Move Back to Brighton 12

Flixy asks me again to buy some of the bin bags that Trombone Tracey 'misbought'. I tell her no and say it's between her and TT. As is the whole issue of Flixy allowing TT to move out without paying the last month's rent (using the deposit) and failing to do a walk-through with her. Having done that, I say, Flixy should then have kept money back from the deposit for damages and for proper cleaning. The botched blue paint, scrapes, the nails and hooks, the daubs of Polyfilla, the dried slime (is that an oxymoron?), the grime, dirt, thick dust. Flixy insists as TT moved out the same weekend as I was coming - as though that was somehow a requirement: I could easily have delayed coming till the room was cleaned and repainted - she didn't ever see the room. This isn't true - she made up the bed in it for me.

Or did she do that blindfold?

I ask why she took a deposit from a friend (me) when the place is so cluttered and dirty. 'To make it any worse, Flixy, I'd need to make such an effort - perhaps going down to the bins site on the corner and bringing back some crap, pissing and shitting on it, and spreading that around.' 

Maybe going too far?

'You were just wanting the money,' I say.

She gets tearful. I apologise. 

She insists I have seen the place over the years of visits with more clutter in it. 'Richard moved out a lot of his stuff.' 

I say, 'But Marty's stuff is now piled up in here.'

'Yes, but that's what it is being in a relationship. Some of my stuff is at his.'

'I'm not renting a room at his.'

She makes it sound as though my being here is under the radar - even though the letting agent knows she must be renting to someone, and TT was officially on the lease - and she thought I'd be a good fit because I understand she is a hoarder, like her mother. I stop myself saying my own mother is a narcissistic cunt, does that give me free reign in that regard?, mainly because I'm speaking to a narcissist. 

She says she couldn't dust because of her hip problem. Though she has been performing with that. There was a moment of comedy about her most recent doctor's visit. 'It's not as though I'm doing a nine to five sitting down, I told him. I'm dancing.' Then remembering who she was talking to here, she corrected herself, 'Well...I'm moving around onstage...' 

She says the dust comes so quickly - daily, at least, on the evidence of the toilet cistern - she can't get ahead of it. 'It's being on a street. And I did go round with the hoover nozzle when Trombone Tracey wasn't here.'

'Well, maybe next time fit the nozzle onto the hoover pipe and plug the hoover in and switch it on,' I don't say. 

I ask why she has the box of rusty rope, pegs, a dead bulb, decorative twine, broken flower pots, etc, all filthy on the kitchen window sill. 

'That's for my gardening!'

'You live two floors up.'

She makes a flourish at the window. I ask, 'You mean your window box?'

'Yes.'

Which is where I must admit defeat and move back to Bungay, somehow. 

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