I'll Sell You a Dog

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In those days, as I left my apartment each morning, number 3-C, I would bump into my neighbour from 3-D in the hall, who had got it into her head that I was writing a novel. My neighbour was called Francesca, and I, it goes without saying, was not writing a novel at all. You had to pronounce her name Frrrancesca, really rolling the ‘r’s, so it sounded extra trashy. After greeting each other with a raise of the eyebrows, we’d stand and wait in front of the doors to the lift, which divided the building in two, ascending and descending like the zip on a pair of trousers. It was comparisons like this that made Francesca go around telling everyone else who lived in the building that I was forever coming on to her. And because I called her Francesca, which wasn’t her real name but the name I’d given her in this so-called novel of mine.

There were days when the lift would take hours to arrive, as if it didn’t know the people using it were old and assumed we had all the time in the world ahead of us, as opposed to behind. Or as if it did know, but couldn’t care less. When the doors finally opened, we’d get in and begin the agonisingly slow descent, and the colour would begin to rise in Francesca’s face purely from the effect of the metaphor. The contraption moved so slowly it seemed it was being operated by a pair of mischievous hands that were taking their time on purpose so as to enhance the arousal and delay the consummation, when the zip finally reached the bottom. The cockroaches infesting the building would take advantage of our trip and travel downstairs to visit their associates. I used the dead time in the lift to squash a few of them. It was easier to chase after them in there than at home, in the corridors or down in the lobby, although it was more dangerous, too.

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