Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
I went to get a book I lent him. I knocked at the door of the housing complex he lived in. Someone let me into the kitchen. I went to his room. Knocked. He was there, merry, all smiles and friendship.
“Come in” he said ”Tea? Coffee?” There was no chair so I sat on the neatly made bed. “Wanna watch a dvd?’ overfriendly. “ Nope , Ive just come for the book, I need it” Hes made me a cup of weak , milky tea, the cups half full, just the way I don’t like it. “ Do you wanna watch a dvd?” Hes still puttering around, quick , sharp movements, busy. He grabs his laptop, puts it on a chair he pulls from beneath a pile of stuff. He opens the laptop. A big cockroach walks desultorily across the side of his desk, checks its email on its iphone and adjusts its aldi bag. “One of my friends” he says with a crooked smile. Its in no hurry, looks like its just done its grocery shopping. It looks tired, adjusts it antennae. I look at the dvd, now playing on the laptop screen, the image is scattered into a thousand pieces of disconnected light. “Your screen is broken” I say. He looks and points to the bottom lefthand corner “there” he points “you can see the picture better there” I can see something but without the other pieces I cant make out what Im seeing. I realise, hes pissed. Totally plastered. Him not whatevers on the laptop screen. Ive seen him like this before, all dandelion flowerheads, bright and breezy, jumping about like a busy flea. Once upon a time I would’ve slipped into his delusional dream, his aldi bag enclave of drying washing and food on the counter chaos.
Now I jump to my feet and say “don’t worry, ill come back another day’. He looks like a naughty boy, caught out. He reaches out ,tries to engage me, makes silly noises I used to find hilarious. “AAAck” he says ‘EEEEEEE’ like the sound of air being let out of a balloon. I don’t know whether to be sorry or laugh. Laughing at him. That’s what got me in there in dreamland in the first place. I open the door, look back to the empty bed, the mess, the cockroach and broken laptop, the man that looks like a pissed Peter Pan. I used to think that’s what love is. I close the door, run hard, don’t look back.