by Liam Livings
“Na. Not really. Permanent employees only. The agency aren’t bothered either.”
“Do you take some sick pleasure out of watching awful things happen to people while you’re minding them?”
“Course not.” She looked up from her nails at me. “I’m not a monster. No, it’s more that I’m just here to cover, to make sure you don’t get run over by a bus or accidently put your fingers in a plug socket. The rest I leave up to you lot down here. I know your usual angel will be back to put it right, and by then I’ve moved on to someone else. It’s not my problem. I’m only doing the bare minimum, keeping things ticking along. I guess you could say I just can’t be arsed.”
She said the last part with such pride, it shocked me. “When did you leave this girl in Sydney and start looking after me?”
“Now, let me see.” She got a packet of chewing gum from the folds of her smock, then started to count with her fingers. “I’d say ’bout a couple of months or so.”
“Thanks. Thanks so much. That’s so helpful. At least now I know. I mean, I did know, based on what he’d said, but I sort of didn’t really believe it. You don’t know you’re having a run of bad luck until you’re right in the middle of it, do you?”
Kylie shrugged. “So, why’d you want me? I’m not meant to come when you ask, so I got round it by saying I was going to do some maintenance with you, give you some guidance in the dark place you find yourself. Or some shit.”
“And are you?” I asked hopefully.
“Am I what, darlin’?”
“Giving me some guidance?” I asked a bit less hopefully.
“What do you think, sweets? Pay attention. Do I look like I’m really bothered about you and your little problems? I just can’t be arsed. Like I said, someone will be back to sort it out when I’m long gone, and so it’s NMP.”
I raised my eyebrows quizzically.
“Not My Problem, stupid.”
“You can’t call me stupid, you’re meant to be my guardian angel. Surely that’s not allowed in the handbook. I bet there’s something about not insulting the client, something like that. I bet there is. Go on, check it.”
Kylie rolled her eyes and began, slowly taking a deep breath first. “I forgot. That Sky’s a bit of a geek, he is. He’s on about the rules all the bloody time. I don’t break the rules, not the serious ones. I just don’t exactly go to sleep with them by my bedside, like some, I can tell you about. And as it goes, it says nothing about calling the clients stupid. As long as I prevent undue or excessive pain, illness, and premature death, I’m okay. Your Mum’s all right now, isn’t she? She’s got someone looking after her, she’ll be right. Bloody hell, I stopped you falling on the platform when you were on the Tube home from your last day at the bank. What more do you fuckin’ want?”
“Lovely, how kind of you.” Her kindness knew no bounds.
“That’s on the agency’s office wall, actually, as a reminder to us all: Undue or Excessive Pain, Illness, and Premature Death.”
“Sounds like a heavy metal band.” I took a deep breath, trying to work out what all this meant. “Beautiful. Perfect. Amazing. So how long am I stuck with you? How long can I expect my current run of shit luck to continue until normal service is resumed? Will it be weeks, months, years? Surely not.”
“They didn’t say. All’s I’ve been told is Sky was going on a sabbatical. They didn’t mention when or if he’d be back, or how long. That’s kind of the point of being from the agency—you don’t know how long it’s for. Don’t you know anything, banker boy?” She smirked at the last bit.
“You made that happen! You made me lose my job, and you’re laughing. You’re sick, you really are. Who can I complain to? Who do I write to complain about you, there must be someone?”
“Unlucky for you, sweets, there’s no one. Nah. ’Cause really you’re not even meant to know we exist, never mind talk to us. So there’s no channels you can go through. You could write a little letter and then stick it up your arse.” She shot me a mischievous look. “You’ll just have to wait for things to pick up, I’d say.”
“You can’t be the final word in guardian angels. There’s got to be someone else I can talk to.”
“Sweets, as far as you’re concerned, I am the mother ship of guardian angels. Watch my lips.” She pulled out a pink lipstick from her smock and reapplied the bright gloss to her lips. “I am it. This is it. It is me. I wanted to clear something up, I didn’t make you lose your little banking job. I just didn’t do anything to stop it happening. I could have made you see how much time you were missing at work that week, or help you think about what work you’d messed up. But I didn’t, I just let you drift through the week, until Charlie spoke to that lovely lady in HR. And that was it. Done!” She brushed her hands and disappeared in a puff of sweet-smelling pink smoke.
I yelled, “I thought you lot said you weren’t genies! Well, that’s pretty genie-like to me!”
But I was shouting into the misty air of my bathroom, alone.
Chapter 18
It made sense, living together: the next stage of our relationship. I had Sky’s blessing, so I asked Bobby to move in with me, and he immediately said yes. “I can’t wait. It means we can spend more time together. I love you,” he’d said.
I was terrified of it all going wrong, because now I knew Kylie was minding me upstairs, and not Sky. Now I knew she really didn’t give even half a shit about my luck, or decisions, or anything, really.
Mum offered to help, but I explained she was still not that long after a major operation, so carrying boxes probably wasn’t a good idea. By then she was growing bored of living on the luxury ready meals I’d stocked her freezer with and was keen to meet Bobby. But with backup from Sandra Next Door, I kept her on sofa rest and promised I’d bring Bobby round to meet her.
On moving day, Amy and Pat offered to help me move Bobby in. We arrived at Bobby’s apartment, and he’d already boxed most of his things up.
“What’s happening with the furniture?” I gestured to the enormous black leather and chrome sofa and the glass coffee table. “And the bed…?”
“I’m not leaving them here,” he replied. “They were really expensive, and I like them. You like them, don’t you?”
“It’s not about whether I like them or not, it’s about where the hell they’re going to fit in my flat.”
“You’ve got a spare bedroom. The bed can go in there. Unless you want the bigger one in our room.” He winked, and I noticed a twinkle in his eye.
“Could do.”
Amy passed me, carrying a small box. “Cheer up, Richard. You’re meant to be happy when you move in with a boyfriend. It’s smug married couples’ basic rules. Don’t you know anything?”
“Of course I’m happy. I am happy. I’m just practical. I’m thinking about the practicalities of his furniture.” I walked to his bedroom and picked up a box. As I stood I felt his hands around my waist, and he kissed my neck.
He pushed himself into my bum, and I began to respond by turning to kiss him back.
He whispered in my ear. “We’ll have to see how much more room my bed’s got than yours.” He paused, kissed my ear lobe. “I’ve never done this before. It’s exciting, isn’t it?”
I turned to face him, nodding slowly, then, as a bubble of excitement, pride, and nerves burst in my chest, said, “It is.”
We surveyed our work back at my flat, surrounded by boxes, our arms aching from all the carrying of Bobby’s enormous mountain of stuff.
“Have fun, boys,” Pat said, putting a wishing glass on my coffee table. “Hang it up against the window and it makes the light coloured against the opposite wall. It’s meant to grant wishes too.”
Bobby kissed her cheek. “Thanks, it’s very thoughtful.”
Amy stood to kiss me goodbye. “Where are you putting your films?”
I shrugged, looking at Bobby’s box labelled Films. “Not sure. Depends how many we have. Mine are there.” I pointed to the cab
inet under the TV.
“Have this.” Amy handed me a film.
Bobby laughed. “It’s not porn, is it? ’Cause I’ve got plenty of that, and I expect he has too.”
I shuddered, thinking about Bobby looking through my “exotic film” collection. It was private. None of his business. And I couldn’t think of anything worse than looking through his. How disgusting. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to know what he was into… no way. I shook the thought from my mind. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bobby shrugged.
Amy left, with Pat who’d been watching the whole performance. They closed the door behind them.
And then there were two.
I looked at the film. Fortunately it wasn’t an exotic one. It was an old eighties movie with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, called The Money Pit.
Bobby walked to our bedroom, which now had his bed in the middle of the floor, taking up more floor space than mine had. But that was fine, that was what we’d discussed.
“I’m going to unpack my clothes, where should I put them?” he asked. “The full-length mirrored wardrobe?”
This mirror had provided many hours of fun during some sexual gymnastics with Bobby.
I shouted from the living room, where I was looking at the boxes all over the floor. “In the wardrobe is great.”
Where else would you put them?
After some door closing and huffing and puffing, he shouted, “They’re all full. Where am I meant to put my stuff?”
I walked into the bedroom. All the wardrobe doors were open, and sure enough, they were all full of my clothes. Boyfriend-moving-in fail.
Bobby looked over at me. “One section for hanging shirts and a few drawers for jeans and T-shirts, that’s all I’ll need.” He held the wardrobe door open, stuffed full of my clothes. “Could you put some of them in bags for the summer and bring them out when you need them next winter?”
“Good idea.” How could I not have cleared space for his clothes? What a monumental twat I was. “Where should I put them?”
I looked around the bedroom, but no surfaces were clear of a box of Bobby’s stuff.
“Under the bed?” he offered. “It’s got drawers and everything!” He pulled one on its runners, gesturing to the drawer’s expanse in a slightly camp way.
I emptied half my clothes from the wardrobe and put them in the under the bed storage, while Bobby unpacked his clothes into the wardrobe.
It continued in a similar vein as he unpacked the other boxes around the flat. I watched as my things were mixed with his things.
His tea towels, which he’d bought on holiday a few years ago, now hung next to mine in the kitchen, alternating between mine and his along the row of hooks. Together they made an attractive alternating pattern.
This is all going to work out. I just know it.
“Shall we put this on tonight?” He held the film Amy had given us.
But I normally watch something on Channel 4 tonight. “If you want. What’s it about?”
He explained the plot while putting his films next to the TV on the cabinet. Mine were on the shelf below, inside the cabinet, neatly packed away.
As he put each film on the shelf next to the TV, I could feel my shoulders tensing, thinking about the dust they’d collect, how irritating they’d be in my field of vision next to the screen. I looked around the living room, searching for somewhere, anywhere else he could put these bloody films.
“Anything the matter, babe?” He continued stacking the films.
“Nothing. Good to have them to hand. Save foraging through drawers when we want to watch something.”
He stood back from his films now neatly arranged on the shelf. “What about these? Where should they go?” He smiled lasciviously.
I walked closer and saw they were his exotic film collection. I started to read some of the titles, noting them for later investigation.
“Under the bed?” he asked. “Or closer, in case we want to watch them together.”
Together, together? “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing boyfriends watch together. I think that’s more of a private alone thing for boyfriends to do. In fact, there’s a bit of me thinks they don’t have any place in a proper relationship like ours.” I paused, thinking about what I was going to say next. I’d gathered quite a head of steam from somewhere. “Maybe you should get rid of them.”
“Because we’ll have so much sex together we won’t need them?”
“Because people in a relationship shouldn’t have things like that,” I replied, surprising myself with my forthrightness and a bit shocked where all this had come from.
“And what about yours?”
“‘I don’t have any.” I stared out the window.
“Okay, if that’s what you’re saying, that’s fine. You obviously don’t want to talk about them, so we won’t. And we definitely won’t watch them together. I thought it’d be fun. I’ve done it with other guys before, and it was a good introduction, a good icebreaker.”
“Were you going out with the other guys? Did you live with these other guys?”
“Well, no, I didn’t actually, but a lot of the stuff I did with them, we’ve done. So….”
I sat next to him on the sofa, his exotic films fanned out between us. “This is all new to me. Do boyfriends do that together? I don’t know.” I shrugged.
“I don’t know either, but we could have some fun finding out.” He smiled, and a familiar twinkle appeared in his eyes. “But only if you’re comfortable doing it.”
Once we found an exotic film that included actors we both liked, we soon found ourselves discussing it like the other, less exotic films. And it seemed logical that we try the film, just to see if we both felt awkward. So gingerly, his eyebrows raised in an “are you sure?” gesture, he put the DVD in the player. After a few giggles and jokes about the corny lines of dialogue the actors said to one another, I realised I was enjoying it, and judging by the bulge in Bobby’s jeans, so was he too. I marvelled at our matched libidos, that we were both always only a few flicks away from a full-on, sweaty sex session. In the whole time together, I could only remember once when one of us had instigated sex and the other hadn’t continued and hopped on the shag train with all whistles blowing. It was during my man flu period, and only then because I couldn’t breathe through my nose.
Then he kissed me. And then he was taking off his T-shirt, and I was taking off my T-shirt, and he was unzipping his dark, Saturday-sexy jeans, and I was climbing out of my weekend jeans, and we were both stood in our underwear. He had a pair of white-and-grey Calvin Klein briefs that fitted snugly, exaggerating some of his best features. I stared at the hairs as they disappeared into his briefs, looked down at my underwear, and suddenly felt self-conscious. So I tried to cover myself with my hands.
‘C’mere,’ he said, walking towards me, and then I felt his hand in the small of my back. He pulled off my underwear in one swift motion, then removed his. We stood kissing, pushing against each other. I felt his cock against my chest, warm and hard. He pulled me onto the sofa—his sofa, actually. His black leather and chrome sofa. I hadn’t put up much of a fight about keeping my sofa. It had seen better days, so it seemed like a good concession to let him put his in the living room while mine was relegated to the spare room.
We lay like that, kissing for a while, until he sat upright, pulling me across his lap, my legs astride him. I pulled back and looked at his chest—my favourite part of his body. His chest had two perfect pectoral muscles and nipples I could have drawn with my eyes shut. I leant forward to kiss his chest and felt his cock straining against my bum with that distinctive look in his eyes that I knew meant only one thing.
That afternoon we fucked each other so hard and for so long that I hardly knew who I was. After an hour alternating between different positions, I looked down at him and said I just wanted to come. With a quick flick of his wrist, he was skiing with both our stiff cocks in his hands, gently pulling, pu
lling, and pulling, until he reached the end of the slope and we lay panting on the sofa, glad it could be wiped clean, unlike mine.
“Soon got over your embarrassment, didn’t you?” He handed me a towel to wipe myself.
I smiled and made us both a drink, my whole body aching and sore in the good exhausted-from-sex way.
Chapter 19
The next week, Amy came round and told me about her work at the science campus, “Slaving away over a hot test tube and petri dish, I’ve been. Who knew science could be so rewarding.”
“Have you put up the dreamcatcher at work again?”
She shook her head. “Too risky. I’ve stuck with the earrings, though. None of the men understands women’s things like earrings, so and Pat and I can get away with murder, from a cosmological, crystal perspective anyway.”
“Glad you did it?”
“Wish I’d done it years ago. But I think, when I did it, it was the right time. The right time as far as the universe was concerned, you know?”
I nodded. Who was I to argue with that reasoning, a man who had an ongoing conversation with his guardian angels?
“When was the last time you left the flat?” she asked.
I thought for a moment, counted on my fingers. We hadn’t left the flat at the weekend. After the marathon sex session on Saturday, we had just lounged around, and Sunday was pottering, some films, and just hanging out with each other—interspersed with more sex, obviously. “Last Wednesday. I ran out of milk.”
“Thought so, my dear.” She looked around the flat. “I think you’re getting a bit too into staying at home alone. You don’t have to leave the flat for work, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t get dressed.” She looked at my pyjamas. “And what’s this?” She picked up a list of TV programmes I always watched during the day, once I’d done my job-hunting for the morning. She started to read the names of sitcoms long since relegated to history.