Lisa Owens - Not Working

“Insurance?” he asks, of my last answer, and I nod, because, well, why not?

“Oh yeah? What sort?”

“Ha, ha?” I say, just sounds now. I’m curious to see where this will lead.

“Healthcare?” he guesses.

I nod. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I’ve discovered a new career service: it feels no less arbitrary than any other approach.

When my mouth is empty once more, I say, “Go on, then: what’s the damage?”

He laughs. His own teeth are good, not perfect, which suggests both respect for nature and tolerance of imperfection: values I can get on board with. Were we protagonists in a romantic comedy, this would bode well for our future. “There’s some thinning enamel we need to keep an eye on”—he gestures on a chart—“but generally things are looking pretty good in there.”

“No sign of any wisdom teeth yet? I thought they were meant to have come up by now.”

He grins. “But they have : full house.”

“Oh! Oh. I didn’t even notice.”

“Some people go through a lot of trouble with those guys. You should count yourself lucky.”

I nod, but truthfully I’m disappointed: the tiniest, stupidest part of me hoped they might live up to their name.

Desire

In bed, I recount my meeting with Andrea. She doesn’t come out of it well.

“She’s obviously not very nice. I don’t understand why you’re friends with her,” says Luke.

“I’m not.”

“So why do you waste your time with her? You only get one life.”

“She asked to meet up and I feel bad saying no. She knows I don’t have a job — I have no excuse.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. Say you’re busy next time.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a next time. I don’t think she likes me.”

“So no problem, then.”

“But I want her to like me.”

“But you don’t like her!”

“Because she isn’t nice!”

“So what’s the issue?”

“I am nice, so she should like me!”

“You do know it’s okay if not everyone likes you,” says Luke.

“If that was true, it would feel okay, but it doesn’t, so it can’t be.”

“All right, you’ve lost me. Sleep time now.”

“Don’t you want to have sex? We said we would.”

“Do you want to?” asks Luke.

I weigh my options. I don’t, but I’m not ready to be left alone in the sickly orange streetlamp wash beyond good night. “I don’t not want to.”

“You make it so hard for me to resist.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I do, but…tomorrow? Definitely tomorrow.”

“We always say that.”

“But this time we really, really mean it.”

Things have been piling up over the last few months in the corners and at the edges of the rooms in our flat: stubborn, uncategorizable items that have no proper place but aren’t rubbish either. In the wake of a spate of huffs and hints from Luke (who has somehow managed to absolve himself of any responsibility for the stuff) I gather everything together and sit down to go through it all in one go.

There’s a cord from my e-reader (which my computer doesn’t recognize); a lightbulb, which might be old but might be new; three keys, all incompatible with the locks in my life; a set of portable speakers rendered obsolete by our recent mobile phone upgrades; spare buttons in little polythene bags; a cardigan left after a dinner party; the order of service from my grandfather’s funeral; a cigarette lighter left after a different dinner party; a red ribbon; two jokers from a pack of playing cards; the instruction booklet for a desk fan; and a used plastic disposable camera: contents unknown.

I leave the other stuff for later and take the camera to the first drugstore I find, one of the dusty village-style variety with a window display themed around evening primrose, incongruously quaint on this grimy London street between a tanning salon (“Spray It Like You Mean It!”) and bookies. A bell tinkles when I open the door and I’m hit by the smell — a powdery, fudgy, floral nostalgia-blast, encoded in my brain at some long-ago point to signify “femininity,” and I realize with a vague sense of disenchantment that this phenomenon — femininity — has not manifested itself at all as I expected, in the form of vanity table, crystal perfume atomizer, kimono suspended from silk-padded hanger, et cetera, but instead as a tangle of grayish underwear, old sports T-shirts for nighties and an unruly drugstore-special-offer-dictated assortment of half-finished moisturizers, packets of face wipes and bunches of tampons.

I select from the shelves a prettily packaged tube of cuticle cream — the first step toward the boudoir of my dreams! — and take it to the counter along with the camera, which I submit for one-week development.

Last night, the wolves that used to feast on my flesh fed on a mountain of steaks instead. Am I meant to read this as some kind of progress?

I turn on the TV to reports of a terrorist attack on the news — rolling footage of charred remains, grave shock in the voice of the presenter, and with a sinking heart, I think, How are we still surprised? Is it as simple as we forget ? That planes crash; babies get bigger; cells mutate; volcanoes erupt; sometimes it rains; years go by; regimes grow strong; humans lie; economies fail; children die; bins get full; clean clothes get dirty; darkness always falls early in winter? Is this how we keep going, one day to the next?

A text out of nowhere, like a small detonation: can u meet. M.

I take a table alfresco — i.e. outside the cafe’s glass front, but inside the train station overlooking the main thoroughfare. I have an absurd fear I won’t recognize her, that in the months since I saw her she’ll have turned gray, aged aggressively. Then she emerges: fingers primping her hair, rearranging her scarf, her collar, her hair again, eyeing herself sidelong in every shop window — so self-absorbed that for a moment, even as I’m flooded with love and relief after these many months without her, I find myself also furious with her.

“Mum,” I call, trying to rise, but things are tight between table, chair and window, and the result is a bowlegged squat. She’s overshot by a few feet and is startled to see me when she turns.

“Oh! Claire. I missed you there.” Instinctively she reaches out for me, then remembering, withdraws a little, and squeezes my hand the way a distant elderly relative might.

“I missed you too,” I say.

“What? Oh right. Yes, I see,” she says, still holding my hand.

—

Once she’s settled with coffee, she gives me the customary once-over.

“ That’s a nice top,” she says. “Is it new?”

Tugging the hem, I say, “This? No.”

“Still. I’ve always loved blue on you.” Her eyes continue to rove. “Hair back.” (Meaning: scraped up .) She touches her own, voluminous as ever.

“You’re looking great,” I say, taking the cue. She tweaks her shoulders and sits up a little straighter.

“Well. At my age you have to make the effort.” There’s a pause. We smile at each other, look away, smile again, wider, a little more desperate.

“So. How’s Luke?”

“He’s fine. Work’s busy, exams ongoing, but you know Luke: always has his eyes on the prize.”

“And…things between you are good?” Her head is tilted to one side, casual fashion, though the tendons stand out in her neck, and I’m seized by the paranoid, squirming feeling I get whenever I’m asked a direct personal question.