Roachville

Time repeated itself in an endless loop and as every hundred and sixty-eight hours, it was Monday. I drank green tea and brushed my teeth; the tap emitted a plaintive sound. I repeated my mantra, ‘We are all made of atoms. We are all made of atoms’, but it was hard to cheer myself up. There was also the matter of the dragon that had made another striking appearance as I had dozed off in the taxi the night before, but Macondo’s Garden was closed until tomorrow. I had tried to call on the off chance I would get hold of the strange gardener, but the phone had clicked off. I was powerless. I couldn’t very well sit on his doorstep, hoping he would turn up. And although he had said he would call, I wasn’t sure if I were him that I would.

I had better get on with the pets translation. I turned on the computer and sat back in my swivelling chair. While the machine emerged from its slumber, I stared at the ceiling and dreamt about egg-shaped cars that could fly through the air, along invisible and well-defined magnetic paths. When was somebody going to invent those?

There was nothing exciting in my mailbox, aside from a couple of answers from the translators’ forum about my corporate jargon queries. I chose the most appropriate suggestion and awarded maximum points to the translator. He had written a friendly message to accompany his answer but I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to reply. Better keep my distance; I had noticed most translators were pretty weird anyway.

I concentrated on correcting this last proof as fast as possible. By one o’clock, I was desperate to finish and I gave up for the day. The final spell-check could wait until tomorrow morning and I would deliver the translation on Tuesday just a few hours before the agreed deadline. No point rushing things; the world was spinning fast enough as it was, hurtling us towards the edge of the universe or something.

The computer was making odd asthmatic noises, so I turned it off and went down to the kitchen, thinking of lunch. Noodles came to mind. As I was about to start cooking the phone rang, and even though I had been feeling crushed by loneliness since the moment I had woken up, my hand hovered over the phone.

Still, old habits die hard and I accepted the call.

‘Hello...’ I mumbled.

‘Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world!’ replied my ex-boyfriend.

Just what I needed, Sarcasmo to the rescue.

‘How the fuck do you know?’

‘Wow, take it easy,’ he said in a Zen master’s voice.

‘Don’t wind me up.’

‘But it’s so easy.’

‘What do you want?’ I sighed. ‘I guess you need to come and pick up your forks or something.’

‘Or something, actually.’ His voice rose. Now I was getting to him. ‘Has it occurred to you that you’ve kept most of the stuff?’

‘No need to go high pitch,’ I answered. ‘And anyway I’ve told you like a fucking million times before, just come and pick up your crap, so that we’re done for good.’

‘As usual you’re not capable of having a civilised conversation, you need to learn to control yourself.’

‘Yeah yeah…’

And so it went on, a fun little game we played even after we had split up. In between insults we somehow managed to agree on a day and time for him to collect his stuff and we both tried to put the phone down on each other. I didn’t know who had won, but my phone looked pretty shaken.

Thoughts of food had vanished with rage and I paced the living room, back and forth. I could have done with a cigarette but I remembered that I didn’t smoke anymore and I had run out of weed the night before. I looked out of the window and wondered about how much Mac and I despised each other now. I had loved him a few years ago; now it had turned to unreasonable loathing. It was amazing how we managed to bring out the worst in each other.

My eyes focused on the garden decoration in the shape of a dragonfly. Mac had bought it for the new house we had taken so long to choose together. The day we were supposed to sign the mortgage, I had woken up feeling as if my veins were filled with very long slugs and the simple acts of moving and breathing had become strangely difficult. Mac, on the contrary, beamed and sang to himself as we got ready. He devoured his breakfast, while I picked at my food. Outside, the sun’s brightness gave me a headache and the birds’ songs sounded sinister. I perched in the car seat as if overnight I had turned into a tiny, fragile old lady; Mac found a miraculous parking space, just outside the bank.

‘I can’t do this,’ I had said.

I glanced at him and could have sworn that his face froze over.

‘What do you mean? I thought you were happy now.’

‘Me too,’ I had said, collecting my thoughts. ‘I’m very sorry, Mac. I should have been more decisive, but I don’t love you anymore. There is no particular reason for it, so I can’t tell you why that is. I wouldn’t admit it to myself until now because I was scared to be alone and to hurt you, but now I have to stop pretending for both our sakes.’

His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard, they turned white – maybe like somebody lost at sea, holding on for dear life to a broken plank floating on the water. He looked at me in a way that told me I had to get out. He didn’t come home that night, or the night after. As for me, even though that evil slug feeling had disappeared, it took months to shake the guilt that had got a hold of me.

I filled up the transparent kettle and watched the water forming bubbles. Green tea, white tea, black tea, red tea? Too much choice kills the choice. I opted for green, because it was my favourite colour. It was too worrying to calculate the right food to have, how many portions of goodness or anti-cancer ingredients. Stressful enough to make anyone ill… While the tea brewed, I stepped out into the garden and checked the weather. Blue-grey sky, a touch of wind and warm undertones made my whole being ache for monsoon season and rainy afternoons. Like the happy ones I had spent some years ago travelling in South-East Asia with Mac. I poured the tea into a mug with multicoloured spots, before sitting down on a white plastic chair in the garden. Listening to the drone of the motorway, I wondered if I should move back into the city; after all, if I was going to live surrounded by people, I would rather be in the thick of it and not in the pseudo-countryside of Roachville. True, I had a garden but a terrace or even a balcony would have satisfied me. I regretted having moved here and mostly I regretted having decided to stay after Mac and I split up. In hindsight, I knew I would have been better off taking a few things with me and starting from scratch. I ran my hand through my hair and went through each room in the house mentally listing the objects I would have kept: the laptop, the clothes, my old comics, the plants, the print made out of bramble paper from my friend Josune, the…

DING DONG!

I spilt my tea. Who was behind the door?

c. Some irate client coming back for revenge after their product hadn’t sold because I couldn’t be bothered to translate their shit properly.

I unlocked the latch and peered through. A man with funny eyes, sharp features and a somehow wolfish grin stared down at me.

‘Hi there! I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Oh, hi… no… not at all…’ I said to the mesmerising blue and grey eyes.

‘I had something to do in this part of town, so I thought I’d come and talk about dragons a bit more,’ he said.

‘Yes, of course.’ I let him in, amazed at life’s unpredictability. Before closing the door, I looked in triumph at my neighbours’ drawn curtains. The day had taken a sudden turn for the better.

I turned round and we eyed each other.

‘Well, would you like a cup of tea? What do you fancy? Black, green, white, red?’

He blinked a couple of times. ‘Green.’

I resisted the urge to exclaim at the coincidence of both of us choosing green tea and maintained a neutral face.

‘Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a sec,’ I said in a calm and collected manner.

I plugged in the mp3 player and Cut Chemist broke the silence in a comfortable way.

With a strong sense of foolish sophistication I put sugar cubes, cold water and green tea in my super-cute, spotted teapot, the one that went with the mugs, on a tray and plonked the whole ensemble in the middle of my small lounge.

‘Nice teapot,’ he commented from the black leather sofa. He was wearing a red t-shirt with a tree print on the front and blue denim trousers that fitted just right.

‘Thanks. It makes me feel happy to look at it,’ I said, pouring tea. ‘So, you want to talk about the dragon? Did you bring it over by any chance? And by the way, I don’t even know your name. Don’t you think that’s weird? Don’t you think it’s important to put a name to a face?’ I coughed nervously.

‘Sorry, I didn’t bring the dragon. In fact I hadn’t planned to come here. I went for an aimless drive and ended up round here. That’s when I thought of calling on you.’ He paused for a few seconds, looking dreamily at some invisible particles. ‘You know, it’s not my habit to go to people’s houses without warning, especially people I’ve just met. So I hope you don’t mind. I would have called, but you forgot to write down your phone number. I realized that after you’d left and I wasn’t sure what to do, but I did put the dragon statue away as we’d agreed…’ His words faltered. ‘To be honest things have been weird since I acquired it.’ He flashed me a carnivorous smile. ‘And you’re right, it’s wrong that we haven’t been introduced properly. My name is Ely. What about you? You also forgot to write your name the other day. That was strange. I mean, it was a strange day…’

He was right, that was strange. But how could I explain the true reasons without losing face? My mind had been in a state of flux from seeing the dragon from my dream in the flesh and he, Ely, had made a big impression on me.

‘Yeah, it was a strange day for me too…’ I tilted my head. ‘My name’s Annika and it’s nice to meet you… And I don’t mind that you came here today. It’s a pleasant surprise. Frankly, I’m not sure why I forgot to write my name and phone number. Why don’t we blame it all on the leafy sea dragon?’ For a second the creature from my dreams blocked my vision. I blinked hard to make it disappear.

‘That’s a good idea.’ He nodded looking very serious and we shook hands. I glanced at him with sudden intent as he took a sip of tea and I racked my brain to think of something to say. I managed to come up with a question that was not completely idiotic.

‘So, Ely, do you get many customers in your shop?’

‘Enough. I opened a year ago and I’m managing to survive. The important thing is that I’m happy doing it.’

He’d been there a whole year? Vi was right, I needed to go out more.

‘What about you?’ he said, leaning his head towards me. ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m a freelance translator.’

‘Cool! I’ve never met one of those before!’

‘We’re not that rare or special, we just tend to hide from the general public. Most of us are a bit weird.’ I coughed.

‘What about you? Are you a bit weird?’

‘Probably…’

‘I don’t mind a bit weird,’ he said. ‘Do you like being a translator?’

‘Well, I mustn’t grumble. Beats commuting to work every day.’

We kept on exchanging words, taking turns to ask and answer questions. Time passed and the earth rotated, but I didn’t want this moment to end.

‘There’s a really nice country pub on the other side of the motorway, next to the power station,’ Ely said.

‘I’d love to go there for a drink.’ I stared a bit longer than necessary.

‘With me, you mean?’ He laughed.

I nodded, tilting my head to the side.

‘Great! Let’s go!’

Before going out to his car I checked my face and noticed with relief that even though I hadn’t got ready that morning for anything but a dull day, I looked okay, with my hair ruffled up in a precise mess, no makeup, worn-out blue jeans and a tight grey t-shirt with a print of arrows falling from the sky. On the way out, I grabbed my bag and my faithful cord jacket. I wondered if I would be able to keep my hands off him.