Edited by
Katy Darby
&
Cherry Potts
Contents
Introduction - Katy Darby
Tasting Flight - Catherine Sharpe
Surf and Turf - Mi L Holliday
Alternative Navigations - Nichol Wilmor
Dara - Jessica Lott
Takeaway - Alison Willis
Under the Influence - Clare Sandling
How to Survive the Olympics With a Broken Heart - Rosalind Stopps
The Sacred Duty of Mexican Mothers - Michael McLaughlin
Mrs Murdoch & Mr Smith - Peter Higgins
For Your Ears Only - Bartle Sawbridge
This Isn’t Heat - Richard Smyth
Monsieur Fromage - Rosalind Stopps
Games I’ve Played and the People I’ve Played Them With - Nathan Good
Speaking in Tongues - Rebecca Gould
By the Horns - Darren Lee
Things - Rob Cox
Mirror - Cherry Potts
Something Missing - Bobbie Darbyshire
Cages Swinging in the Moonlight - Tom Conoboy
The Painter and the Physicist - Tania Hershman
Skin Deep - Michelle Shine
A Time and Place Unknown - Jason Jackson
About the Authors
The stories in this anthology are drawn from the best of over five years of readings at Liars’ League – and not just our annual Valentine’s Day love-ins. We know that love takes many forms, from erotic obsession to unspoken admiration, so we’ve picked a beautiful mixed bouquet of fiction for you which will last a lot longer than a bunch of roses. Some are sexy, some sad, and some funny, but we hope all these stories will make you fall a little bit in love with them, just like we did.
The Danish-Norwegian novelist Aksel Sandemose once said ‘Love and murder, murder and love. These are the only things worth writing about – and our authors have proved him at least half-right, with stories ranging from the comic to the bittersweet, and crossing countries and continents from the Mediterranean to Mexico, via Paris, Syria, Arizona, and of course London.
We’ve selected tales submitted under themes as remotely linked to romance as Art & Science (award-winning author Tania Hershman’s tender ‘The Painter and the Physicist’) and Birds & Beasts (Bobbie Darbyshire’s Eden reboot, and Tom Conoboy’s regional gothic ‘Cages Swinging in the Moonlight’). You’ll discover the darker (and sweatier) side of New York in Jessica Lott’s ‘Dara’ and Richard Smyth’s ‘This Isn’t Heat’, how to handle a bull in the lounge with Darren Lee’s ‘By the Horns’, and why Chinese is not the food of love in Alison Willis’s ‘Takeaway’.
If your literary leanings are more exotic, you can hang out with a mermaid, travel in time, experience ear-licking in an art gallery, and meet a goldfish that eats loneliness – but for the old-fashioned romantics, we’ve got some boy-meets-girl (and girl-meets-girl) tales too – even if the course of true love rarely runs smooth. Catherine Sharpe’s ‘Tasting Flight’ explores the wine-drenched hopefulness of internet dating, and both Nathan Good’s and Peter Higgins’s stories shine a light on love in middle age and beyond. Meanwhile, Rob Cox’s subtle and moving ‘Things’ reminds us of the love that remains, even when the beloved is lost.
We also have a brace of stories from Rosalind Stopps, who’ll cheer up the broken-hearted with two remedies for love gone sour (cheese and sport, if you’re curious), a sinister story of vodka and online shopping in Claire Sandling’s ‘Under the Influence’ – and editor Cherry Potts also contributes her own meditation on love, war and regret in the atmospheric ‘Mirror’.
Every month I look forward to reading the new crop of submissions for our latest theme: not just because I love short stories (which I do) – but also because I’m endlessly fascinated by the new and unique ways in which our authors interpret life, love and the world of words. We at Liars’ League don’t mind whether you think of this collection as a series of one-night stands, or snapshots from one rollercoaster of a long-term relationship – as long as you call us in the morning.
x x x
Katy Darby
www.liarsleague.com @liarsleague
A gorgeous meaty smell pulsed from the open hearth that separated the restaurant from the lacquered bar where Pen waited for Amy233, a first meeting. She was early, straight from yoga, trying to decide what she wanted. She ordered the Think Pink! Rosé tasting flight. If one was unpalatable, she could move on to the next. Not far from her bar perch, various meats and a tidy row of ever-larger fowl rotated with precarious dignity over licks of hickory flame – quail, bantam, duck. Duck, duck, goose. Pen could almost hear the sizzle of fat dripping, almost feel hungry. She tasted the first wine set before her.
Pen suffered displacement, having lost a day somewhere, or her voice, or an important list, or the spelling of her middle name. Perhaps her chakras were out of whack. They were whacked. Maybe wacky. Pen’s first chakra, her base chakra, even her second, and possibly third chakras, were undercharged. Or was it overcharged? One or the other. Her chakras were whacked, and her empty stomach soured at the first rosé.
The bartender smiled when he poured a French offering. Pen studied the sweating bottle, as if it revealed a matter of great interest, as if memorable. Mmmmmm, she nodded, but this one tasted sour, too. Shouldn’t pink wine taste sweet, more like candy, more like SweetTarts? Were her sense receptors whacked, too? Maybe she was miswired.
Plugged, unplugged. Or worse, tripped at the breaker. The heart breaker! Ha, thought Pen, with a bit of an ugly twist around her second chakra. Maybe just gas. Getting ripped on blush wine. Another symptom of a shocking chakra problem.
She balanced her elbows, sipped from the third pink. This one reminded her pleasantly of André’s Pink Champagne, prom night, and Henry devoted in his performance of true love, if not exactly straight. That stood for something! Her consciousness expanded.
Cologne. An older guy at the wine bar. All in his dark blue suit, Italian (the suit), and banana-coloured tie. Polish on his nails, Mister Advertising Man with his two-olive martini.
Well, hello, he offered. Yes, hi, she said. It seemed polite to take less space on her stool, to make more room for his elbows. Then, sudden as a rooster pecking an egg, he’s telling her about his stepson, Dismissed from boarding school! he said. First one wife, and then another one, this one with a miscreant son. Can you imagine? Pen could well imagine. The first wife’s aura, soft-shelled like a crab, a fading bluish-green – flushed out by someone younger, livelier, easier. But that son was trouble. Mister Disappointed.
Mister leaned close, with questions. He was handsome, in a fatherly aftershave kind of way. He popped an olive, grinning.
I like you, he said, for no good reason.
My date. Waiting for my date. She was vague, looking pinkly through her fourth taste. Feeling the cool wineglass soothe all the little foreheads of her fingertips. Oh, it was warm, so close to the open hearth.
Oh your girrrlllfriend, he said, all sly like a fox – sinful, silver fox. Mister Hipster. You bi? asked Mister Hipster Withit. Maybe my first wife was bi or even lesbian she was so angry. Is it easy to tell?
Sure it is, Pen said. Easy.
I thought so, Peg, he said.
It was easy to mix her up. This did not help her self-esteem (a depletion of the third chakra). She pictured her esteem in a dismal little pile, like underpants kicked under the bed. Her first and second chakras were probably in the toilet.
She needed the bathroom, but would she miss Amy233? It was 233? Not 223? What if she’d emailed back and forth with 233, but made a date with 223? There was probably more than one Amy. What if she was mixed up?
Pen often got mixed up with other people, the wrong kind of people, the not so nice kind, the cheating kind. She would get herself mixed up with someone else, forgetting her own name and such, thinking she was someone’s mirror, or mattress, or dishwasher, or any number of home furnishings. Then suddenly, her chakras were kicked under the bed.
Nose. Powdering, she said. Mister chuffed, elbows expanding, endangering her flight. But she was brave. She pushed away. Mister ordered another martini.
She walked past the open hearth into the ladies’ lounge, where she almost cried to catch the last strains of a Beatles song – Norwegian Wood or Eleanor Rigby; she always mixed those up – piped into the bathroom. She examined the full expression of her pinkness in the mirror, her raw nature. Only four-fifths through her flight, barely off the ground. She could leave. Could it matter? She cooled herself with water.
Pen came back to find her place crowded out by Mister’s wife and stepson. The woman – styled, fluid, cared for – took up little space alongside hubby and her droopy-lidded teenager. Like her mate Mister, the woman was very with-it, or at least with a lot of it.
Pen reached around them to recover her place, but her flight was gone. Flown. No empty coop, not even a ring of moisture. Pen had no seat, she was not grounded, she was ungrounded, she was a live wire dropped in a puddle, she was at risk of serious shock, unwarranted electrical discharge.
Did you see my fifth blush? Pen asked Mister. Mister shifted politely out of Pen’s way, unruffled, elbows tight, martini aloft.
I’m sorry? he said, as if to a total stranger.
At Pen’s question, Mrs Mister’s eyes flicked like a snake tongue over Pen’s face, her body. Pen could smell the sizzling arc of suspicion before the wife tucked it back in like a bra strap. The wife wiggled the knot of her son’s tie, then reached for her husband’s. Mister puffed his chest towards the missus, making his tie easier to reach. This helped Pen remember herself; remember why she was here, a least for a minute.
A water? Flat, please, she told the bartender. Soon Amynumber should swoop in, cupping the air for a skidding, hiccup of a landing.
Pen had other strangers to meet. She was open, her heart chakra was open. She watched the door closely. Open, open, open, Pen thought.
There’s a girl on my living room floor, looking up at me from underneath sodden blonde curls and eyelashes clumped together in thick black triangles. The light of the TV renders the pastel orange of her mermaid skirt just barely visible where it clings to her legs, a scrap of fabric in a similar colour masquerading as a shirt.
I set my carton of lo mein down on the coffee table, ignoring the scent that tantalizes my all-too-empty stomach.
There’s a girl on my living room floor, and she fell out of my fish tank.
It wasn’t a big tank, just a little two gallon thing that barely fit the fat goldfish I’d had in there, the one suspiciously nowhere in sight, though by all rights it should be flopping around amongst the shattered ruins of its home.
I open my mouth, hoping something useful will come out and restore order to my night.
‘Did you eat my goldfish?’
She just blinks up at me. Her eyes are huge and dark, reflecting in quick flashes the bursts of colour from the movie I was watching. The movement on the screen must catch her attention, because she cocks her head in its direction before turning around fully, scooting up to the screen, nose so close I swear I can hear the soft static reaching out to connect with her wet flesh. A soft, unintelligible murmur drifts out of the speakers, but I have the sound down too low for much more than that. After a moment she reaches up one pale hand and pushes the volume button until the TV seems like it’s blaring. I wince, even though there’s no one to be woken up by it.
The girl pushes herself up off the floor, stepping across carpet that I imagine in better light would have her dainty footprints seeped into the cream colouring, a damp trail leading over to the couch where she settles lightly down next to me. She’s so close, the warmth of her body like something palpable, almost a force field around her, forecasting her movements as she lays her head down in my lap, face turned towards the TV. I hold myself rigid, back straight and shoulders tense, feeling every twitch as she makes herself comfortable. She pauses like she’s finally done shifting, but then she leans back, her arm coming up to press across my chest as she looks up at me.
My stomach growls, of all things, and I’m intensely grateful that the dim light probably hides my blush.
Still without a word, the girl reaches out and grabs my Chinese food, snagging a bite before handing it up to me. I take it in numb fingers and try to figure out how she expects me to eat and not end up smacking her in the face with my elbows. I’m just getting the hang of it as a sandworm creature bursts up from the ground on screen and devours somebody. I’d know who if I’d been paying more attention to the movie. I’ve got a fork in one hand and food in the other, so I can’t exactly pinch myself, but I do end up stabbing myself rather painfully in the mouth as I take my next bite, so this isn’t a dream. I’m mostly certain.
‘I like the part where the main character gets his leg eaten,’ the girl says after several long minutes of staring at the screen. Her voice is a soft alto, nothing strange about it. ‘Have we missed it?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen this one before,’ I tell her. I finish the last bit of lo mein and hand her the empty carton and fork, which she dutifully pushes back onto the coffee table with a little stretching and squirming.
‘Really?’ She asks. ‘Maybe I’m thinking of a different movie.’
‘Sandworms are hard to tell apart,’ is all I can offer her. The tension starts to bleed out of me now that I’m fed, with the girl seeming more and more normal with every passing second. I could almost ignore the broken remains of the fish tank on the floor, just out of the circle of light cast by the TV; ignore the dampness still clinging to her hair, where my hands seem to have found a home. She shudders when my touch ghosts too light through the strands and makes a peculiar, almost-purring sound when I tug slightly, pulling ringlets straight before allowing them to bounce back to their original shape. I feel my spine curve back towards the couch cushions, relaxing into a slump that sets my shoulder blades to stinging with their sudden release from duty.
The girl sighs contentedly against my thigh when another victim falls to the devouring hunger of the sandworm monsters. I try to let myself drop back into the flow of the film, but I miss, tumbling headfirst towards unconsciousness instead.
‘Bette,’ I whisper, but my voice trails off.
The girl hums something affirmative into my worn sweatpants, the sudden warmth more than her response jolting me awake for one impossibly long moment.
‘Are you my goldfish?’ I ask her muzzily, fighting against the heaviness of my eyelids, but to no effect. I’m out before I can hear her answer.
It seems like only a second later I’m waking with my goldfish’s name on the tip of my tongue, but I’m alone except for the beams of sunlight falling unfailing across my eyes, burning the sleep away. There’s a damp dent across the couch, the lingering smell of her hair rising up to meet me when I roll off of it, the thump of my body reminding me belatedly that I should be watching out for the glass. There’s no glass, though, and no signs of water on the carpet. I push myself up and stagger into the kitchen, and there’s the girl, not gone at all but rather rummaging through my fridge. The shards of the fish tank have been deposited neatly into the trash along with my empty Chinese carton.
‘Bette?’ I try the name again.
She turns her head towards me, leaning on the refrigerator door. She looks remarkably normal in the light of day.
‘You were lonely’ she says.
‘What, goldfish can sense loneliness?’
The girl shakes her head.
‘Goldfish eat loneliness.’
My jaw drops. That was certainly not what I had been expecting.
‘Is that true?’ I ask.
She looks down demurely, casting a glance back up, a sweet smile curving her lips.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not.’
I can feel myself on the edge of flailing, but that wouldn’t really help. I think I manage to keep my voice admirably even as I ask, ‘Then what is?’
She pulls the milk out of the fridge, knocking it closed with one hip as she steps over to two bowls of cereal sitting on the counter. I hadn’t even noticed them. I wait for her to answer, but she just mumbles half a tune and pours the milk, clattering around in the silverware drawer one-handed until she comes up with spoons.
‘You were lonely’ she repeats at last, giving me a bowl, ‘and I thought it might be nice to see what the movie looked like from your side of the glass.’
I stare at the cereal. She crunches into her own, unperturbed.
‘I’m not sure that really explains anything.’
Bette grins.
‘I know.’