A Day Without Sunshine

by E. Saxey

I don't waste time. I study, I work hard, and when I go out I can squeeze a month of clubbing into one night. Tonight I'm squeezing it in a nasty place in Peckham, South London: no air, and the walls are sweating. I can't get drunk--I've got a lecture tomorrow morning--so I'm dancing myself stupid, twisting my head so quick that my braids twat me in the face.

But across the delirious dance-floor, in the far corner, there's a pool of stillness. Nobody dancing, everyone chilling, and you, leaning on a wall. You're a little guy with lush brown eyes, gazing all around you.

I fight my way through the dancers to get to you. I get tangled in arms, fingernails up in my face, but I finally reach you.

"I'm Michelle. I'm doing law. You a student?"

You're Hesham, twenty-eight, from Cairo. Not studying anything.

As I look at you, my skin tingles. Then I hear a police siren wailing past--of course, we're next to the fire exit. That's why there's a pool of coolness round you.

"This is all excellent," you say, waving an overpriced beer bottle at the terrible club. I laugh.

"You must be on some good stuff, fam."