‘Do you want to leave a message?’ Nikki asked, eventually.
‘Yeah,’ said Jane, ‘Tell him: “Jane says, fuck you.’”
When she went to bed she checked every lock in the flat, screwing the window locks down as tightly as she could. It was unlikely that anyone would be able to scale three floors, but that wasn't the point. In the hallway she checked the chair was wedged firmly, but didn't bother to check the catch. It was too late now.
Listlessly unbuttoning her jeans, she opened the closet. The owner was inside.
Jane stumbled and fell as she tried to step backwards. The man from the night before was standing bolt upright amongst her clothes, hands folded together at waist height as if he'd been waiting there all day. He was wearing the same dark suit and a patient smile.
Jane scooted backwards, trying to get up and to rebutton her jeans at the same time. The man stepped out of the closet and beamed suddenly.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Jane's head banged into the bed frame and she clutched it and pulled herself up. She backed towards the wall, hands held weakly out in front of her.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘please…’
‘Please what?’ the man said, cocking his head. ‘Hm? Please what?’ Back against the wall, Jane sidled towards the door. ‘Please … and thank you?’ He took a step towards her, blocking the way to the door. ‘Please? Please?’
‘Please, go away.’ Jane shrank back as he took another step, staring at his blank, anonymous face. Her neck spasmed wildly and her mouth opened. Her face wanted to cry but she was too frightened. ‘Please just go away.’
‘Oh I don't think so,’ the man said mildly. ‘I don't have to go away. I'm the owner.’
Jane's teeth crashed together as her face responded to anger from somewhere inside her. She pushed herself from the wall and shouted: ‘Get out! Get out! GET OUT!!’
‘No,’ he said, with a winning pout. He took another step towards her and before he could get any closer Jane lunged to the side and got round him. As she ran to the door he turned elegantly and made a swipe for her, tearing her blouse, but she made it past him and into the hallway.
She was halfway to the living room before realizing that was stupid, and instead swerved towards the door. She grabbed at the chair and yanked at it but it wouldn't budge. The wood from the chair seemed to have flowed into the wood of the door, jamming it shut.
As she tugged uselessly at it the owner watched her from the bedroom, smiling indulgently. Just as he started to move towards her she realized the chair was merely jammed under the handle. She yanked it aside and pulled at the door but it wouldn't budge. The owner stepped into the hallway and she grabbed the chair and flung it at him. She tugged frenziedly at the door again and then saw that the catch was down. She flicked it and swung it open just as a hand fell towards her shoulder.
She moaned as she stumbled out onto the tiny landing, and leaped straight for the stairs. Her heel caught and she fell most of the way down the flight, banging her face against the railing and tearing the nails out of one hand, but she got up as soon as she hit the bottom and careered out into the street.
She found a phone booth and rang a number. As soon as Klass l's answering machine message started, she began to scream at it.
‘He's in my flat! He's in my flat! He's in my flat!’
She kept screaming until even she couldn't hear the whisper of her voice.
Camilla reached out and took the brochure proofs from the printer. ‘There,’ she said. ‘And it does look better than hers.’
Whitehead nodded and smiled. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now all we need is Jane.’
Camilla looked at her watch. It was ten to four. ‘She's cutting it a bit fine, isn't she?’
‘She'll be here,’ said Whitehead. ‘Whatever her faults, she's reliable.’
Meanwhile, Jane was stepping out of the lift and opening the door to FreeDot. As she walked into reception, she shook her head. Her hearing appeared to be slightly deadened, and there was a buzzing sound. The office seemed very quiet, calm with quiet business. People came and went, passing paper. Egerton plucked a piece of paper from the fax machine and marched across the room to drop it heartily on someone's desk. People answered the phones though they weren't ringing, and looked as if they were talking into them. She took a step towards the corridor. Egerton plucked a piece of paper from the fax machine and marched across the room to drop it heartily on someone's desk. Jane blinked at him, watching him stop to answer a phone, his whole body declaring buoyant stupidity. Then he was at the fax machine again and she turned away.
Slowly she walked down the corridor. Behind her she thought she heard the ghost of a voice call her name, call it as a question.
When she got to her office Whitehead and Camilla turned to smile at her. There was a new plant on Camilla's desk and a poster for Les Misérables on the white wall. Suddenly, the buzzing stopped as their faces dropped.
‘Jane, what's happened?’ Whitehead asked, the lying fuck pretending to be concerned as he stared at the blood under her nose and her torn clothes, the bruise on her cheek and her ragged hair.
She ignored him, and swept her arm along the desk. ‘Get OUT!’ she screamed at Camilla. The plant sailed along the desk and flew straight out of the window.
As Whitehead lunged with a cry to watch it fall, Jane ripped the poster from the wall and began tearing it to pieces, arms flailing.
‘Jane, please,’ Camilla stuttered, cowering.
‘Please WHAT?’ Jane leaned over until her face was right up against hers, until she could see the mascara glistening on her lashes and smell the make-up, and screamed, ‘Please can I have everything?’
She stuffed a section of the poster into her mouth and hummed while she chewed.
Whitehead stepped warily towards her. ‘Er, Jane…’
‘What?’ she said, blowing the pieces out of her mouth at him.
‘Perhaps you'd better go home.’
She fell towards the door, laughing weakly. ‘Go home? Go HOME?’
Egerton was in the doorway, staring at her with childish surprise.
‘Yes?’ she shouted. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ He stumbled backwards, hands held up, and she turned to look once more at the room, at the shelves, at the machines, at the acres of white wall with so many things in front of it and none of them hers. Before she could cry she ran out into the corridor.
The door to Flat 8 was still ajar. She walked in and shut it behind her. The buzzing in her ears had returned.
The furniture was back where it had been when she moved in, the champagne bottle in position, his pictures back up on the walls. Her things had disappeared from the bathroom, and shaving foam and aftershave had materialized in their place. The fragments of her mug were gone from the kitchen sink. The bedroom seemed least altered because it had been least changed by her, but her clothes and the photo of Andrew were gone.
She walked back into the living room and looked out of the window. It was getting dark outside, and someone had taken the garden furniture and stacked it up so it stood like a sculpture.
When she turned, the owner was behind her, hands behind his back like a solicitous waiter.
‘Yes?’ he smiled.
‘I'm going,’ she said dully.
He looked disappointed with her, and spoke with a slow, mocking kindness. ‘You can't go.’
‘I am,’ she replied, feeling about four years old.
‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Where are you going to go?’
‘I'll find somewhere.’
‘You won't. There isn't anywhere.’ He took a step towards her and suddenly her breath was hitching, uneven, because it hurt and she wanted to cry again. She backed away.
‘Please…’
‘What do you have, Jane?’ he asked quietly, cocking his head like a robotic dog. ‘Some have, some… haven't.’ Still advancing, he threw his hands out expansively. ‘You haven't. Everywhere's somebody's. There's nowhere to go.’
Then suddenly he shouted terrifyingly loudly, and Jane flinched as she had just before Andrew slapped her the night he left. ‘WHERE's THERE TO GO, JANE?’
She broke and tried to run for the door, but he intercepted her. She darted the other way along the wall, but he got there first. As she slid back and forth along the wall he tracked her and backed her into the corner.
‘WHAT DO YOU HAVE, JANE?’
He slammed her against the wall and she dropped to the floor, her lungs suddenly empty. He grabbed at her and she rolled and tried to stand, but he slammed her over again and leaned down towards her, mouth hanging open as he reached to choke her. She fumbled out with her hand and found something and swung it round to smash it on his head.
The champagne bottle didn't break, but bounced out of her hand as he fell with a grunt on top of her. She squirmed away and stumbled towards the door but his hand whipped out and grabbed her ankle, tripping her so that she fell onto the sofa. She tried to pull free but his hand was too strong and snatched up her leg, tugging at her. Scrabbling out with her hand she found the bookcase. The old lock was on it and she grabbed it as his hand wrenched her thigh, turning her round to face him. Blood was seeping out of his matted hair and down his neck but he wasn't going to lie down.
‘Mine,’ he said.
She smashed the lock down into his face, feeling his nose momentarily resist and then spread like butter. For a second his head remained upright, and then he toppled over onto his front.
Jane staggered up, using the wall for leverage, watching him. His hands were flapping up and down, like a pair of damaged birds. She stared round the room and could see nothing that was hers, so she grabbed a picture off the wall and threw it at him. The owner's hands started flapping more wildly, beating against the carpet, and he began to make a humming sound that got louder and louder as his whole body began to vibrate.
He wasn't going to die. People like him never did.
She pulled out her lighter and held it next to the curtain. She spun the wheel.
‘Own this,’ she said.
The cheap curtains caught quickly, flames licking up towards the ceiling. Jane limped towards the door, coughing, stumbling round the owner whose whole body was whipping back and forth with an insectile violence.
She ran out into the hallway and as she wrenched the door open she heard his voice shouting from the depths of the fire.
‘Where, Jane?’
Victor and Alex leaped straight out of the doors of the car, but Mr Gillack beat them to it. They'd been inclined to treat the whole thing as a joke, but to be on the safe side Mr Gillack had come back from Belgium. Suddenly, it didn't seem very funny any more.
‘That's our commission down the pan,’ muttered Alex, as they trotted after Mr Gillack towards the blaze.
A policeman brusquely stopped them from getting too close. His manner softened when he heard Mr Gillack was the owner, but he still wouldn't let them go any nearer. Mr Gillack just stood and stared, running his hands wildly through his long blond hair, watching his flat burn down.
Jane sat in the back of a police car, her legs outside. She felt cold, even though a blanket was wrapped around her. The inspector snapped his pad shut. ‘We're going to have to ask you a few more questions later,’ he said, ‘but for now …’
He stopped then, and glanced at a constable who'd just returned from talking to the fireman. Out of sight of Jane, the constable mouthed the news. There was no one else in the flat.
‘Ah,’ said the inspector, very slowly nodding and turning to look warily at the woman in the back of his car. ‘But for now,’ he concluded, ‘I think we'd better get you down to the station.’
He gently lifted Jane's legs and swung them round into the car. Quietly shutting the door, he looked at the constable over the roof of the car and they both breathed out heavily.
Jane stared at nothing as they pulled away past the knots of bystanders. She still felt cold, but it was nice to have the blanket.
She looked out at the pavement. Standing there neatly, smiling and waving like a child as they passed, was the owner. He was on fire.
She turned back and looked down at the blanket for a while. The pattern was unfamiliar. It didn't look like one of hers.
FOREIGN BODIES
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Well what?’
‘You know very well. What happened last night?’
Steve laughed. I groaned loudly, enjoying every minute. ‘You did it again, didn't you.’
‘Yes.’
‘She stayed round yours.’
‘Yes.’
‘You berk. You utter spanner.’
‘It wasn't my fault.’
‘Yeah. Try telling her that. Another scratched fixture, was it?’
‘Nope. Reached the finishing post.’
‘You idiot.’
‘Twice.’
I sighed theatrically, and Steve laughed again, slightly embarrassed. He knew what I was going to say, not least because he agreed with me. ‘You've been a very silly boy, haven't you?’
‘I know, I know,’ he said happily.
‘What happened? We spoke, what, three hours before? I thought you'd told her it was just going to be a meal’
‘I did.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well we were there, mid-evening, in this restaurant I wanted to try. That Bolivian place.’
‘How was it?’
‘Fucking terrible.’
‘What, worse than that Korean?’
‘No, not that bad, obviously. But still bad.’
‘Anyway.’
‘There we were, it was all going fine, and then suddenly she looked at me and said: “You know what I suggested last time?” and I said “Yes …”’
‘What, about why don't the two of you just do it anyway?’
‘Exactly. And so she said, “Well, how about it?”’
‘And you said yes.’
‘Well what could I say?’
The answer, of course, was nothing. I knew this, to my cost, but I continued giving him a hard time for a while, and then we signed off the phone and got on with our jobs. Steve didn't mind me giving him the third degree – it was the equivalent of doing a penance. Talking to me after an Ill-advised Sexual Encounter was the nearest thing he was going to get to saying ten Hail Marys.
There are men who will go out, see a woman they fancy, and chat her up. I know it happens because I've heard about it, seen it, marvelled at it. I've never done it myself. In all the time I've been meandering around the planet, I can honestly say I have never had the courage, confidence or whatever it is that it takes to be as proactive as that. But, on the other hand, if you're a reasonable-looking bloke, keeping half an eye open but never really trying very hard, there's a certain kind of situation you're going to find yourself in. While not especially charming, I can string coherent sentences together. While not handsome, I don't inspire outright terror when I hove into view. More importantly, I can listen. Boy, am I good at listening. And therein lies the problem, because there is a certain type of woman out there for whom I, and men like me, appear to be the answer. These women are intelligent and attractive, interesting and sophisticated. They are also, unfortunately, all as mad as snakes. In the two years I was a single variable, I spent time with four women of this type. They were either people I worked with or met through friends, and I didn't approach a single one of them. They started it. I'm not boasting or gloating here, completely the opposite. Think about it. In my circles women don't approach men. They don't need to. They spend enough time fending off members of the opposite sex without starting trouble for themselves. So what does that say about the women who do such a thing? It says they come with problems. It's different in some other countries, America for example, where perfectly sane women will sometimes make the running. In London it doesn't work like that. Or it doesn't for me, anyway. I was approached by four women, of widely differing ages, appearances and personalities,
and I ended up spending time with them purely because I didn't realize that's what I was doing until it was too late.
And the simple fact was, each of these women was mad.
That sounds sexist. It's not. Not deliberately, anyway. There are a vast number of disastrous men out there, too. I'm probably one of them. I'm not characterizing the female sex as in any way unstable. If anything, I'm taking the blame back, because I can't understand how some women get the way they are unless it's through a long-term, recurrent, almost concerted campaign of subtle mistreatment by men.
My point is, I'm the guy they latch onto when someone else has brought them to that state. These other men sow the seeds through years of desertion, mixed messages and callous indifference, and then they trade up to a younger model and abandon these women to the world. The women regroup, do their jobs, live their lives and carry on, all the time keeping an eye out for someone who looks nice. Someone who looks like they're not going to hurt them, who looks as though they'll listen. In other words, looking for someone like me. The sad punchline of the story is that, despite appearances, I'm just as bad as everyone else, and I'm the last thing that they need. I'm just another of the guys they've met before, but with a slightly kinder smile and an even colder heart.
Or was, anyway. After two years of sexual hit-and-run accidents, each of which left me feeling more damaged and damaging than before, I simply gave up. I gave up right at the start of another one, finally having the experience and bloody-mindedness to spot it for what it could become. I backed out, pulled down the shutters, and resolved to sit tight for a while. If I wanted company I had my memories, and if I wanted sex I'd hotwire my imagination or buy a bloody video. Sounds pathetic, but it's not. There are advantages to virtual relationships. They don't leave you with someone you don't know to talk to in the morning, someone's calls you have to take when you've got nothing to say. They don't present you with someone's faith to destroy when you never promised them anything in the first place.
And then, out of the blue, I met Monica. I made the effort for once, and she reciprocated sanely and slowly, and suddenly everything was different.
What You Make It: A Book of Short Stories Page 24