“Oh my god,” Georgie said, “there’s this
woman in work right, who’s been wearing the same pair of boots for the last two
years. Two years one pair of boots. Winter, spring, summer, autumn, the same
boots.”
I shrugged.
“Can you believe it?”
I shrugged again. “Maybe they’re
comfortable,” I mumbled.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if they were a nice
pair of boots, but they’re gross,” Georgie mimed putting her fingers down her
throat. “They were gross when she bought them and now they are uber-gross, mega
gross, two-year-old gross.”
“What do they look like, these boots?” I
said, not really believing a pair of boots could be uber-gross.
“I just told you, they’re gross,” she said.
“Well, I get that, but describe gross.”
“Well, first of all, they’re grey! Who wears
grey boots? Not even a nice grey either. Not like a dark misty fifty shade of
grey, but a light Ford Cortina grey.”
“So silver then.”
“God no! Not Silver, Silver is nice. They’re
grey. And then they’re tatty, scuff marks on the heels and the toes, and along
the sides.”
“Well they are two years old,” I said, “They
couldn’t have always been tatty.”
“They have been. Tatty, old, grey since
grey one.”
“Knee length?” I asked.
“No, get this they are dodgy ankle height
boots. Her legs look like tiny bonsai trees in huge, ugly, grey flower pots.”
“I need a piss,” I said and hobbled over to
the toilets. As I washed my hands I stared into the mirror. The water ran over
my fingers and I rubbed them together over and over like Lady Macbeth staring,
staring at my reflection. I was replaying the conversation with Georgie through
my mind. My reflection, grey. The story about the boots, dodgy ankle. My reflection, tatty and scuffed. The story about the
boots, two years. I counted up the
months we’d been together. Twenty-three. Georgie hadn’t been describing a
colleague’s boots. She’d been describing, me.
No comments:
Post a Comment