TIMES LIKE THIS…

Got back to the flats and the man lives on the first floor held the front doors for me to follow him through.
‘Thanks,’ I said, twice…or did I say, ‘Cheers’ one of those times?
Anyway, the lift was there, we didn’t have to wait for the gift left for us (I do take it personally, yes).
‘Is that what I think it is?’ he said, leaning down to take a closer look.
‘It looks like it and smells like it,’ I said. ‘So I’m guessing it is.’
‘I agree,’ he said, straightening up and saying, ‘It’s beyond...’
‘Beggars,’ I said.
The lift stopped and he got out but turned to say, before the door closed, ‘How far you got to go?’
‘The top,’ I said.
When I got to the top I knew I couldn’t leave the shit, which was undoubtedly human, there in the lift where the D and her friend might find it, so I got a bucket and mop and disinfectant and spent five minutes cleaning it up.
Times like this…

COOKER

I bought a cooker today. The D asked me too. ‘There’s something growing in it,’ she said as we stood in the kitchen for her to make her case in front of the old one. One of her friends is staying and arrived today, we were late meeting her at the station. When we got back to the flat I made a cup of tea for the three of us. When I’d handed them each a mug I said, ‘Shall I leave you to it?’ I’m very awkward when I meet people the first time like walking on a knife edge.
Drove the length of Filton Avenue before stopping at the The Locker on the Gloucester Road. They had one second hand for eighty-nine, the clock didn’t work, and they told me how to connect it. I said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and left the shop.
It was about what I wanted to spend but seeing what I’d get…Oh, it was clean and the woman looking over the top of her glasses or fiddling with some papers on the table she sat behind said, ‘We do a lot of business with him.’
Nothing in Fishponds, well, not until we went to Curry’s. The one we chose they didn’t have any in stock but the branch at Winterstoke did.
‘You want to pay for it here then pick it up there?’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
At Winterstoke they had two on display. One had a dent the other a dodgy foot. We got twenty pounds off the already sale price for the one with the dodgy foot which I fixed when we got back.
The cooker was being shrink wrapped when I asked, ‘Does it come with a cable to connect it up?’
‘No,’ he said having had to ask. ‘But you can get one at Wickes’s, you know where it is?’
‘I’ve just bought a cooker and it doesn’t come with a cable to connect it?’ I said incredulous. ‘That’s so me,’ I said later, ‘getting all excited…’
At Wickes’ I said, ‘You an electrician?’ to the man looking at the cables near the lighting section.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I know something about it.’
I told him what I needed and he showed me the cable, ‘This one should do the job,’ he said.
The manual said a qualified electrician only should connect the cooker to the mains but the D did it.

SINCE MOVING IN

She’s got a friend visiting in a few days an event the like of which means she cleans the flat because her standards are so much higher than mine. This time however, because she’s living with me while she looks for a place of her own, she’s painting the kitchen and has got me working on the bathroom.
‘How long’s she coming for?’ I said.
‘Six days,’ she said and I screamed a high pitched scream, ‘Six days?’
We looked at what needed doing and she said, ‘Did you paint the doors that colour?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘they were like that when I moved in.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said, ashamed of how little I’d done to the flat since moving in.

WHAT I THINK

‘You want this?’ she said throwing the blister pack of tramadol at me.
‘Might as well,’ I said acting cool after catching the pack, turning it over in my hands, ‘have some now.’
‘I didn’t mean now,’ she said.
I took two tabs out washed them down with the coffee she’d made while I’d done the laundry. Later I'd have two more.
‘This is lovely coffee,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘The half price stuff from Wilkinson’s,’ she said.
‘Aah,’ I said, ‘I know it well.’
She e-mailed someone about something as I doodled on the scrap piece of paper with a black gel pen I’d taken out of my pocket.
‘What do you think of zoos?’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ I said, taking time to organise the thought. ‘I wouldn’t like to be an animal in a zoo,’ I said, ‘that’s what I think.’

HE SMILED

He was singing in the subway as we approached. I put my hand in my back pocket felt for change and took out what was there and looked at the coins in the palm of my hand.
He had an inflatable toy resting on a soft toy just in front of him. There was a dark cloth to one side had a few coins.
We stopped and I said, ‘You mind if I give you change?’ meaning more coppers than pieces of silver.
He sang, ‘I saw you dancing in the moonlight…’
‘Did you?’ I said and he laughed but only stopped singing to say, ‘Thank you,’ when I dropped the coins onto the cloth then walked on into town.
After lunch in café Amore on our way into Broadmead I said, ‘They treat the customer right, he’s trained them well, is part of why I like eating there, that and a panini is about enough this time of day.’ Then I told the story of buying the NC10…and she said she knew what I meant.
‘It’s him again,’ she said, pointing to where the buskers play outside Tesco.
‘Oh yes,’ I said and looked away when I caught his eye and he smiled. I thought he recognised me from earlier and was embarrassed that I wanted him too. ‘You think he recognised us from earlier?’ I said.
‘Yes, I think he did,’ she said, ‘he smiled.’

FLAT

They were on the balcony of the dead man's flat. The flat of the man said when they were trying to evict him that they'd have to carry him out in a box: turns out that's what they did. He died in his sleep his girlfriend finding him cold and still next to her when she woke one morning.
The two on the balcony, a man and a woman are devotees of self-medicating, their faces gray like the others who worship in the stairwells and dark corners...This is the body, This is the blood, Do this and keep doing it in remembrance of me...
I've seen the man on Stokes Croft, walking the walk gets walked by walkers round here. I've seen him coming in the top entrance of the block but I've not seen the woman he's wrapping his arms around, leaning on, who seems at best indifferent to this attention.
'Wonder how long they'll last?' I said, thinking about the previous occupant, his habits, smile, eyes bright saying, 'Come along and see what you think,' as we waited for the lift. 'They've been practicing in my flat, you might've heard them.'

MEDICATION

I saw the tramadol on the table by the door and I knew if I took it she'd never remember it'd been there. I didn't take it, thinking about the side effects. It's my good deed for the day: not stealing her medication.

COCAINE

'I was thinking,' I said, 'About last week when you asked me.'
Her eyes where like when she'd left him and'd been crying all night.
'I was quite aroused,' I said.
She said, 'It wouldn't be just us two...'
'It would change things between us.'
She said, 'I like the way you talk about things.'
'I know,' I said, 'but just, not now...'
We sat in silence a few minutes.
She crossed her legs, turned more to face me.
'I was at a party this weekend,' she said, 'a dinner party. Not only did I almost sleep with someone then wake up in the morning wishing I hadn't, but at the end of the meal out comes the cocaine, shed loads of it, little piles on the table and everyone sticking their nose in it, I was the only one didn't have any, I felt very prim and very bored,' she said, 'watching them,' she said, 'Have you had cocaine?'

HOW IT GOES

‘See-saw Margery Dawes
Hickory dickory dock…’ he said when asked what it was.
‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘That isn’t right.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘That isn’t,’ he said.
‘“That” is right,’ he said. ‘“Which” would be wrong,’ irritating me sat nearby listening, no, over-hearing…
‘What?’ shaking his head. ‘I meant the song,’ tired, no, weary, like this was common between them, ‘the song isn’t right.’
‘How’s it go then?’
‘See-saw Margery Dawes
Jenny shall have a new master
She shall have but a penny a day
For she can’t work any faster,’ he sang. ‘That’s how it goes.’

OH

‘You got pain?’ she said.
‘Feel a headache starting,’ I said, ‘see if I can nip it in the bud.’
‘How many you taking?’ she said. ‘Two?’
‘Three,’ I said.
‘Three?’ she said. ‘Is that alright?’
‘Some internal bleeding, got a bit of a habit.’
She said something else then I said, ‘I was listening to what you were saying.’
We were in the kitchen she was telling me a dream where her dead husband visits.
‘He said he’d come to check I was alright,’ she said. ‘I said I missed him, that there’d always be a place for him in my heart.’
She was quiet, her attention in the dream.
‘He turned into a snake,’ she said. ‘Crawled inside me it felt like I was pregnant then giving birth. But the midwife was a junkie and took my baby for a score.’
‘Oh.’
‘A social worker turns up too late, does a risk assessment and calls for an inquiry. The next thing I know we’re at the crematorium.’
‘Which one?’
‘South Bristol, the one you can see the bridge from…’
…I knew it.
‘…after the service we got a taxi,’ she said. ‘And you were driving...’
‘Oh,’ I said.

HAS BEEN PASSING

A man with long golden hair, ran past me turning, slowed down, said, ‘It is you, I thought it was.’
‘It is,’ I said, thinking, ‘He going to stop?’
‘How are you?’ he said.
‘Okay,’ wary. ‘You?’
‘Yes,’ he said walking backwards in front of me.
‘You working?’ taking some control.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘at a call centre, on a smoking helpline,’ he said.
‘People phone say, “I need help smoking”?’ I said.
‘It’s NHS Direct,’ he said. ‘Thing is I live just round the corner,’ pointing, ‘that road there,’ I didn’t look where he pointed because I knew the road he meant. ‘I saw you,' he said. 'Thought it was you.’
‘Okay,’ I said, waited long enough then said, ‘See you around.’
I watched him run off, sure the man I’d blanked a few weeks ago not far from here, as even then I’d thought, had been him.

THE LONG WAY ROUND

He was coming out his front door when I arrived and he said, ‘I’ve got to go and meet Wag at the Thali, we’re getting some food,’ and he held up one of the tiffin’s you have to have for a takeaway from there. ‘Can you wait,’ he said, ‘You got time?’
‘Well,’ I said looking at my watch, ‘I’m running out but I can wait.’
‘Wait inside,’ he said and unlocked the door he’d closed behind him.
Inside I sat down on the sofa’d been moved to a side wall from the window bay we’d put it after carrying it back from the far end of Greenbank. There was a book on the nearby table I picked up, opened, read some, there was a knock on the window.
‘Where is he?’ said Wag when I let her in.
‘He’s gone to the Thali, said he was meeting you there,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you see him?’
Inside, me on the sofa, she in the chair against the back wall, we chatted. My phone rang. ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘I’m down here but she’s not,’ he said.
‘She’s here,’ I said, ‘sat right here.’
‘Is that him?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he’s just hung up on me.’
‘Didn’t he say goodbye?’
‘No, just hung up,’ I said. ‘Mmm, that’s not like him.’
We chatted. Then he came back pushing the front door open, slamming it shut.
‘Where were you?’ he said.
‘I was down there waiting but you didn’t turn up so I came up here,’ she said.
‘Which way did you come up?’ I said.
‘Through the alleyway.’
‘Well, I didn’t come that way, and I wouldn’t,’ he said.
‘That’s why you didn’t see each other, and,’ I said to her, ‘the alleyway is the long way round.’

ROUND THE CORNER

He calls me Pete. It’s not my name.
John isn’t my name either. Nor is it Charlie.
There are more names that aren’t than are mine.
I corrected him once but I he mustn’t’ve heard because he called me Pete today.
‘Hello, Pete,’ he said, ‘got a new motor?’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Yes, I have,’ and wanting to keep talking said, ‘And it’s like yours.’
‘Yes. There’s a man round the corner does a good deal on a service. Better than Bryan Brothers,’ he said.
‘Better than Bryan’s?’ like I’ve been around.
‘They charge something like two-thirty, forty, fifty,’ he said, ‘and he’ll do it for half that.’
‘Not half as good, though, is it?’
‘He’ll come here and take the car then he’ll bring it back when he’s done,’ he said.
‘That’s handy,’ I said and he said, ‘He’s a very handy man, being just round the corner.’