Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery

Author:Nicole Flattery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526612106
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2023-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

There was no silence. If I wanted silence – and even after the first few hours I came to crave it – I had to take off my headphones and pick a point on the wall. I had to stare directly at that point and imagine silence flooding in. Picture a green meadow, breathe in and out, imagine an empty room filled with light. But quickly even my empty rooms were invaded by the people I had to listen to. There were pockets of silence on the tapes, but these were only the prepared silences before someone else began to speak, before language poured out again, ugly and vulgar and unstoppable. In these pockets of silence, the times when they were pausing, taking their breaths, the city made itself known. Honking, blasting, violent. In the background of the tapes, New York sounded like a shrieking cartoon hell. When I travelled home in the evening, these noises – street arguments, sirens, subway screeches – were amplified to me. They were almost tangible as if I could reach out and touch them. In the evenings I ate my dinner in silence, as if the act of conversation was too much for me. I didn’t have the energy to navigate more words. I tried not to stare at Shelley during that first week. She moved with such ease it unsettled me. It was as if she was born to do this. Her face occasionally gave away what she was listening to – an expression of tenderness, a look of indignation, all expertly played out as if she were a silent movie actress. It felt intrusive to even look at her. Her tape was her own secret, and I didn’t want to see her reactions. Instead, I moved closer to the window, to have another point of focus. Our scrap of sky showed the beginnings of spring.

I knew that in comparison to Shelley I was already behind. She had a neat stack of finished tapes piled up beside her. She was probably many conversations ahead. I had no idea when we had to hand our pages in – Shelley never told me – but something competitive kicked up in me. I was always surprised when this happened, but I welcomed it. Shelley’s ambition was catching. At the start, I tried to be good, beginning again if the margins weren’t in the right places, balling up the paper and throwing it away if there were typos. I was precise and precision was a problem. Those early attempts felt like a struggle between two different parts of myself. The typing itself was physically exhausting, every key demanding huge effort. Some evenings, I felt broken. All that was left to do was eat some cookies, crawl into bed. Then I remembered my will and determination. Where had it come from? I let my subconscious take over. I hit the keys instinctively. It was hard even for me to believe that I hadn’t taken much dictation before. When I sat down in the mornings, I no longer felt like I was beginning a slow descent down the void.

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