The Sandwich

She says she’s hungry, and rolls over with an air of finality. He stands, and pulls on a pair of pyjama bottoms. Yawning, he descends the stairs.

He stands in the kitchen and stretches, the extension of his back muscles spins out the long tracery of scratches and he winces, then grins.

First he pours some oil into a wide pan, then lights the flame very gently. He opens his case of knives and selects one that is short-bladed but heavy. Testing the edge with his thumb he notes the labyrinth of tiny cuts on his hand, most healed, some open. He crushes two cloves of garlic and chops a fat red chilli, he scrapes them into the pan, chops a lemon in half and squeezes that into it, cursing as the juice runs over his hands.

The sun is streaming through the kitchen window in torrents, as though it’s trying to get a month’s worth in twenty minutes or so. He opens the window and spring rolls in.

He takes a chicken breast from the fridge, noting that he needs to go and buy some wine later. The scent of frying garlic starts to fill the kitchen, and the tiny chopped pieces jerk fitfully in the oil. He cuts the chicken breast along its horizon and opens it out. He turns up the heat on the gas and the oil sizzles fiercely, a couple of spots hit his hand and he shakes it before he lays the two halves of breast in the pan.

He looks at the chicken whilst it cooks, doesn’t take his eyes off it once, except after he’s turned it over, when he takes a moment away from the pan to cut two slices from a thick granary loaf sitting in an earthenware pot on the back of the counter. He slices tomatoes, and pulls some leaves from the basil plant on the window sill and chopping them, takes the chicken from the pan, places it on one slice, layers the tomato and basil on top, then presses the whole lot together firmly.

When he goes back to the room she’s woken up, and is sat with her knees drawn up, reading. As he enters she looks at him and smiles.

“I’m bloody starving” she says “what took you?”

Les the Taxi

He always says that in his experience he has observed (and that is how he always says it, “in his experience” and “observed”, slowly, mulling over the words as he looks down at his pint) that there are two types of people (he called them two “distinct groups”).Those who automatically sit alongside him in the cab of his Sierra, and those who don’t. Or, as he put it the other night.
“There are some as are polite, and realise that to enjoy an even level of discourse they must sit alongside me, so that we are on a level playing field.” He paused for a long pull of lager, spilling a little on his plain shirt “then there are the others. Those to whom I am a conveyance, a way of getting from A to B.” he has descriptive hands, and on this occasion points A and B were indicated with sharp jabs in the air, causing some fag smoke to buckle and curl. “Those who do not wish to engage with me.”
We can always tell how good a mood he’s in by the proportion of types he gives when he tells us this. When in an optimistic mood the majority of rides sit alongside him in the front and pass the time of day. The gloomier he is the more they shut themselves away in the back and deny his existence.
Les always says that what hurts the most (and his voice slows almost to a complete stop when he says this, he looks down even further and traces his finger through the spilt Stella) is when he gives rides to carloads of girls going up to the college bar, all short skirts and cleavage. After he started driving taxis he’d always attempt to make conversation, thought that was what you did. The girls would always look nonplussed, and giggle at him, and that was when he realised that they knew how they were, all young and sleek and desirable, and he knew what he was, a man trying to be polite and getting it wrong.
“Younger than my daughters” he always says “as if I would.” And he always looks sad as he says it. “I should have kept my fucking trap shut” he always says. “I should have kept it shut.”

Cat

There’s a small thump on the kitchen table.
“What’s that?” she asks, a cat I reply.
The cat has jumped in easily through the open kitchen window and now sits, compact and at ease with itself on yesterday’s Racing Post.
“I know that” she says, and pouts slightly as she does, which I like. “But what’s it doing there? Is it your cat?”
No, I answer, truthfully.
“I hate cats” the cat yawns at her, and licks its paw. It is black, small and black. A small black cat sat on an old newspaper with a girl glaring at it. It’s like a postcard or something. “So if it’s not your cat what’s it doing here?” I shrug, and say I had no idea, which is also the truth. I am grateful to the cat though, for whilst she looks at it, and it looks at her, I can also look at her without her noticing, trace the line of her hair, the untidy flick of ginger over the nape of her neck. I want very much to kiss that neck. So we have a fine old minute or two of it, the cat and me. It gets to be the centre of attention and I don’t, which suits us both fine, I think.
She turns and I whip my eyes away from the swell of her small breasts, perceptible through a rainbow-coloured jumper. She looks younger than I remember from the night before, and her skin has that whiteness that always makes me think of princesses, though flecked with freckles. Even sexier.
I want coffee, I want a shower, I want to rub my neck where it aches from the night spent on the sofa, but any time spent making coffee and showering and rubbing my neck would be time spent facing away from her, enough time for me to melt out of her existence. Just a few more seconds, her, me, the cat. Just a few more seconds of this’ll be great.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
I met her last night, walking home from a long turn through the fields to think, turned into my street and there’s this figure on a bench, I make to move on and hear crying, I walk up to the figure and well if it isn’t a girl, seventeen, eighteen at a guess. Not quite young enough to be my daughter, thank Christ, not yet. A bit drunk and angry and defiant so I guess this is something to do with a young gentleman, which is probably why she says yes when I ask her if I can make her a cup of tea because otherwise she’ll catch her death.
I don’t know what she’s expecting, but she seems surprised to actually get tea.
She eyes me suspiciously when I show her the bedroom, place a clean towel out, smile at her and bid her goodnight, her reply is halting. I hear the click of the bolt, sensible girl, go downstairs and sit for a while in the dark of the kitchen. And now it’s morning and fuck me she’s beautiful, I had no idea. Big eyes. Ginger hair. A heart-shaped face. Beautiful.
The cat stretches, arching it’s back and thrusting it’s paws forward like it’s going to do a handstand any second, then it jumps off the table and disappears off upstairs. The girl snorts, evidently pleased it’s gone.
“I hate cats” she repeats, then glares up at me from under her fringe, like it’s my fault that cats exist “listen” she says at length “thanks.” I tell her she’s welcome and already I can see that the end is nigh, she’s out of here, she’s trying to find a nice way to do it. She can see that I think she’s beautiful, she’s got herself in an awkward position and she wants out. I smile at her, and try to look brave as I do it, then I hear the click of the door but I’m sure my sense of the order of events has gone fucked, because after I hear the door close I feel the brush of lips against my cheek.

The dynamite

Most of the day the dynamite sat on the doormat. In the morning it sat in a rectangle of sun, but that had shifted by early afternoon. At some point in the morning the cat sat on it, mid-afternoon the paper was pushed through the letterbox and fell on it, a false cover advertising a firm of glaziers with a caveat telling me that my usual champion lay inside. I read it to keep me up to date with the news on the murder that had happened up the road.
As it turned out a man who was something big in property had had his head stoved in with a length of pipe. They only found out when dogs started trying to get into a shed on his allotment and the door was forced to a bloated cloud of flies. Gripping stuff, and I read it intently, munching toast.
I suppose I must have tidied the dynamite away at some point, stacked it nice and neat with her appointment cards and my offers of loans with zero percent interest for six months (none of which answered my question which was this: what the fuck would I do with twenty grand?). I have never been much of a one for post, to the annoyance of my family, who are fine ones to talk.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I opened it and the contents blew up in my face. It was four lines long, and baldly written. I went upstairs and started putting her things into boxes.

Man disco dancing in car park

Dave put his pint down. “You’re shitting me”
“No”
“In the fucking car park?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you”
“Look I’ve explained about that. Now trust me, there’s a bloke in the car park behind Kwik Save and he’s dancing.”
By the time we got to him he’d drawn a crowd. Dave hadn’t believed me, he never does, and the price of his disbelief was a place at the back of the crowd behind a fat woman in leggings.
Sweat ran down the man’s face. There was no music, and the crowd didn’t say much. He was giving it loads.
“If you’d believed me in the first place” I said “we’d have a better view.”
“You’re a congenital liar though.”
“True. But I’ve explained about that.”
“You’re a fucker.”
The man danced for some time, grunting with effort and throwing wild shapes with his arms. A small child cried. A group of lads in tracksuits threw a couple of desultory coke cans. After a while we all went away. Dave and I were last to leave as we hadn’t had a good view on account of Dave not trusting a word I said. I checked back after a couple of days and he’d gone.