Layla’s Flat On Moon Gravel Road

By Jasmeet Dosanjh

Summer had finally happened on moon-gravel road. That night, there were no ominous spaceships floating above in the swamp-green sky. The meteor fixed above the residents’ heads like a painting had finally been removed, and in its place was a flower-patch looking down from heaven. The sun didn’t come, it never came on moon-gravel road. But summer was here, it came without sun or chiming little living things, but it came with its natural, universal song.

For three days and twenty-three hours there was a diffused, uplifting cloud of energy over the expanse of the three apartment buildings that coagulated into moon-gravel road.

Layla woke on day one with her pet robot Pri perched on her pillow. The pillow was fluffed with life and the electric home help had prepared a drink of lemon and nicotine-powder and kept it on her bedside table. She woke to bright light pouring in from the hall-window that had never needed curtains before.

The moon-gravel synthetic-environment control committee had felt the arrival of summer in their faded hearts, and for a while had been working on a central light source as golden and honey-charged as their memory of the sun to accompany the summer atmosphere, when it finally came. They remembered the sun from vague dreams of childhood, but it had not come for so long that hope had transformed into a cool, resilient indifference.

There was little talk of souls during the permanent winter.

Layla rose, sprinkled her clean scalp with lavender oil she had secretly preserved, in stubborn hope, that one day the dead cold road where her life revolved will have a small green thing snake out, make a crack in the earth, and bloom rebelliously. 

 On the moon-gravel road podcast today there was a guest boy, immediately catching Layla’s attention with the summer in his cheeks, the kind of rosiness that can only come from continued episodes of summers over the years. 

There was talk of souls, but Layla heard too little of it. But the voice poured into her like a cool orange drink, giving her a glimpse of extraterrestrial life. Moon-gravel road, her home, was suddenly barren. Pri and the house-help had always been there, hovering, yet their presence felt pale and translucent compared to the fleshy shine of this boy, his fragrance fresh and skin woven with star-shine, even in the holographic projection. She was mesmerised with something artificial, she knew, her only hope being that at least it was a picture of something real, something she could touch and feel with her own hands.

The other residents of Moon-gravel road were too little like her, mechanical and submissive to the natural law of their circumstances. She had never spoken to any of her neighbours except for work or custom. 

The boy was coming to Moon Gravel road for the summer, unspecified as its duration was, to collect unspecified data for the higher committee of natural law. He seemed to belong to some safe sector in a land so vastly dystopian. 

Layla had never seen the outside of moon-gravel road. It had always been enclosed in a misty dome, ever since she was little. Her parents had been transported through the dome to hospital when they got sick during the epidemic which oddly seemed to launch periodically when a handful of residents reached the middle age. She never saw them again. She never knew the super-secret authority that took them. 

Now that memory of warmth was bright and close in her heart. In truth she had never let her flame die out completely. She refused to be the unconscious prima materia of what seemed like a divinely unjust experiment. She had remained, through some secret power of the will, conscious.

Her bald scalp began to itch now as the pungent oil seeped into her skull which had become less and less ceramic over the endless winter- or at least so it had seemed.

She started making preparations in welcome of summer. She wanted a chapter now, something solid and menthol blue to play in her head at night before the winter dream was summoned again.

She saw him on day three in the grocery store. She had spent day two making cocktails because her house-help would not allow her to bake, saying she had never baked before, and that art is best untouched after the tender age has passed in ignorance.

It was all mechanical, even Pri’s soft licks by her ear, and the help’s ritual cooking and cleaning, nothing offered a chance for a kick, for hurting, for a stolen kiss in a vine-meshed alley.

He was so beautiful and human to her it seemed cruel, at first, then she passed into adoration, simple as her heart had remained despite the devitalized feeling she had when she let herself be scooped by rituals of moon-gravel road. All of them worked in building number three and none of them knew what purpose they served, they simply arranged or entered data dully, clockbound. There was everything dutiful and nothing sweet about their devotion. They met on Sundays in the purple garden and suckled on peachy epinephrine popsicles. 

He was hovering near the liquor section, his mouth amused.

Layla aimed to give the impression that she was idly weaving through, in search for some secret toiletry item. She passed him and felt a curling pain in her belly, when his fragrance and life radiated through the aisle.

She felt a sudden urge to embrace him, and there was little to lose. It was summer, her last hopes had fluttered away some lost eon ego, and here was a boy with the sun in his cheeks and a real way of looking, a way of looking that is almost like touching. 

She caught him in a tight, powerful embrace just before he was about to exit. He hadn’t looked at her before, not that she had noticed. 

He returned her hug, with an everyday sort of ease. There was no more smothering, it was time for Layla to plunge.

Day four was Sunday popsicle night and Layla felt so nervous she almost cancelled. There were no repercussions for not going, perhaps because the thought had never occurred previously to the moon-gravel residents.

The flower-patch overhead glowed bluely, lovely as a motherly being. Layla was glad she came. Dew was in her eyes, in her skin. Her scalp stung but smelled sweetly of night-buds. 

A milken river flowed tonight in the community garden. Pri drank from it, gentle and happy as a baby lamb. 

Tonight the people chimed, not earnestly talking, but still there was music and life emanating from the hearts of things. 

She scanned the garden for the one.

Leaving Pri to swim in the cream-flowing stream with the only two other pets of moon-gravel road, she marched under the spell of her private task.

She had always felt the world beyond the mist, its obviousness, its forbiddenness. She felt certain that is from where he entered her world, and dislocated her centre in it.

A hand, light as a firefly. Popsicle-charged she became slightly jumpy, so the coy romance of the scene she had planned in her head, was realised instead in a frantic hop at his touch. 

She turned to a face beautifully crinkled in laughter. It hurt and it felt like being seen. 

“Layla!” she screamed her name, releasing it with urgency. It had been trapped in the labyrinth of her mind for all of history, it had assumed many lonely appearances. This was its final form.

“Layla, Bo.”

“Bo?”

“Bo,” he said, lighting up. It was a gentle name, almost a sigh, and Layla put her life energy into it, spitting it with force. It amused him, he is constantly amused by moon-gravel road and its happenings.

“Are we a strange people?” Layla asked, disheartened.

“You are all individuals. That is rare. You are nothing like each other.”

“Do you drink cocktails?”

Bo laughed, crinkling up again, like candescent butter-paper. “Cocktails? Why, yes. Of course!”

“I made some, for the first time. First day of summer.”

“I’d love to try. Except, this is my last night here. And I’m supposed to attend Sunday garden earnestly. How about, I give you a drug from my world?”

Layla realised this will be the first goodbye she has ever anticipated. She played the final scene in her head, replicating it, mutating it, hoping it will end in a kiss. So she will have her dream, and life will be lived on moon-gravel road.

He gave her a slim white tube, he calls it a mint cigarette.

“You pop the beads in the filter, before lighting it.” Saying this, he popped the beads for her. Her hands still pale and sheer from the memory of winter. 

Summer has the irritating character of ending as soon as it begins.

They smoked by the milk river, Pri circling them in electric orbits. There is a gravity to that night, everyone is pulled closer. The usually scattered map of life in the garden became centred now, like a big heart. 

Layla took a few puffs, the nicotine is something she is used to, in powder form. But there is something earthen in that cigarette that anchors her body, and solidifies the grass and river, even the soft breeze. 

She returned the cigarette, half-smoked. 

“It’s not a universal first experience, I know. Is your heart okay?”

He placed his hand on her small chest, shocked at the almost translucent, shimmery peel layered to make her skin. Loneliness, and a stubborn self-preservation against the norms of moon-gravel road while simultaneously participating in them, had made her infinitely beautiful.

“Tell me, do I have a heart-beat, still?”

“Very faint, like a radio wrapped in silk.”

She nodded passionately.

“Silk is like, a soft stream of water, except that you can hold it.”

“Oh, alright. I see.”

“That was not an insult, I mean, I just assumed, this is a different sort of reality, almost, so I didn’t know if you understood me.”

“I see.”

“You can ask me anything you like. Anything under, well, the flower-patch overhead.”

“What is a radio?”

“Oh, oh! A radio. That’s like, an old-time device. It’s a box, and like, music comes out of it. It catches signals in the air.”

“Can you hear voices on it, also?”

“Why, yes. If someone wants to reach a lot of people at once.”

“Speak to me, through a radio.”

He pressed his mouth just above her rib-cage, feeling the shock of its warmth. There was a current passing through her, touching her is a changing. 

“I wish I’d met you in a dream. So I’d wake up at home, only with a sweet aftertaste.”

“Mint cigarette taste.”

“You’ll find a tobacco aisle in your grocery store tomorrow.”

“When you’re gone.”

“Come with me.”

Layla did not answer- he had said it in a sanitised, detached manner. Like one would recite a stranger’s poem.

But now the thought was inside her. Crawling, sniping.

She wanted something, a link to him, his world, so in the morning light she could make a decision. The burying place of his final souvenir.

She gave him the amethyst crystal from her locket. It was a small heart, violet- it brings a heaviness to the wearer, really grounds them in their body. 

He understood the nature of this exchange. She has fallen in love with him, simply because he is the only one who ever came. He is going home, where he has already loved before, and there is always a chance at another love. 

So he drew a small hip-flask of whiskey out of his hip pocket, Jack Daniels, a name she’s never seen before, and gave it to her. She imagined it as a potion to dispel her newborn love. Like a quick gulp of pain-killer.

In the ionic light of her bathroom she sat with the shards of her quick-lover’s filigree flask. She had managed to trip near the archway entrance to her building, a path she took everyday had somehow disoriented her. Everything was new and old at the same time. There was little love left over, because now hope had entered her, and just as quickly fled. She felt her body enlarge, each expanding cell a glorious emptiness. Soon she was the walls of her familiar bathroom, made cold and sanitised as a hospital ward, soon she was a nothingness staring at her pale wrists that were so white and thin they could almost tear open at the slightest touch.

She thought of nothing but his face, through the mist, refusing her the last goodbye. Then she cut herself, oblong across the length of her arm, then a cross diagonally. 

The foam dispenser overflowed and took her in an ethereal cloud, floating, white and sweet and dead as everyone else 

on Moon-gravel road.

In a glass-cage she was watched. She saw her boy, too, when he was on rounds, but she felt nothing. It was not betrayal, because there were never any promises. 

There was nothing in the cage, and she had grown to need nothing. Returning to winter was simply returning home.

By Jasmeet Dosanjh