The First Person: And Other Stories - By Ali Smith Page 0,27

and ‘ruining cinema property’. He picks up his papers in his less sore hand and leaves the building. He goes to the doctor that afternoon, has himself signed off and has his wrist seen to.

Six weeks later he goes to the job centre to see what there might be for him in the way of similar work.

the second person

You’re something else. You really are.

This is the kind of thing you’d do. Say you were standing outside a music shop. You’d go into that shop and just buy an accordion. You’d buy one that cost hundreds of pounds, one of the really big ones. It would be huge. It would be a pretty substantial thing just to lift or to carry across a room, never mind actually play.

You would buy this accordion precisely because you can’t play the accordion.

You’d go into the shop. You’d go straight to the place they keep the accordions. You’d stand and look at them through the glass of the case. When the assistant, who’d have noticed you as soon as you came in – partly because you look (you always look) like a person of purpose and partly because you happen to be, yes, very eye-catching – came straight over to serve you, you’d point at the one you wanted. The shop probably wouldn’t have that many makes of accordion, maybe just five or six. You’d point at the one whose name you liked the sound of best. You’d like the sound of a name like Stephanelli more than you’d like the sound of a name like Hohner. It would also be the one you liked the look of best, with its frame (if that’s what they’re called) made of light brown wood, a good workaday colour; the other accordion makes in the case would look too lacquered for you, too varnished, less ready for the world.

When the assistant asked you if you’d like to try the Stephanelli before you purchased it, you’d simply hand her your bank card. You’d take the heavy accordion home. You’d sit here on the couch and heave it out of its box and on to your knees. You’d press the button or unhook the leather strap or whatever keeps its pleats shut. You’d let it fall heavily open like a huge single wing. You’d let it fill itself with air like a huge single lung.

But then that thought of the accordion being a bit like a single wing or a single lung would make you uneasy. So this is what you’d do. You’d go back to that shop. And although you can’t really afford it, although you can’t even play one accordion, never mind more than one, and although playing two accordions at once is actually humanly impossible, you would catch the eye of the same assistant and point into the glass case again, at the accordion next to the space left by the one you’ve just bought.

That one too, please, you’d say.

That’s what you’re like.

No it isn’t, you say.

I feel you get annoyed beside me.

That’s nothing like me, you say.

You move beside me on the couch. You move your arm, which has been tucked there between us, against my side, like a reassurance. You pretend you’re doing this because you need to reach for your coffee cup.

I didn’t mean it in a horrible way, I say. I meant it in a nice way.

But you’re sitting forward now, not looking at me, looking away.

What amazes me about you, you say, still looking away, is that after all these years, all the years of dialogue between us, you think you’ve got the right to just decide, like you’re God, who I am and who I’m not and what I’m like and what I’m not and what I’d do and what I wouldn’t. Well, you don’t. Just because you’ve got, you know, a new life and a new love and a whole new day and dawn and dusk and everything new and shiny like in some glorious pop song, it doesn’t make me a fiction you can play with or some well-known old used-up song you can choose not to listen to or choose to keep on repeat in your ears whenever you like just so you can feel better about yourself.

I don’t need to feel better about myself, I say. And I’m not playing with anything. I’m not keeping anything on repeat.

But as I say it I notice there’s something out of place on what was our window ledge. There’s what