Me

Me

Lynny was confused. She'd been confused for the last twenty-five
minutes. She was sitting still in a chair in her flat thumbing slowly
through a pile of papers. She was doing this for the fifth time. This
pile of papers had arrived in the morning's post, in a bulky white
envelope with a dirty mark on the front. Lynny had been excited. She
didn't pay her own bills, and she didn't have friends, so it wasn't
often that she found anything on her doormat, except pizza menus, which
she had started to collect in a pile. This envelope had been a mystery.
A heavy mystery at that.

Fetching a knife from the mug which was her cutlery pot by her very
small kitchen sink, Lynny had sat down with the envelope and slit it
open. What she found inside made her neither happy nor disappointed.
She was confused, and that was all.

Lynny had in her hands, fifty sheets of name and address labels, each
row and column spelling out the letters of her name and address in neat
round print, the gaps between lines and the gaps between labels
precisely identical.

Lynette Hatherstone
Flat 28 Rodney Court
Tandy Street
Battersea
London SW11 9LN

She had peeled one off almost immediately and patted it onto her arm,
as if to test its stick. She had stared at the labels, her name in
orderly multitude, until she seemed to turn uncomfortable at the sight
of it and started fidgeting, leafing through the pages, perhaps
counting them. Her glance shifted thoughtfully from side to side as
though she was trying to work out why she had received them. Who had
sent them and what would she do with them?

Twenty-five minutes had so elapsed, and Lynny, getting up from the
chair, accidentally let a couple of sheets slip from her hand. She bent
down to collect them carefully, smoothing the corners that could so
easily have been damaged in the fall, and noticed an edge of pale green
paper protruding from amongst the pile in her arms. It was an envelope
with an order form inside.

'To order more address labels, simply stick one of those sent out to
you in the rectangle to the left, and send it back to us with a cheque
made payable to "Me" in the freepost envelope provided.'

Lynny consulted the prices on the reverse side, moving a finger over
the numbers listed. Ten sheets for five pounds. Twenty sheets for eight
pounds fifty. Fifty sheets for sixteen ninety-nine. Multi-buy surprise
label pack for twenty-two pounds twenty-two pence. Lynny's finger
lingered over the word surprise. And then she got out her cheque
book.

Having straightened the pile of labels again and placed them on the
right hand side of the coffee table, Lynny sat down and opened up her
cheque book on the left side. She spent more than five minutes writing
the cheque, first being unsatisfied with her signature, (it had been so
long since she'd used it), and then not trusting that she'd got the
date right. She walked over to the cat calendar on the wall to check
and checked it twice. She filled in the numbers crisply, and looked
intently at them afterwards. Her gaze shifted from the cheque to the
labels, and back to the cheque.

Two weeks later, Lynny's letterbox was again flipped open by a large
white envelope. Lynny hadn't been outside her flat since the day she'd
sent her order, she had run to the postbox in her slippers and dressing
gown. Now she rushed to the front door. She grabbed the envelope and
ripped the top off.

The multi-buy surprise label pack consisted of fifty sheets of normal
name and address labels, (Lynny now had a hundred), five sheets of
coloured labels in red, blue and brown, five sheets of larger sized
labels, and five sheets of labels printed out in a slanting old
fashioned style font. Lynny was drawn to the slanting ones. She peeled
off two and stuck them to either side of her face. She smiled
mechanically making her cheeks rise and the labels twitched. Lynny
pressed them firmly and danced to the bathroom to look in the mirror.
She grinned at her reflection so she could see her backwards name and
address going sharply up and down, up and down.

Lynny remembered her arm and rolled up the sleeve of her dressing
gown. The original label from two weeks ago was still there, seeing it
made her smile normally. She threw off her dressing gown and without
hesitation hopped out of her pyjamas. Naked she sat down on the dust
covered floor of her empty-looking flat and quickly she arranged her
multi-buy surprise label pack around her.

In the outer hallway on the second floor, Lynny pressed the button for
the lift. As the doors opened, the faces of the couple from flat
twenty-four lit up and widened as they caught sight of her. They looked
at her without saying a word. Lynny's skin was covered in name and
address labels, they stretched and overlapped down her legs and arms
and curved softly over her belly. There was a red coloured label stuck
directly to each nipple, and the man from flat twenty-four's gaze
rested there in amazement before his girlfriend spoke.

"Lynne, are you OK?" she asked kindly. "Do you want me to phone your
Mum?"

"No," replied Lynny, "I'm fine! Look," she pointed, "this is Me!" She
twirled in the hallway. "This is Me. I am Me!"

The woman from flat twenty-four smiled awkwardly as she took hold of
her boyfriend's hand, and the two of them edged out of the lift and
away from Lynny, who got in and pressed the button for the ground
floor.

There was a strange man on the ground floor Lynny had never seen
before. He had his back turned as she emerged from the lift and was
tapping the side of the public phone with a twenty p, swearing under
his breath. Hearing the 'ding' of the lift, he looked over his
shoulder, and there was Lynny in her labels.

"Has someone tried to post you?!" asked the man, laughing suddenly. He
put the receiver back on the phone.

"No," answered Lynny. She looked at his face which was still amused,
and laughed too.

"Who on earth are you?" asked the stranger, and then coming a little
closer, said, "ah... Lynette Hather...stone. Is that you?"

"Yes, this is me!" said Lynny, happy to be asked that particular
question.

"Well I am Raymond Horton" said the man, "But call me Ray. This is
me!" He pointed to himself in the way Lynny had done just previously,
and then looked her up and down.

"Call me Lynny!" said Lynny. She giggled.

There was a pause as they eyed each other momentarily. Ray sat down on
the first step of the staircase going up, and shifted to one side
making room for Lynny. She sat down beside him. "It's cold" she said,
readjusting to sit on her hands. "It's cold in winter and in this
building."

"Yeh it is," replied Ray, "so maybe you should get a coat. What's with
the outfit?"

"I like them" said Lynny, "I like the way they feel."

"How do they feel?" asked Ray.

"Try one," she said and ripped one from her wrist.

She held it out for him to take. He stuck it to his forehead making a
face. "How do I look? ...Feels kind of tight doesn't it?"

"Yeh" said Lynny nodding. "Tight and loose at the same time. They
start peeling off by themselves when you move, look. I really like
them, I ordered them, they came in the post." She bent her elbows and
then a knee. "It's funny having your name all over you. Your name -
like it's really you inside."

"Really you inside..." repeated Ray, "Yeh you're right it gets
looser."

"It feels like Me," said Lynny, "it's funny, it feels like there's
another..."

Just then a bustling woman with a mobile phone rushed in and gasped
loudly. "Lynne, for heavens sake!" she said irritably. "Get up,
whaddoyou think you're doing? ...I'm sorry" she said, looking hurriedly
at Ray without spotting the label on his head. "This is my daughter,
although looking at her like this you'd hardly know it!" She attempted
a casual laugh and then continued, taking Lynny's arm and leading her
up the stairs. "What's this all about? What's wrong? Whaddoyou think
you look like? You've got no clothes on at all? That neighbour phoned
me, the woman, whaddoyou think I said to her? Hmmm?"

Lynny didn't respond, she entered her flat, the door opened by her
mother's key.

"Come on, let's get these off you," said her Mum once they were
inside. "Where did you get them silly girl?" She pulled away the first
few and scrunched them up into a ball.

"Ordered them," answered Lynny.

"A waste of good money," replied her Mum. She tugged and peeled. "What
were you thinking?" She screwed more up into balls. "Why don't you stay
in more? Here... you do the rest." She turned away and picked up
Lynny's pyjamas and dressing gown from the floor. "Put these on Lynne,
you'll be warmer for a start! I'll make us a drink."

Lynny sat still in a chair. She had no reason to take off her dressing
gown, no reason to raise her cheeks.

Downstairs on the ground floor, Ray had de-labelled his forehead. He
read the full name and address for the first time and glanced up the
staircase. After deliberating a short while, he suddenly stopped and
shook his head. Ray stuck the address label on the wall next to a dried
shape of chewing gum and left the building.