Joe-Nathan took two steps back from the front door, as per his mum’s instructions in the yellow book. When Charlie opened the door, he was wearing jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, nothing on his feet and a stick of Peperami in his hand. He stopped – mid-chew – when he saw Joe.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘I have come to see you,’ said Joe. He looked at the ground and said, ‘As a friend.’
Charlie snorted, then leaned forwards out of the door, looking both ways. ‘I guess you better come in.’ Charlie turned and walked into the house, leaving Joe to close the front door and follow him along a narrow passageway to a kitchen.
‘Would you like me to take my shoes off?’ Joe asked, looking at Charlie’s bare feet and remembering his mum’s advice.
‘What for?’ Charlie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.
Charlie leaned against the countertop and folded his arms. Joe noticed a calendar on the wall. It had a picture of a big American car in front of a diner. The calendar was on the wonk and showing the month of January. Joe felt as though his eyes were getting bigger in his head as he stared at the white car with the red leather seats. The temptation to turn it to the correct month and make it hang straight was almost unbearable; he could feel his blood vibrating.
Don’t tidy people’s things for them, or rearrange their stuff.
Why not? thought Joe. Wouldn’t it be helpful to straighten it and change it to the correct page?
‘What’s up?’ Charlie asked.
‘Your calendar,’ said Joe. ‘It… it is wrong.’
Charlie looked over at the wall to where Joe was looking. ‘I meant, why are you here?’ he asked.
Joe continued to stare at the calendar. He decided he couldn’t speak until it was squared up and turned correctly to April.
‘Joe? Hello?’
Joe stared unblinking and nodded slowly at the calendar.
‘Fuck sake,’ Charlie muttered, and he pulled the calendar up and off its nail, roughly turning the pages over until they showed a shiny chrome truck driving at night in April. Then he lined up the little hole in the calendar again and returned to the kitchen counter while it swung to a stop. Joe observed that it still wasn’t hanging straight and beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
‘Better?’ Charlie raised his eyebrows.
‘It’s wonky,’ Joe whispered, tucking his chin into his collar, expecting Charlie to shout at him. But Charlie just sighed and went over to the calendar, carefully adjusting it until it was right.
‘Want a drink?’ Charlie said.
‘Yes, please.’
Charlie opened the fridge and bent down, grabbing two bottles. ‘Beer okay?’ he said, holding one by the neck and holding it out to Joe.
‘No, thank you.’
‘What do you want, then?’
‘Have you got any orange squash?’
‘What are you? Five?’
‘Twenty-three,’ said Joe.
Charlie put the beers back in the fridge and opened a kitchen cupboard. Joe noticed that it hung slightly crooked on its hinges and he had to look away. Charlie opened another cupboard and another.
‘I can’t remember the last time anyone drank squash in this house. Hang on, what’s this?’ Charlie crouched down and reached right into the back of a cupboard, pulling out a bottle of squash that was so old the cordial inside seemed to have evaporated a couple inches, leaving brownish-orange lines of sediment. Charlie shook the bottle, unscrewed the lid and sniffed it. He shrugged and got out two glasses, pouring too much of the cordial into each one and not letting the tap run cold before filling them up; he handed a glass to Joe who reached out for it very slowly.
‘Take it, then, what’s wrong with you?’
‘You do things differently. It makes me uncomfortable.’
‘Christ, you need to man up. You lost me my job; you don’t hear me whining about it.’
Charlie led Joe away from the kitchen and into the living room. The curtains were drawn roughly across the window in a way that suggested they were never opened. The overhead light was on, something Joe did not like in a living room. He preferred lamplight in any room except a kitchen, bathroom or hallway, and the furniture in here cried out to Joe that it wanted to be rescued: removed from this room with its too-harsh lighting; it wanted to be cleaned and cared for. The room smelled of old smoke and Joe noticed an ashtray on the coffee table: the stubs of skinny cigarettes nose-down in a dense pool of ash, like a strange garden of tiny, white, wrinkled tree trunks dying in dark grey soil.
Charlie perched on the edge of an armchair and put his glass of squash on the floor between his feet. Joe breathed in deeply through his nostrils, trying to calm the nerves that alerted him to the full glass just waiting to be kicked over.
‘Can I see your bedroom?’ Joe said.
‘Jesus, you really are five years old. Do you want to play with my toys?’
‘No, I really am twenty-three. What toys do you have?’
‘Fuck sake,’ said Charlie again, shaking his head. But he smiled slightly and pushed against his knees, stood and grabbed his glass. Some of the orange squash slopped over the edge. Joe gasped and looked away.
There was nothing on the walls – no pictures – as they mounted the stairs, although Joe noticed that where the sheets of wallpaper met, the paper rose away from the wall slightly. He could see where someone had put their finger into the gap between the sheets and pulled the paper so that it had ripped in an increasingly narrow strip along the wall, like one of those pointy triangular flags. In Joe’s house, the stair wall featured evenly spaced framed photographs of Joe at various ages, and a framed certificate from when he had taken part in a spelling competition at school. In Joe’s house the wallpaper was perfectly aligned, but Charlie’s wallpaper was completely out of kilter. Joe looked away, but he was running out of places to look in Charlie’s house. There was a tiny landing at the top of the stairs, framed by three closed doors, and Charlie opened the middle one.
‘Welcome to my room,’ he said, walking over to the window, which overlooked a playing field, rusty play equipment and what looked like a primary school in the distance. Charlie leaned against the windowsill, took a sip of his squash, grimaced and put it down on the bedside table. Joe breathed a little more easily and placed his glass next to Charlie’s.
‘Sit down. This place isn’t really big enough for two grown men to stand up in.’
The only place to sit was a single bed, which took up almost half the room. The sky-blue duvet cover was wrinkled and didn’t contain the duvet properly (it looked as though a small child had tried to hide in the bottom of it) and Joe was desperate to shake it out. He stood uncertainly, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
‘Sit,’ said Charlie.
Joe closed his eyes and sat down so slowly that his thighs burned before his buttocks reached the bed. He kept his eyes closed and Charlie laughed softly and muttered something under his breath. Then Charlie took a sharp intake of breath and Joe opened his eyes. Charlie stared at his bedroom door, frozen, his mouth slightly agape. Joe heard it too: the sound of a key in a lock; the sound of keys being dropped on the floor and a deep grunt of annoyance.
‘Oh fuck,’ Charlie whispered. ‘What the fuck is he doing back home?’