He flattens the fan box and the toaster box and leaves them by the door of the flat. Then he flattens the bigger boxes and takes them into the bedroom. He moves the chair to another part of the wardrobe and stands on it and opens another door to the top part of the wardrobe. He looks in at two suitcases and several flattened boxes. There is no room. He steps down, moves the chair back to where it was, picks up the new boxes, steps up on the chair, and sticks his arm into the wardrobe and lifts the pile of jumpers and the coat and lifts the boxes to slide them underneath. Then he stops. He doesn’t move for a few seconds. He lowers his right arm holding the new boxes, and then he slowly pulls his left arm out of the wardrobe, letting the jumpers and the coat down again. In his left hand there is a folder. It is A4 sized, a pale green.
David steps down off the chair. He puts the boxes down on the bed and sits on the chair and opens the folder. It is full.
— Oh my god, he says.
He leafs through some of the contents.
— Oh my fucking god, he says.
And then he laughs, loudly, and for quite some time.
David goes out of the flat. He stops before he has closed the door, making a sound with his teeth. He leaves the door open and goes back in to the flat, into the bedroom. There is silence and he is gone. There is nothing here. The landing is bare and the stair is slightly to the right of the door to the flat. In front of it, slightly to the right. On the same landing there is another door to a different flat. The stair going up is on the left. The banister is a dark wood. There is a worn thin carpet that covers the stairs and the landing and it is of no particular colour. David comes back out of the flat, wearing a T-shirt now, and flip-flops. He closes the door. He holds his keys in his hand. He doesn’t lock the second lock.
He starts down the stairs, then he stops. He has gone down three steps. Now he is standing still and staring into space. He takes another step. He makes a sound again with his teeth, or perhaps with his lips or his tongue, a clicking sort of sound. He starts to turn around. Then stops. Turns back again. Then he sits down on the stairs.
The carpet is a sort of bluish grey. David’s legs are smooth. The hairs are light and fair.
At the bottom of the stairs there are leaflets and menus and free magazines lying around on the floor. There are two umbrellas leaning against the wall in the corner. There is a box beside them. There is a bicycle. There is the noise of a siren and the planes keep coming. David is just sitting there. He is looking at nothing. Near the top of the stairs. There is a doormat that is the colour of sand.
David stands up and walks slowly down the rest of the stairs. He pinches his nostrils. Then he coughs, clearing his throat. At the bottom of the stairs he turns and walks towards the door that leads to the garden and to the downstairs flat. He moves slowly. He stops at the door to the flat. He strokes his beard and his neck and knocks at the door and then takes a step back.
— David.
— Hello.
— Come in, come in.
— Sorry to bother you.
— No bother.
He pauses in the doorway, but then he goes in. He doesn’t close the door behind him. He folds his arms.
— You want a coffee?
— No thanks.
It is Laura. She is wearing a dressing gown. She goes and sits in the armchair. She looks curiously at David.
— Close the door. Come in. Something wrong?
David looks at the door as if he had forgotten about it, and takes a step to it and closes it slowly.
— No, nothing wrong. I just have a bit of a weird question to ask.
— Ok.
— Do you have a picture of Karl and Peppi that I could have?
Laura frowns.
— I have loads yeah. Why?
— Well that’s the thing. I can’t really say. I mean. By which I mean that there isn’t really a reason. I just, it’s just that I am in what used to be their place, you know? And I know that you miss them a lot. So there’s sort of an energy. No, not energy, I hate that sort of talk, that language. But the fact of them is, it looms large. In the flat. And just generally, you know. And I don’t know what they look like. I don’t have a picture of them in my head. There’s this faceless fact. Of them. And I’d like to put faces to them. Does that make sense? Any sense?
Laura looks at him for a moment without saying anything. Then she looks down and up again.
— It makes a lot of sense actually.
She stands up, smiling.
— It’s sort of beautiful, Laura says.
She walks over to David and puts her arms around him. He seems surprised. He hesitates and then embraces her lightly in return.
— They are lovely people, says Laura. I’m so glad you want to be friends with them as well.
David’s face, invisible to Laura as she holds on to him, makes an exaggerated expression of surprise or horror, comic horror, wide-eyed, his tongue sticking out slightly. She lets go of him eventually and goes to get her phone, telling David that she is not as worried now as she had been. That having him in the flat has somehow calmed her down quite a lot. She expects that she will hear from them eventually, though maybe not for some time, but that it is pretty clear that they’d needed to do what they’d done, and that it is pointless trying to second guess them or to worry. David tells her this is good. A good thing.
On her phone she shows him various pictures of the two men. Sometimes one or the other alone, and with either Laura or Nadia or both. But mostly the two men, together. Some of the photos have been taken in the garden, some in Laura and Nadia’s flat. Some in the upstairs flat. Together they pick the best photos, the nicest photos, and Laura sends them all from her phone to David’s phone. They chat for a while about things. About the flat. About his work.
The cat is outside. On the path outside, listening.
Her work. She asks him what he’s working on at the moment, and he tells her some things about that, some brand names. He seems impatient. He talks quite fast, and repeats himself. He turns down a second offer of coffee and stands up and tells Laura that he has to go. She walks after him to the door and he turns in the open doorway and she kisses him on the cheek and smiles at him and he nods and smiles back at her and goes. In the hall he runs his hands over his face. He jogs back up the stairs and goes back into the flat. In. He locks the second lock from the inside. He walks into the bedroom and stands there. The contents of the folder are spilled across the bed. They are photographs. Photographic prints, paper prints, some polaroids. All of them show Karl and Peppi having sex.
He checks the phone against the photos. He lays them out on the bed. Karl, he says. Peppi, he says. A photo of one man, lying on his back — Karl, he says. The other man, his face covered in cum, laughing, Peppi. He lays them out on the bed. He takes off his clothes and starts to masturbate. He goes through the photos. There are hundreds of them. He stops on photos showing three men together. He looks at the room
— Jesus.
He lays out a series of photos in which three men can be seen on the bed. One fucking another while sucking the cock of a standing man, who is crouching so that the man who is being fucked can eat his ass. In the mirror there is a reflection of a fourth man, naked, with an erection, holding the phone that is taking the photos. David groans. He looks like he is about to come but he doesn’t. He looks at more photographs. He continues to masturbate. He spits on his hand. He walks around the room looking at it from different angles. He moans loudly. Saying fuck sometimes, or Jesus, oh my god. He starts to feel his arse. He is rummaging in the bedside drawer.
This is private.
In the hallway there are two ants. They are leaving. In the kitchen the toaster looks like it still has not been used. There are dirty dishes in the sink. The bin is full and there are flies. Two flies. Three. The blinds are open but the window is closed. David s
tays in his room with the photographs, moaning, for a long time. When he comes out he is covered in sweat. He walks naked into the kitchen and drinks two large glasses of water. His cock is still hard but it softens as he drinks. He burps and laughs. Then he runs his hand over the sweat on his chest. He curses and goes to the bathroom and after a couple of minutes there is the sound of the shower. All the photos are on the bed. A dildo lies on the floor. There are two different bottles of lubricant on the bed. The pillows are piled up. There is a smear of lube on the wardrobe door mirror. There is all this.
When he comes out of the shower he dries himself in the bedroom, looking at the photos, stroking his cock a little. Then he puts all the photos back in the folder. He puts on boxer shorts. He takes the dildo to the bathroom and when he comes back he dries it on the towel he’s thrown on the bed. Then he puts it in the bedside drawer. He puts the bottles of lubricant in there too. He hasn’t noticed the smear on the mirror. He pulls up the blind and opens the window. He sees the body of the large moth lying on the windowsill and makes a face. He looks around. His gaze rests a moment on the tissues by the bed. But then he walks out of the bedroom to the kitchen. He takes a sheet of kitchen paper. Then he has another drink of water. Then he looks around for something. He goes back into the bedroom, the kitchen paper balled up in his hand. He looks around. He lifts and shakes the duvet and his phone falls to the floor. He curses and picks it up. He walks back to the kitchen and starts looking at his phone. He looks and scrolls and touches it with his finger. He sits on a stool by the counter. After a few minutes doing this he gets up and goes to his desk and opens his laptop. He looks around. Then he goes back to the bedroom. He picks up the chair from in front of the wardrobe. Then he puts it down again. He picks up the folder with the photographs and opens the main part of the wardrobe and puts it on a shelf under some T-shirts. Then he picks up the balled piece of kitchen towel and looks at it, frowning. He carries it to the kitchen and puts it in the bin. He sees the flies. He makes a face. He takes the top off the bin and pulls the black bag out and ties it. He takes it to the door of the flat. He looks around. He puts the bag down. Then he goes into the bedroom and looks around. He picks up his keys which are under the T-shirt he was wearing earlier. He puts the T-shirt in the laundry basket and then glances over to the window. There is the sound of children shouting. He goes out to the hallway and picks up the rubbish bag and opens the door of the flat. He leaves it open and he takes the bag out and then stops at the top of the stairs and puts the bag down and turns around and comes back inside and goes into the bedroom. He opens the laundry basket and takes out the T-shirt that he had just put in and puts it on. Then he picks up his shorts from the floor and puts them on, and finds his flip-flops and puts them on as well and then he looks around. He walks around. Then he pats his pocket and takes the keys out and goes back to the hallway and out of the flat and he takes the rubbish bag downstairs and goes out of the building and after a minute he comes back into the building and he jogs up the stairs and goes into the flat and closes the door and locks the second lock and then he goes into the bedroom and takes off the flip-flops and the T-shirt and the shorts and the boxer shorts and he glances at the window and then walks over to it. There is the sound of children shouting. He looks out. He can’t see them. They are in a garden that is not visible except for its tree and its hedges, impossible to pick out against all the other trees, all the other hedges. He glances down and sees the body of the large moth lying on the windowsill and makes a face. He looks around. His gaze rests a moment on the tissues by the bed. But then he walks out of the bedroom to the kitchen. He takes a sheet of kitchen paper. Then he has another drink of water. Then he looks around for something. He goes back into the bedroom, the kitchen paper balled up in his hand. He looks around.
This goes on for hours.
He sleeps late. He wakes up suddenly and looks at his phone and his voice makes a shrill noise and then he says What! loudly. He sits up in bed and stares at his phone. He touches the screen. After several minutes he makes a phone call.
— Alex. Yeah hi. I’m late. Yeah I know. Something came up, family. Yes I know. A family thing. No nothing, nothing bad, nothing, not an emergency, but I had to spend the whole morning on the phone trying to get it sorted and. Yes I know. I apologise. No, no one is dead. I’ll explain when I see you. I’m on my way now. Yes. Ok. Ok. I know. Did it go ok? I’m really sorry about this. Ok. See you soon.
He gets dressed and leaves very quickly. He doesn’t lock the second lock.
There is the sound of a key. In the second lock. Rattling. Then there is a pause. Then a key is put into the first lock and the door opens and it is David standing there, looking puzzled. He glances around and then comes in. He closes the door behind him and locks the second lock. He looks confused and unhappy. He puts his bag down in the living room. He pulls up the blind and opens the window. He gets himself a drink of water. He sits down on the sofa. He spends a few minutes just staring into space. He takes off his shoes and pulls his knees up to his chest and sits with his arms around his legs, his face hidden. Then he sits cross legged. He moves his legs, swings his body one way and then the other, uncomfortable. Then he stands up frowning, and curses, and takes off his trousers and his socks and sits back on the sofa cross-legged. He folds his arms and looks down at the floor. He doesn’t do anything for a few minutes.
The flies that were around the bin are not there any more. There is no black bag in the bin, but there is one on the counter top. One fly is dead on the kitchen floor. There are no more dirty dishes in the sink. There are clean dishes on the draining board. A second fly is buzzing against the glass of the open window. It needs to fly over the barrier of the window frame to get out of the window but it doesn’t, it keeps on buzzing against the glass. In the bedroom the dead moth is still on the windowsill.
David makes a phone call.
— Hi Rob. Yeah. No, no. I’m just in. Had a shitty day. Jesus. No, no I’m ok. More or less.
He has a long, one-sided conversation with Rob. He tells him about sleeping late, about missing an event that he was supposed to be organising. He tells Rob that the event was important. That it was supposed to be followed by a meeting at which David was supposed to make a presentation, and he’d missed that as well. As he tells Rob the details of these things he sighs often and looks around the room. He tells him about all the people who were there. He tells him about his boss Alex and how Alex had told him that he had completely let the entire organisation down, that it had been a sort of betrayal, and that David thinks this language is ridiculous, and that there is no way that he, David, is that important to this campaign that they are launching, that Alex is being a prick, that there are others who have been more central, especially Marcia who had after all assembled . . . and here David trails off and curses and then tells Rob that he has forgotten to take his pill, and he stands up and goes to the kitchen while still talking, and he pours a second glass of water — the first is still on the coffee table in the living room — and he opens one of the cupboards and puts Rob on speaker phone and puts the phone down by the sink and he takes one of the small letter-sized boxes out of the cupboard and takes a foil of pills from the box and pops one of the pills out of the foil and swallows it with the water, and Rob asks him is he ok though, and David says that he is fine, that he’s just pissed off, that Alex is being unprofessional and vindictive, and that if he can’t deal with a member of staff having a personal emergency, you know, a family crisis, if he can’t deal with that with courtesy and calm, without, you know, fucking exploding, then maybe he shouldn’t, David says, maybe Alex shouldn’t be running a team like theirs, and Rob asks him what family crisis, and David, who has left the phone on speaker by the sink and is looking in all the cupboards one by one, tells Rob that no, there wasn’t actually a family crisis, but as far as Alex is concerned there is, or there was, a family crisis he means, so maybe, David says, maybe he, meaning David, should
talk to someone in HR because this is, what this amounted to is bullying actually, and Rob tells him to calm down, to maybe have an early night and see what he thinks about it in the morning, and that he should, David that is, David should relax, that he sounds extremely stressed, and he asks whether he wants Rob to come over, and David laughs at this saying no he is absolutely fine, a little stressed maybe but Alex is being a prick, and Rob tells him again that he needs to calm down, and David tells him he is calm, but he lowers his voice which has become quite loud, and he stops looking in the cupboards and stands looking towards the window with his hand in his boxer shorts, and Rob says that he has to go, he has to have his dinner, and that he’ll call David tomorrow, and David says ok and Rob cuts the call and David just stands there looking towards the window but his eyes are unfocused, and he takes his hand out of his boxer shorts and turns around and then takes off his T-shirt and his boxer shorts and leaves them on the floor and picks up his phone and touches the screen and there is a ringing tone and David touches the phone and the speaker goes off and he holds the phone to his ear and he stands in the kitchen gently playing with his cock and he says hello and then he has more or less the same conversation again with some other person.
He gets dressed. His shorts. His shoes. A T-shirt. He puts his phone in his pocket and looks at the door of the flat. He walks into the living room, the kitchen, the living room, the kitchen, the hallway, the bedroom. He looks at the bedroom and then he begins to tidy up. He sniffs at a towel and puts it in the laundry basket. He closes the door of the wardrobe. He stares at the mirror. Not at his own reflection but at the mirror, and then he goes to the laundry basket and takes the towel out again and goes to the mirror and wipes it clean. He sighs, mutters, sighs. He goes to the bathroom for a few minutes. He has a drink of water. He stares at the books on his shelves. He takes some from the floor and puts them back on the shelves. He goes into the kitchen and starts looking in the cupboards and touching his phone screen and saying things out loud in a voice that is both more cheerful and more harsh than his voice before.
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