Imperfect Strangers Read Free

passed her on the steps to the building. Women never smile at me, but she did. She returned my smile, and the sky became a sizzle. For that reason, if for that reason alone, she must be my type. She has to be. Why else would she smile at me? Sally actually saw me. She actually noticed me. Chose me.
    A beginning.
    With it came the realisation of what loneliness truly feels like.
    T hat smile was the first sentence of a story; the first piece of a jigsaw; the first item on a list; the first, most important piece of a picture not yet complete: a corner piece: a perfect place from which to start. First came the smile and now the song.
    Up until that moment we had been perfect strangers.
    That phrase rankles. I have difficulty attaching the word perfect to myself. For me it is not an appropriate word and it jars because I know it’s untrue. It doesn’t do to lie to oneself. Sally is perfect. For her the word fits... perfectly. Though I don’t like to think so, strange suits me better. There’s none stranger than my Keith , mother always used to tell people.
    Strange and Perfect. Can t hey ever fit together? Stranger perfection. Perfect strangeness. Strangely perfect. Perfectly strange. The two words combined take a new meaning in my mind. They fit in an altogether new fashion: an unexpected, recently birthed collocation.
    Intoxicated with imagined promise, I listen to the track eleven times before placing the player back in the drawer. Rummaging deeper, I find a paperback novel – Bound to open on passages of smut – and flick through the pages.
    Mother would expect it to, wouldn’t she? She would expect it to open on well-thumbed pages of smut. It doesn’t, and I myself am not surprised. I’m pleased to show mother she was wrong. This proves that not all women other than her are coquettish, self-absorbed sluts. More pleasing still is the artful way in which I managed to ignore mother’s acid tongue. With my mind a flood of sublime music, her words had no grip and slipped away like... like... like something particularly slippery.
    Slugs, maybe? Yes. Slugs, slugs soaping in a sluice full of bleach.
    Sally is not a slut. Sally is a good girl. Sally is an angel. Sally is perfect.
    On the back cover it says: “ A must read for any woman searching for the meaning of true love .”
    Sign number three.
    Perfect.
    Add it to the list.
    A corner piece and two well-defined edges make for an excellent start.
    Where the book had been, s itting beneath it, as if specifically hidden, and I can see why she would be ashamed, sits a box of tampons – half empty. For some reason I can’t quite fathom, I flip the lid and take one and place it in my pocket. Mother would disapprove. I suppose that’s reason enough. A shudder grabs me as I recall her monthly ritual: rags hanging from a rope strung over the bathtub, dripping acrid-bleach into my bathing water. Rags far too soiled with shame to be dried outdoors in the wind. The memory doesn’t bring on an episode, but it does sketch a sensation of spider’s web on my cheek. It’s nothing but a trace of memory on my skin, but as quickly as a thought I brush it away. I have to.
    S moothing away the recollection, rubbing the pains that come to my wrists, I drag my attention back to the drawer. From under the box of shame, its corner only just visible, a thin diary beckons. Yesterday’s date has a reminder, written in the most exquisite handwriting, to collect photographs of a cousin’s wedding. The words: Remember to bring to work , follows, in a different hand, by order of Colleen. Ha Ha!!
    This unsettles me somewhat.
    Replacing everything in exactly the same position, I close the drawer and determine to check at a later date to see if I can find the photographs. I put on my shoes and twist the cap to my head. You’ll grow into Arthur had said, when I was new to the job. That was eleven years ago, and now, at the age of twenty-eight, it’s still too big. Turning off the lamp three