GEOMETRY

By Sam

Alice knocked and waited in the hallway lit by stark fluorescent lights. Along the lower stretches of the white walls there were black scuff marks left by rubber soles and bicycle tires. Over there a streak of ketchup from a little plastic sachet that was now stuck to the ceiling. Cigarette burns and takeaway menus littered the carpet. Alice knocked again. She had seen him cleaning his door with a J-cloth and a bottle of anti-bacterial spray the other day.

The door opened, slightly, and one half of Alan's face appeared. The cool, fresh odour of chemical fragrances escaped from his room; forest pine, summer breeze, winter fresh.

Hi, said Alice.

Hi, said Alan. Alan wore glasses, wire ones with rectangular frames that sat level on his face.

Can I come in? Said Alice. Alice also wore glasses, with swooping bright red plastic frames that tilted asymmetrically no matter how many times she adjusted them.

Alan opened the door fully and Alice went in, passing in front of Alan. Brightly coloured fabrics swished with the rolling of her hips and the hair that brushed Alan's face, wavy and thick like a lion's mane, smelled of something sweet and organic. Sandalwood and clove cigarettes, perhaps.

Alan stood and cleaned his glasses while Alice gathered her bare feet beneath her on the bed.

I love your room, she said, looking around her. Alan had many posters on his walls: Chicago skyscrapers rigid and correct, sports cars from the eighties whose lines resolved themselves into a sharp wedge. A Bridget Riley print, a mosaic of softly coloured trapezoids. The posters were evenly spaced and perfectly aligned, as though composed on a grid.

Alan's desk, arranged so that it was precisely perpendicular to his bed, held his computer monitor, engineering text books, a desk tidy and a pad of A4 lined paper. These elements too, were laid out in exact spatial proportion to one another. A biro lay a perfect inch from the pad of paper, parallel to the spine. The text books were laid on one another in descending size order, forming a neat ziggurat of mathematical principles, material behaviours and logarithmic functions.

The overhead fluorescent light was turned off, the room lit instead by spherical free-standing lamps that rendered everything cool and serene. Electronic music without lyrics was coming from the stereo, soothing and regular.

It's like a little oasis of calm, said Alice. She laughed, one fluid, shaking breast threatening to dislodge itself from her cleavage. Alan looked away as she readjusted her top.

Thanks, he said. I like to keep things a bit tidy, you know.

She watched Alan as he cleaned his glasses, his neat features sharpened by concentration. His shirt was square-cut and well-ironed. She imagined his body beneath it, taught pale skin without creases.

Maybe you could come and sort my room out for me. You know, rearrange it. Give it some Feng Shui, she said.

Alan looked up from polishing his glasses. Alice ran a hand through her unruly hair, pulled it into a certain position only for it to mutiny and spring back. A thigh was protruding from her skirt, a wild and expanding curve back towards her buttocks.

I don't really like touching other people's things, said Alan. Alice shifted position and readjusted her bra strap, a bright flash of mismatched underwear causing Alan to look away abruptly.

Oh no, it's all perfectly hygienic, said Alice. I'm just a bit messy. I just leave my clothes wherever I take them off, you know, she said. She laughed again, the warm flesh in her cleavage rolling like bathwater.

I have a laundry bin, said Alan.

That's good, that's admirable. I need to buy one of those.

Well, said Alan. You can always come in here. You know, to escape the mess.

It feels so tranquil in here you know, she said. It's so messy everywhere else. In the kitchen, the bathroom.

I don't go into the kitchen much.

I don't blame you, it's horrible. There are things growing in there. Alice stretched, her top riding up to expose a broad expanse of her belly, a small jewel glinting in the vortex of her naval. Alan polished his glasses.

Would you like to come to the pub? A few of us our going out, you know, having a few “beverages.” She made quotation mark signs with her fingers on this last word, skin tightening in the hollows of her armpits.

Oh, said Alan. I don't think so. I have a lot of work to get on with. He gestured towards his desk, its contents lying in regimented isolation from each other.

Go on, said Alice.

Next time, said Alan. Definitely next time.

Alice stood up, and readjusted her clothing, pulling down her rustling skirt and setting a bra strap back in place with her thumb. She went to the door, opened it and paused.

Next time? She said.

Definitely, said Alan.

Alice hugged him, his body remaining stiff against the warm chaos of her flesh that smelled of sandalwood and clove cigarettes.

Alice left.

Alan stood by the door, and looked around his room full of right angles. He walked over to his bed and examined the rumpled crater on his duvet where Alice had been sitting. He ran his hand over it, gently and comprehensively, drawing from it all of the heat left by Alice's body.

SHOWER CURTAIN

By Sam

Beyond the image of his face, hanging pale and half-shaven in the mirror on his mother’s bathroom windowsill, a black square of window. Beyond the window: December at eight o’ clock on a Tuesday morning, cold and forbidding and black as fresh tarmac. Beyond that, nine hours of pushing shopping trolleys around a Tesco car park for £5.60 an hour in a shitty cheap blue fleece in the freezing shitty cold.

Jason clacked the head of the blue plastic razor against the pink porcelain of the sink, the razor coughing out black flecks of hair that looked like the severed legs of house spiders. Mum had had the bathroom re-done about six months after Dad moved out. Two guys in heavy boots had ripped out the old fittings, treading flakes of plaster into the kitchen on their way to make mugs of tea, while Mum pointedly swept the torn lino as the kettle boiled, muttering to herself. In place of the old fittings, the pink sink, with gold-effect trimmings and a recess for bars of soap, moulded into the imprint of a seashell. A new bath and shower combo, in the same style as the sink. Cream carpet and pink paint on the walls. Yellow and pink tiles above the sink and the bath. Mum put it all on credit cards.

They had stood in the bathroom while Mum admired the effect.

Much nicer. Out with the old, Mum had said.

Mum, it’s like being inside a fucking Battenburg Cake.

Language, Jason. I think it’s nice.

Jason had surveyed the shower curtain that had come with the package – Country Dolls’ House, or some such shit. It was covered in geometric scrawls and blobs of pink and yellow, at once chaotic and regimented, an object of profound and nauseating ugliness. The rest was just about bearable, but that shower curtain was a fucking nightmare, a fever-dream puked across a sheet of machine-washable polyester.

Well I guess Dad definitely won’t be moving back in now.

Jason. Mum had bitten her thumb and turned away. Jason had laid an awkward, lanky arm across his mother’s shoulders.

It’s lovely mum. It’s what you wanted.

Jason had gone to the Chinese down the road for fish and chips, smoking a B&H on the way down and sucking a breath mint on the way back up. They ate the fish and chips on their laps straight from the paper while they watched Strictly Come Dancing, eating with their hands and wiping the grease off on the sheaves of white paper.

Fish and chip shops stopped wrapping fish and chips in newsprint because it gave you cancer or some shit.

***

Jason shied away from the showerhead as the water ran cold, then hot, filling the shower with steam and leaving a pink mark across his shoulder. The water settled on a bearable temperature and Jason pulled the shower curtain across – his shower curtain. He reached among the regiment of little feminine phials and bottles that lined the edges of the bath and took a plastic bottle of shower gel, lathered his armpits and chest and crotch and up behind his ears, then rolled his head under the shower head as the lather dispersed and descended his body.

He had bought the new shower curtain as a birthday present for Mum, mainly as a way of removing the pink and yellow travesty from his morning routine. It was a montage of painted maritime scenes: isolated beaches, fishing boats, Cape Cod lighthouses and a sailing boat riding the crest of a wave, the foresail billowing out, its crew tanned and languid on the deck. Warm, cobalt blue skies containing clouds like chunks of vanilla ice cream. It didn’t really go with the bathroom, but his mother had been graceful about the shower curtain.

Thank you Jason, it’s lovely.

Jason examined the shower curtain intently, picking out the faded numbers painted onto the side of a small fishing boat pulled up among a pile of low, gentle boulders, the fresh white painted ironwork around the bell of the lighthouse, the elegant curve of the sailing boat’s foresail. He did this every morning. Jason’s shower curtain was a thing of mesmerising beauty.

He ran the palm of his hand over the waxed surface of the curtain, over the cool blues of the sea and the hot blues of the sky.

***

Jason walked the stretch of the beach approaching the lighthouse, the heat of the sun warm across his pale, narrow shoulders, the sand giving softly around the soles of his feet. He approached the fishing boat and ran a hand across its sun-bleached wood. The wood was smooth and a deep warmth came from the fine fissures that followed the grain. The name “Maggie” had been carefully painted by hand on the stern of the boat. In the middle distance the little white sailing boat fought the tide, the delighted cries of its crew reaching the shore as soft murmurs. Jason waved to them and a lithe, brown arm, rendered tiny by distance, waved in response. The tower of the lighthouse gleamed crisply in the bright, golden haze of a Cape Cod afternoon.

***

Mum gave three hard, jolting knocks on the door.

Jason? Jason, I need to shave my legs.

Jason dried his body and then his hair, gathering the towel around it and rubbing it hard. He pulled on his uniform, the blue polyester trousers abrasive and itchy against skin still pink and tender from the heat of the shower. The shitty, cheap blue fleece snapping with static as he pulled it over his head. He checked his reflection in the mirror, the narrow face above the fleece. He smoothed down his hair, stiff and gritted with salt crystals. He put his hands to his face and inhaled a breath of dried seaweed, sun-baked wood and sea salt.

Outside the bathroom, Jason’s mother waited in her pink and yellow dressing gown, one arm clutched around her middle as the smoke from her cigarette worked its way into the ceiling plaster of the low hallway.

LOVE WILL DESTROY US IN THE END

By Sam



The hallway was dark, and Darren tripped over a pair of trainers before he found the light switch. The energy-saving bulb hummed as it built up momentum and a dismal, low frequency light revealed the pair of trainers lying paint-spattered and forlorn on a pile of take-away menus inside the front door. Four Seasons, Paradise Fried Chicken, The Golden Wok. Linda, Darren said.
Darren turned on the light in the kitchen. Plates and knives and bowls and a cutting board lay on the sideboard. Brian blinked in the hard fluorescent light, stretched and padded over to Darren, his nails clicking on stained linoleum. Darren scratched Brian behind the ears. Darren wiped his glasses and put them back on his face. Linda, he said. The bowls were stacked on top of each other, forming a crooked little totem pole of dirty crockery. Darren turned off the light.
Linda wasn’t in the bedroom or the living room. Darren stood in the doorway of the living room, stooping slightly as he absently rubbed Brian’s back. He checked his watch. 11:30pm. On the coffee table were some magazines, two mugs, a dried out tea bag and a half-full ashtray. Leaning against it, a ukulele with nylon strings. Brian walked to the middle of the living room, turned around twice and then lay down heavily. He looked at Darren with his sad dog’s eyes. Linda, said Darren.
Darren fed Brian, scooping chunks of jellied meat from the bottom of the can with a stainless steel fork. Brian’s tail waving like a windscreen wiper, Darren nudging Brian’s nose away from the bowl with his forearm.
Darren called Linda. Hi, said Linda’s voice, I can’t take your call at the moment, please leave a message and I’ll phone you back. Darren listened to the message and hung up. He found a clean bowl and filled it with Muesli and the last of some milk that smelled okay. He took the bowl of Muesli into the sitting room and ate it in front of the television. Football highlights, late night politics and a made-for TV movie about a woman married to a psychopath.
Darren turned off the TV and called Linda. Hi, said Linda’s voice, I can’t take your call. Darren hung up. He wiped his glasses and put them back on his face. He found Brian’s lead under the coffee table. It was a strip of red synthetic material with a metal clip on the end. He clipped it onto Brian’s collar and took him for a walk.
Brian took a shit in the middle of the pavement, squatting low and squeezing out a tidy yellow turd under the sickly, Calpol-orange streetlights. Darren wrapped the turd up in a little plastic bag and carried it with him until they found a bin designed for the disposal of dog turds. It was soft and warm beneath the polythene.
In Darren and Linda’s street a drunk in a suit was leaning against the wall of a terraced house, pissing onto his black loafers.
Darren called Linda. Hi, said Linda’s voice. Darren hung up.
Darren lay in bed. He looked at the alarm clock. 02:00am said the clock. Linda, said Darren.
Darren sat in the living room in his boxer shorts and his glasses and a T-Shirt. He played California Girls on the ukulele, then he smoked a cigarette. He thumbed through a fanzine that had an interview with him on page 5. He read the interview twice.
Darren stood in the kitchen and listened to Brian sleeping while he drank a glass of orange juice.
Darren lay in bed. He heard a key turning in the front door. 04:30am said the alarm clock. Linda was in the hallway, leaning heavily against the wall as she tried to kick off her heels.
Hi, said Linda. She went into the kitchen in her bare feet, leaving the odour of booze and perfume and cigarettes and cologne in her wake. Bruised skin on her toes where the heels pinched. Darren followed her.
I was at a club, said Linda. She sat at the kitchen table, holding a glass of water in one hand and trying to straighten her hair with the other. She spilled water onto the table and onto the floor and her hair remained dishevelled. A narrow streak of mascara ran down one of her cheeks.
Which club? Said Darren.
I don’t know Darren, said Linda. Just a club. Just a bar, Darren.
Brian woke up and walked over to Linda, his nails clicking on stained linoleum and his tail wagging like a windscreen wiper. He licked Linda’s ankle.
You look a state, said Darren.
Linda spilled water down her blouse, her bra visible through the spreading damp patch.
I mean, you look awful. Which club?
I know. I do know that, Darren. I’m fucking aware of that.
Linda cried, biting the knuckle of one hand while Darren held the other. A film of mascara, tears and mucus forming on her knuckle. Linda stopped crying.
Shall I make you a cup of tea? Said Darren.
Darren found some teabags and a clean mug and boiled the kettle. He wiped his glasses, put them back on his face and looked out of the kitchen window to the alley that was filling up with a dreary, grey kind of dawn. He put the teabag in the mug and poured the boiled water on top of it, the teabag surfacing and spinning and turning the boiled water into tea.
I used the last of the milk, said Darren.

FAT MAN

By Sam

The guy was on the bus, talking into a little hands-free headset through mouthfuls of a sausage roll. The sunlight was making his hairspray glow as it strobed through the windows and it was that winter sunlight the colour of a new pound coin, that kind of sunlight that makes life glorious and simple as a pie chart. I sat a little way behind him, and watched the sunlight bouncing off all that hairspray. He was a big, fat guy – I mean, he wasn’t big because he was fat, he was fat on top of being big. He had a big voice too, spouting this yuppie shit.
I think we can expect a return of about five percent.
I don’t know, something about that sausage roll bothered me. I leaned up against the window, I watched the world skip by like a schoolgirl. Pigtails and knee-high socks and all.
The guy was in the cafe. It was one of those students and builders-type places, cheap bad fry-ups, cigarette smoke and XFM. I was eating breakfast, pretending to read an indie fanzine and watching these two girls wearing black eyeliner and All Stars painted with graffiti like the sides of New York Subway trains. The voice kind of slowly filtered in, and then suddenly it was all I could hear.
We’re still shifting stock from six months ago, the figures reflect this.
He was still talking into the little headset, talking through mouthfuls of the baked beans he was shovelling into his mouth. I don’t know, it was pretty disgusting. He must have been in his forties, and he looked pretty out of place, like he should have been eating a sandwich in Cafe Rouge or something. Prosperous I guess.
I paid and left, stopping to see if either of the subway-car-All-Stars girls would give me a glance but instead the guy was looking at me. He was still talking that yuppie shit into his headset, but staring at me really intensely. A kind of chav’s “I’m gonna kick your arse” stare. I walked out into that shiny-pound-coin sunshine pretty fast.
The guy was looking in the window of a stoner shop on Cooper Street, eating a packet sandwich.
As it stands we’re seven percent over target.
The guy was in the “R” section of a record shop eating a Cornish pasty.
We need to improve out portfolio in that sector.
The guy was sifting through biker jackets in the vintage clothing shop eating a fucking jacket potato. The guy was literally everywhere I turned, talking into the little headset and giving me his Superman lasers-for-eyes stare.
The shareholders have the final say.
I walked over to say something to him in the vintage shop, like, “Dude. What the fuck? Why are you following me everywhere? Do you ever stop eating?” But his had this look on his face – this look like he was actually just going to kill me there beside the leather jackets and, well, I just walked out instead. I mean, he was a big guy.
The guy wasn’t on the bus home. The sunlight was still as bright and yellow as an Argos necklace, but it just made my face hot and prickly and my palms were pissing sweat. I don’t know, the whole fat guy thing had made me pretty fucking nervous. I was looking forward to getting to my apartment. I was pretty much going to roll a joint and playing Burnout 3 for about three hours. Maybe have a wank. Subway-car-All Stars and black eyeliner.
The guy was in my apartment. I heard that yuppie voice bellowing about over target earnings as soon as I stepped through the door, and there he was standing in my hallway with his back to me.
Yeah, Mike? Mike, I’ll get back to you in a minute. Something’s just come up.
And he was there in my hallway, turning around, eating a fucking blueberry muffin and turning around.

CASSETTE

By Sam

It was a Maxell UR60 today, thirty minutes on each side, new and without a case. Yesterday it had been an ancient tape of indeterminate make, roughly cast out of heavy, cheap black plastic and so full of sand the voice had been barely audible. Today it was a new one though.
She switched off the radio-alarm clock and took a biro and a strip of white adhesive labels from the bedside table. She peeled one of the labels off the strip and onto the tape and then, in a precise but rounded script, wrote “January 28th 2008. Monday,” on it. The full stops were little circles.

She showered while the tape played in a portable cassette recorder on top of the bathroom cabinet, tape spooling under shiny clear plastic. Shaving foam stains on the cabinet mirror.
“You are in a supermarket. You are holding one of those little wire baskets and wearing your long kaki jacket, the warm one with the furry hood. The one your ex-boyfriend told you you looked like an eskimo in.”
Today the voice was her own voice, the turns of phrase familiar but the delivery flat and toneless, as if spoken under hypnosis. She took the showerhead and washed soap from her belly, the froth running down her thighs and collecting between her toes. The voice continued.
“You are in the produce section. You are squeezing an orange to see if it’s ripe, which it isn’t, when you notice a wolf standing at the far end of the aisle. It comes towards you, and for a moment you’re scared, but it just walks past you. Doesn’t look at you. It puts its nose in a basket of melons and sniffs around. Its wet nose, just like a dog really, you think.”

She dressed with the tape playing. A white bra with padded cups that were supposed to enhance her bosom, then over that a white sleeveless vest and her checked blue work shirt.
“You follow the wolf up the aisle with the mayonnaise and things. It brushes past a shelf and knocks over a bottle of soy sauce with its tail. It puts its nose in the soy sauce, but then it turns and walks back up the aisle, past you, brushing your legs with its tail.”

She ate a bowl of Rice Krispies with the tape playing on the kitchen table, picking out the burnt ones and laying them carefully beside the bowl.
“The wolf is standing in the dairy aisle, sniffing at the butter. You are an aisle down, in the fresh meat section. You say to the wolf, you say ‘Hey. Hey, this is what you’re looking for.’ You pull a steak from its wrapper, and the meat is cold from the refrigerator and blood gets on your fingers. You sort of toss the meat up the aisle towards the wolf. ‘Hey,’ you are saying.”

She rode the bus to work, checking her watch and listening to the tape an elderly Walkman she had borrowed from her brother.
“The wolf looks at you, like, cautiously. It sniffs the steak. You think it is going to eat there on the floor, start chewing on it. But it picks up the steak and sort of trots away, past the cereals and you don’t see where it goes after that. It doesn’t look at you any more.”
Sitting on the top deck she watched commuters queue up for the bus at the stop before work, weekly passes clutched in fingers pink from the cold. The wolf sticking its wet nose in a bucket of melons.