Chapter Ten

I only meant to leave for a few minutes. I woke up and, having watched his eyelids flicker for only three minutes and twenty seconds (one hundred times in two hundred seconds - a pretty hectic dream for such a soon-to-be-hungover state), I managed to crawl over the threshold of the bathroom. Taking a piss, clutching the rim of the sink for support, I caught sight of the wall tiles and started counting away. Old habits die hard. Twenty-three and my vision started to fur around the edges. I couldn't see the lines between them, so I couldn't reach the end. I had to get out. He was still lying on the bed, as though I'd taken a twelve-inch mallet to him. I hadn't had the chance; he'd been out the minute his balding head had touched the starched pillow. I, on the other hand, counted the flowers ingrained in the carpet: the number of bouquets, their petals and leaves and finally, the stems that linked the clumps of greyish-green together. Each consecutive number was accompanied by a sip from the closest bottle to my ass-groove in the mattress, until my arms and eyelids were too heavy to lift. I kept my eyes to the pavement and I just didn't stop; by the time I'd walked in a circle back to the room I had counted three thousand, two hundred and fourty-nine steps and the bed was pressed and ready for the next guests. I snuck out before anyone could say I hadn't paid my dues, and whaddaya know - there he was. Sixteen metres in front and gaining ground... I didn't call his name. I just traced his steps to the tube for two-hundred and thirty-nine seconds of pavement. He didn't notice me behind my paper, thirty-two pages of death and disaster that I wasn't going to read, eyes on stalks over the edge, waiting to see where he got off.

Who dumps their suit with a tramp and walks around in linen? It's three-thirty now, too late for lunch but too early to start drinking. His journey along the high street has come to an end, I can see it by the way he's looking around him for somewhere to go. Then, without warning, he takes a sharp left as if he didn't know he was going to do it either. The train station? Looks like I had you pegged in the wrong hole.