Please, Please

The hermit receives a visitor.

Burrrrr

Doorbell!

That sharp, plick-plick sound in the sink. Allen looked at that phone again, screen dark, his head wrapped in his scarf, pulled up over his chin like he was preparing for Siberian winter in a bedsit that smelled of sour milk and samovar. The frightened babushka stared at Allen from the other side of the darkened mirror of his phone. He looked exactly like her now, Grandma, just like when he saw her fall into that fireplace in the old family home, just that autumn there…

The door again! Burr–Brrrr—Incessant!

Had he received some notification? He pressed the button on the side of his phone. Just <Message deleted>. Who was it now? One of his neighbours, wanting to complain about something? One of Frederick’s Tinder acquaintances ringing the wrong door? Someone from Waterstones? That bouncer guy? The police with a restraining order? Someone from the nursing home? But how? They’d just called, just left that message. His father had—

The chair scraped back against the floor, like a groan. He didn’t remember deciding to stand; the hallway stretched before him toward the door. He walked slowly. His socks on the wooden floor. Careful, the third board creaks. It always creaks. The door. Four locks running down its edge like vertebrae. The peephole sits at eye level, like a beetle, a tiny glass eye, watching him approach. His breath is loud in his ears. Whoever is out there will hear him breathing. They’ll know he’s here. They’ll know—He stops. His hand hovers.

What the fuck do they want now, Allen thought... I just can’t deal with this... they need to bring their wheelbarrow full of manure to my door, and then I’m supposed to what? Dive headfirst? Cake my face with that sort of shit? Bring it on, is it? I don’t—you come in and have a cup of—why don’t I suck your dick whilst we’re at it, Mr. I-know-people-who-own-shit, you know we’ll all feel better after that, and it’s just a cup of tea and why not. Can’t they just leave me alone, make a little bit of space, for chrissake, just keep quiet for a bit? No? No? Well, that is too bad for them if they don’t. I certainly won’t respond to anything. My resolve is quite clear: never, that’s it. Maybe I should try to write them a letter in my own time! They should drive that into their little brains now! And meanwhile, Allen pressed his head against the door, like, oh, my father, of course, come in and have a cup of tea and of course, leave all your caca on my carpet and I’ll deal with it and all of that. Or the person from Waterstones? Come on—oh yeah, go ahead, make them your… You are too fucking much, you! How dare you? He shifted his face—no noise—and slowly peered through the spyhole.

The rant sputtered out. His forehead found the door. He leaned in. One eye pressed to the cold brass rim, the other squeezed shut, and the world outside flattened into a bubble. The corridor bent at the edges like a funhouse mirror, like a cylinder in an impossible spaceship, walls curving around the middle, the bannister warped, the stairs going up in a spiral, Escher-like. And in the centre of it all:

A shape. Right there, just beyond his door, someone with their back turned to the door, standing there, hands in pockets, weight on one hip, like someone waiting for a bus. A round head, curly hair, the back of it like a Cookie Monster puppet, eyeless, mouthless. The body underneath that head, almost encompassing all of his field of vision, but distorted by the location of the spyhole, tiny arms dangling on each side, and even tinier still (despite the bulk of his head) those two white dots, pristine white trainers, making the whole shape of that person, like that of a genie popping up out of a magic lamp.

The figure shifted. Turned around toward the door. Sébastien.

The face ballooned in the fish-eye—nose first, cartoonishly large, then the eyes, dark and knowing, then that mouth already forming words Allen could feel, could remember—Ça va ma pépouse? That stupid nickname from school, from the dojo, from a thousand beers and a thousand jokes at Allen’s expense.

Burrrr. Burrrr.

—Alors, tu ouvres?

The figure knocked. Three times. Allen’s eye stayed pressed to the brass, watching, watched, the tiny glass beetle staring back at him as much as he stared through it.

—Eh, ma pépouze, c’est moi, mon pote, gonna keep knocking on that door or what? Open up, bro.

Allen’s forehead was pressed against the door now, his eye still hovering near the spyhole but not looking anymore, just listening, just waiting for it to stop. It didn’t. What does he want from me now? Okay, he thinks I’m going back to his karate class; it’s over, not gonna happen.

—I know you’re in there, mate. I can hear you breathing, connard. Open up! Ouvre, j’te dis! You’re doing it again. Disappearing. Ghosting everyone.

I’m not ghosting. I’m surviving. There’s a difference, you self-appointed saviour, you intervention prick, you come here with your white trainers and your yoga lungs and your karate discipline and your oriental energy woowoo and your—and the worst is how dumb and delusional you are, thinking you’re so fucking clever and how amazing your soft skills are, when in fact you keep patronising everyone (especially me, which I detest) all day long about chink medicine bullshit and acupuncture crap and vipamama meditation and life coaching and always offering your own bespoke self-help solutions to every casual remark. What kills me is how convinced you always are about everything. It’s like you’re just out from a cult of such cool people, indoctrinated with all sorts of shit and then always bloody trying to convince me that ‘energies’ really exist—when it’s obvious that you’re just projecting your own likes and dislikes onto stuff around you and saying that what you dislike about me, about my life, has ‘bad vibes’ and what you like, your pathetic zen master + white Nike trainers life has ‘good vibes.’ It’s all such simplistic stuff, simple interpretations of your own emotional states, of everything around you, which is just you being judgmental most of the time. And you’re always so fucking self-confident with your black belt and failed dojo business, empty TikTok account, and ridiculous, overly ambitious projects, convinced you are such a sage, when all you do is spew esoteric shit… I’m not going to let you invade and fucking sprawl on my couch and lecture me while swirling a glass of my booze, no way! Yeah, I know I’m a failure. Don’t need another reminder right now, someone to give me the fucking pep talk. Yeah, my life’s not great, but neither is yours.

—Quoi, man? You wanna turn into one of those hermits who die on top of a pillar, and nobody finds them for six months until they start to fall bit by bit, is that it?

Who the fuck made you the— The hermit who dies. Six months. The image landed somewhere mushy and sticky inside, somewhere Allen didn’t want it to land… just that autumn there… Grandma balancing on two legs of her chair in that kitchen overlooking the garden and tilting backwards, and she couldn’t stop herself, crashed into the flames. This look in her eyes then, with the woollen shawl around her head, sparks catching fire at the edges. Allen hadn’t laughed so much in his whole life. He was four… His father was there. The voicemail he’d deleted. The body that would one day be found in a flat that smelled of sour milk, the mail piling up and— No. No. Fuck off. Just fuck off. Silence from the other side. Allen could hear Sébastien breathing now. Both of them breathing. The door between them, thin as a wall, thick as a membrane.

Boom boom boom!

Sébastien’s fist against the wood. Allen felt the blow through the door, through his own pressed forehead. What the fuck. Allen pressed his eye back to the spyhole. Sébastien was banging on the door, looking behind him, looking—terrified? Was he going to break down the door now, banging on it with his fists, with his shoulders?

—Allen, ils arrivent, they’re HERE! Please let me in, ma vieille!

Allen’s jaw clenched. His hand, hovering near the lock, had started to tremble. Not from cold. From the effort of not moving. From the effort of staying perfectly, absolutely still. Should I let him in? Has he been—? And now Sébastien was backing away from the door, making these weird karate moves at the top of the stairs, some bizarre aikido dance mixed with tai chi, slicing the air, pounding tsuki punches, and mae geri kicks against invisible enemies.

—I’m fighting them back, Allen! Kiai, sah! Look how I’m smashing these zombies’ heads into mincemeat! Sah, ish!

What the fuck is he doing? Allen’s eye pressed tighter against the peephole, popping wide. The ballooned fish-eye Sébastien, dismembering nothing, performing heroism for an audience of one who would not open the door.

—Fucking open that door already! Ils vont me manger tout cru! Please, please!

And something caught in Allen’s throat. Not the zombies—the please. Twice. Sébastien never said please. Sébastien commanded, joked, charmed. He didn’t beg. Even fake-begging. Not even a bit.

At length, Sébastien stopped, remained immobile, head down, watching the stairs, then came back to the door, pressed close. Allen’s fingers grazed the metal lock and pulled back, as if burned.

—See how useful karate can be when fighting zombies? At least a dozen of them dismembered now on those steps. Better than your fucking video games... Bon, tu m’ouvres?

He knows. He knows about Plan B. About— Allen’s palm was flat against the door, sweat between skin and paint. On the other side, maybe an inch away, Sébastien’s palm too. Maybe. Probably not. Probably just standing there, waiting, patient, his curly hair brushing the peephole, these fucking curly and oily waves. Waves that most girls find cute— The letterbox rattled.

—OK, si c’est ça que tu veux, ben va te faire foutre!

Sébastien turned around, walked down the stairs, and disappeared into the spreading city. The cool curly hair slowly crawled up Allen’s legs.