Free The Bird Room by Chris Killen Page B

optician’s were twats.
    â€˜He’s been out of the country for a while,’ I say.
    â€˜What does he do?’
    â€˜He’s an artist.’
    Will’s still out of the country. He gets back later this week. (I’ve not watered his plants yet.) I imagine them meeting. Will laying on the charm. Alice disliking him. The bus ride home afterwards. ‘That friend of yours was a bit of a smarmy prick, wasn’t he?’ I’ll introduce them.
    By meeting Will, I think, Alice might love me even more.

Will’s house smells of roll-ups and aftershave. I water his plants from a chipped tea-stained Ghostbusters 2 mug. The only plants I can find downstairs are a wilting rubber plant in the living room and a tall spindly thing in the kitchen which looks dead already. It has fairy lights wrapped around its branches. I pour extra water into the pot, imagining Will getting electrocuted the next time he turns it on.
    Bird paintings are hanging in the living room.
    In the hall, a series of female nudes.
    I look closely at the face of one of them, at the crude black lines of her cheeks and neck, the rough swirls and dots of her eyes. Even reduced to a few brush-strokes, she looks familiar; most likely one of the hundred girls Will’s introduced me to in the past. I guess I still find ithard to take him seriously as an artist – I can remember us getting pissed on cheap cider in the car park behind his house, sixteen years old. Back then, Will wanted to be a singer. He wanted to be Nick Cave. He had this ridiculous messed-up haircut, and he used to talk incessantly about how, if he started a band, he’d be ‘swimming in pussy’. Then he did alright at college, went off to Glasgow and came back an artist.
    I go upstairs. I’ve never been upstairs in this house before.
    No plants in the bedroom. Just a bed, a dresser, a full-length mirror and clothes all over the floor. A tiger-print bedspread. On the bedside table, a full ashtray, an empty bottle of wine and a dog-eared copy of Mr Nice by Howard Marks.
    No plants in the bathroom, either.
    I go into the final room. Will’s studio. Canvases and bits of wood rest against the walls. The floor is covered with a paint-flecked old sheet which is taped to the carpet. An empty easel stands in the middle of the room. By the window is a desk with a laptop and a cheap stereo on it.
    I sit down.
    I turn on Will’s computer.
    He has a photograph of Anna Karina as his desktop.
    I go to ‘My Computer’.
    I double-click.
    I open ‘My Documents’.
    I open ‘My Pictures’.
    I don’t know what I’m expecting to find.
    The window fills with folders. They’re not named, just dated. I open the first one: ‘09/01/07’.
    A photo of Will, stood in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom. He holds a digital camera in one hand. His shirt is unbuttoned a bit, so you can see wisps of his scraggly chest hair. He looks into the lens, his head tilted and one eyebrow raised.
    I click ‘Next’.
    Will, again, now with his shirt completely unbuttoned. His non-camera hand rests, posed, on his hip. His mouth is curled into a snarl, showing off his yellowed wonky teeth. It looks like he’s swept his hair back with his hand between photos.
    â€˜Next’.
    Will, with his top off, leaning back on the bed. His flies are unzipped, his belt unbuckled, black hair curling in a line over his beer gut. He’s thrust his legs wide apart and he’s stroking his chest with his free hand like he thinks he’s in a Prince video or something. His chest looks like it’s been oiled. I squint at the picture and make out a bottle of baby lotion lying on the tiger-print bedspread behind him. His mouth is open, his tongue flopping out ‘seductively’.
    Christ.
    I turn off the computer and stand up, feeling like he could walk in at any moment.
    On my way out, I leave a note on the kitchen table:
    Will