Late afternoon and the phone rang, rousing Adam from a peaceful slumber. He had fallen asleep with his head resting on the table, the crossword no nearer to completion than it had been when he started it. He arched his back on his chair and attempted to stretch the results of his awkward sleeping position out before answering it. The sun had passed over his building and the room in which he sat was in shadow. Ahead of him the row of buildings, behind which the sun seemed to have only just emerged from, where bleached white, the windows reflecting light towards him in flashes, like flecks of quartz in pale stone. For a moment, he fancied they looked like the bottom row of teeth in a grinning skull. He grinned back at it, finishing his stretch and glancing around for his phone.
Beyond the paper, at the edge of the table but in reach, just. He must have pushed it away from him as he lay sprawled on the table. That in itself was a concern. He couldn’t recall doing that before and as much as he had wished to hold on to sleep that morning, he hadn’t exactly been tired when he had brought himself across to his crossword. Denys had seen to that.
The phone continued to ring. He was deliberately moving slowly, subconsciously willing whomever had the audacity to call him to hang up, and not bother to call him back again. It wouldn’t be anything important. The mere fact that it was so insistent put him in the mind that it was nothing more than a call centre, attempting to sell him something that he didn’t want, or need. He was quite sure that it wouldn’t be a British voice on the other end of the line when he did pick up.
He stretched across and pulled the phone to him, being careful not to answer it by mistake. The other thought he had other than a nuisance call was even more of a reason not to answer. He was quite sure that the rent he was two months late with was going to put him at serious odds with his rent agency, who up til now hadn’t phoned Adam in regards to the late payments but no doubt would do any day now, if not today. Their letters had gone unheeded and unanswered and he knew that he was pushing his rights but not responding at all. There was a time in the not-so-distant past where the working on such letters would be heavy handed, and even threatening, but they were no longer allowed to use such terminology as “pay in full or face eviction”, or “the next stage will involve bailiffs to recoup the shortfall”. Now it was all “we want to help you and understand if you are having difficulties, please contact us so we can make arrangements on your arrears”, or “here is a number for a debt management charity that can help you organise your finances and deal with your creditors on your behalf”. He knew that they couldn’t just throw him out on the street. Not any more. Those days were gone. Too heavy handed in the past resulting in a significant mark-up in homelessness and suicide painted the government in a less favourable light. He, and other renters like him, held all the cards, as it were, when it came to not ending up not he streets.
He glanced at the screen, the phone still ringing shrilly in the otherwise silent apartment. The number flashed up in time with every ring and he frowned. It could be a call centre. It certainly wasn’t a UK number, with that code in front of it. It wasn’t his letting agency, of that he was certain. They were saved in his phones address book and the name would have come up on screen.
“Hang up for fuck sake,” he whispered through his teeth. He should just cut the call.
Picking up the phone to do just that, the ringing suddenly ceased. He exhaled slowly, and put the phone on silent before sliding it across the table away from him again. He pushed it too far and it fell to the floor with a heavy thud. He looked down and noticed that it had landed with he screen facing the floor. A moment of panic gripped him. What if he had broken it? Did he care?
He sighed, pushing his chair backwards and turning towards the phone, pushing down slightly on the wheel rims until he could bend over and pick it up. The screen was unmarked, despite the bare floorboards that it had impacted with. He clicked the side panel and waited a moment for the familiar display to flash up. Nothing happened. He clicked it again. Still nothing. He clicked the buttons not he other side in case he was hitting the wrong buttons. Most likely that’s all it was. Clicking his phone screen on and off was one of those near autonomous actions that you don’t need to think about, yet as soon as you do, you over think it and do the wrong thing. Like driving a car. As soon as you start to fixate on one particular aspect of it, you’ll start to do it wrong. Bring thew clutch up too early, or put it down to late. Same with a motorcycle, it was all to easy to -
Stupid. That was stupid.
Why did he have to let his thoughts lead him in that direction?
Idiot. Way to relive the trauma.
“Fucking thing,” he sighed, giving up. It was perhaps just out of battery now by coincidence and whenever he bothered to charge it, it would probably be fine. Probably.
Again though, did he care? Apart from the aforementioned call centres flogging him cheaper electricity or trying to get him to sign up for something, and the inevitable phone call from the letting agency, who exactly would be trying to get in touch with him these days? Jane? His contact at the publishing house? Not after he had told her to shove her work “up somewhere hot and wet” six weeks ago. She had been trying to convince him that he was the perfect fit to illustrate the hardback of the new Tom Manillo thriller.
“What’s the gist of it?”
She had explained to him the outline and he couldn’t have been more disinterested. Normally he would have taken on the work regardless. A Tom Manillo thriller was nothing to be sniffed at. The guy was a serious heavyweight and probably the biggest author on Hounsett’s books. The advance alone for the work should have covered his rent for the next six months, let alone the fact that his contracts with Jane typically had him on commission for the initial sales period and any promotional material printed or created online that used his imagery. He was just about to say yes and ask her to forward the contract when he suddenly picked up on something she said.
“Sorry, can you repeat that last part?”
“What part?” Jane said. The tone of her voice had changed. Normally confident to the extent of being brash, it instead was low and almost hesitant.
“Just the last little bit you were talking about. Something about an accident.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you but I know how you always end up reading the full book yourself anyway to set you up for your initial considerations. So I figured you ought to know, but Adam, Tom specifically asked for you. This book is poised to be his biggest seller yet. We’re talking big payout, and you’ve been with us years so -”
“Just tell me what you fucking said Jane,” Adam said through gritted teeth.
“Alright, there’s an accident of sorts in there, a character loses a limb. It’s such a minor thing overall that -”
“A minor thing?” Adam retorted. “How can it just be a minor thing?”
“It doesn’t impact the main character’s arc in any way you see, he’s more concerned about the fact that his wife won’t let him see -”
“Fucking hell Jane. Really? Does any of this ring a bell to you? Does any of it sound like it’s something I want to get involved in?”
“Adam, please, I’m sorry. I mean. It was so long ago now. You’re doing so well. I just didn’t think that -”
“No. You’re right Jane. You just didn’t fucking think at all did you. Or was that the reason he asked for me? Did the great Tom Manillo think ‘oh, I know who will be perfect to illustrate the cover of this particular book the guy with first hand experience of all of this shit!’. Or perhaps it was when you and him had one of your meetings over a bottle of champagne down at the Rooster? Did you toast to your mutual imminent success and then jokingly tell him who he should contract in as an illustrator. Did you both have a good laugh at my expense?”
“Adam,” she said softly.
“Because I can fucking picture it now. Get the cripple to draw a picture of a cripple for the cover! Perhaps he can do a self portrait? At the very least, he can sit in front of a mirror, just so he can get the stumps just right. Just fucking so. Is that about the size of it?”
“Adam,” she said again.
“Then you call me with this, paint it like it’s the greatest gig ever and I should be lucky to have it because it’s Tom fucking Manillo and I should just be so grateful and hey there’s a bonus here because I can totally empathise with the guy who lost his family and his fucking legs in such a short space of time.”
“Adam,” once more. A soft sigh.
“What?”
“Have you been drinking again.” A question posing as an accusation.
“Do you know what? I haven’t. But thank you for placing so much trust in me.”
“Jesus look this call is going -”
“It’s going straight where this job offer and our professional relationship is going Jane. Straight up somewhere hot and wet.”
“Adam please.”
“Fuck you and good night,” he said as he disconnected the call and threw his phone towards the open window. By sheer luck his aim was off by some margin. Luck, or the distinct possibility that his aim was affected by the half bottle of blended whisky he had consumed before Jane phoned. Instead of flying effortlessly through the open window and gliding to the ground two storeys down, it thunked against the framed picture that in turn fell to the floor, it’s glass front shattering. Later on, Adam would see that as fair and just karma for his temper, but right then, it was all he could do to continue cursing louder, thankful that there was at that point no one in apartment six to complain. His neighbours had moved out the month previous, citing the fact that the apartment had begun to develop a smell that they couldn’t locate the source of, nor mask with anything.
They had asked Adam numerous times, each one of the elderly couple taking it in turns it seemed to knock on his door and ask him if he was cooking anything pungent, or if he could smell anything. He thought they were actually brother and sister as opposed to a married couple but wasn’t too sure. Each time he asked he gave the same answer. No he wasn’t, and no he didn’t. The last time, they had both been there. It could have been the light or his imagination but both faces looked positively drained of colour and life. Pale jowls, heavy lidded eyes sunken back in thin and strained faces. They both stood stooped and gaunt. They asked Adam again if he smelled anything. He had asked what it was like, what kind of smell it was.
The man, a retired engineer by the name of Benson, had simply said “Death”, before both of them shuffled down the corridor towards the lift, out of sight and out of Adam’s life. A couple of weeks after, Denys and Yana had moved in. As far as he knew, they hadn’t smelled anything in there.
He didn’t need his phone. Fuck it, he thought, I’ll charge it in the morning.
With that, he pushed himself away from the table, taking his three quarters full coffee cup with him, the cold black liquid slopping over his thighs a little as he did so. He entered the kitchen and poured the rest down the sink, debating whether he was hungry enough for dinner, despite knowing that the options in his cupboard were more limited than ever.
In the end, he opted for the fridge, knowing that there was some of the previous nights dinner there. He opened it and pulled out one of the remaining bottles of beer, taking it with him into the living room where he pulled his chair up to the couch before hoisting himself off and on to the soft cushions. He found the remote and put the television on, navigating to something mindless and pulling the tab on the can in his hand. As far as he was concerned, this is where he would sleep that night. Whenever sleep took him. He didn’t expect that it would any time soon, considering that he had done nothing else that day, apart from sleep.
He managed to make it halfway through his second beer before sinking into oblivion. Where he found himself standing once more atop a stairwell of iron and ivy.
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