Stories by Louis Urbanowski

In which a man cannot remember doing something heinous even though there is photographic evidence.

An intrusive thought made into a story.

The lights in Mr Khan’s shop bleached everything, right down to the red splits round Martin’s nails, which he noticed while blinking and blearing, waiting to pay; he bit at his fingers. Milk and bread were the mission; the four lagers were an addition, hardly worth distinguishing from the rest of the shopping until Mr Khan swept everything behind the till and said he couldn’t serve him.

Martin gave an absent smile, giving Khan a moment to finish the joke. But he didn’t. He pointed to a photograph taped between the cigarettes and the lottery display.

Unmistakably, it was his ripped wax jacket and mustard scarf, one foot turned out enough to show the split in his black trainer. His left hand was crushing packets of chewing gum against this very counter; his right had closed round the nape of the charity pot marked HELP OUR ORPHANS. The flash picked out the blue veins across his hand and the bright red of the thing holding coins; he looked closer—it even had the dirt beneath his nails, but it was his face he kept returning to, his eyes open wider than looked safe. He could see the whites above the hazel. He was looking straight at whoever was taking the picture. Martin wanted him to look away.

“That isn’t me,” he said and tried to stop smiling now. “When’s that supposed to be?”

“Last night. Leave the shopping. Get out.”

He hadn’t touched the shopping. He had been going to, though, to bring the bread back towards him while they sorted this out, but he put his hands in his pockets instead. Last night he had eaten overcooked pasta and watched half a shit documentary, gone to bed at eleven with a tomato seed stuck between his teeth; it was still there this morning—he had worked it out with his tongue on the way here. Mr Khan ought to hear this. There was sauce under his thumbnail too, which he began scraping out before he caught himself, because that was something he could actually show him and now he had picked it off.

“Could I just get the milk?”

Khan pushed it farther back.

Martin took out his phone and photographed the photograph, needing two attempts because his own reflection covered the face. He wanted to say he was doing this for the police, although was it a crime to be accused of being in a photo? The moment in which he might have said it passed while he was trying to get the camera to focus. He left with a small nod of thanks that belied swearing. It occupied him all the way to the corner of the high street.

There he checked his pockets, reaching past his phone, keys and wallet into the lining, where his fingers had already been in the shop. No pot, although he knew that because it was big and cumbersome and it wouldn’t have fitted in a pocket, would it; he checked the other one again before he could stop himself. On the third search he found a pound. But there were no trolleys to give that to.

He set it on a wall and walked away, then came back because it was a perfectly ordinary pound and he was being ridiculous. He held it by its milled edge. He could put it in the pot next time he went in—except there wasn’t a pot now, and there wasn’t going to be a next time, and offering money after denying everything would make him look worse. The coin was wet from his palm. He rubbed it on his trousers, hated himself for wiping it, and put it back in his pocket.

At the crossing he enlarged the picture until his face came apart in red and yellow squares. Dirt marked the cuff of the jacket; his own cuff was clean, and for several seconds he stood there with his wrist raised, letting people go round him. He never washed that jacket. He could remember buying it and he could remember spilling things down it, but he couldn’t remember once putting it in a wash. Which was good, surely, unless the man who went out stealing from orphans also washed his clothes afterwards, in which case Martin knew very little about him beyond his greater willingness to get things done.

At home he opened his bank account and read through the transactions, grateful for each small amount he had frittered away. His maps history put him at home all night, apart from twenty-three minutes missing shortly after two. He looked up whether this happened to other people and found that it did; he read several explanations of signal loss, then went back to the gap, which remained twenty-three minutes long however much he knew about signals.

He must have fallen asleep with the phone underneath him. Pressed something. Except unlocking it took his thumb, and he found himself holding that thumb apart from his fingers, looking at the pad he used without looking dozens of times a day. He put it in his mouth and bit the skin beside the nail until it hurt enough to stop.

When he opened the photograph again he noticed the date printed along the bottom.

Tomorrow. He checked against the date on his phone, then against the calendar in the kitchen, although the calendar could only confirm the year and that he had stopped turning its pages in April.

He rang the shop. Mr Khan said last night, yes, last night, and Martin interrupted to explain about the date, relieved enough to talk over him; a wrong date meant there was something wrong with the photograph, and if he could get him to look at it properly they could start again. But Mr Khan told him to stop calling, and after the line went dead Martin carried on explaining for a few words before taking the phone away from his ear.

He sat in his jacket. Perhaps he had already done it and forgotten; perhaps he hadn’t done it yet, which ought to have been better, except now he knew the shop and the pot and what he would be wearing. He got up and took the jacket off, then put it on again to empty the pockets. The pound dropped and rolled under the washing machine. He bent down after it, stayed there a while, and eventually pushed the jacket into the drum and shut the door.

From his chair he could still see the scarf caught in the rubber seal. He went over to tuck it inside and ended up taking the jacket out again; he needed it in the morning, and he wanted, very badly, to be someone who could still need a jacket in the morning.

At two minutes past midnight he poured four lagers down the sink, tipping each can slowly so the foam wouldn’t come over the edge. His fingers ached with cold by the fourth. He set it beside the others and stood looking at them, trying to remember another shop between Mr Khan’s and home.

Martin woke on the kitchen floor with sick cooling in his chest hair. When he lifted his head it pulled at the hairs beneath his chin; he tried to swallow and brought more into his mouth. His trousers were round his ankles. Above him, white powder crossed the table and clung to the torn edge of the bread bag, where tablets had spilled between the slices. He rubbed his nose against his shoulder and left powder there too.

Both hands held the orphans’ collecting pot over his genitals, the rim pressed so deep into his palms that he had to loosen one finger at a time. He could see his phone on the floor beside his knee, and reached for it without letting go of the pot with his other hand.

1:37 a.m.

The date was yesterday.