Don't Try This at Home by Angela Readman

Don't Try This at Home by Angela Readman

Author:Angela Readman
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary fiction, literary fiction, short stories, fairy tales, metamorphosis, poet, Angela Readman, UK, America, Angela Carter, Katherine Dunn, Margaret Atwood, Costa Award winner, Inkspill Magazine Short Story Competition, Salt Publishing, Strip, Hard Core, Sex with Elvis, Colours/Colors, Unholy Trinity, The Keeper of the Jackalopes, debut collection, women’s writing, Patti Smith, David Lynch
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2015-04-16T16:00:00+00:00


‌Everywhere You Don’t Want to Be

I saw the other me on a rainy morning – at least, I did the first time. The city dripped and surged. Everything smelt of wet dog. She was huddled in the doorway of a pawnbroker’s with a bin bag and a blanket. Her voice creaked when anyone passed by.

‘Spare change?’ she asked a guy in a suit. ‘Spare change?’ she asked the jogger with the bouncy ponytail.

I was walking to work balancing coffee. I averted my eyes from her, loath to see.

‘Nice shoes,’ she said.

I looked down at my shoes, and glanced across. She was familiar, sort of. I supposed I’d passed her before. She wore a baseball cap and a coat like a half-inflated life raft. She was filthy and had a scar on her cheek; there was nothing remarkable about her. Some people all sort of look alike. In the morning I saw her again. Spare change. Spare change. Spare… People rushed. Men with newspapers tossed coins.

‘Nice bag… real nice,’ she said to me.

Something in her voice bugged me. Mocking, judgemental even. My fingers rubbed the phone in my pocket. Silent. Still. I stormed on, then doubled back.

‘Why don’t you ever ask me for change?’ I demanded.

I glared into blue eyes, sort of like my mother’s, but hard as frozen water.

‘You? You never gave me shit.’

She laughed, then coughed. Laugh, cough, laugh, cough. Who was she to judge? It was one of those moments when everything that’s wrong in the world took the form of one person, one old woman in a doorway with the wrong tone.

‘You don’t know I wouldn’t give you money,’ I said.

‘Of course I know. You only give to guys with dogs. Sometimes buskers, if they’re cute.’

She was right. I rifled for change, finding only cash cards and gum. I tossed the gum at her like some sort of horrible-woman repellent and ran.

‘See you soon, Zoe,’ she called after me.

Not if I saw her first.



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