Cathexis Read Free

glanced at the window. She smiled enigmatically and turned away, seemingly in a quandary like Lady Macbeth.
     
     
                                                                                                                                                              Chapter 3
     
    April escaped down a tunnel of relentless toil and it was in May, a week before my birthday, when the phone drilled rudely into my high. I stared at it stupidly and then at Remy.
     
    “It's probably one of your clients Minsk” she mumbled, too stoned to care. Rolling off the 'sofa that might eat you', I crawled towards the tantrum, hand hovering in spliffy indecision, not sure if I could be coherent, but starved of entertainment. “Might be funny” I thought. “Hello” I said thickly.
     
    “Hi, may I speak to Minette please?” A female voice, breathy, charged with something – nerves, nausea, I couldn't tell.
     
    “Speaking” I slurred. Perhaps this hadn't been such a good idea.
     
    “Hi, it's Nancy Ilarian”. A provocation in the voice.
     
    I knew it was my turn to speak, but kept missing it, like trying to catch a chicken. This imagery made me snort. I could hear her puzzlement. Managing to grasp the chicken, I planted it firmly under my arm.
     
    “Hi Nancy” I said. “Sorry, I'm a bit zonked”.
     
    “Oh, I'm very sorry to have disturbed you” she said.
     
    “No, s'fine” (the chicken was struggling).
     
    She paused. Was it my turn? I noticed the mouthpiece of the phone was filthy.
     
    “I wondered” she continued, “if you had progressed with a design for me?”. My mind spun around a word; what was it now?
     
    “No” I said decisively.
     
    Silence, followed by a fluttering discourse which reminded me of Woodstock berating Snoopy. I looked at the irritable, scrapey lines in the speech bubble, trying to read them as if they were words. I had no clue what she was on about and opted for a pacifying approach.
     
    “You're quite right” I interjected. “I'm sorry, I'll have something for you very soon”. I hoped I was on the right lines. Another hiatus.
     
    “OK, thank you” she said inscrutably. “Take care, Minette”.
     
    I liked the way she said my name, emphasizing the ‘t’ by breathing an e at the end.
     
    “Bubbye Nancy” I said, slipping down a hole. But she was still there and so was I. Why weren't we hanging up in the customary fashion after the sign off? Was she expecting something more?
     
    The receiver clicked.
     
     
    In bed that night, reviewing the photos of the empty garden on the new company digital camera. I often did this because I dreamed solutions. The next morning I had it. Throughout the night I'd been in Nancy's virtual space, it was uncanny. With my favourite blue biro poised over the pad, I stared into the portal. When I'd finished, I set it down, unable to look at it straight away with any perspective. Remy, still comatose, the amorphous lump's only identifying feature a comb of straight, black hair on the pink pillow.
     
    In the living room, I sat cross legged on the crusty, itchy carpet and played patience to find out if I would get the job. My companion was obsessive compulsive disorder, but it made me good at my job, combining all the components needed to feed the Tamagotchi: repetition, checking and creativity and constructing new and tortuous elaborations. There was a degree of counting, estimation and volume, and a firm belief that outcomes could be affected and gods placated by sheer perseverance and force of the mind, plus a smattering of masochism and a great deal of anxiety thrown in.
     
    After playing five games, the cards had indicated a largely positive result, so returning to the mouldy futon, I retrieved the work. Rolling my eyes up, down, left and right several times to purge them, I beheld the