Come Dance With Me

25 Christabel Alderton

25 January 2003. And now a dead bat. Not just any bat but a rare one, an endangered species. I can imagine this bat — I’ll call him Jim, he’s from Maui. Hasn’t been feeling all that great so he goes to his doctor for a check-up. Doc Bat says, ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Jim says, ‘Shortness of breath, chest pains, I pass out when I hang upside down, my echolocation is wonky, I have trouble taking off and I can’t get any altitude.’

‘Hmmm,’ says the doc. Listens to Jim’s heart, looks into his ears, opens and shuts his wings, says, ‘Hmmm’ again and shakes his head.

‘What?’ says Jim.

‘I think,’ says the doc, ‘if there’s anything you’ve always wanted to do but never got round to, now is the time to do it. If you can.’

‘You mean …?’ says Jim.

‘You got it,’ says Doc Bat.

So Jim thinks he might as well try for Honolulu. It’s only a short hop but he’s never found the time to go there and he’d like to see the bright lights and the action before he checks out. He takes off and he’s flapping, flapping his way to Oahu. He’s running out of petrol when he sees the lights and there’s the airport with ALOHA in big letters on it. How he’s over the Japanese garden and he echolocates me. ‘My kind of human!’ he squeaks. ‘She’s into this kind of thing.’ And with that he drops dead in front of me.

OK, so Jim Bat got my number. Why not? I was probably broadcasting on all frequencies, ALDERTON’S MY NAME AND DEATH’S MY GAME. I felt sorry for Jim but I had other things to think about, like why I came here.

In 1993 when the grief in me was like something with hooks on it stuck in my throat, I spent a night at the Mini Hotel Sleep/Shower and the quietness and tranquillity of it calmed me down and helped me pull myself together. Now the Mini Hotel was gone but I thought I might find that old quietness in the gardens or the lounge in the middle of the night. It didn’t happen. In my chair in the lounge I was tired but not sleepy; I was awake for a long time with my eyes feeling dry and sandy and I dozed off now and then with strange pictures in my head but no useful thoughts.

What I was feeling for Elias wasn’t the kind of rush I had with Adam. How could it be with Elias and me both so much older? But when he held me that night while I cried I felt as if I’d come home after being gone for a long, long time. I’d been trying to keep my death life separate from the live life that Elias was part of. Why hadn’t I told him about Django? If I told him about that I’d be inviting him into every part of my life and I wasn’t sure he’d be safe there.

Henry turned up with a coffee for me. ‘I thought you might be wakeful,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I was.’ I said. ‘Too much on my mind.’

‘Remember,’ said Henry. ‘The bat chose you. You’re special.’