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I struggle to get the door open with fumbling fingers. “You have my word.”
“One week or you’re both out,” he calls after me. “You and that … friend of yours.”
I slam the door shut and then lean back against it, letting out a sigh of relief. “How did it go?” Cathy shouts through to me from her bedroom. “Say anything racist this time?”
“Doesn’t he always?” I call back, dumping my backpack on the coffee table. “He knows you’re permanently here.”
She sticks her head out. “Shit, really?”
“Yep.” I sit down hard on the couch, sending out another plume of stuffing into the air from the split down the left hand side.
I grab the TV remote. “Managed to hang just the right side of a racist remark though. Oh, and he propositioned me.”
“Again?”
“Yep.”
“Hang on, let me get dressed.”
I flick through the channels, finding a documentary on Tracy Benn. I sit back and lose myself in the artist at work while Cathy hums to herself in her bedroom. This is why I’m writing a book on her. She’s such a natural talent.
I wish I could paint like that but I dare not even try. It would only be a disappointing failure in comparison. Better not to even attempt it than to screw it up and feel even worse than I do now.
Cathy emerges a minute later, tugging the straps of her dress into place. “How come it’s always you who gets propositioned?” she says. “There’s me desperate for a screw and no one wants to come near me. Yet here’s my pristine angelic virginal roommate who has no interest in the opposite sex. Yet you get leered at left, right and center?”
“If you want the super, you just say the word. I’m happy to back down and let you have him. Cat pee and all.”
She sits on the couch next to me, looking like she’s thinking about it. “Nah, I like my lovers like I like my coffee.”
“Black and strong?”
“Disease free.”
“That’s … heartwarming, I think.”
She smiles, tying her hair back as she replies. “How’d the interview go?”
“One more rejection to add to the pile.”
“What happened this time?”
“Let’s just say the guy who went in after me bore a striking family resemblance to the interviewer. Same surname and they high fived as they went into the office as I was leaving.”
“Never mind.” She squeezes my knee. “You’ll get that Tracy Benn biography of yours finished and it’ll be a smash and all your problems will be over. I’ll get my cleaning business going eventually and we’ll …”
“Clean up?”
“Exactly.” She gets up, holding a finger out in front of her. “Oh, yeah. I have some good news.”
“What?”
“Be right back.” She dashes into her room and comes back out carrying a sheet of paper. “You know what this is?”
“A piece of paper.”
“Well done, Sherlock. You want to hazard a guess what’s on this piece of paper?”
“Words?”
