Daniel dragged the toe of his shoe over the top step, feeling the sheen of recent rain. It was quiet. The building loomed in darkness behind him ’“ every day he was the last to leave. The air felt cold and moist against his cheeks and he could see the faint outline of his breath when he exhaled. Looking ahead from this vantage point, the city spread out before him, a mixture of warm orange glows and sharp spikes of white and blue light. Daniel began a slow, almost plodding descent down one step then the next until he reached the gravel drive where the crunch and grind of the stones was muted by shallow puddles.
He turned right onto the makeshift path which was a much used short cut in summer but by October had become a mush of mud and weeds. He brushed past overgrown bushes at the gate. Raindrops which had lain perfectly formed on plant life since the lunchtime downpour now splattered against his knees and gleefully permeated the fabric of his trousers.
Daniel walked slowly towards the empty bus stop. A poster twisted inside the plastic panel distorting the photo of a family around a breakfast table so that their smiling faces were hit by the glare of the flickering light. Standing at the bus stop he noticed a solitary moth trapped inside the panel. He watched it display a futile repetitive dance, ricocheting against invisible barriers on both sides. The number 12 drew up and puffed its doors open but before Daniel stepped onto the bus he saw that the moth had relented and was now crawling slowly in the bottom of the panel.
As the bus swept down the hill, jolting to a standstill occasionally when a lone passenger wanted on or off, Daniel felt his stomach complaining which was fair enough as all he had eaten all day was a Snickers for breakfast. It was hunger that had finally goaded him to leave work and head for his flat. Not that much work was being done for the most part he had been meandering pointlessly from one website to another. Something he could do just as easily in his flat.
A man climbed slowly onto the bus and lowered himself into the seat next to Daniel. He smelt of cheap beer, roll-ups and old age. Daniel noticed the man was wearing Homer Simpson slippers and he looked sharply out of the window, unsure whether he was hiding his own shame or avoiding the old man’s. He wondered if the man was also going home to a microwavable sausage pizza with an impenetrable overcooked crust.
At home he didn’t bother switching on any lights but instead choose to stand in the glow of the microwave and wait patiently for the three beeps. Daniel briefly considered washing a knife and fork under the tap but knowing he would have to scrape dry tomato sauce off each implement with his fingernail he decided against it. Instead he balanced the cardboard pizza stand on finger tips and swept it through to the sitting room where he deliberately let it drop when his hands were just an inch from the top of the coffee table. Daniel watched the middle of an episode of CSI and bit into the still scorching hot pizza.
When the coarse winter daylight raided his eyelids for a weak spot Daniel woke with a groan and stretched. He then became very aware of the tinkling sound of a teaspoon being stirred. Sitting still on the edge of the sofa, Daniel tried to heighten his sleepy senses and work out what the noise meant. He could hear the padding of bare feet on linoleum and then someone clicked on a radio. His radio. The sound of some X Factor reject squeaking his way through a Sting cover was definitely coming from his kitchen.
In the small square hall Daniel edged slowly towards the kitchen. A chair scraped and at the possibility of coming face to face with whoever it was Daniel found himself hiding behind the bathroom door, gripping the towel rail. He got up the nerve to look through the slither of space between the door and its frame, his heart thrusting violently against his ribs.
A woman walked past and into his bedroom.
She re-emerged pulling a coat on and as she stuffed her feet, covered with thick woolly socks, into ankle boots he finally allowed his long-held breath to trickle cautiously past his lips. He gulped another deep breath. It seemed he was staying in the bathroom - opting for the do-nothing approach to crisis management. There was no point even considering how he might react if she chose to enter the bathroom.
Who on earth was she? Where had she come from? What the fuck was she doing in his flat? Had she brought her own sugar for her tea? Why was she acting like she lived here, like his flat was her home? He didn’t have a clue. So Daniel continued to peek through the door and remained motionless even when he was aware that his slightly stooped stance was beginning to niggle his back.
The woman fluttered in and out of the kitchen and bedroom and Daniel continued to steal gulps of air as and when he deemed it both feasible and vital to his continued existence. She sailed past the bathroom door once more and then she was gone ’“ with the shuddering jolt of the front door and the click of heels on concrete as she went down the stairs.
Daniel finally let go of the towel rail and flapped soundlessly round his bathroom, rocking from one foot to the other, pacing one step in each direction. What was going on? A quick and determined inspection of his one bed flat just added to his bafflement. Nothing was missing, she was not a eccentric thief ’“ at least not yet. In fact, if anything things had been added. There was a new toaster in the kitchen, cushions on the bed and unfamiliar CDs in the rack in the sitting room. He might have been hideously embarrassed at being in the wrong flat if it wasn’t for the familiar fag burn on the sofa and the broken lava lamp down the side of his bed. If it wasn’t that nothing of his was out of place.
Daniel’s adrenalin levels got an extra boost when he saw that it was 8.35am already and he was about to miss the last bus that could get him to work on time. No matter how late he left work in the evening his boss still demanded punctuality ’“ in fact he was one of those bosses who thought it was a fantastic idea for his minions to arrive 15 minutes early so they weren’t making that first cup of coffee during work time. With his heart still battering sporadically in his chest Daniel found himself reaching for a shirt that he had discarded over the back of a chair a few days ago. It would be well aired by now.
Daniel caught the bus with no seconds to spare, the driver taking pity on him as he lunged across the road waving his arm in the air while impotently mouthing the words ’œStop’ and ’œWait’. There were no seats available and he clung onto a hand rail, mildly disgusted by the residue of stranger’s sweat. As he worked at regaining his composure, wiping his own sweaty forehead and trying hard to regulate his breathing, he thought of the woman in his flat. He still had no idea what on earth she had been doing there but in a way the most ridiculous thing about his whole morning was that despite it all he had actually rushed to get to work on time.
Why, after all the unexpected randomness of this morning had his instinct yanked him onto a bus headed for work? It wasn’t like he particularly cared about his work, it was bearable at best. It wasn’t even that there would be any serious repercussions for being late. So why was it that the thing that had got him most animated this morning was not the inexplicable appearance of an enigmatic woman in his flat but that familiar anxiety about getting to work on time? In fact, what the hell was he doing on this bus?
Daniel had piled off the bus before he was even conscious of making a decision not to go to work. His stomach swirled at the sudden realisation that a whole day stretched ahead of him and that he could do just what he wanted with his time. He could go back to the flat, await the return of the woman ’“ after all her belongings were strewn all over the place, it seemed unlikely she had just abandoned them. But what would be the use of sitting around all day, waiting?
Daniel decided he would walk into town and later when he returned home he would see whether or not the woman had reappeared.
copyright © 2013 Kat Friel
