Its the light that wakes me.

The ridges in the white vaulted ceiling are caught, sprayed along with bars of shocking pink, and the rest of the room is washed over in the reflected light: magenta walls, Persian pink curtains, the mosquito netting above me pooled with deep cerise. Its like being inside the tight petals of an unopened flower. What flowers are pink? A carnation. A pink tulip. The dangling bell of a single fuchsia bloom. It reminds me of something I cant place. A hint of a dream I would like to return to but the light is too insistent and something in my head chimes with the clarity of it and all at once Im fully awake. I sit up into the fleshy light and lean my back against the wall of the alcove where we sleep. The bright air is cool and wall is cold against my skin. I havent felt this chilled for weeks. Beside me on the mattress Ella has curled herself tightly into a ball and her skin is peppered over with goose bumps. I pull the white sheet, amaranth now in the light, up from where it has crumpled at the foot of the mattress and cover her over with it. She doesnt move and I swing my feet slowly round and then drop with a little flat footed slap onto the white ceramic tiles, all shiny pink now, and push out through the netting into the room. Its a small room, tiny for a studio, with a cocina Americano, the unlovely name they have here for a strip kitchen, at one end and big glass sliding doors at the other. The doors look out onto a rooftop terrace that is as big as the studio itself and through them, and through the diamond metal grill that we lock at night so we can sleep with them open, and through the canes of the bamboo fencing around the edge of the terrace I can see that already the sunrise is changing gear, moving from pink towards gold. I havent seen the sun rise for years. I look for Ellas keys and find them in a pot with some small change underneath a length of cloth that looks a flat matt purple in this light, wrapped up in a ball with a necklace of hammered metal and seemingly purple and pink gemstones. There are things everywhere, parts of Ellas costumes, bits of old clothing, props, makeup. The sofa bed on one side of the room, its mattress removed, has become a frame for hanging clothes dresses and jeans and tops here along with the ruffed collars, the diamond patterned tunics, the baggy black pants, the endless hats. The dining table has a large mirror on it propped against the other wall and is completely covered with paints and bottles of makeup; spray cans, brushes and small metal utensils like small instruments of torture. We eat outside at a small table on the terrace. We sleep and make oral love on the mattress from the sofa bed in the curtained alcove or, sometimes and usually at night, on the terrace also. My calves and thighs are stiff from standing all day yesterday and I cross the room with a stiff-legged prancing hobble. I reach up and with a twist and shake unlock the diamond metal grill. It makes a terrible noise, a shriek of metal on metal, when you open it and for a moment I consider just watching from here but I want to be out and in the light, up onto the terrace looking out to see the horizon and already the colours are shifting and the sky overhead is moving from a dark wash of ink towards a bright turquoise, all in a perfect west-east gradient. I look back to the alcove, where the lovely familiar hump of Ellas body has not moved since I covered her. I move the door an inch, two in silence and then it catches with a shrill complaint and I stop. The band of turquoise broadens from the east, rising almost to the nippled point of the lighthouse tower. I look back around the room which is now almost all golden, just edged with stray remaining veils of pink. Ella still has not moved. I shake the door to loosen it a little and then push

again. It goes several inches and then sticks hard with another harsh shriek. I hear Ella move in the alcove and wait, paused and silent and trying even to breathe quietly. It might be better just to give the door a single push than to try this. Would that wake her? Would she not just go back to sleep if it did? Or will the repeated small squeals of friction do that anyway? I wait for a moment. The last of the ink has blotted away to the west replaced by a powder blue and as the glow in the East grows stronger its colours become more common, less precious, the turquoise dulling towards azure, the gold fading to mere orange and yellow. Im missing this. I hold my breath and give the grill a last short shove. It squeals vindictively but gives enough for me to step up and squeeze through and out into the cool glowing morning. Ive scraped my ribs slightly getting through and the graze stings sharply and then subsides. Im naked. Theres no-one around to see at this time and anyway the bamboo canes cover up to my waist but still I add a small exhibitionist thrill to the mornings electric sparkle. I walk across to the edge of the terrace and the red tiles of the terrace are cold and wet with due under the soles of my feet. Theres a little breeze, clean and smelling of nothing, and I can feel little liquid streams of it running fine and icy over my skin. Im just in time for the last of the glory: ahead and below me the lower part of the city stretches dark and studded with street lamps towards the harbor. The buildings look unnaturally dark and the highest ones look completely black and two dimensional, cut out against the glowing horizon. You cant see the Mediterranean from here but as with everywhere else in the city you can feel it even when it is out of sight, a great pool of light and space, a vast muscle of blue beyond your Eastern horizon. Above the dark ramparts of the buildings to the East, a low bank of cloud hangs far out above where the horizon must be, sending with its atmospherics these great capes of color over the city. Very high up overhead a plane is slowly climbing across the blue gradient of the sky from west to east. Its con trail is a razor cut of pure brilliant cyan, bleeding brightest shocking pink at the edges, staying straight and true and bright and thin for a long time and then finally spreading out like a watercolor brushstroke, lavender against the blueing sky. The coolness is drug like. It rushes over me and sometimes I think its too much but then it subsides and always I am just on this side of shivering. I close my eyes and tense and relax my legs to stretch them. The morning seems worthy of some kind of ceremony and I wish that I knew yoga, or some tai-chi, or something old and mystical with which to salute the new day. With my eyes closed the eastern light is just a soft illumination and I am very aware of the currents of air across my naked skin, the tiny hairs erect and moving in the shifting currents. The tiles beneath my feet release a deep, bone aching chill and I balance for a moment with one foot on top of the other, and then reverse that, until I can stand comfortably again. I put my arms out straight to my side and tease myself a little with the proximity of the terraces edge, the slot canyon between tenaments straight down to the paved street below. Im almost asleep in this posture, a long way back towards the warm crimson place in the dream , when theres a soft, patterned thump, like four muffled drumbeats very close together and something brushes across the back of my ankles.

Out takes:

Thomaszewski is Ellas cat and although hes friendly, I think I see sometimes in his crystalline yellow eyes that he hasnt entirely made up his mind to trust me yet. The day seems still fragile, as if a sudden shock might send it scurrying back eastwards into darkness, only to return grey and low and overcast. << NO! Just refer to it as fragile at some point.