Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove

tried to smile when people walked past, raised their drinks to her. Others danced on the balcony, threw their empty glasses down, trying to skim them across the surface of the sea. They pointed and exclaimed at colours in the sky. Bursts of light from bombs and shells falling in other parts of the city were merely a backdrop to the view. Stars extinguished. Another explosion. Familiar war. The incessant crack of machine-gun fire, only a faintly off-the-beat bass line to the music inside.
    Sanaya hummed along to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. It was a strange choice. Out of date, ironic even, nostalgic for better days when there was no war, when Beirut was that much-lauded but true cliché: Paris of the East. Sanaya closed her eyes. She wanted to dance alone, oblivious to the ugliness around her, float among clouds with diamonds in place of pupils, a third eye shining bright. She let herself sway a little, opened her eyes. A man walking by raised his glass to her, self-deprecating, with a twist to the mouth. He was heavily tanned, like a construction worker, the whites of his eyes too bright. A woman behind him struck poses on the coffee table, in her own self-imposed trance, pushing aside the tiny, heaped plates onto the carpet with her stiletto heels. The man stopped in front of Sanaya, his body blocking out the other people. He was wearing a tuxedo, and although his dress shirt was half out of his trousers she thought him pretentious.
    â€˜Having fun?’
    She raised her eyes up to him and smirked, sitting more upright on her chair, cross-legged, almost prim except for her bare, hose-free legs.
    â€˜Not really.’
    His attention wandered for a moment; a blonde leaned backward over the balcony, screaming, her bell-shaped sleeves flying in the breeze. Sanaya looked, too, and grimaced.
    â€˜I haven’t had enough to drink, maybe that’s why.’
    He topped up her glass with whisky from a bottle he carried under his arm. She didn’t think it strange at the time. She was only conscious of him looking at her. His too-white eyes were now closed, the violet lids veined with thread-like capillaries. When he opened them, he didn’t blink. From his vantage point, she felt he could see right down into her cleavage. She stood up, too close in the humid, smoke-filled air, uncomfortably close. Excitingly close. He didn’t move, their torsos and faces almost touching.
    â€˜What?’ she asked. ‘Is there something wrong?’
    He shook his head. Together in rhythm, they turned and downed their glasses of whisky. He shook out a packet of cigarettes.
    â€˜Smoke?’
    â€˜Sometimes.’
    She let him lean forward and light the cigarette for her, smelled something from his hair, spice and sourness; a lock of it touched her face. She shivered, felt the pressing-down sensation of desire in her belly, runnels of energy, almost like anxiety, or ambiguous signals of distress. She inhaled, felt the smoke enter her brain in tendrils like another form of lust.
    That had been a year ago, to the day. An anniversary of sorts. Tonight, Selim would be dropped off at her apartment by his fellow militiamen, after an evening session at the gym. It was always a different Mercedes, armour-plated, that she could see from her upstairs window: always a different number plate, but always with the same gleam, the same plushness, the same understated malice. He was still sweaty and red-faced when he arrived, clutching a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker and jumbo packets of Marlboros, tokens of the generosity and goodwill of Israel and America. No matter how many times he brought these gifts, she tried to make him take them back. But she still wanted them, regretted her scruples once again when he took them away.
    The money he brought her she always accepted. He pressed folded notes into her hand in rainbow currencies – dollars, deutschmarks, pounds – citing her cracked ceiling, her mother’s