The note and the bruise

The kid who handed me that note — eight, maybe, third row — drew a Vauxhall Corsa in blue biro under GOOD LUCK. Not the joke. The actual car. He thought the bit was about the car and the cassette and his gran probably owns one too and that's fine, that's the whole architecture of it, the universal in the specific. But the kid saw the specific and not the bruise and I held that folded paper like he was the only person in the room who'd understood.

Pryce's fingers are still a bruise on the left side. I can press it and feel it. I'm not pressing it but I know it's there. The vision going white at the edges — I've had worse panic attacks and they didn't leave marks. I keep thinking about how I looked to the room when my hand flew up. Like I'd been burned. Like it was nothing. Like it was everything.

The woman in the front row laughed at the cassette line. Three seconds of actual laughter. And I stood there with my hands shaking and I thought: it's true, it's actually true, saying the thing doesn't ruin it. Which is inconvenient because I've built a lot of architecture around the opposite belief.

I read the bit aloud before bed. The Corsa line still makes my hands tight. Tomorrow I say it in a room where someone might have seen the photo and I don't know yet whether that makes it braver or just more performative. Dee said yes. Soho October. A real room. I want that so much I can taste it which means I will absolutely manage it badly somehow. That's the only prediction I'm certain about.