“It’s nice under there, isn’t it?” I say. “That’s where I had my blue feast.”
“Jesus Christ, woman, what the fuck are you playing at?”
I didn’t think officials were allowed to curse.
“I’m playing at Job-hunters, that’s why I’m dressed in khaki. I thought you’d join in the game.”
He gets up from the floor with a creak, his black trouser-knees covered in grey dust and cornflake silt. He sits in the chair, but he doesn’t sit up quite so straight. Then he leans his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands. When he takes a sup of tea, the mug shakes and spills. I put the gun on the floor and gather up his papers. The top page reads, in squat handwriting:
“Client appears to have inappropriate—”
I put the pages on the table and look away. David is breathing in short gasps that don’t seem to take in much air. I sit opposite him and stare, in silence, until he gives his head a small toss, like a pony or a snooty child, and straightens his papers.
“Right, where were we?” he asks.
“Well, you were on the chair, until I started shooting, so you moved to the floor—”
He waves his hand in the air like a conductor, so I shriek “Lalalalalalala” as loud as I can. He cowers under his papers and hisses,
“Christ, what are you at now?”
“You were conducting, it’d be rude not to make some kind of music in return.”
I like singing—the breath and effort of it—even though I can’t tell from my own ears if I’m in tune. I was told to whisper in my school choir, but maybe I’ve grown in tune since then. I start singing “Doe a Deer,” but I sing quietly so that I don’t scare David. He looks at me like I have bled the last drop of milk from the carton and left none for him, so I drop my tune.
“What kinds of jobs have you been applying for?”
I push my list across the table. He reads aloud:
“Dog walker, bubble-blower, changeling, assistant.”
He turns the page over but that’s all there is. He looks at the list again and seems to wilt.
“Assistant what?”
He has barely enough up-breath to form a question mark.
“Assistant anything, I won’t know until I see the job description.”
“I see.”
His tongue doesn’t quite reach the roof of his mouth, so it sounds more like “I hee.” He picks up the list with his fingertips as if it’s a paper disease, takes a sip of tea and coughs.
“Excuse me.”
“That’s okay, I put half a cough and a quarter of a hiccup in the teapot.”
David closes his eyes and, I think if he had glue, he would have stuck his lids shut. When he opens them again, his eyes seem to have sunk further back into their sockets, as if he’s showcasing his corpse look.
“Have you ever pretended to be dead?” I ask.
His face doesn’t move and his voice, when it comes, is sealed good and tight.
“Have you considered other areas—administration jobs, for instance?”
I prefer an example to an instance, but David won’t understand this.
“I don’t like telephones, and there are lots of them in offices.”
His face twists into a tormented expression, the kind of expression I’ve seen on the faces of war victims on news reports.
“Indeed” is all he says, but he says it like it’s the last word before the end of the world. He rustles through his papers as if he’s looking for an official response, then he straightens up and makes a small speech about benefits and credits and signing on and job seeking and computer courses and upskilling and qualifications in pharmaceuticals or marketing or industries where they are hiring. I nod my head and say “hmm yes” and “oh I hadn’t thought of that,” but I know this is all a cod. Employers won’t hire me to work in their offices when they can hire a shiny woman who speaks in exclamation marks.
“It’s important to keep an open mind,” he says.
“I am open-minded,” I say. “Sometimes I wear my slippers on the opposite feet to change my worldview, even though it makes me hobble.”
David takes a deep breath. He looks like a faded mural in a children’s ward.
“Right, I think we’re all done here,” he says on a new gust of breath, and he bundles his papers and stuffs them into his briefcase. He says half a goodbye and leaves in a great hurry, such a great hurry that it makes me think there’s a fire, so I follow him outside and look up at the house. There are no flames, but the house seems more menacing now that David’s been in it. The smell will be all wrong: the smell of fake strawberry and David and fresh paper. I regret my bath—David didn’t even ask to smell me. I tuck my nose into my jumper and sniff. I still smell strawberry-sweet, but there is also the start of a sweaty tang. I go back inside and walk through the house, closing every blind and every curtain and every door. I crouch in the bathroom, pick up a piece of the smashed bottle and stare into it. I will check every shard, surely in one of them there’ll be a glimpse of where I’m supposed to be.
I WAKE ON a damp pillow; my dreams must have leaked. I put my head under the blankets and sniff: it smells aged. I creep out of bed, pull on some clothes from the floor and go downstairs to look at Lemonfish’s bowl. The water is a little cloudy and smells of lemons. I take the lemons out, before he gets too attached to them and knows enough to miss them. He looks at my fingers and the fruit and doesn’t seem to care, but I’m not sure how I’d know if a goldfish cared. I put a pinch of goldfish food in the bowl. I eat a pinch myself—it looks like Brunch ice cream, but it tastes bland and pointless. I eat my mashed cornflakes breakfast and wipe the lemons dry. I’ll bring them to their home in Lemon Street.
I leave the house at a run, calling “Bye” to Lemonfish. The lemons take up most of my bag space. I look busy with life plans. I walk to the bus stop and wait. Two old ladies with tartan shopping trolleys are chatting. A woman is making big exaggerated faces at her child. I wish the bus would come, because the wind is skinning. It’s the kind of vicious easterly wind that makes my eyes water and my nose drip, the kind of cold that makes me hate. I bounce at the bus stop to stay not warm but as not-cold as possible. A man jogs by in shorts and a T-shirt; just watching him makes my eyes cold. When the bus comes we rush the door, and the old ladies use their trolleys as moving barricades to get on first. I sit near the back, beside a man who is on the phone.
“NO!” he shouts. “I had the score and I was outside the off-license an’ it blew out of me hand an’ I went down to pick it up, but some prick got there ahead of me, an’ when I said that’s my money he said he had a knife and if I didn’t fuck off he’d bleedin’ knife me, I’m tellin’ yeh that’s what happened.”
He talks like he’s being chased by words, swallowed up by sentences. Other people in the bus are giving little secret glances over their shoulders at him.
“For fuck’s sake, yeh can go and shite,” he shouts, and hangs up. I root around in my bag to look busy in case he wants to tell me his problems but his phone rings again, a blast of shouty music that makes me jump.
“Hello!” he shouts as if there is