The Life of Other People Chapter 2

11 years after the chorizo was so thoughtfully bought, Leroy lived in a cloud. It was not a candyfloss cloud, nor a Botticelli cloud, nor even a pink and scarlet sex-on-the-beach kind of cloud. It was a raincloud, grey and omnipresent and deeply irritating in its needy and indecisive hovering. And the most irritating thing about this particular breed of resolute cloud was that it had overstayed its welcome, and extended from the metaphorical into the physical, so that Leroy’s life had been flooded up to the knees with watery irony. Leroy did indeed live in The Cloud Apartment Block, where “luxury accommodation meets instant trendiness”. The word ‘trendiness’ should have been a warning to Leroy, who had undertaken two university degrees before finishing high school. The sarcasm in “luxury accommodation” should have been apparent to Leroy, who could explain – in detail –String Theory and Other Sciency Things. Regrettably, the only thing that did strike Leroy was the gradual rain of paint flakes that fell from the ceiling like pallid snow.

He had considered finding a roommate when he initially rented the place. He had even put up ‘tear-here’ posters on lampposts and traffic lights, where time had managed to spitefully smudge and slur the ink until each word was much longer than it was originally, perhaps, Leroy worried, insinuating a more intimate and longitudinal arrangement than intended. In had flown the Restless, the Righteous, first the Rocking and then – gradually – the Rolling, the Undeniably Rude and the Imperturbably Perky, the Artistes With An ‘E’, the Call Me Gavs and the I Prefer The Term ‘Natural Healer’s, all of whom were turned away awkwardly. It was Camden, after all.

Eventually he decided that he would not have a roommate, not because, as you might think, he found them unsavoury, but because his childhood had brought him, he felt, quite up to speed with the caricaturish nature of life, and what he really needed was not Greta with the dreadlocks and the cactus collection, but his neglected and derelict friends, Peace and Quiet.

So he retired to life as a twenty-something, filled his three rooms with many bits and pieces and even found himself a favourite café, which made coffee just the way he liked it, even though he had not previously been aware that he liked it any particular way. Milk to sugar ratio, it turned out, was the key.

It should be mentioned that Leroy was not now the same man he once was. A turning point had come when he was fifteen and he had realised, unceremoniously, that nobody liked him. It was not necessarily his fault; if anyone was to blame, it was his mother, who treated parenting like NASCAR driving, or perhaps his father, whose interest in his son had receded with his hairline. Nevertheless, Leroy spent several uncomfortable months in his mid-teenage years trying on different outfits and personalities, as if he might suddenly find his true self, crouching sheepishly behind a rack of studded shoelaces. This continued for about a year before a girl named Delilah changed his world, and not in the way you’d think. Delilah smelt of patchouli and played the clarinet. She had enormous eyes the colour of the blue-green veins that spidered out beneath the skin of her wrists, and harboured a collection of expressions that ranged from aloof-nonplussed to aloof-bemused and somehow lassoed her a strange popularity. Leroy, who looked uncomfortable in pyjamas, viewed her as some wild and mythical beast, and may have even loved her if he’d ever found a way to forget that she was destined to be rare and lesser-spotted, while he was doomed to be eternally common-or-garden.

They had run into each other at a garden warehouse, when Leroy had been carrying a large terracotta flowerpot for his mother – which he promptly dropped – and Delilah a packet of sunflower seeds. In his dreams, he would see the fall of the pot reflected in her water lily eyes, and she, fearing reprimand from an irritable employee, would grab his hand and drag him down the Pests & Insecticides aisle to hide behind the 100kg bags of fertiliser. Then, with a wink (he had never been winked at before), she would pull him away and they would run together, laughing, away from the grouchy man who didn’t understand teenagers, until Leroy knew he was in love and he didn’t need a personality anymore, he could just be the boy who was in love with Delilah…

In reality, she blinked in the second the pot hit the floor. It shattered, and they stood there for what felt like a long time, before an apathetic nineteen-year-old in a red EMPLOYEE polo shirt shuffled over with a sigh and a dustpan.

And while Leroy felt the colossal pressure to say something weighing down his chest and squeezing his lungs, Delilah felt no such obligation. This was what Leroy later reflected on, when he was running through the day for the hundredth time: she didn’t have to say anything. She could have just walked away, she could have been cruel, could have laughed or smirked or even, if she was truly merciless, sighed, but she didn’t. Instead, she said:

“I like your hair.”

No one liked Leroy’s hair. He had dyed it black the month before for no particular reason, and he didn’t dislike it enough to remove the colour, yet, didn’t like it enough to blacken the mousey roots that sprouted unkindly from his scalp. It was, to use his mother’s words, thoroughly offensive. It was, to use his father’s words, a train wreck of a hairstyle. 

She addressed him again, without blinking her winter-sky eyes.

“It looks, like, good.”

Leroy finally spoke, his tongue like rusty metal. 

“It doesn’t look like anything.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s the point, like … you look… totally unique, just out there… like, lonely”.

“I am, thanks.”

“Noooo, it’s cool. It means you don’t ... like … listen to anybody else, you’re just a person and …”

The bewilderment in his face must have annoyed her; her delicate eyebrows drew together menacingly.

“Oh just figure it out.”

And she left him in the centre of a terracotta skeleton.