OLWG# 284- Nat

Written for OLWG# 284

I first met Natalie on a Friday night in late November of 1983. She leaned against the window of the DP next door to the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road in Camden. She was dark-skinned. Her complexion consisted of all the colours that make midnight. That is, if you were to look away from the full moon hanging low in the eastern sky.

Peter Tosh was playing that night.

Natalie and I soon fell into an easy banter, and we hung together during the show. Afterwards, we ran through the rain and shared a drink at a tiny, non-descript place in Soho. We shared a mattress on the floor of her flat in Brixton. In the morning, we shared a breakfast and made plans for later that day.

That evening as agreed, I knocked on her door just before dark. We were going for dinner. She came to the door wearing nothing but a smile. We missed out on dinner, but we played Strip Monopoly all night. She won the last time I landed on ‘Fleet Street,’ but I felt that I had won as well and that she had wanted that.

In total, Natalie and I shared almost a month. She disappeared before Christmas that year. Looking back, I realize I should have seen it coming, but I was blind and taken by surprise. One afternoon, I went to Brixton, but her space was empty. Empty save for a single sheet of lined paper ripped from the pad she always kept next to her bed. It read

Nat