Carpet Diem Read online

  Was there such a thing as a door-to-door doorbell repairman?

  Every fibre of his being was screaming at him to stay quiet; to pretend not to be in, just as he always did.

  But the doorbell had rung.

  Unfortunately, he had to know why.

  Thus, despite desperately wanting the unexpected doorbell fixer to go away, he crept down the stairs in his dressing gown, carefully avoiding the squeaky steps - numbers 8 and 11. Slowly and carefully, he placed a foot onto the hall carpet. It was soft and welcoming. He liked a soft carpet. The fashion for hardwood floors was inexplicable to him. Why would anyone choose a cold, hard, slippy floor over a soft, warm, lush carpet? Especially on cold winter mornings. He was definitely a comfy, soft carpet kind of guy. He’d chosen the hall one because its slightly toasted cream colour reminded him of Andrex puppies. Of course, that meant he’d at least once pondered how many puppies would have been needed to make it.

  Placing his second foot on the carpet, Simon took a deep breath and steeled himself for the short but ninja-like creep to the door, to see what his tormentor looked like.

  “Mr. Debovar? Hello?”

  Simon jumped like a startled butterfly at his name and nearly fell back onto the stairs. They knew his name! What kind of trickery was this? Now, in a panic, Simon had to decide what to do, quickly. Quick decisions were not really his forte - so he did what came naturally.

  “Go’way!” he grunted, hoping his local reputation would be enough to see off the interloper.

  “I’m sorry?” the voice politely answered. “What was that?”

  Definitely male. Simon couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not. It might not be a thing at all. Either way...

  “F’koff!” he grumbled, croakily. Surely nobody hung around after that. He could investigate the doorbell once the nuisance caller had gone.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Debovar, did you say you have a cough? Perhaps I could offer you a sweet?”

  This was not going well.

  Simon did not take sweets from strangers.

  He decided on a new tack - take the initiative. It was not something he was used to, but then he’d never had someone refuse to leave the front step before.

  “Whadayouwant?” he splurted.

  “I have a proposition for you, Mr Debovar.”

  Ah. A salesman. The world made sense again.

  “I’m not buying,” he called decisively, heading for the kitchen. He had some hazelnut coffee he was looking forward to trying this morning.

  “Oh no, and I’m not selling. Quite the contrary, actually.”

  Simon stopped. What was the opposite of selling? Buying? How could he know what Simon had that he might want to buy? Unless he’d broken into his house during the night, had a good look around and then left everything, in order to come back the next day and purchase it legally?

  No, that was ridiculous.

  Did he want to buy Simon? The thought of a troupe of white slavers barging down his door made him slightly light-headed. He suddenly longed to return to the comfort of his bed, where there were no people to confuse him and doorbells didn’t ring –exactly as they were supposed to not.

  Wait a minute.

  “How did you ring my doorbell?”

  “I … pressed the button.”

  “That bell hasn’t worked in ten years,” Simon answered triumphantly. He even had a little “Ah-hah!” to himself, in his head.

  “It hasn’t?” Pause. “Oh.”

  Simon heard what he thought was another, softer voice whispering.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr Debovar,” the male voice finally said. “We’ll come again tomorrow perhaps - or maybe Monday.”

  Footsteps faded away down the path, then the gate swung open and shut.

  Simon was elated. Having accidentally stumbled across the right question to make the possible white slave trader go away, he could get on with breakfast undisturbed.

  Later, when the elation had passed, he would try the doorbell, which persistently would not ring.

  Around the corner, a tall, thin man in a white suit, with mismatched eyes, turned to a dark-haired young woman in black leather and said: “How was I supposed to know the bell didn’t work? Who has a doorbell that isn’t connected? If you ask me, that shouldn’t count.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The letterbox rattled.

  Not in a ‘you’ve got mail’ way; definitely in a ‘somebody’s at the door’ way.

  Having had a whole day (and two sleepless nights) to think of a plan for this occasion, Simon was much less panicked than he’d been on Saturday. He’d thought through his options and decided that he knew exactly how to handle the situation. So, with a slight tremble of nerves he put his plan into action:

  He sat very, very still.

  After a minute, the letterbox banged again. Simon reminded himself to keep calm. He focused on the coffee he was holding and watched the hypnotic little ripples in the surface caused by the tremors in his hand.

  “Mr Debovar?”

  Simon spilled coffee.

  “Mr. Debovar, I know you’re there. Can we talk, please?”

  Something was deeply wrong with the world. Because not only did the voice apparently know he was there - it was female! What the hell was going on? Nobody ever came to visit him! One insistent doorbell fixer was unlikely enough, but two visitors in three days? As far as Simon was concerned, it was End of Days.

  In panic and disarray, Simon considered shouting “No, I’m not!” in response. Thankfully, he quickly realised how stupid that was. He did, however, need to do something.

  “Mr. Debovar? Please?”

  It was a nice voice. Soft. Viscous. Like honey. It actually made him want to answer the door, which was odd. He never wanted to answer the door.

  “Mr Debovar, I really do just want to talk to you. Could you please let me in? It’s cold out here and I’m not wearing very much.”

  She “wasn’t wearing very much”.

  It had been a very long time since Simon had seen a woman in the flesh. It had been a long time since he’d seen anyone in the flesh. He’d seen many, many women on his computer screen, but in the actual flesh?

  He needed to calm down and think. She had a nice voice, but that didn’t mean she would be as attractive as she sounded. After all, that was how all those sex lines made money, wasn’t it? Charging men to pleasure themselves to the sound of someone’s granny.

  But on the other hand, she might be gorgeous. She sounded gorgeous.

  He had to know. Wait, he had a spyhole in his door! He could see her without her even knowing! Simon realised with a guilty pang that he was dangerously close to voyeurism, but quickly decided that one can hardly be a Peeping Tom when the person at whom one is peeping is standing on one’s front doorstep. Thus reinforced, he crept slowly towards the door, feeling nausea, elation and arousal, but mostly terror.

  Halfway there, the voice came again.

  “Well?” it tickled his earlobes. “Are you going to open the door?”

  Simon stopped for a moment. He smacked his dry lips together and wondered where all the moisture in his body had suddenly gone.

  “Maybe.”

  With excruciating care, he crept the rest of the way to the door.

  “I suppose ‘maybe’ is better than ‘fuck off’,” the voice teased.

  Simon stopped an inch from the door. He hadn’t told her to fuck off. He hadn’t even tried “go away”.

  Suddenly, Simon remembered the half heard whisper of Saturday. All of his arousal turned to panic. They’d come back to get him with a honey trap! A brothel girl, riddled with diseases and haggard with the ravages of the sea!(For some reason, Simon always thought of slave traders as sailors.)

  Deciding that seeing the potential harridan before opening the door was even more important now, he leaned towards the spyglass, breathing heavily. He was so nervous that he initially closed the wrong eye, giving him a close up view of the egg
shell blue on his door. It needed a new coat.

  Blinking to regain his equilibrium, Simon leaned forward again and peered through the spyglass. Nothing but black. Damn. Could these things break?

  “Nah-ah,” sang the voice, “if you want to see me, then I get to see you too.”

  Damn this conniving seductress and her obstructive finger!

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?” Simon asked, nervously.

  “I haven’t said who I am.”

  It was a fair point.

  “Well then, who are you?”

  “My name is Lily,” she answered, softly. “I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?” Simon was very far out of his depth. But he seemed to be getting somewhere.

  “Something you have, that I want; that I need.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you open the door, Simon?”

  Simon’s legs were rubber. What now? He was clearly going to have to open the door if he ever wanted to get rid of her, and if he ever wanted to sleep through another night without fear of the doorbell. Of the few people who had ever tried to see Simon, none of them had shown the one quality he wasn’t prepared for: persistence.

  So, after more than a dozen years in isolation, Simon braced himself for his first sight of unfiltered sunlight. He unlocked the door, took off the chain, removed the doorstop and turned off the alarm. Putting his hand up to shade his eyes from the glare, he opened the door slowly to reveal … grey. A cloudy, miserable, nothing.

  In the split second before his eyes came to land on the temptress’s cleavage, Simon felt a sense of immense anti-climax. Surely on such a momentous day, the sun could have had the decency to shine. The disappointment passed as he took in the woman before him.

  Her midnight black hair hung in loose ringlets around her delicate, pale face, teasingly caressing her shoulders. She appeared to be wearing no makeup, yet her skin was utterly flawless, and her deep, soulful eyes were dark in contrast. Her full lips formed a relaxed smile and what little matt black leather she wore served to cover those parts of her that public decency required. The rest of her that was on display looked so smooth and firm that Simon found himself battling an extreme desire to lick her.

  “Hello,” she said. “Isn’t this nicer?”

  He had to agree; it was nice. And no slave traders in sight - just this beautiful, friendly, smiling woman.

  “So, what do you want?” he spluttered.

  “May I come in? I’d much rather talk about it in your living room,” she answered.

  Simon realised he’d come too far already. Opening the door to a beautiful woman was one thing, but letting her in, that was entirely something else. Then again, she was utterly stunning, and Simon found his eyes wandering south again, down the line of her lily-white, delicate shoulder, lower to her cleavage, then straying towards her pert…

  “Nipples!”

  “No I wasn’t!” Simon spat in instinctive defence. But when he looked up, he saw that Lily was as startled as he was. And had he thought about it, Simon would have realised the voice was coming from his left. And was male.

  “Nipples!” it bellowed again. “You’ve got nipples! You’re not allowed nipples!”

  A tall, thin man strode towards them from the side of the garden. His slightly too large white suit and white-blonde, short hair gave him a ghostly look, heightened by the mismatched eyes that provided the only splash of colour on his angular face.

  Simon stood frozen.

  “Sorry Mr Debovar, I don’t mean to interrupt, but she really isn’t allowed nipples.”

  “Oh, come on,” replied the woman, “that’s such a technicality – they’re tiny!”

  “Well I can see them, and he can clearly see them, so they’re big enough,” replied the man. “Now that is a much more worthy disqualification than a broken doorbell!”

  Simon realised that this was the slave trader, but was oddly unafraid of him. In fact, he seemed vaguely familiar, and now that Simon could see him, his voice was even more melodic than it had been through the door. He looked less like a slave trader than a pop star, actually. Which was something.

  “Oh come on, it’s not like I did it intentionally. I just stuck my chest out and they … appeared!” she argued.

  “No, no, no,” replied the man. “You have no nipples. You have absolutely no need for nipples. Only women who have children need nipples.”

  “Men have nipples,” Simon offered, wondering what the hell they were arguing about.

  “Ha!” chirped the woman, pointing at him, “He’s right!”

  The man turned to Simon: “Purely decorative. You just don’t look right without them.” He turned back to the woman. “Which is hardly the point. You had them a minute ago and you’re not allowed them and now it’s my turn!”

  Simon wondered why the man wanted a turn with Lily’s nipples and concluded that he really wasn’t following this conversation.

  The two stood staring at each other, fuming, for a moment, until Simon broke the silence with a rather pathetic little “ahem”. Man and woman both turned to look at him.

  “Why don’t you have nipples?” he asked. “And why did you make my doorbell ring? Or rather, how?” he asked the man, who was now slightly red about the cheeks.

  “Ah, yes. I suppose we’ve rather blown that, haven’t we?” answered the man. He looked at the woman, seemingly for confirmation of something, and then said, “OK, Mr Debovar, it’s time to come clean. Can we please step inside?”

  “First you have to tell me who you are,” demanded Simon. He realised in passing that neither of them smelled of anything. He could smell grass, flowers from next door, rubbish bags from the pavement and exhaust fumes from passing cars, but no perfume, deodorant, body odour, cigarettes – nothing at all, not even soap. They were like a scent vacuum.

  “OK,” answered the woman. “My name is Lily. I’m a demon.”

  Simon looked to the man, hoping for a laugh or a rebuttal, but he just smiled serenely and said, “And my name is Daniel. I’m an angel.”

  Bloody hell.

  ----

  A phone rang.

  A rugged, good-looking man of about 40, with sandy brown hair, light stubble and the beginnings of distinguished wrinkles around his blue eyes answered it “Pizza Pizzazz,” as he had done for the last three years. Prior to that, he had answered it “Perfect Pizza” for about six years, and before that, “Pizza Pour Vous”, in an ill-fated attempt to fuse Italian cuisine with French.

  Prior to that, it was a chip shop.

  “It’s time,” the woman on the other end of the phone told him, urgently.

  “What time?” he replied, confused.

  “They’re here.”

  “Who are?”

  “Who do you think?”

  His face fell. For her to sound so grave, so serious, there was only one ‘they’.

  “Already? It’s only been, what, 15 years?”

  “Yes.” Pause. “They’re good.”

  “I thought he’d be a lot harder to find. I thought we had more time.”

  “I know. What are we going to do?”

  “What choice do we have? Are they there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have they been there? Did he let them in?”

  “Yes – I don’t know, I just got home – I was shopping.”

  “Damn it. He may already have agreed a deal. We could be too late. How did we not see this coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ok,“ he said. “I’m coming home. I’ll close up.”

  “Luke?”

  “What?”

  “I’m scared. Really scared.”

  “I know. I am too. We’ll be OK.”

  “…”

  “Gabby?”

  “I’m here.”

  “It’ll be ok. I’m sure.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  A long cold pause hung in the air.

  “No. I
’m not. But I’m not giving up, either.”

  ----

  Simon sat on his couch, staring across his living room at the pair of lunatics he’d just invited in. On reflection, he had absolutely no idea why he’d invited them in. In fact, he was fairly sure he could specifically remember deciding not to invite them in, but to lock the door as tightly as possible, run away back to his bed and hide under the duvet. Because anyone who comes to your door and tells you that they are an angel or a demon is clearly a very long way off their rocker.

  And yet, here they sat in his living room: two of them. He’d invited them in, and even offered them tea. Thankfully, they’d declined, avoiding the need for him to explain that they’d have to share a cup.

  “What’s happening?” he finally asked. “I’m a little confused.”

  “Yes, that’s normal, Mr. Debovar. We apologise for any disorientation.” The man smiled at Simon as if he was an idiot child struggling to understand something that was really very simple.

  The woman smiled too. Her smile was nicer. It felt more real - more genuine. The man’s smile was a formality; a handshake before a business meeting.

  “Yes, but, why are you here?” asked Simon.

  “Ah, yes, well, that’s a good question. You see, we need something from you, Mr Debovar. If you are happy to give us a chance, we’d like to explain,” the man answered.

  “No, sorry, I mean: why are you here?” Simon gestured around his living room. As always, it was immaculately tidy, as he preferred, but it definitely had two too many people in it for his liking.

  “You invited us in, Simon,” said the still-very-much-honey-voiced-and-rather-sexy-too woman. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, I do,” Simon answered, “but I also remember having no intention of doing that.”

  “Ah,” said the man. “Of course. Sorry, that is probably our fault.”

  Simon searched the room with his eyes, looking for things he could defend himself with when the nutters inevitably got violent and tried to do things to him. There wasn’t much. Besides the furniture, there was a table lamp, his laptop and the wooden clock he particularly liked. It was the only decoration he’d kept from when his parents had lived here. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded of them every day, wherever he looked, but at the same time, a piece of them was … nice.