Read Online Exposure by Talitha Stevenson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Talitha Stevenson
Tags: General Fiction
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about to buy bounced in the gutter beside him. A woman rushed out into the road and a hairbrush fell out of her handbag; as she bent down to get it a motorbike passed, whipping up her long hair, which caught the eye of a window-cleaner, who dropped his sponge. Behind the soapy glass, a row of blowup sex dolls mouthed their obscene 'O' and just as Luke wondered what on earth this had to do with selling neat racks of footwear, someone threw a cigarette butt on to the pavementâat the exact moment he lowered his new shoe. He crushed it out.
When had life started feeling like this, like a steady-cam shot with him as the walking figure?
He sat down under a tree in a nearby square with his can of Lilt and his smoked-duck wrap. He was not hungry: he had bought his lunch out of habit, standing numbly in the line at the deli, distantly reassured by the familiar rows of sandwiches and cartons of juice, by the bright signs asserting the magic words 'healthy' and 'fresh' to some half-dormant part of his consciousness. A crisps packet skimmed across the grass and was caught against the railings. He put the lunch in his shoulder-bag and lit a cigarette.
What had begun as an odd game had become a preoccupation with how easily he might have altered the story of his life. His mind ticked over the endless range of improbabilities, the minute coincidences, that had brought his current existence into being. He had found out about the company he worked for from an ad in a newspaper that someone had left on the tube. Who? And hadn't he been on the wrong tube, drunk, on his way from one party to another? He had folded the page into his pocket. Hadn't he met a girl that night and slept with her? What was her name? He had left his jacket at her flatâand had to go back for it because of the ad, pretending he had also forgotten to ask for her phone number.
She didn't believe him about the number, he remembered. He had done a big, broad smile at her and asked her for it and she had pulled her dressing-gown round her very tightly and blushed. She handed the jacket to him on the doorstep and scribbled the number in tiny handwriting on a piece of notepaper with ' THINGS TO DO TODAY !!' printed at the top. He remembered the smell of toast behind her, the traffic rushing by behind his back as she wrote.
What was her
name
? He could recall oddly pendulous breasts ... but not her name.
And into this void went the missed opportunity of meeting Arianne.
Was it TV that made you think the world was smaller than it was? He had worked in advertising for six years now and he was sure he ought to know better. He would never see Arianne again, no matter how similar their bio-active yoghurt purchases or their taste in music, no matter how inclusive 'youth culture' seemed to be in magazines or cable documentaries about twenty-somethings.
His mobile phone was going in his pocket and he knew it would be Lucy. Everything about his relationship with her had been consciously planned. It was formulaic, designed to challenge the terrible sensation he was scarcely allowing himself to feel, even now. What was the sensation, exactly? It came between heartbeats; it was like clicking on the wrong link, being launched involuntarily towards web addresses you hadn't typed in, pop-ups bursting on to the screen advertising humiliating products that must yet appeal to someone (but
who? Where?),
telltale cookies accumulating faster than you could press
'Escape', 'Escape', 'Escape'...
He and Lucy had been introduced at a dinner party as two nice-looking single people, aged twenty-six. They were a good match. He diverted her call.
Luke felt breathless. He looked around at the offices and the people he could see through the lit windows, all doing their jobs. Mothers, fathers, boyfriends, wives. Betrayals, longings, grief, pride, heartbreak, ambition. Two girls passed by eating chips from the same bag. The smell of vinegar made him salivate.
'Whatâlike Buddhism, you
When had life started feeling like this, like a steady-cam shot with him as the walking figure?
He sat down under a tree in a nearby square with his can of Lilt and his smoked-duck wrap. He was not hungry: he had bought his lunch out of habit, standing numbly in the line at the deli, distantly reassured by the familiar rows of sandwiches and cartons of juice, by the bright signs asserting the magic words 'healthy' and 'fresh' to some half-dormant part of his consciousness. A crisps packet skimmed across the grass and was caught against the railings. He put the lunch in his shoulder-bag and lit a cigarette.
What had begun as an odd game had become a preoccupation with how easily he might have altered the story of his life. His mind ticked over the endless range of improbabilities, the minute coincidences, that had brought his current existence into being. He had found out about the company he worked for from an ad in a newspaper that someone had left on the tube. Who? And hadn't he been on the wrong tube, drunk, on his way from one party to another? He had folded the page into his pocket. Hadn't he met a girl that night and slept with her? What was her name? He had left his jacket at her flatâand had to go back for it because of the ad, pretending he had also forgotten to ask for her phone number.
She didn't believe him about the number, he remembered. He had done a big, broad smile at her and asked her for it and she had pulled her dressing-gown round her very tightly and blushed. She handed the jacket to him on the doorstep and scribbled the number in tiny handwriting on a piece of notepaper with ' THINGS TO DO TODAY !!' printed at the top. He remembered the smell of toast behind her, the traffic rushing by behind his back as she wrote.
What was her
name
? He could recall oddly pendulous breasts ... but not her name.
And into this void went the missed opportunity of meeting Arianne.
Was it TV that made you think the world was smaller than it was? He had worked in advertising for six years now and he was sure he ought to know better. He would never see Arianne again, no matter how similar their bio-active yoghurt purchases or their taste in music, no matter how inclusive 'youth culture' seemed to be in magazines or cable documentaries about twenty-somethings.
His mobile phone was going in his pocket and he knew it would be Lucy. Everything about his relationship with her had been consciously planned. It was formulaic, designed to challenge the terrible sensation he was scarcely allowing himself to feel, even now. What was the sensation, exactly? It came between heartbeats; it was like clicking on the wrong link, being launched involuntarily towards web addresses you hadn't typed in, pop-ups bursting on to the screen advertising humiliating products that must yet appeal to someone (but
who? Where?),
telltale cookies accumulating faster than you could press
'Escape', 'Escape', 'Escape'...
He and Lucy had been introduced at a dinner party as two nice-looking single people, aged twenty-six. They were a good match. He diverted her call.
Luke felt breathless. He looked around at the offices and the people he could see through the lit windows, all doing their jobs. Mothers, fathers, boyfriends, wives. Betrayals, longings, grief, pride, heartbreak, ambition. Two girls passed by eating chips from the same bag. The smell of vinegar made him salivate.
'Whatâlike Buddhism, you
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