In Real Life

by Chris Killen

  Commercial

  I was walking towards Nanaimo on Commercial, and you away. I was wearing an open black hoodie with a white shirt and jeans, you had a long white jacket and black slightly wedged shoes. We both did a double take and I should have run back and said hi, so this is me doing that now just a few moments too late.

  With Your Mom

  You were the Korean (?) girl with your mom at Tim Horton’s on Robson, Saturday morning. We exchanged smiles but I didn’t want to embarrass you. I was the cute half-Asian guy in the purple sweater. Next time I promise I wont be so shy.

  What are you doing for Christmas by the way? Do you go home and see your family? I think I’ll be spending mine out here . . .

  L xx

  p.s. I’m not really sure what I’m doing once my working visa here runs out. But I don’t think I’ll go back to Nottingham. I feel pretty much the same as you about it. I’ll probably end up staying with my mum for a little while but no doubt she’ll drive me mad after a couple of weeks. So, I guess my answer is just: Not sure.

  p.p.s. I hope there have been no more dressing gowns in your sink recently.

  p.p.p.s I’ve been sort of talking to you in my head a bit, sometimes, as I’m walking around. That doesn’t make me sound like a nutjob, right?!

  (Actually, don’t answer that.)

  LAUREN

  2014

  I’d just finished showing Peter how to use the till – he picked it up straight away, he’d done shop work before – and I was about to sort through the remaining tower of donations with Nancy, when Alyssa appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Surprise,’ she said, stepping into the shop, shaking a Sainsbury’s bag at me.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ I said.

  ‘Lunch.’

  ‘I don’t think I can leave the shop today.’

  ‘Come on. It’s your birthday.’

  I looked back at Peter, who grinned and raised his eyebrows. I went back over.

  ‘Right,’ I said, keeping my voice down so Nancy didn’t hear, ‘now I know this is throwing you in at the deep end, but think you could handle things here for a bit on your own, just for half an hour?’

  ‘Well, there’s Nancy too,’ he said. ‘She can help me out if I get stuck, right?’

  ‘Yep,’ I whispered. ‘But if she asks where I’ve gone, just say I’ve popped next door.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, touching him on the arm, which struck me as weird, even as I did it. (I’ve never been much of a ‘physical contact’ person.)

  ‘Happy birthday!’ he called as we left.

  It’d stopped raining, just about, so we sat on a bench in the square, a little way down the road from the shop. Alyssa took her jacket off and laid it over the damp slats of the bench, hamming it up, playing the role of a Disney prince.

  ‘Why, thank you, kind sir,’ I said, trying to join in, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

  Once we’d sat down, she talked me through the contents of the Sainsbury’s bag: ‘just cheese’ sandwiches, BBQ Transformer Snacks, Mr Men cupcakes, and a large bottle of Appletiser, which she cracked the top off and swigged from before handing to me.

  ‘Aren’t I a bit old for this now?’ I said gently.

  ‘That’s the point,’ she said, blowing a stray bit of hair from her forehead. ‘That’s the joke.’

  ‘Right.’

  I tried my best to smile.

  ‘So? Go on, Birthday Girl. What happened?’

  ‘What happened when?’

  ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘Oh shit. I don’t know. Nothing happened. I cancelled on him. Said I wasn’t feeling well.’

  ‘He sounded nice.’

  ‘I’m fine on my own,’ I said. ‘You really need to stop thinking that being single is some kind of problem or disability. Because it isn’t. Okay?’

  I could feel that wasp’s nest buzzing inside me again and I had to stop and take a deep breath. I didn’t even really know what I was getting so angry about, really. Alyssa was just trying to help.

  ‘Right,’ she said, only half listening, peeling the pink circle of icing off the top of her cupcake with her teeth, half a cheese sandwich still in her other hand. ‘Well, there’s this bloke at work called Gary who I think might be single, if you wanted me to find out and put a word in with him?’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ I said, standing, my sandwich falling off my lap. The pigeons went for it immediately, swooping down, making the whole scene about ten times more dramatic than it should’ve been.

  ‘What?’ Alyssa cried. ‘What?!’

  I took another deep breath and sat back down.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘You’re thirty-one.’

  ‘So?’

  Alyssa was four years younger than me. She’d been married since her early twenties, to Dave, a boy she’d known since A-Level college. She’d never been outside this town, except on holidays and training courses. Which was absolutely fine, I reminded myself. But it also seemed to lead her to different conclusions about things.

  Be nice, a voice said inside me. She’s your only friend here and she’s just trying to cheer you up, because, admit it, you’ve been acting pretty down lately.

  ‘Thirty-one’s fine,’ I said, in a purposefully lighter tone, trying to snap myself out of it. ‘Thirty-one’s the new, um, twenty-eight. Please stop trying to make it into something it’s not.’

  ‘That spotty lad at the till looked alright,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘He’s eighteen,’ I said, unable to stop myself from smiling too.

  ‘Hot MILF action.’

  ‘Right, now can we please stop being such fucking clichés,’ I said, forcing the grin off my face, ‘and just talk about anything other than men for once?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like how the planet is probably going to become uninhabitable in our lifetime and there’s probably no point in procreating anyway.’

  ‘Cheerful.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  I wasn’t sure if it was true or not; it was just a thing I’d skim read on my phone the other evening between TV programmes, some elderly academic likening our attempts at recycling and emissions management to ‘rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic’.

  As the pigeons pecked away at the rest of my sandwich, I imagined an end-of-the-world scenario: global warming had caused the earth to reach unbearable levels of heat and everyone knew that soon they’d all be cinders.

  I imagined myself going to the phone, trying desperately to call you, and realising I didn’t know your number.

  ‘Give me that Appletiser,’ I said.

  Alyssa passed me the bottle and I took a big swig.

  Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:08:08 +0000

  From: fiveleavesleft@hotmail.com

  To: lauren_cross83@hotmail.com

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Argh

  thank you for being interested in reading the review. (i’ll type it up at the bottom.)

  we’ve had someone from a label get in touch off the back of it, too – they’re only a tiny vinyl-only thing in Leeds, but still. fingers crossed. Alex has sent them over a CD and he’s also been spending an inordinate amount of time making us a Myspace page, which he insists is extremely important.

  have a look: myspace.com/thepostcardsUK

  it’s got the three songs off our demo and an acoustic one I recorded last week, here in my room. hope you like it. (if you don’t like it, please lie and tell me you liked it.) also, if you look in the ‘top friends’ bit, i’ve got my own personal account on there, too, so if you wanted to join, we could be ‘friends’ on it or something, maybe?

  congrats on your job/flat/fondant fancy/etc!

  i’ve got an interview for Christmas temp work at the HMV tomorrow. kind of dreading it. i don’t know. feels like i’m selling out – cheating on Selectadisc. is that pathetic??

  yeah, probably going h
ome to see my parents at Christmas. we usually just sit in the living room and eat chocolate oranges and watch TV for three days straight. last year my sister brought her new boyfriend down on boxing day, too, and he turned out to be a prize dickhead, so i’m kind of hoping they’ll have broken up by now. (is that mean?)

  (i’ve been talking to you in my head a bit too. that’s kind of what the song, the acoustic one, is about actually, if you must know. i feel like i have all sorts of questions to ask you. would it be okay if i just asked you some questions? i don’t want to bombard you with them though, without your prior consent, you see, but i just want to know lots more about you . . .)

  i can hear Alex shouting at the TV downstairs which means the football must be on. sometimes, when the football’s on, it’s kind of terrifying: i went out for a walk the other night and the streets were completely deserted and then someone must have scored a goal because suddenly i heard this massive roar coming from every house and it sounded a bit like what i imagine the end of the world might sound like.

  okay, here’s my first question (i couldn’t wait till next email, sorry): do you like football?

  also: do you have any brothers and sisters? (i have one sister.)

  and finally: what’s your favourite band or singer? (i think mine is Elliott Smith.)

  i guess i’d better try and get some sleep. Just looked at the time on my computer and realised that my interview’s in less than eight hours.

  shit.

  wish me luck,

  Ian x

  p.s. NME review:

  Opening up for the Alps were Postcards, a local band who seem to have already developed a small but rabid following. From their short, nervy set it was easy to see why. This three-piece buzzsawed their way through a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it performance full of howling, wiry guitars, clattering drums, and occasional moments of soaring, angelically melodic brilliance. Beneath the fuzz there’s some real talent at work.

  IAN

  2014

  Martin appears in the doorway and claps his hands. ‘Great job this morning everyone. Only a few hundred surveys left before we’ve hit our target. So let’s really smash it the rest of this week, yeah, and as soon as we get it finished, I’ll order us in some pizzas. How does that sound?’

  Everyone makes an ooh noise.

  On my way out the door, he puts a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Quick word, mate?’

  I follow him down the corridor and into his office, which smells suspiciously like McDonald’s.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he says, sliding himself into his big leather chair. ‘I’ve been having a listen through to a few of your calls from the other day. And I don’t think you’re performing at your maximum potential to be honest, mate.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘Now don’t be alarmed. I’m not going to fire you. But I just feel like you’re just not really putting your heart and soul into this. You sound like you’re just reading out the words from the script if I’m honest. And we both know you can do better than that, yeah?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Look at Danny.’

  ‘Which one’s Danny?’

  ‘Danny,’ Martin says, touching the place on his earlobe where a sparkly earring would go. ‘Danny.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Danny.’

  ‘He only started a couple of weeks before you did and he’s consistently coming up in the top three in the weekly chart.’

  I didn’t know there was a weekly chart.

  ‘Whereas you . . .’ Martin says, opening a spread sheet on his computer, then swivelling the monitor to face me, ‘you’re right down here near the bottom.’

  He points to my name on the screen. It’s second from the bottom. Below me is someone called Andrew Smith.

  ‘Which one’s Andrew?’ I say.

  ‘Andrew’s been off since before you started with spinal problems. Anyways, all I’m saying, mate, is that this afternoon I really want you to step it up a gear, yeah?’

  ‘Alright,’ I say, lifting myself out of my chair. ‘Cheers.’

  I wonder what he’ll do exactly if I don’t step it up a gear.

  I wander back down the corridor.

  I stick my head in the break room.

  Today there are eight or nine people in there, including Sue and Danny and Tall Boy and Dean. They’re all eating Tesco sandwiches and silently doing things on their phones. I carry on down the steps towards the exit, rolling a roll-up as I go.

  Four days left until I give up.

  Four days until my thirty-first birthday.

  For once it’s not raining, so I decide to go for a walk.

  I head down Deansgate in the opposite direction to the Tesco Express, and on a whim I turn into a side road near the fancy, white-brick solicitor’s offices. At the end of the street there’s a small park that I’ve never seen before: a rectangular patch of bright green, just-mowed grass with a few metal benches dotted round the edges. It’s the kind of place you might take someone for a picnic. It’s almost empty, just one woman sitting on her own, eating her lunch.

  I can’t remember the last time I went for a picnic with anyone.

  I’m reaching for the gate, my hand’s just about to touch it, when I see a dash of pink beneath the woman’s coat and realise that of course it’s Dalisay, sat there eating her sandwiches. My hand falters and stops in mid air then slips back into my jacket pocket.

  I never know what to do in situations like this.

  Do I sit on a different bench?

  Or do I go over and say hello?

  Or do I perhaps turn round and head back to work as quickly as I can, hoping she didn’t see me?

  I feel extremely pathetic, the whole rest of the afternoon. Each time I hear her voice from behind the partition wall, I cringe. I bet Danny wouldn’t have run away from a girl on a bench. According to Ways to Happiness, ‘to fully achieve happiness you must first be prepared to grab it by both horns’.

  I’m such a coward.

  I should’ve gone up and said hello.

  In between calls, I lose six games of solitaire in a row.

  Before you leave each day, you have to fill in a sheet, saying exactly how many minutes you’ve worked and exactly how much in pounds and pence you believe you’ve earned, then add that figure to your running total for the week. It’s beginning to look like a massive amount (even though I know in reality it’s only slightly above minimum wage).

  Only a few days left until payday.

  I’ve had to borrow twenty quid off Carol, to see me through the week.

  I sign my name in the correct box and file my sheet in the box file by the door, and as I’m heading down the main set of stairs, I realise that I’m right behind Dalisay. She’s only two or three metres in front of me. She pushes open the main door at the bottom, then stops and holds it open for me, too.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumble.

  I stick my hands deep in my coat pockets and fumble around amongst the bits of fluff and the stray filter tips for my almost-empty pouch of tobacco and papers. We step out onto the street. It’s already gone dark and the wind is making a whistling, howling sound, like a dog trying to join in when someone plays the piano.

  I turn right and start walking in the direction of Piccadilly, extremely, painfully aware that Dalisay’s turned the same way too.

  Shit.

  She’s walking just a few steps behind me.

  I try to focus on rolling my cigarette, but my fingers feel numb and wonky like they’re made out of sausages.

  I slow myself down, so we’re almost level.

  The wind keeps blowing my tobacco away.

  I’m trying desperately to think of something interesting to say.

  When I finally finish rolling my cigarette, I look up and there she is in the left-hand corner of my eye, just a quarter step behind me.

  I stick the roll-up in my mouth and light it.


  ‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ she says. ‘It’s a bad habit.’

  I turn to look at her and she’s smiling.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  I slow myself down a little more and now we’re walking side by side. I attempt to blow my smoke away from her face but the wind catches it and blows most of it straight back at us.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say again.

  ‘Why are you apologising?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She’s still smiling.

  I try to smile back and my face feels like a Microsoft Paint drawing of a smiling face. We walk along Deansgate, past Richer Sounds and the Church of Scientology and a large shop that just sells bathtubs. I allow myself to stop smiling.

  ‘I’m giving up soon anyway,’ I say. ‘For my birthday.’

  ‘When’s your birthday?’

  ‘This coming Friday.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘I don’t suppose . . .’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  This is it.

  I am grabbing happiness by both horns.

  ‘Well, I was just wondering . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  I’m about to just blurt it out when a beeping sound makes us both jump. I spin round and there’s Martin’s Audi, pulling up to the kerb. Fuck’s sake. Not now. The tinted window slides down as we both approach.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ Martin says. ‘Want a lift?’

  Dalisay hangs back, confused.

  ‘I’m fine thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Fair play,’ he says. And then, really, really obviously, he winks at me.

  He pulls away from the kerb so fast his back tyres squeal, lurching off into the Deansgate traffic.

  ‘Martin goes out with my sister,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, okay, right,’ says Dalisay.

  A long pause.

  ‘He’s awful, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dalisay smiles with relief. ‘He is.’

  ‘Anyway . . .’

  We’ve stopped walking now. We’re just standing by the kerb, looking at our trainers. They’re both Converse, I realise, except mine are black low tops while Dalisay’s are red high tops. Fuck it. I’m just going to say it.

  ‘I was just wondering if you fancied having a drink with me on my birthday, maybe? I’ve only just moved here, you see. To this city. And I don’t have that many friends yet, and I was going to hang out with my sister but now she’s going away. For the weekend. With Martin. So, um, yeah.’