Calima Lunt Gomez

OUTSTANDING AWARD

be bad

The best advice she can give me, the advice of her life as she refers to it is - take out more credit card loans. That, and be bad. I don’t really have the chance to ask for clarification on the former, or the latter, though both have slightly confounded me, and seem to go hand in hand. She’s drunk off eight percent cherry beer: my fault, and she’s in twenty thousand pounds of debt: hers. We used to be sexy. We used to do drugs and be sexy. Now everyones fat and old.

After calling Citizens Advice she has gathered that if she sends the credit cards back and says she can’t afford it there’s not much they can do. So that is what she does. Works a treat! Oh yeah that and Buddhist Chanting. Which when done correctly can really work miracles. She did an ad with Virgin Media which certainly could have never been achieved without the chanting, thirty years she’s done it for now - no stopping at all. In North London thirty years ago, a friend told her that she had booked them dinner at a restaurant and instead took her to a meditation chanting workshop. Restaurants are really the way to her heart, but she’s not going much these days, not since she discovered that you can make instant risotto from a sachet. Whats the point of cooking when these kind of inventions exist. She told me she might not come today if she got the M&S ad she auditioned for, but seemingly this time the chanting wasn’t enough and she’s going to have to stick to cat-sitting to pay off the mortgage.

Older women seem to have a special interest in photographs of cats, and she makes sure to show me many, all the while explaining the personalities of each one in detail. She describes the felines more favourably than most of my next of kin would describe me. He’s such a sweetheart, shy at first but once you get to know him. She complains a lot about her position - which to me sounds ideal. Sitting in the wealthiest homes of Hebden Bridge and stroking pedigree felines. I sit there thinking about my own job prospects and wonder if cat-sitting is a skills-based job, or the kind of job you need nepotism for. 

She’s still holding my hand - she has those hands like silk that very few people, and mostly only old women and babies possess.

She tells me her hair is fake. I honestly never considered that it was fake because I didn’t think they sold wigs where each side was a different length, but now I see it’s possibly her own impressive DIY, and that the beret is doing a lot of work. It’s yours you bought it. She likes that. I should have guessed.

There’s nowhere like Lesbos, she tells me. Or there was. Now it’s full of druggies and British people and it’s the worst. But go to the bar ran by the two retired policewoman, that’s the spot to be. Can’t cruise like you used to but in my present situation I think I would probably be more focused on networking. I’ve heard Lesbos is full of cat-sitters.

She got scabies from being an extra in Riot Women. And the blouse didn’t even suit her. Absolutely no point wearing a blouse that isn’t you is what I’ve always said. Scabies has been ravaging my nearest and dearest but I don’t mention that to her because she’s just healed from her own mite-based trauma, and the mention of such things always brings up the phantom itch.

She’s going to walk home drunk through the park, nice to know there’s no age limit on that. Though I do worry about the frost and her drunken waddling. Text when you get home. I speak to her like she is one of the girls. Alright mum, she laughs. She says she likes Sycamore by Bill Callahan. I do a quick Shazam and my technical prowess impresses.

I don’t think I will take out any loans. I think I will be bad in other ways. Jo is dead, she tells me - offhandedly before I go. Last I heard she was psychotic. I don’t think my source thought that to be true, she just wanted to be mean, but I guess it partially was. I am sorry for the loss and I am fairly ignored. I met Jo once and she didn’t acknowledge me at all, as she panicked about leaving her phone in the Uber. She was tall - I never thought I could be old and tall and I guess that’s what she briefly showed me, and that old women leave their phones in Ubers and wear leather jackets too. 

A card is placed in my palm, american psycho, neon blue. Now I know where to go for my chanting.