Light. #4
Door underarm, and with a new lock in what must have been amongst the flimsiest of plastic bags I have ever had the misfortune to have been given, I made my way back to the car in sleet commensurate to the mood at hand: the precipitation a mix of the particulate excitement of liquids and the more reserved decorum of the pseudo-solid masses therein; it perfectly followed my fear of and parallel longing for what this intruder may have been. A kindred spirit, perhaps? More realistically, just an opportunistic vandal with a penchant for underwear. I kept on coming to the same conclusion as the lock burred its way through the fraying strands of the bag constituent of environmentally-friendly, but useless for the purpose for which it was designed, biodegradable condensation polymers: was too well organised for an opportunist; it was intended. I really did have a playmate.
Another car journey which was to prove all too long: my hands trembled with the intense excitement of a new player in my game; one with the understanding of what I was, with no reservation in their acceptance of what I was. It was the same feeling which had filled me from the initial realisation, and had begun to consume me to the point of a yearning for this stranger; this wonderful stranger.
Arrival, and the fitting of the new door began. Misplaced screws widened drilled holes for hinges; hinges which were thus to be fitted in a manner not parallel to the doorframe; a door which was further to be fitted to the hinges in a manner not straight – a single mistake catalysed by a sense of complete and utter confusion; of excitement; of longing; of sheer uncontrollable desire for the possibility of understanding leading to each further step’s accuracy being limited: it was a microcosm of the nature of life itself. How workmanship meant nothing to me, though: I needed evidence of my instinct, proof of my fellow traveller on a path infrequently followed. Lock fitted; door closed; barrel turned: tight and a little too much force was required to, but it would do. It would have to do.
Just as I went to return to my own flat, Tanya called me in that impenetrable husk of hers:
“I apologise for my rudeness earlier: you’ve been so helpful. Come in for a drink.”
A flash of the cleanest of white hopes appeared to me: as she prepared my drink, I would have at least the smallest of opportunities to search for the evidence I so desperately craved. Naturally, my acceptance of her offer was inevitable, and I walked into her dank, damp, unkempt ‘abode’, if such a lavish term could be applied seriously to such a place. The most depressing part of all of this is that she’d actually cleaned up: clothes now had homes once again, and her personal order was restored; but the flat as a whole was still an example of the most candid of fetid homesteads. It was, in a way, something perfectly reflective of her: all of these flats were sold as pristine showhomes, furnished and tidy; the very ideal of yuppie perfection. Tanya had had her days of beauty and her youth of consumerist fantasy; but she became bitter and disaffected with the entire matter. The smells emanating from her home had gradually increased in the extent of their appalling vigour as this process had continued: watching her intrigued me, as her physical decay really did occur in perfect accordance with her mental. Once full cheeks had diminished into the sunken cheekbones of a starving whore; just as any sense of my respect for her privacy was to degenerate into flagrant mooching.
