The Title Sticks Now

The man at the bottom of the stairs had the same shape as the canal-path one and I knew before he opened his mouth. Something about how he stood. Waited. The kind of waiting that knows your name already. I said ask away because that's what we do, we open the door into the dark and pretend we invited it in. He said never mind, mate, and walked off, and I stood on the pavement for two full minutes like a bloke whose own joke had walked up to him and asked him to explain it.

The room split. I could feel which half I was playing to in real time, like a cable snapping halfway across. The Radox bit landed clean — they know what to do with that one. The panic attack set I still can't tell. Either it worked or I stood on stage and bled for three minutes and they were polite about it. Sandra said Sunday slot, quiet, like handing me a grenade under a napkin. I want it so badly my teeth hurt.

That's the bit I'm scared of. How much I want it. The title is a thing now. You're the panic attack one, yeah. Strangers say it to me in the dark. I used to be a man who did jokes about his nan and his nan's Radox. Now I'm a man with a tag.

Yara still hasn't texted back. I checked at the kitchen table with the notebook open. I checked at the kettle. I checked brushing my teeth. Five days now. I tried to write one line about the man in the beanie and crossed it out so hard the pencil snapped. The Moleskine's open to a page that looks like a crime scene.