Not too long ago I had this flatmate called Gilray who always locked his bedroom door whenever he went out. It didn't make me feel particularly good because I was the only other person living in the mouldy rathole anyway. He'd lock the door when he left for work at seven-thirty in the morning and unlock it when he got home at five forty-five. Sometimes it was five forty-six if there was a lot of traffic on the main road and he couldn't get across immediately. He wouldn't really do anything inside the darkness his room always seemed to consist of. He'd put down his briefcase. That much I know, because he'd leave his room without it, except if he was on his way out again. He took that thing everywhere with him, even if he went to watch a movie. And I'd swear it was empty sometimes, just like his room was.
I only saw his room once. That was when I dared to peek into it when he was in the toilet once. I've never dared to peek into it when he was in the bathroom because I was never sure when he would come out. Sometimes he went in for 30 seconds. Sometimes he was in there for hours, but he never closed the bathroom door. So he could scoot out at any time and catch me. He only closed the toilet door. Thank god for that or I think I would have moved out. He'd bath or shower though and the door would stay open. Kind of strange for a guy who would lock a plain and desolate bedroom. Maybe he was waiting for me to peek into the bathroom so that he had an excuse to kick me out, but I doubt it. I sometimes thought he was dying for me to see him naked. But I never did. No doubt a good thing.
One corner was taken up with an old, narrow, spring bed laden with a thin, brown and yellow blanket. They both appeared to have been created before anyone ever used wooden double bunks and duvets. Then there was a chest of drawers, splintering at the top and a desk that looked as if he'd stolen it from a school. It had a hole in the right top corner where he could put his inkpot when he wrote a letter. I didn't see any signs of quill pens or scrolls though. His chair was high-backed with a bulging red leather seat. The floor was thinly carpeted. It looked the same as my room's carpet in fact, which isn't surprising considering the flat was made that way. I covered my pus yellow carpet with a large mat I'd bought when I was around eleven at the only garage sale I've been to. It looked magical at the time. And I'd just recently read "The Phoenix and the Carpet" by E. Nesbit, which if you don't know is a story about a bunch of siblings who came into the possession of both a phoenix and a magic/flying/wish carpet. And if you don't know what a phoenix is, look it up. The carpet isn't too great-looking any more though. For one, it's all worn through. It wasn't too bad when I bought it. You could see luscious blue and yellow and maroon patterns on it then. When I moved into Gilray's flat, sometimes you could make out a pattern. Now you just see the floor through it.
His briefcase was on his desk. With my heart palpitating and my head beating, I approached the black bag. I'd seen him get home from work that day and the bag had seemed laden. As I touched it, I realised that it had been opened and appeared empty. My eyes swivelled around the room and apart from the chest of drawers, I couldn't really think of anywhere else he could have put the things that had been inside it. Except under his bed. The desk didn't even have a shelf underneath it. Then I heard him unlocking the toilet door. I hadn't even meant to enter the room. I did a dumb thing then. I crept under his bed. Two ticks later he was in the room. I saw his shoes. They were Caterpillars. He had them before I'd ever heard of the things. Now they're not even such a big deal any more. There are bigger and more expensive shoes now. Big shoes make up for small egos, one of my ex's once told me. Just before we broke up. He said weird things like that all the time. I fell for him because of it and then I threw up and broke up with him because of it.
I liked Gilray's shoes, but I didn't like to see them coming into the room. (Just by the way, he was the weirdest guy I ever knew.) He closed the door behind him and then sat at the desk. I was cringing and grimacing under the bed. I hate floor dirt and any kind of dust although I don't go around cleaning things all the time. In fact I am quite lazy like that. And I hate cleaning things because it means I have to come into even closer contact with dirt. The solution might be to clean and dust regularly, but like I said, I'm lazy. I was imagining all the dustballs and spiders and stuff infesting me under that bed more than I was worried about what I would do if he caught me under his bed. And there was no telling how long it would be before he left his room again. If he left the flat that would have been great because his lock was a latch, so I could just open it from inside. But I would have been relieved if he just went to the bathroom. I wondered if he would try to find me in my room or if he would start wondering why he couldn't hear me elsewhere in the flat. I'm not very noisy, but I'm sure the silence must have been unnatural at that point. Anyway then I heard the chair creak and his hands touched his left shoe. He started taking it off. I couldn't see any part of his head although I could hear him breathing. This was above my thundering heart. He was directly opposite my head and soon I saw his dark green, towelling socks. I kept expecting to get a horrid whiff, but for some reason I couldn't smell a thing. Then his socks came off. Next he stood and his black jeans fell around his ankles. Amazing how he just stepped out of them. The buckle of the belt which was curled around the waist actually dropped under the bed next to my nose and I nearly had a heart attack. I could only see as far up as his knees, but that was fine by me. While he removed his upper clothing he started humming a song. He didn't possess a radio as far as I knew but he was always humming something. Perhaps it was the last thing he heard in a mall or a shop or even on a radio at work. I didn't recognise the song. Then he started dancing around the room. The dancing didn't appear to be in time to the humming.
Then he said, "I know you're under my bed, Peggy." This was at the same time as he completed his humming and fell onto his bed. The bed sank so low it pushed against my back. Quite honestly I nearly panicked. I felt trapped.
"Hey! Get off!" was all I managed to yell as if he was about to rape me.
"What are you doing under there anyway?" Calm as a paranoic isn't.
"I got a fright when I heard you," I said, trying to squirm out from underneath then.
"So you were sneaking around then?"
"I was just curious. I've never been into your room before."
"You never asked."
"That would have been rude," is what I nearly said, but it didn't seem to be the thing to say in these circumstances. I managed to get out.
He was in his underwear and long-faced as ever. I mean he had this majorly gaunt, starved look about him. Droopy fog eyes with bags under them all the time. "I'm sorry I barged in," I said and then rushed out of the room. He didn't follow and I expected he would kick me out after that, but he didn't.
I got a bit angry once I was back in my room. The bastard. I never asked indeed! I mean, he didn't even trust me enough to leave his door unlocked when he went out of the flat. He probably thinks he had a good reason now that I've invaded his pathetic private quarters. Well he won't find me perving his scrawny body even if that is what he wants.
How we met? I was travelling on the train from work. What happens with trains is, if you don't know someone you don't talk to them This rule gets broken if the trains start taking too long to reach their destinations or if there's some sort of break in service. When people want to complain they will complain to strangers. They just don't care. No, that's generalising. And anyway, it's just that they figure you must be getting as peed off as they are, so it doesn't hurt to strike up a whiney conversation. They get bored anyway, so it's something to do. Anyway this tall, scraggly fellow happened to be standing behind me in this packed train that was picking up everyone along the way. And no one was getting out. He started humming, this stick-and-bones chap behind me. And people sort of look at him because he's humming "I will always love you" at a stage when just about everyone has heard it a million times and now wishes someone had cut Whitney Houston's vocal cords at birth. I find this phenomenon an item of the funny nature, so I start laughing to myself. Only, because people are squashed against me some of them can feel it. I guess maybe they might have thought I was going into claustrophobic spasms. But anyway I can tell the rake hummer knows I'm laughing.
Eventually people do start to filter out of the train, whether it's because they have actually reached their designated stops or because they can't take feeling like canned sardines anymore, I just can't say. And eventually I can scoot to a seat. The guy actually sits down next to me and how we got onto the subject of flats I will never remember. All I know is it came out that I wanted to get out at home and he was looking for a flatmate. The cool part was that he was only charging a third of the price the landlady was leasing it to him for. He said that it was his responsibility because he was leasing it and he didn't mind the other person only paying a third. He invited me around to see it. But at that point I started thinking about psychotic gangster "rooker"1 rapists. And especially those that hum. So I told him I would phone him about it. I wrote down his number on the back of my latest bank slip and that was the end of that conversation. I caught a glimpse of his clodhoppers then and thought, "Rad".
Needless to say, I ended up contacting the bastard on account of his posh boots.
When I moved into his apartment, I was twenty-one. And I found out that he was twenty. He looked older to me though. I think he probably had always looked old. Can you imagine a briefcase with massive black boots? That was him.
Then I got pregnant. And it was, like, eight months after I had moved in that I knew I was. I was crying uncontrollably when he got home from "The Plant" which was where he worked. Nothing like a nuclear power plant. It was just a health shop that also supplied people with massages for a fee. I found out on the day he caught me crying that he was a masseuse and it shocked me no end. I would never have known. I thought he was some sort of eccentric accountant or banker type. Because of the briefcase. Either that or a pimp, but that's another story. Actually I only thought he was a pimp after he told me he was a masseuse. I thought he was a lot of other things too, like a male prostitute.
I had meant to stop crying by five-forty so that it gave me five minutes to get my eyes right. But like I said, it became uncontrollable. This incident occurred about a month after I'd sneaked into his room and I had been avoiding him as much as possible since then.
"What's happened?" he asked me, boldly stepping into my room.
"Nothing that hasn't happened to the majority of other women in the past!" I whined, dashing my head to my pillow.
"Peggy, you're a bit old to be starting your period now," Gilray said to me in a tone that suggested that I just hadn't noticed it before.
"Fuck you, I'm pregnant!" I hurled at him.
"Nononono that's hardly the logic to try with me! If you fucked me it wouldn't necessarily make you pregnant, although considering how virile I am...."
I could hardly believe his audacity and his placidity! "Mean, heartless son of a hyena dog!"
"Listen, hon, it's not the end of the world." He put his chameleon arm around me while making himself comfortable on my bed and I shuddered.
"You don't know what it feels like, you wretch!"
"You reckon I'm a virgin then?"
"I'm talking about unplanned unwanted pregnancy, you twat!"
"Go ahead, insult me, I bet it's helping... Actually you should be harassing the father."
That's when I started shaking. I felt as if I just wanted to die. I didn't even bother trying to stop him from holding me.
"I'll help you with things," he murmured after a while when I was a little steadier.
"I don't know if I can go through wth an abortion," I wailed.
"I didn't mean that. Just, you know, being on your side and stuff."
"I was raped."
He kept rather still for an unbearably long time. Then he stopped holding me and clasped his hands together between his legs. "What do I say? I'm sorry. I know it doesn't help, but I wish that it hadn't happened. When was it?" He looked genuinely pained.
"Three months ago."
"Jesus. I wish... who else have you told?"
"No one. God, I believe that people should report these things if they happen to them, but I just couldn't. And now I'm pregnant, would you believe?"
"I'd like to do something for you, but you might think I'm just being crude or disrespectful."
That's when he told me about him being a masseuse and how people had the wrong impression. He said he didn't see any reason to hide one's body and that it was great when people trusted you in the massage parlour. "They're naked, but they don't feel vulnerable."
Anyway, he wanted to relax me, give me a massage. I fumed and then screamed when he reached out to reassure me. I didn't go back there. Someone had to fetch my things. I didn't explain anything.
I'm five months pregnant now and I don't think I can hide it any more. He's still the only one that knows. I haven't seen him since I ran out of there that day.
I think I'll take a walk. "The Plant" is in this direction. I walk inside and smell vitamins. "Is Gilray here?" I ask.
"No, he stopped working here over a month ago. Gone private at his home. Here, I'll give you his number..."
"No, that's all right."
I walk out and take a taxi to the old place. I don't really know why. I do think maybe I'll catch him in the middle of some raunchy nude orgy, but I don't care at this stage.
I beep the flat from downstairs. An old woman answers. Sounds like someone a little way on in age anyway. "No Gilrod here, my girl."
"But he used to stay there."
"I've been here a month. He must have gone somewhere else. Sorry."
So I find out the number from the shop. They say his secretary will answer. So she does and she tells me how to get there. Very modern house, white with turquoise roofing and steps.
"Would you like to make an appointment, miss?"
"Yeah. No, I just want to see him."
She looks at me strangely and I swear she thinks I am pregnant and want to accuse him of being the father.
"He knows me," I say, in a futile effort to combat her stare.
"I'll check if he can come out out for a couple of minutes, miss... what's your name?"
"Peggy."
So Gilray comes out and stares at me. He looks down at my stomach briefly and then smiles crookedly. "Hi Peggy, you're looking frightened. Come with me."
So I follow him into his office which seems to be connected to the room in which he presumably has a client. "I really don't want to disrupt an appointment," I tell him.
"Not to worry." He doesn't try to touch me or anything like that. He seems afraid of me.
"You're still the only one who knows about this little thing."
He seems surprised. "But it's so obvious."
"Really?" That shocks me.
"Anyway the doctor must know too."
"Haven't been to a doctor."
"Peggy, you should be careful. It's not worth trying to hide this baby. How were you so certain you were pregnant when I last saw you?" He folded his arms across his chest.
"I just knew. Symptoms..."
"Why did you come here?"
"Because I ... I don't really know. I acted crazily before."
"You were in a bad state, not to worry. You look like you're coping all right even if you're hiding this. Your face is full, glowing."
"I've been rushing all over the place. I've always had a round face." He has a way of embarrassing me.
"It's not round, it's just not all sunken-in and long like mine. You have a lovely face."
"It's round just like my walnut eyes and macadamian nose!"
He starts laughing. "You're a nut."
"His face was covered with a black stocking. I don't know what my baby's father looks like, but I'll know kind of when I see him or her. The baby, I mean."
A sad look grows on his face. "I wish I could have killed the fucker before he even did it to you!"
"Jeez."
"Does the baby bruise your ribs?"
I am amused. "A little, I think."
His eyes drop to my stomach. I walk towards him, take his hand and rest it against my belly. I have never seen him so nervous. "Why did you lock your door all the time?"
"To get a reaction out of you."
"Why do you carry that briefcase around?"
"I've got poems in it. Well, I write poems and I keep them in there. I never know when an idea will hit me. But no one else reads them. I think they're too personal. Actually it doesn't look like anyone really knows about them. No one's ever asked before." His thumb starts circling over a small area of my belly and I close my eyes. "I think it might be all right if you read a couple though. Maybe not right in front of me, at first anyway. It's like you'd be reading my soul." He rests his other hand on my right hip and eventually that hand slips around to the small of my back and gently pulls me against him.
"I hope you'll still give me that massage, Gilray," I say to his chest.
"Peggy, you smell like cashews, how could I refuse?"
"This seems like a corny ending to a crazy story," I say.
"More like a nutty ending. Yeah, it feels cosier than real life."
"Nothing cosy about giving birth."
"Don't worry about that just yet. Also, an epidural will help."
"I don't even have a gynaecologist!"
"You've got a masseuse though."
"God I hope you don't get this friendly with all your patients."
"Oh god."
"What?"
"No I don't. But I just remembered something.
"My secretary? The one who spoke to you when you came in?"
"Yes?" I breathed out.
"She's my girlfriend."
I push away from him, "Are you joking?"
"No," he manages, folding his arms uncomfortably across his chest again.
"Well... I'm happy for you." Tears reach my eyes, but I blink them rapidly away.
"Shit." He looks at the floor.
Then the secretary opens the door. "Sorry, Gil, your next one has been waiting for a while and he's getting impatient." She looks more like she wanted to check up on us. She has a narrow face, the face of a beautiful elf. So what does he see in my naartjie face anyway? Bastard. "Okay?"
"Yeah, just a couple more minutes," he tells her.
"By the way, is this the Peggy who used to share that grotty flat with you?" she asks, looking me up and down again. Her eye seems to catch on my belly and I see my top has come mostly out of my pants. And Gilray's eyes are zinging between me and her a hundred times a second.
"Yes, this is Peggy."
"You told her didn't you?" I spit out, meaning about the baby, because I can see this woman knows I am pregnant.
"Ann doesn't know," he assures me tightly.
"I don't know what??" She closes herself inside the room with us.
"That I'm pregnant," I say, tears starting to hiss out of my face.
"Shit," says Gilray.
"I didn't know, but now that you say it, of course I do. God, this isn't your child, is it, Gilray??" She starts to hit him and I try to stop her because Gilray looks like he wouldn't care if she beat him to death.
"It's not his! I was raped," I sob, pulling her off him.
So she and I are both crying. "I'm sorry," she says. "Me too."
Shit, this is beginning to get out of hand.
"You what??" asks Gilray, gaining interest in life.
"When I was fourteen. Like six years ago, it's over. I didn't tell you because I don't know you well enough yet."
"So you tell Peggy?" he asks, but he's amused. Then he's serious. "I'm sorry Ann." He frowns.
"I'd better go," I say. I walk out and see that the person waiting looks like he is starting to leave. He doesn't even glance at me, just glares at the reception desk and marches out. I wouldn't want to massage that repulsive-looking thing. I don't know how Gilary manages.
I walk out and stand on green-blue steps, and feel the baby kick my ribs. I start wondering if Ann got pregnant. It didn't seem that way, but one can never tell. I remember Gilray's loving touch and wish he could feel the movements. But he has Ann. Perhaps one day he can have me. Sad, hopeful ending to a heart-rending drama?
"Peggy, wait." It's Gilray, touching my back.
"Where's Ann?" I ask.
"I love you."
"Shit."
"I mean it."
"You've got Ann."
"Yeah. But I love you."
"If you can mess around behind her back, what will you do behind mine?"
His arms fold across his chest again and he starts humming, "I will always love you".
I start grinning. Then I sigh. "You sort out things with Ann and then maybe if you still think it's better to break it off with her, then you can chat with me about us."
The baby kicks and he notices that something's up and then he catches on so he touches me. Fuck, and there's no way I can get myself to stop him.
"Wow, it's like Alien," he says spoiling the romance, then he hugs me and gives me a brief kiss on the lips. "I want to be there when this thing breaks out."
"You're gorgeous in just your undies," I tell him.
He laughs a short loud laugh. "Shit, I wish I could see you in yours."
"Not with this tum twice as big as normal!"
"Oh yes."
I hug him and want to make love to him. "Gilray, please sort yourself out quickly."
"Ann will be all right. She isn't really into me much anyway. Don't worry, I'll be round at your place faster than you can dive under my bed."
"I won't be doing much diving with this lot," I say, poking the belly bulge.
"Oooh, baby, we can dive right until the baby's near due." That grin was too massive not to giggle at.
We say goodbye. I expect to see him this evening. I don't think either of us can wait any longer. I wonder, as I float away on my magic carpet of love, whether I will soon have a turquoise roof over my head too.
It is a corny ending after all.