Call Me by P-P Hartnett

Author:P-P Hartnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466882058
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Verdict: Crazy. But the tv pages didn’t fill me with excitement, so I decided to turn up on her doorstep as suggested.

* * *

I wore the same silver-grey suit I’d worn for the baldy not so far back, same shirt. I still cycled. Having worn cycle shorts and teeshirts for weeks, a suit felt awkward and heavy.

There wasn’t a spyhole in the front door, a council flat irregularity. No darkening of the small dot of glass to give a once-over. Instead, the letter-box opened like a cat-flap.

“Hello,” the voice whispered. “Who is it?”

Any melody in her voice had been scraped away with nicotine. She sounded like a cartoon mad woman. The fake name had slipped from my mind, I nearly said Bike Boy.

“It’s me,” I whispered.

I bent to eye level, gave her a winning three-stage smile.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” she said more to herself as she eyed me carefully.

“Hello.”

Once vetted, okayed, I was in.

She was older than the advertised age of twenty nine. She’d lopped off a lot of unhappy years. She had the look of an obstinate middle-aged man got up in bad drag. A dim, fly-specked lightbulb treated my senses to brown Paisley wallpaper and canary yellow glossed doors.

“Didn’t think you’d come. Place is a mess. I’d’ve tidied up a bit.” She gave up-from-the-cauldron laughter, as if she realised that a bit would not have been enough.

I sat on a filthy three-seater sofa. Plastic. To my left a pile of Casualty Department women’s magazines. To my right a pile of intimately stained knickers and beige bras. Three record players dominated the room: a polished new one with a CD; a tired-out Sony of mediocre-to-poor quality and an old Dansette, a possible collector’s item ruined with the same canary yellow gloss. She made a cup of tea in a corner while I endured Iron Maiden at considerable volume from the mediocre player.

Her long bleached hair, worn in an untidy bun, would have suited her better down. Despite the squalor she seemed quite a happy sad soul. She spent a lot of loose change on discount jewellery.

“I love photography. It’s my number one hobby. Look at these.”

She’d started. I witnessed the last three years’ unhappy collaboration between her, an old Zenith and Woolies’ photographic department. Prints galore of East End scenes, architectural decay being her big delight. She’s in the right country for that. Many of the photos had sticky smudges on them like they’d been passed round at a kiddies’ party.

“You are gay, I hope. You don’t look very gay. Not, you know…”

“Queeny.”

“Yes.”

“I do my best.”

“You’ve got a nice face, Patrick. I’ll take your picture.”

Pulling all three sets of roller blinds down, she eyed me with cruel speculation: Can I get him to put some make-up on? Rhythms the universe is not used to hearing began to pound in that room which had the not unfamiliar stink of my mother’s handbag in the early seventies. She wanted a picture to show her mates at work.

This photograph was taken half

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