Work was shit. It’s always shit. And never any different. The second — like the very exact instant — that I walked out the door that day, I took my tie off and felt better. Not because I hated wearing a tie, or because it was too tight or the weather was warm or stuffy or I had some great evening ahead of me or, most especially, because I had just achieved something fantastic and worthwhile in my job – that doesn’t happen. But just because I wasn’t ‘at work’ anymore, and that was reliably the worst thing I had to do in my life. So being anywhere else was a relief.
Sometimes I got a seat on the train. Other times I didn’t, and that was fine, but when you get a seat you can really breathe. You can do a big slump on your arse and lean back, and you can put your bag under your feet. And it’s like that taking-your-tie-off moment, but instead of for work it’s for sort of holding your body. Not literally holding it, but holding it like holding yourself a certain way. Not looking too bored at your desk. Seeming interested in a meeting. And if you’re standing up on the train there’s a bit of that too. When it starts to move you can’t not be holding yourself, or you’ll flop all around and bump into some prick you’ll later resent yourself for apologising to because of how loudly his suit was screaming ‘I’m very very expensive.’ But sitting down you can kind of switch that off for a bit. You can be sat looking fully and utterly dead on a London train and everyone will have the good grace to leave you alone.
Just as the doors were about to close, a sprinting woman appeared on the platform shouting to the man sprinting beside her ‘Is this the correct one?’ and he said no and held his hand out to stop her getting on. Then they both stood still on the platform and watched the train pull away, and I sat on the train and thought about what sort of life a person would lead that meant they instinctively used the word ‘correct’ instead of ‘right’ when they were in a hurry.
****
I was sat at the bar reading the paper and this guy stood beside me looked over and went ‘longform journalism, nice’ and nodded his head. And I thought for fuck sake that’s another one ruined and I finished my drink and left. It was ten past seven. After I walked out I looked back, and tried to stare into the back of the guy’s head in a way that would tell him I thought he was a great silliness that ought to stop trying so hard. I was annoyed. Then annoyed that I’d let myself become annoyed. But then I settled at ‘no, you’re allowed to be annoyed’. So at least I knew how I felt. Maybe that’s useful or maybe it’s a waste of time.
I was hungry by then and, three drinks in, just tipsy enough to convince myself I deserved to be spared the tedium of preparing my own dinner. Three by yourself is probably the limit before it starts getting kind of sad. I stood still for about thirty seconds thinking all of this, and simultaneously stared down at my phone so I didn’t look like I was just standing there and thinking.
When I arrived at the Caribbean place it was reasonably crowded, as it tended to be at this time, and around half of the crowd were other white people and I wondered if the owners and staff might hate us. I had an urge to explain that I didn’t earn loads of money working for some big evil company, and I shopped in locally-owned businesses when I could, and didn’t actually pay that much (relatively speaking) for my rent, and I had learned a bit about the history of the area and understood I was a foreigner and not really part of the community but that I would try to become that somehow or maybe just not disrupt it if they’d prefer and also just sorry. But obviously I didn’t say any of that, I said ‘umm, can I have an Aloo Roti and some Pholourie please?’ and the woman behind the counter turned around and shouted ‘Potato Roti and Pholourie’ then turned back to me and asked ‘you want it spicy?’ and I said ‘a little bit please’ and held up my hand with my forefinger and thumb close together to provide a helpful visual illustration of ‘just a little bit’. She laughed, maybe at the hand diagram or maybe just at the answer, and turned back around and shouted ‘slight pepper!’
The problem with getting a takeaway is you then have to find somewhere to eat it. I didn’t want to go home, that was the whole point, so maybe a bench, but they were all full. A bus stop was the next best thing. As I ate I thought it must’ve been the fifth or sixth best thing and there were several better things I hadn’t thought of because the angle of the bench that isn’t quite a bench meant the food kept slipping down off my lap. I had to use one hand to keep everything still and that meant the Roti kept falling apart. It was maybe the closest I’ve come to understanding what having kids is like. It’s chaos. And a few times a bus came and no one else was sitting there and the bus slowed down to see if I wanted on. And I had to shake my head to say no thank you, and a couple of times the bus drivers shook their heads but it wasn’t a no thank you shake it was a fuck sake man why you wasting my time like this shake. I felt bad about that. But what else did they expect me to do? Not sit there I suppose. I wished I could tell them there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. I think they would’ve understood then.
****
Flat Mate Matt was already home. He asked me if I’d been working late. I said yea, because it was easier. I’d known him since school. I wanted to punch him most of the time. He hadn’t done anything wrong, I’d just seen his face too much. He asked if I’d had dinner on the way home and I said yea. He asked if I fancied watching The Office with him and Clara and I thought shit help how do I ah shit I can’t I don’t have a good reason to say no and I said yea sure. I got a beer from the fridge. Matt and Clara were sharing wine.
They only got a little bit couple-y which was nice of them but to be fair I’d had words with Matt about that before and when they moved onto bottle number two they kept starting some sort of snuggling or something and then one of them would stop the other one and point at me as if to go ‘wait the little freak boy is here remember?’ and they’d stop.
About halfway through the second episode I did a big sigh. And I wasn’t trying to get attention or show everyone how painfully terrible everything was or anything like that because I didn’t even think about it or decide to sigh I just sort of did a sigh the way you do a sigh sometimes. But Matt paused The Office immediately and looked at Clara and went ‘shall we go to that place?’ with a big smile on his face and she smiled back and went ‘yea, I think we should’ and I thought for fuck sake you really need a better codeword or whatever that was supposed to be (a codephrase I suppose, if that’s a thing?) but then she looked at me and said ‘we’ve got this place we want to show you’ and I thought hang on I’m not so sure about this now.
‘What place?’
‘C’mon, we’ll show you. You’ll need your shoes.’
‘Oh right.’
I got up and put the sitting room light on and thought why on earth am I doing this. Matt and Clara went down to their room. Then I thought maybe it’s quite sad actually that I’m just going along with it have I not anything better to do. I wondered had they prepared a big speech to convince me and all. Probably not.
‘Shall we bring the wine?’
‘Ooh yea, nice one babe.’
‘Bring a few beers with you!’ Matt shouted down the hall from their room. It occurred to me that what if this is some big illegal rave or something, and I can’t be doing that. I’ve got work tomorrow.
‘Is this some big illegal rave or something!’
‘No!’
‘Ok!’
I tied my shoes and put my coat on.
‘House party!’
‘No!’
Clara laughed. Quite an annoying laugh. ‘Heeheeheeheehee’ like that. Then she did a little skip down the hallway and stood hugging the bottle of wine. I was holding my beers and thought about the downstairs neighbour.
‘You excited?’
‘Umm. . . not really. . . I don’t know what it is. . .’
‘Ugh come on!’
‘But why would I –‘
‘You ready?’
Matt was there now as well. He unlocked the door and held it open for us. ‘After you!’ I let both of them go ahead and asked how far away it was but he said ‘you’ll see!’ so I just followed them down the stairs. We turned left out of the building and went straight for about ten minutes. I said I never go this far North and Matt said what do you mean and I just said it again and he went ‘oh right, I didn’t realise this was North.’ I never understand how people can be like that.
Then we were in a big suburb full of bungalows that were all just as boring as each other. What were the chances that all of these hundreds of people had wanted to live in exactly the same kind of house? Obviously it doesn’t work like that. But, you know. It’s like they felt they ought to live here because someone built it. Or something.
We turned left into one of the particularly new-looking bungalowlands and I thought about asking again where we were going, but I realised one of them would probably do another ‘it’s a surprise!’ thing so I didn’t bother. I was letting them walk a little ahead of me now so they could hold hands and presumably feel a little bit less conscious about it, which was a favour I didn’t imagine they would ever think to thank me for or maybe even notice, but knowing that and doing it anyway made me feel quite good about myself.
Eventually they got to a corner and stopped and beckoned for me to catch up with them by doing little hurried movements with their hands that they probably thought were cute. When I got to the corner they said stop and close your eyes and I gave them a look but when they didn’t say anything I just gave up and did it. They said wait there for a second and I heard them run somewhere but I couldn’t tell in which direction because I’ve never been very good at that. Then they shouted from wherever it was to walk round the corner but keep my eyes closed and they promised there were no banana skins or trip wires or anything and I tried to fake-laugh but I’m terrible at that so they asked if I was choking and I said no I’m fine. I felt my way along the fence to keep me right and when I got round they shouted Stop! Open your eyes!
It was nothing. Pretty much. It was a dead-end of a cul-de-sac but with no bungalows (or anything else) built there. Just an empty bit of road leading into nothing and then a fence all around the big nothing. And a hole in the bottom of the fence where it had been detached from the pole and bent out toward the road, and Matt and Clara standing on the other side waving. But I could only see half of them because the other half of them was covered by tall grass. I walked over to the fence and crouched to go through the hole they (I presumed) had made. I saw that the far boundary of whatever this was was about a hundred feet away and backed onto more bungalowland. And the same on either side. And inside was just nothing but this tall grass. Matt and Clara took each other’s hands and lay down in the grass. About fifteen feet away, I sat down first, then opened a beer, then looked up for some reason. No stars, but nothing else either. I lay on my back and forgot about it. Forgot about everything. It was nothing. It was perfect.
*
Killian Faith-Kelly is a freelance writer from County Derry in Northern Ireland, currently living in London. He’s currently finishing an MA in Magazine Journalism at City University, and is yet to be published anywhere except the South London Press, but he has a feature set to be published in the next issue of The Fence magazine and has been described as “very talented” by such critics as His Mum.
New Critique 