Andrea Segovia Loses Control

A short story by Fletcher Kovich

 

Andrea Segovia was twenty eight and was not satisfied with the Spanish men in her home town of Madrid. She had recently discovered internet dating and met an English man called Craig Stemford. He lived in London and seemed to possess none of the flaws that Spanish men did. She was excited and could foresee no problems. They had chatted online for two months and six days and now Andrea was strolling through an arrivals lounge at Heathrow airport with her single suitcase in tow. She was beginning a new life and was travelling light.

Craig met her and took her to his house in Chepstow Villas. She told him how to greet her, how to sit, how to eat his meal in a satisfying way and how to drink tea properly. Andrea knew all about good taste. Her parents separated when she was a baby and she was raised by her mother who, by way of a divorce settlement, was left with two valuable possessions, an antique couch and a set of six antique soup bowls. These were the only material possessions she truly cherished. The other passion in her life was order and correctness. Andrea loved her mother and the two of them worked as a team in their household, correcting the placement of objects by a three-degree rotation to the left or a two-millimetre nudge to the right. But most care was taken on the display of those antique bowls along the living-room dresser and on meticulously brushing the couch so its fabric caught the light in a pleasing way. Andrea soon became as obsessed as her mother was with tidiness and by adulthood had developed a sixth sense for detecting bad taste. When she first entered Craig’s house she helpfully told him which of the pictures on his walls belonged in the dustbin, and after instructing him on his manners and habits, they found themselves in bed and he began kissing her when she pushed him back and said: “No, you are doing it all wrong. You do not know how to kiss. Your mouth should not be so much open. Now, try again.”

She motioned for him to attempt the technique again and he obliged. She pushed him away and said, “No, that is still no good. Let me show you.”

She placed her fingers on his chin and closed his mouth, which was hanging open, then she began caressing his lips with hers, when his tongue attempted to part her lips. She pushed him back and said, “You will need lots of training. You are no good at this.”

Andrea’s first experience of kissing had set the standard for all others to match. At the age of sixteen she met Jorge. When they kissed it seemed to go on endlessly and transported her to another world and twelve years later she could still vividly recall the taste and texture of his mouth.

Six days after meeting Jorge, she took him to her mother’s house. Her mother was away and was not expected back for a few hours. Her mother’s rule was that the antique bowls were never to be used and food was not to be eaten in the living room, to protect the couch. But Andrea wanted to give Jorge something special and it seemed appropriate to break these two rules. She warmed some soup and served it in two of her mother’s antique bowls and, to complete Jorge’s treat, she decided they would eat while sitting on her mother’s couch. The two of them were about to sit and Andrea held out Jorge’s soup for him. At that moment, she heard her mother entering the house. She turned to look at the living-room door. She felt almost dizzy with pride, since her mother was about to meet Jorge. She thought he had taken the weight of the bowl from her and she released it. She felt a sensation beside her, as though a large well had opened up and black air were rushing down into it. She looked round to see the bowl landing on the couch, its soup emptying over the fabric and the bowl then falling to the tiled floor and smashing. Her mother entered the living-room and her eyes were drawn to the pool of soup soaking into her couch. She looked down to the smashed soup bowl and fainted.

 From that moment, there was a stain on the couch and only five soup bowls displayed on the dresser. Her mother’ only response to her loses was to always leave a gap in the line of bowls. The sight of this gap haunted Andrea and reminded her of a missing front tooth or the space where an amputee’s leg should have been. Her mother’s face, too, seemed permanently fractured in some way, as though some part of her had died along with that bowl and the loss of her couch’s pristine state. Andrea never saw Jorge again and vowed that in future she would always uphold the high standards that life with her mother had instilled in her.

Back in London, she had pushed Craig away and told him he was no good at kissing. He sighed and took an interest in her body instead. She moved his hand aside and said, “What are you doing? Now is not the right time to do that. You must do things in the right order.”

Craig said, “Are you playing with me? Is this a joke?”

Andrea said, “What do you mean? I do not understand.”

Craig sat up in bed, folded his arms, looked away and said, “Is there anything you do like?”

She thought about this for a while, then said, “You have nice curtains.”

Craig put out his light and went to sleep.

In the morning, he had arranged for her to start work in her new job. Craig was a partner in a firm of solicitors: Bright and Stemford. His partner, Dicky Bright, agreed she could work part-time for them as a secretarial assistant.

Craig entered the office and said, “Dicky, this is Andrea Segovia.”

Dicky said, cheerfully, “Oh! do you play guitar?”

Andrea said, firmly, “No, I do not play guitar.”

Dicky said, still cheerfully, “Oh, I am sorry. Welcome to our practice,” and he held out his hand.

Andrea said, “Everyone thinks I play guitar. It is not polite to make such assumptions.”

Dicky looked surprised, took his hand back, then took his puzzlement into his office and closed the door.

Andrea was given a desk to sit at and some work to do. Her morning progressed routinely until she came to her final task. She was midway through typing the will of Dame Harriet Blewit of Mayfair, when she noticed Dame Harriet had bequeathed ninety five percent of her estate to one of her sons and only five percent to the other, since he had married “a foreigner”, as Dame Harriet put it. To Andrea this seemed misguided, so she changed the wording and awarded both sons fifty percent of the estate. She bound the will and left for lunch, her day’s work at the office now complete.

The offices of Bright and Stemford were situated in Golden Square and Andrea was to walk the short distance to Piccadilly Circus underground station. She was given simple directions but felt sure they were wrong, so while making her way there she devised her own short cut. She turned off the route prescribed by Craig and was about to cross a street when she noticed a woman who was obviously a prostitute. The woman was standing next to the alleyway across the street and beckoning to the motorists who paused at the nearby traffic lights.

The woman was wearing a creased red and yellow dress, which did not match her shoes, nor her handbag, which both looked battered, and her hair was untidy. Andrea felt sure the woman had deliberately arranged her hair in this fashion in the mistaken belief it would attract customers. This irritated Andrea. She could see the woman needed to make changes to her appearance if she was ever going to be successful.

She decided to cross the street and instruct the prostitute on how to dress properly and was about to step off the pavement when she noticed a short-haired man talking to her. The man seemed interested. Andrea paused and then noticed an old woman standing a few yards along the pavement from herself. The old woman looked afraid. She was obviously concerned about crossing the busy road. Andrea stepped over to her and put her arm through hers. The woman pulled away from her, shielding her handbag. Andrea grabbed her arm and tried to pull her across the road. The woman started shouting, “Thief, thief; help me someone.”

Andrea said, “You are wrong. You need help.”

The woman shouted, “Stop her someone, stop her.”

At that moment, the short-haired man and two uniformed police officers closed in on Andrea. She looked across the street and saw a police woman leading the prostitute away. The short-haired man held up some credentials and one of the police officers took possession of Andrea’s arm.

The old woman said, “She tried to steal my bag,” and turned to Andrea and said, “I haven’t collected my pension yet, so you’re out of luck.”

Andrea said, “I do not want a pension. I am much too young.”

The police arrested her and led her to a van. She sat in the back, next to a prostitute. Sitting across from her were two other prostitutes, one of them being the woman with the red and yellow dress.

Andrea told her, “You will never get work looking like that.”

The woman folded her arms and looked away.

Andrea said, “Your dress is creased; you should iron it each day. And the colour is all wrong. And your hair is a mess.”

The woman said, “Who are you?—my pimp.”

Andrea said, “You look unclean.”

The woman leapt across the van and tried to grab Andrea’s hair but the prostitute beside Andrea intervened, pushing the other one away, and one of the police officers at the front of the van rattled the cage, saying, “No fighting in there, girls—you’ll get yourselves a bad name,” and smirked at his colleague.

At the police station Andrea got confused and pleaded guilty to soliciting for sex. She was locked in a cell, since there was some suspicion over the address she had given and the custody sergeant was not happy about her identity. When she gave him her name he said, sarcastically, “Oh! do you play guitar?”

She did not respond. And further, the vice squad wanted to interview her, since she was not previously known to them.

The duty solicitor, who, by a happy coincidence, was Dicky Bright, was shown in to her cell. Dicky sat down and said, sarcastically, “I bet you’ll shake my hand now.” He opened his briefcase and added, “But there’s no way I’m shaking yours—‘impolite to make assumptions’—ha!”

Andrea said, “I do not need a pension. She was mistaken.”

To Dicky, it now made perfect sense that she was a prostitute. Back at the office he was suspicious about her from the start. Craig had been evasive when he told him about her; he merely said she was a friend he was helping out by offering a job. But when she snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand, he suspected Craig had put her up to that. And now that he knew she was a prostitute, it seemed obvious Craig had hired her to humiliate him. He wondered what other tricks Craig had in store for him. He arranged for her release on bail and quickly returned to the office to try to unpick their apparent plot against him.

At home that evening Craig attempted to find out why she had adjusted the will and why she had got involved in prostitution, but instead of an explanation, all he could elicit from her were intricate instructions on how he should amend his behaviour and his house. She then told him at what stage he could kiss her each day and was midway through demonstrating the technique when he pushed her away and shouted, “Look, this is no good. I’ve made a big mistake. You’ll have to go. Dicky is going to sack you in the morning. I couldn’t tell him about us—you’ve embarrassed me too much.”

He told her he would pay for her flight back to Spain but she did not want to leave the country. She decided he was not a suitable lover because he could not even kiss, so she would look for another man. Craig phoned a friend of his, Doctor Andrew Duncan, who ran his own surgery and offered her a month’s trial as a receptionist. He also phoned another friend who owned a house in Dawson Place which had been converted into twelve bed sitting rooms. He had one vacancy. Andrea accepted both the job and the room.

She moved in to the room that evening, and next morning was let loose on the surgery’s computer system. She could immediately spot several shortcomings, which she proceeded to fix.

At midday, a woman phoned to make an appointment. Andrea asked what the problem was. The woman said it was rather personal. Andrea said she would listen carefully. The woman explained she was not being sexually aroused by her husband and wondered if Doctor Duncan could do anything for her. Andrea gave her intricate instructions on how to perform better in bed. The woman was most grateful and hung up.

Andrew Duncan appeared briefly and asked her how she was doing. She said, “I am very helpful.”

He said, “Splendid,” and retreated back into his consulting room.

She had a few minutes to spare between each phone call, so she started to review the surgery’s database. She noticed the records for some patients took up far too much space, so she carefully reviewed their records and deleted any detail she thought unnecessary. By the end of her first day, she had reviewed the records of fifty seven patients and managed to make a dramatic reduction in the length of their files.

As she was leaving, Doctor Duncan asked, “How are you getting on?”

She told him, “I am being very efficient.”

He said, “Splendid. See you tomorrow.”

Over the following two weeks, Andrea continued to make many improvements in the surgery’s database system and she even managed to make a noticeable reduction in the number of appointments being made. Doctor Duncan was most pleased.

In the evenings, Andrea watched the behaviour of her neighbours. The house where she lived was on the corner of Dawson Place and Pembridge Villas, and from her room she had a good view along both these streets. The only problem was that each time she peered through her window, she found that her good taste was offended. The people just did not know how to do anything. The previous morning, she had left for work five minutes early, so she could rearrange the garden furniture of the house opposite. And this morning, before setting off for work, she was looking down on the improved layout of their garden, when she noticed the adjoining neighbour was out cutting his garden hedge but was doing it incorrectly. She dashed down the stairs, crossed the street, tugged on his shoulder and said, “I have watched you doing this. You are wrong. This is why you get this bad pattern,” indicating the texture of his hedge. She said, “You should do it like this,” and went to grab his hedge trimmer.

He held on to it.

She said, firmly, “No, let me show you,” and tried to grab the trimmer but he held on to it. She tried to free the trimmer from his grip and he managed to nip his other hand with the blade which was still running.

He shouted, “You’ve cut me. Are you on drugs?”

She said, “You have done that yourself.”

He shouted, “You’ve just done it.”

She told him, “You should have let me show you. You are a stubborn man.”

He said, “Let me have it,” and he tried to pull the trimmer free of her grip.

She held on to it and told him, “But you are doing it wrong. You don’t know how to.”

He tugged, “Get off.”

She looked up and noticed her bus off in the distance. She released her grip and said, “Now I have missed my bus. You have made me late for work. You are inconsiderate. All English men are selfish, and they can not kiss.”

He said, “You’re on drugs; I’m calling the police.”

She said, “I am not a prostitute. I do not like disposable sex. Do not offer me any money.”

He said, “I wasn’t going to; why would I pay you?” and he walked back into his house and slammed the door.

When Andrea finally got into work, there were two police officers waiting to interview her. Doctor Duncan, who was looking pale, told her that her trial employment was over. The police took her to a police station and led her to an interview room. The same short-haired man she had seen talking to the prostitute on her first morning came in and sat before her. He said the surgery had discovered discrepancies in their patient database. Records had been tampered with. Did she have any explanation?

She said she had noticed discrepancies herself and had done her best to correct them.

He said the problems had only started when she began working there.

She said, “Well, they were lucky to have me there. I have corrected what I could.”

He said, “No, you don’t seem to follow. They think you did it.”

Andrea said, “I did do it. I have just said that. No-one here can understand English.”

He said, “Are you saying you made the changes?”

She said, “I corrected what I could. Now someone else will have to do the rest.”

After a pause, he said, “I see.”

Andrea said, “This is a strange country. No-one will let me help them.”

 He said, “I’m not sure what we could charge you with, so I’ll have to let you go for now.”

She said, “You have good eyes. Why do you do this job?”

He said, “What?”

She said, “You are not evil. Are you married?”

He said, “You are free to go.”

She said, “You should not be afraid. I will show you how to kiss. English men do not know how to kiss.”

He showed her out.

Over the following week, Andrea continued to watch the painfully incorrect behaviour of her neighbours. During the day, she walked the streets, exploring her new environment. She discovered Pembridge Square, a nearby communal garden, encircled by a high hedge. She would sit on a particular bench there, watching a beautiful plane tree while reflecting on her life. Her first month in England was now coming to an end and she was not earning any money and her rent would soon be due.

The following day she noticed an advert in the window of a local fruit and vegetable shop. The advert said, “HELP REQUIRED.” This seemed to strike a chord with Andrea, since she was good at helping people. She was given the job and the next morning she started her work.

She could see she was greatly needed in the shop. On her first morning a teenager who was shopping for her mother, placed her basket on the checkout. Andrea told her, “You have got this all wrong. Those green peppers are too old. You should have picked the back ones. I have not had time to change them yet.” She took out the green peppers and dropped them into the dustbin beside her. “And this cabbage has brown leaves. Why do you buy rubbish like this?” She took out the cabbage and discarded it.

The girl said, “But I have to follow my list. My mother always says to follow her list,” and she took out her list.

Andrea took the list, dropt it into the dustbin and moved on to the next customer.

On her second morning she was left alone in charge of the store and took the opportunity to rearrange the displays. She changed the position of the oranges, cucumbers, potatoes, and the tomatoes.

On the third morning, Mr Graham, the owner, who was clearly uncomfortable about something, asked her why she had changed the displays. She told him, “It is now more pleasing to me.”

He said, barely able to keep himself from shouting, “But you’ve moved the tomatoes; they’re the best seller; they must be at the front.”

She said, “Their colour does not go with the bananas. They had to be moved.”

He yelled, “Their colour? This isn’t an interior design shop.”

She told him, “You are ungrateful. All English men are the same.”

A queue was forming at the checkout. Mr Graham put his hand to his chest and said, “I’m having palpitations again. I must keep calm.” He walked into the storeroom at the back of the shop.

Andrea looked at the man at the front of the queue. He was unshaven and his shirt was crumpled and dirty. She told him, “You should take more care of your appearance,” and started taking the produce from his basket, weighing it and placing it in a carrier bag. At one point, she glanced up at him and said, “You are a mess.” Then she came to the courgettes he had chosen. She picked them up and said, “No, this is no good. You have picked a bad one.”

She took him by the arm, walked him over to the courgettes, found one that pleased her and said, “This is a good one. It has a good colour and feel,” and indicated for him to try it.

He stroked it and looked at her, puzzled.

She asked, “Is that not pleasing?”

He shrugged.

She told him, “It is good.”

He could no longer hold back his growing excitement. He whispered to her, dry at the mouth, “Would you like to feel my courgette.”

She told him, “I do not understand. I have already felt your courgette.”

He stepped closer, placed his hand on her hip and whispered, “Come back to my hotel.”

At that point Mr Graham came back into the shop. He said, “Andrea, what are you doing? Look at this queue——” There were five people waiting at the checkout.

She said, “I was helping this man. He does not know how to shop.”

Mr Graham said, “There was a box of avocados in the store room. Have you moved them?”

She said, “I threw them away. They were too old.”

He shouted, “Right, that’s it. Get out, get out.”

She said, “You need my help. Your shop is garbage.”

He shouted, “You’re sacked. Get out,” and pushed her out of his shop.

Andrea left the shop, but not until she had told Mr Graham, “You are English. All English men are ungrateful and are no good at kissing.”

Outside, it was sunny. She decided to walk to Pembridge Square to sit in the calmness among the trees and work out what to do next. She heard some quickening footsteps behind her. The courgette-man appeared beside her and said, “I run a hotel. I am looking for an extra cleaner if you’d like a job.”

She told him, “Maybe it is you who needs cleaning, not your hotel.”

He said, “Now, look here. A joke’s a joke, but I’m offering you a job.”

“And I am offering you good advice.”

He told her, “If you want the job, be there at nine in the morning. Here’s the address,” and he gave her his card and walked off.

When she got home, Mr Jacobs, the landlord, told her, “Your rent is due today. I do insist tenants pay on time.”

She told him, “I have lost my job again. English people are strange. They do not want you to help them.”

He asked, “So, you can’t pay your rent?”

She said, “I will start a new job in the morning. I will pay you when I can.”

He said, “That’s not good enough. Look for somewhere else to live,” and as he was walking away, he said, “I’ve heard all about you.”

Andrea looked to the ceiling and said, “If I am reincarnated, do not return me as an English man.”

The following morning, she was about to leave to start her cleaning job at the courgette-man’s hotel when she noticed a courier van pulling up in the street. He was calling on the man who lived in the ground-floor flat of the corner house. She had often seen him and noticed his hair was in need of styling and his trousers were too short.

From her room, she could see into his kitchen and she watched him placing some bread into his toaster and plunging down the “start” lever. At the same time, the courier rang his doorbell. The man appeared at his door, started to sign something but then changed his mind, struggled with the courier, pulled his door to behind him and hurried away. Through his kitchen window, she could see his toast starting to burn. She hurried down the stairs, out into the street and saw him in the distance. She shouted after him but he only seemed to quicken his pace. She broke into a run, shouting after him but he was now out of sight.

He seemed to be heading for Notting Hill Gate tube station. She took her own shortcut and at the entrance, she saw him making his way through the turnstiles. She quickly bought a ticket, tailed him to his platform and spotted him boarding his train. She boarded the same train, but was two carriages further along. The train pulled away. There was standing room only and Andrea could make no progress through the obstinate commuters. Soon the train stopped, disgorged its burden, and she was again pursing her fleeing neighbour on foot, which she did until he disappeared into the entrance of an office building. She followed and found her way blocked by a guard. She explained she was following a man who had messy hair but the guard seemed unable to understand English. To make the identification crystal clear, she explained he wore trousers that were too short for him.

The guard’s eyebrows slowly rose.

She said, urgently, “His house will burn down if I can not see him.”

The guard said, “If you don’t have an appointment, I can’t let you in,” and he started guiding her towards the outside door.

She said, “English men do not like being helped.”

He said, “Madam, you cannot stand in the doorway; it is a fire hazard.”

She said, “You just pushed me here.”

He said, “I did not push you. Would you like me to call the police?”

She pictured the short-haired detective who did not want any help with his kissing. She said, “English men do not like being helped,” and walked out onto the pavement.

Outside, she looked up at the building. There were five floors and endless windows. She crossed the street, sat on a bench and wondered what to do. She watched the traffic and pedestrians for a while. She thought about the courgette man and his hotel; she thought about her landlord demanding his rent, and she wondered how she would ever be able to fix the mess she was in. Somehow she knew it was more important to help the man with the short trousers, whose house was surely burning down by then. About an hour had gone by when she looked up at the building and thought she could see him sitting on a top-floor window ledge. She thought perhaps he had received the bad news about his house. She stood up and waved to him, shouting, “Do not jump. All is not lost.”

He sat further back on the ledge and was now out of sight. All she could see were his legs, dangling over the edge. She looked round and noticed people entering the building behind her. She entered, found a lift and took it to the fifth floor. It opened into an open plan office which seemed to be a call centre. At every desk a person was speaking on the phone and watching their computer screen. Andrea crossed to the window and had a clear view of the man on the ledge. She started banging on the window and shouting, “Do not jump. At least you will not have to clean hotels for dirty men.”

Another man had now climbed out onto the ledge and was edging towards Andrea’s man who stood up, climbed back into his window and closed it, leaving the other man outside, banging on the window and shouting something in at him.

Andrea went back down to the street, entered the office building and told the guard, “He is on the top floor. I tried to tell him his bread stick was on fire.”

The guard said, “Hold on a moment, madam,” and he made a call. She gave him her name and he told her to take the lift to the fifth floor. When she reached the reception on that floor, a young girl told her that Mister Pam had just left for lunch. Andrea asked, “Does he know about his house?”

“Know what?”

“Is that why he tried to jump? I tried to tell him, but he went away too quickly.”

The girl said, “Perhaps you can catch him after lunch——”

Andrea left the building. She took the tube back to Notting Hill Gate and made her way to the courgette man’s hotel. He told her she was three hours late and he had given the job to someone else. She told him, “At least you have combed your hair. But you still need to learn how to shave.”

At her bedsit, she found her key did not fit the lock. Mr Jacobs told her she was now evicted and he had let the room to someone else.

Out in Dawson Place, she could see three fire engines. There had, indeed, been a fire at Mister Pam’s house. She made her way to her favourite spot in the garden at Pembridge Square, sat on the bench and watched the plane tree. Again, she wondered what she was going to do now. While watching the tree, she found herself looking at a particular branch, which somehow seemed attractive to her. There was something about the shape of the branch and its relation to the pattern of leaves around it that made it pleasing, even “perfect”. Then a squirrel jumped onto the branch and the branch sprang into a different position, disrupting the pattern of leaves and changing the branch’s perfect relation to everything around it. The squirrel then looked directly at Andrea, as though it had jumped onto that particular branch to demonstrate something to her. She noticed that nature was flexible, that the tree had bent to accommodate the squirrel, that the tree did not try to hold on to its state of “perfection” but allowed itself to bend when some outside force intervened. She thought about her own tendency to correct other people’s mistakes and wondered why she did this. She also wondered why people seemed to do so many things incorrectly. When she saw these mistakes, she felt a desire to correct them, and it seemed to her that is was this that had got her into so much trouble. It seemed that the people did not want to be helped. But how could she help feeling the desire to correct people, and why did she feel it?

She thought back twelve years and recalled herself handing Jorge that bowl of soup and feeling it falling from her hand. That moment had seemed to be a turning point in her life. She wondered what she had done wrong. She had bent her mother’s rules, which had seemed to destroy all that her mother held dear. From then onwards it seemed to Andrea that “good taste” was there for a reason and she should not bend such rules, nor allow other people to do that either.

She watched the squirrel, who was watching her, and she could see that nature was flexible, that the tree did not cling on to its own perfection but allowed itself to bend. It bent because otherwise it might break. Andrea pictured herself allowing people to bend her “good taste” rules, instead of her trying to correct them, and she realized it was her mother who had been wrong on that day. Her mother could not bend, so she had broken. Her mother’s loss had been caused because she was too attached to her antique items and their pristine state and once that state had gone, something within her died. But it was not Andrea who caused this loss; she realized she had not done anything wrong that day. She had only wanted to please Jorge. Her intentions had been good, but her mother was too attached to things being in a particular way, so she had suffered a great loss.

At the time, that incident had seemed like a lesson—to not break the rules; but Andrea now realized she had learnt the wrong lesson. Her lesson should have been to not be too attached to physical objects, or to things being in a particular way; this just caused pain when those things were not “correct”. When she realized this, she felt as though she were floating. Perhaps she should not try to correct people but allow them to make mistakes, as her mother should have allowed her to make that mistake. Yes, that was it. From now on she would try to allow people to be incorrect.

She sighed and, as she did so, the squirrel jumped to another branch, as if her lesson were now over. The branch sprang back into place and the tree’s perfect state was restored. She looked over to another bench and saw Mister Pam now sitting there in the garden. She crossed over to his bench and sat beside him.

They spoke for a moment. She told him she had been trying to tell him about his toaster. He said he knew that now. She told him about her misfortunes, all due to trying to help people. He said some things she could not understand and she told him where he was going wrong and how he should change his thinking, but then remembered the bending branch. She looked at his left eye, which seemed to be slightly out of alignment with his right, but she managed to not mention it. She looked at the bottom of his trouser legs and because he was now sitting, they were so short they revealed the bottom half of his shins. Her hand involuntarily moved towards one of his trouser legs to tug it down but she remembered her resolve and pulled her hand back. She looked up and noticed his hair was wrong and his tie did not match his shirt. She felt a strong desire to tidy him up but told herself that these things did not matter. She would bend. They did not matter. Instead, she smiled and told him, “I like you.”

He hesitated for a moment, then said, quietly, “Thank you.”

They both returned to watching the plane tree. Andrea found herself wondering if he knew how to kiss. She was watching that same branch again on the tree and realized she should dismiss the thought and that it did not matter how he kissed. But then she realized there would be limits to how much she could bend on that issue and she started imagining a whole range of kisses and tried to decide which ones would be acceptable and which ones not.

Finally, she dismissed the thought and returned to simply watching the plane tree. In the background she could hear the distant sound of passing traffic and the occasional burst of bird song.

 

21 May 2008

26 November 2010, edited

 

Read Craig Stemford’s point of view.

Read “Mister Pam’s” point of view.

Read some of Andrea’s poems, which give further insight into some of her experiences that are depicted in this story.

See my sketchbook entries on writing this story, on editing the story to produce the second draft, on editing the story to produce the third draft, and also on the Samuel Pam further episodes.

 

See readers' comments on this work here.