I uttered a sullen acknowledgement. The door inched open. A sliver of a face appeared. Shining, burnished. The hinge creaked as the door completed its parabola. Strawberry was standing there,
smiling lazily, her left leg bent slightly so that she stood just off centre. Her head, too, was cocked to one side. The effect was inviting without being necessarily sexual. I could smell
patchouli oil, cloves and something else. Iron? Old pennies?
    I blushed and avoided eye contact. She had changed. She was now wearing a simple white linen dress, embroidered with a fine pink and blue looped pattern across the bust and, it seemed, nothing
much underneath. I could see the caramel darkness of her nipples through the material. No shoes. She was carrying two of the green ceramic cups from downstairs.
    She gave a small cough, which quickly developed into something more serious – a hacking rasp that shook her tiny frame. Her body was underdeveloped – I hadn’t realized how much
so when I had first seen her. Her calves and thighs, exposed beneath her buttocks – where in fact, there was barely any curve – seemed to be no more than the circumference of a sturdy
table leg. ‘Spindly’ was the word that crossed my mind. It made her seem vulnerable, even in her beauty.
    The coughing was so extreme that I thought she was going to drop the cups. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the fit ended. She had tears in her eyes, presumably from the seizure, which she
was unable to wipe away because of the cups in her hand. She held one of them out to me. I took it, tearing my gaze away from her body, and nodded acknowledgement.
    ‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘Instant. Not that tar water Henry cooks up.’
    She wiped the teardrops from her face with her free hand.
    ‘I sort of like Henry’s coffee,’ I answered.
    ‘I only drink green tea. You get it in health-food stores in the States. And spring water. Or rainwater. I’m very strict. Green tea helps to remove impurities. The pollution is
everywhere. Invisible rain. Even here we’re not safe. Right out here in the boonies, that shit still comes down. That’s why I get these terrible coughs. Charged particles. Radiation.
You know about the radiation? But it’s better here than in the Smoke. It feels clean. Even if, really, it’s not. You know?’
    I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t answer. I expected her to withdraw, but she didn’t move. She adjusted her posture slightly, leaning forward as if inviting herself in
further. She sipped her tea, leaving a trail of moisture on her ghostly lips, whose paleness contrasted sharply with the rest of her body. It occurred to me then that she was waiting for an
invitation to sit down. I was slouched on my bed. On the wall above it, a large poster of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, in mid-solo, was stuck with drawing-pins at four corners: bearded,
ecstatic, the neck of his red guitar pointing to heaven.
    The only place to sit, other than the severe chair at my desk, was the rumpled and stained purple