The Bird Room (10 page)

I hereby give the bearer of this note written permission to do
whatever the hell he likes to me
…

Will has the note now. He must do. I've looked everywhere. It's gone. He took it. Maybe Alice slipped it to him under the table. I can see us walking off down the street; Will waving goodbye, leant against a streetlamp.

Once we've turned the corner, he takes the little square of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it.

He reads it.

He licks his lips.

He reads it a second time.

…
and I promise I won't mind. In fact, I'll probably like
it quite a lot
.

His mouth curls into a lewd budgie-eating grin.

I still have his spare key.

It's hard to tell if Will's home. The curtains are drawn. I knock on the door and wait.

I knock again.

Nothing.

I slide the key into the lock and turn it slowly. The door clicks open. I stick my head into the hall. The roll-up and aftershave smell. Darkness. Silence. I let myself in and close the door softly behind me, treading on a pile of bills and circulars, leaving wet footprints on them. Fuck it.

I start in the living room, going through the drawers and the mess of paper and things on the coffee table. A cut-out from a newspaper supplement. ‘Cheep tricks' the caption reads. A puff piece. A photo of the exhibition and another of Will, leering at the camera, his arms folded. Unopened gas bills and telephone bills with shopping lists written on the back (BREAD, MARGE, LIGHTBULBS, CONDOMS?). But no note.

In the bedroom I try to remember what colour jeans he was wearing the night we met. I go through the pockets of the pairs strewn around the floor and hanging off the end of the bed. Just receipts, bits of fluff, loose change and about eight ten-pound notes. I pocket three.

Under the bed, an old leather suitcase, brown and scuffed. I pull it out. A combination lock. I shuffle the numbers, randomly.
Click, click, click
. I imagine the note in there, lying innocently next to a bottle of baby lotion, a whip and a huge purple dildo. I try more combinations.
Click, click, click
.

I can see Alice, lying back on his tiger-print bedspread, pulling off her knickers, her legs in the air. Will is taking photos. His camera flashes. Alice. The note. Will doing whatever the hell he likes to her and Alice not minding, probably liking it quite a lot.

I hear a key in the lock downstairs and my heart lurches. The front door opens then slams. I push the suitcase under the bed, stand up and look round frantically. If this were a film there'd be a big empty wardrobe to hide in. But all Will uses is an old waist-high dresser and the floor.

‘Hello?' Will's voice.

If he comes up the stairs, I'll hide behind the door. I'll use that radio alarm clock thing next to the bed to smash him over the head.

He walks down the hall and turns on the light.

I could break down in tears. Confess. Tell him about the note and how everything's been going wrong with me and Alice lately, and how (‘So stupid of me, really … ridiculous …') I've suspected something's going on between them.

He's put the kettle on. I hear more walking sounds, the telly going on in the living room, Will whistling to himself.

Then a foot on the stairs.

I hold my breath.

He's coming this way.

Oh, Christ.

He's coming up the stairs.

I move behind the door and try to pick up the radio alarm clock, but it's plugged in at the wall. The cord pulls tight.

He's on the landing now. A door opens, then closes with a click. The bathroom. Thank fuck. He's in the bathroom. I hear the jingle of his belt, the zip of his flies and the heavy manly
sloosh
of his piss.

I tread quietly onto the landing and down the stairs.

The toilet flushes.

I run the rest of the way, fumbling with the latch at the front door, finally getting it open, letting it close softly behind me. I breathe in the cold wet air outside. Spots of rain land on my cheeks, feeling like pieces of hot glass.

I'm halfway down the path.

I turn back.

I knock on the door.

Will opens it, still buckling his belt. He squints at me. He looks like he was expecting someone else.

‘Alright,' he says. There's something shifty in the way he says it, something suspicious.

‘I still have your spare key,' I say, and hand it to him.

‘Cheers,' he says. ‘Want to come in for a drink?' He doesn't look me in the eye. He looks at the floor.

‘No, thanks,' I say. ‘Listen, Will. You didn't
find
anything the other week, when we went for dinner, did you?'

‘How d'you mean?' he says. He puts his hand in his
pocket. The left one. He shuffles his weight from one foot to the other. He looks at me funny. I bet he's got it on him.

‘Just that when I emptied out my wallet at the restaurant, I think I lost something.'

‘What?' he says. ‘Like a cash card?'

‘Yeah. Something like that.'

‘Nah, didn't notice anything.'

‘Alright. Never mind.'

‘Hey,' he calls, as I'm turning into the street. ‘You're still coming round for dinner sometime, right?'

I pretend I haven't heard.

We get in a bit drunk and heat up some leftovers.

‘It's not going too well, is it?' Alice says.

The ‘it' she's referring to is us.

‘What isn't?' I ask.

She drops her fork on her plate, stands up and starts scraping stuff into the bin. I hear the hiss of
fuck's sake
under her breath. She rinses her plate. She turns and looks at me. She leans against the kitchen counter. She's wearing the long black jumper, the one that covers her neck and hangs down past her knuckles.

‘What do you think?' she says.

‘I don't know,' I say.

(I know exactly what she's talking about.)

‘Christ,' she says and storms out of the kitchen.

I wait for the sound of things being thrown into
boxes, things being lugged down stairs, things being smashed against a wall. If she leaves, I can't afford to live here any more, not without getting a job. If she leaves, I don't know what I'll do. I hear the TV being turned on in the living room and the closing music of some programme. I go through. She's on the sofa.

‘Cup of tea?' I ask.

‘A cup of tea isn't going to solve anything,' she says. She puts her hand on top of her head. ‘William, in case you didn't notice, we just sat in that bloody pub for about two hours and said pretty much nothing to each other. We've become one of those sad old couples you see. It's awful. I want to talk to you.'

Alice paid for all the drinks.

I don't know what to say. I feel frozen. I feel like a display model of a human being. Things have gone so far past okay, I don't know what to do. I don't want to talk about it. I want to pretend everything's fine. I want to somehow not be here any more; to not be the cause of the problem. I want Alice to carry on happily in the house without me, until I somehow sort myself out. If I had money, I'd book a holiday. France. The moon. Give her space. And then, after a while, I'll come back, and she'll put her arms around me and kiss me on the head and tell me how much she's missed me.

Or I could get a job.

(I won't get a job.)

I go into the kitchen and fill the kettle. I wait for it to boil. I look through the window at where the back yard should be and there's just blackness. I can imagine Alice looking at me sometimes, too, and where I should be there's nothing.

I make two cups of tea. I carry them through. I put one next to her foot. I wait for her to touch it. There's a gardening programme on. She reaches down to her ankle and I think she's going to pick it up. I get excited. I wait for her to pick up the mug. If she picks up the mug, I think, then she is still in love with me and everything's going to be okay. But she just scratches her leg and folds her hands back in her lap.

It's two days later, or three, or four. The evenings have become as cold and small as marbles. We aren't talking. Alice turns off the TV halfway through a programme. She looks at me instead of the TV. Her eyes are wet. She's about to cry.

‘We need to have a talk,' she says. Her voice is low and quiet.

I'm scared of what's coming next. I look at the TV instead of her.

‘What is it you do all day again?' she says.

Here it comes. The end. She's found me out.

‘I went on your computer,' she says.

I want to pull my T-shirt over my head. I want to hide in it until she's finished.

‘And there weren't any of those bloody spreadsheets
you always go on about, as far as I could see. All I could see was a load of porn saved on the hard drive.'

I look at the floor, at the TV, at my hand, at anything but her. I look at a flake of Rich Tea biscuit on the carpet.

‘Right. So you're not even speaking to me now, is that it?'

‘I don't know what to say,' I say.

She stands up.

She sits down again.

She touches her hair, wrapping a piece of it round her neck.

‘Look, I don't mind if you want to look at porn all day. That's your business. It just seems … I don't know. Why didn't you tell me the truth? I feel like I don't even know you sometimes. It scares me. Do you know what I mean?'

I could get angry here. I could say, ‘Well, why didn't you feel you could tell me the truth about your parents?'

‘Why did you have to lie to me?' she says. ‘That's what I don't understand. I wouldn't have been mad if you didn't have a job. That's not why I liked you …'

Liked, I think. Past tense.

I could say, I am looking for that film of you. I want to find it and destroy it. I think about it all day every day.

I could say, Why did you do it? Why did you make it? Did it turn you on? Did you hate yourself afterwards? Did you do it
because
you hated yourself?

I could say, What about Will? What's going on there? You want to fuck him, don't you?

Or, Why do you even stay with me? I don't understand it. I do nothing. I don't even talk. It must be like living with a ghost.

I could say, Do you even love me any more?

But I say nothing.

‘How about you?' she says. ‘Anything you want to ask me?'

She stands up again. She waits for me to speak. I don't speak.

‘Fuck it. We can't go on like this. It's ridiculous. I'm sure if we
talked
about things we could try and sort it out, but it looks like we can't even do that any more.'

She's in the doorway. The phone's ringing. I don't care if it's my parents. Pick it up, Alice. Introduce yourself. Explain that you're my girlfriend (soon to be ex-) and ask them how they are. Talk about the weather.

She sniffs. She rubs her face with her palm. I want to be her palm. I want to rub her face and make her feel better. I can't move. She walks into the hall. She picks up the phone.

‘Hello?'

Pause.

I hear her laugh.

‘Oh, hello,' she's saying.

She laughs again.

I don't believe it.

I turn the telly back on.

Only one person could make her laugh like that and I know exactly what he's saying. There's nothing I can do to stop him.

A few minutes later she reappears in the doorway.

‘In case you were wondering,' she says, ‘that was Will. He's invited us round to his for dinner, a week on Friday, and I've accepted.'

Great.

‘Come if you want,' she says. ‘But I'm going, anyway.'

I've put some of my things on eBay; about one hundred CDs, two thirds of my books, a lamp, my guitar. I have an old watch, too, that belonged to my granddad.

I want to put myself on eBay.

I want to sell myself to the highest bidder.

I will give Alice all the money I make from selling myself on eBay. I will put it in an envelope with just the word SORRY written on it. I will leave it on the kitchen table, then post myself.

‘You currently have no bidders.'

I've done nothing today, not even turned on the computer or opened the curtains.

When Alice gets home from work, she finds me lying on the sofa. I've been drinking red wine. My teeth are
grey. She leans over and kisses me lightly on the forehead. Her hair brushes my face.

‘Happy birthday,' she says.

I move myself into a sitting position.

‘Thanks,' I say.

She kneels down in front of me. She puts her hands on my knees.

She moves one of the hands up and down my thigh.

Her eyes are sad-looking.

I want to say, ‘I'm sorry.'

I want to tell her about the things I've put on eBay.

It doesn't seem like the right time.

The hand moves to my crotch. It massages my crotch. It unbuckles my belt. It unzips my jeans. I can't look her in the eyes. I look at the top of her head instead, as it lowers towards my lap. I put one of my hands on her head. I don't know what to do with the hand so I just sort of rest it there on top of her head. She tugs at my jeans. I lift myself off the sofa, so she can pull my jeans and boxers down over my knees. My penis is limp. It looks very small. We both look down at it. I've not had an erection now in over a week, maybe two. Not since I lost the note.

She puts my penis in her mouth.

I try to imagine I'm watching this on the computer, that this is a free preview clip I've downloaded from some amateur ex-girlfriend site.

I feel nothing.

She takes my penis out of her mouth.

It's still small. Small and wet and cold.

‘I'm sorry,' I say.

‘What do you want me to do?' she says.

A tear is crawling down her face.

‘I want you to ignore me,' I say. ‘I want you to ignore me completely.'

The tear stops moving. It freezes halfway down her cheek.

‘Okay,' she says, and a sheet of something falls heavily and definitely between us.