Marvin Walsh sits on his bed watching a girl, in a room, over the road. He is wearing a wrap-around skirt and a vest. The room is empty except for his unmade bed; a dirty, uncovered duvet and three soiled pillows ' stained light brown in the middle - are behind him. Marvin sits on his bare mattress observing her. She is texting. Both hands hold her mobile phone; he sees her thumbs pressing buttons. He wonders what she is saying and to whom. She is concentrating on what she is doing; oblivious of her watcher.
Marvin's room, on the third floor in a rented house, is cold. He doesn't put on his heater; he shivers from the chill while excitement flows through him.
This girl, over the road, he wants. Marvin normally gets what he wants, always has and always will. His mother makes sure of that. The only child of a one-parent family; he makes demands on her that she happily fulfils; beyond his dreams - he is privileged. He lives at home with her still - only this rotten place, this bed-sit, is his bolt hole, away from her lovey-dovey ways. She wants him with her, at home, most of the time, and he wants out. He knew from an early age she was going to give him love, objects and his own way. He made sure she did. He needs to escape, cut the umbilical cord. This is where he is at; this shit hole and he has found love; a different type ' sexual. A feeling Marvin hasn't used to its full potential, hasn't needed to, what with a mother like that.
The girl in the window puts her mobile phone down. She turns away and out of his sight. One curtain closes; she comes into sight again as she pulls the other to meet it. She is gone, behind closed curtains. Marvin stays on his bed; hands clasped, feet crossed.
He is cold; it's hours since she closed the curtains. His toes are numb and his back aches from sitting upright for so long; the mattress is thin and the bed frame digs into his buttocks. He is weary, nervous, waiting to glimpse her another time, just once more, and more.
He wiggles his toes and rubs his hands together. His skirt is open, exposing him. He folds the soft material over his legs, straightens it. Out the corner of his eye he catches movement from her room. She pulls one curtain, then the other. She is fully dressed ' wearing a short denim skirt, black tights or leggings, he can't make out which. Her top is white, see though, no sleeves. Hair is up - tied in a knot to one side with short bursts of hair sprouting behind her ears.
She takes her mobile again and sits on a chair facing his room. Marvin watches, forgets he is cold, forgets he is hungry. His eyes narrow as he focuses on this slight girl with light brown hair. He wishes he knew her name; she could be a Sarah, Clare, Emma - he wants to know. Now. He wants to invite her for a drink, a meal, a walk ' anything. He needs her, wants her.
Her thumbs are working once more. Marvin leaves his bed; bends to switch the heater on. He takes a sandwich from the plate on the floor and bites into the stale bread. Rancid ham touches his tongue; he swallows quickly while he watches her. She puts the phone to her ear. She pulls her top straight, showing her breasts, lowering the front.

She laughs as she talks; stands and paces back and forth in front of the window, looking down at the street now and then, looking across at Marvin's house. She sits again and puts her feet up on the window ledge; they are bare, small, perfect. She rubs a leg with her free hand, up and down, then under her knee. She does the same to the other leg; up and down, under her knee. Marvin notices a tub of something she is dipping her hand into, a cream he guesses - she is massaging her legs, creaming them, smoothing them, smiling as she talks. Marvin wonders if the person she is talking to knows what she is doing. It ends. The phone calls ends. She puts her mobile down and pulls on a jacket.
Marvin stands and steps into faded jeans, he pulls the strings of his skirt free. He throws it on the bed. He sprays deodorant under his arms, takes an anorak from the back of the door and runs down the stairs and out to the street. He pulls a cigarette from his pocket, it is bent and flat but still in one piece, he lights it. He leans against the wall and looks across the road waiting for the girl to appear.


Marvin waits and waits. He looks up at her window and it is dark inside. She must have gone out the back way, he thinks, perhaps there is another way, another door. Marvin fidgets nervously now and hunches his shoulders, deep in thought.
A car rounds the corner and stops. Right next to him. Right in front of him. A thin girl, over fifteen but not perhaps twenty gets out opens a purse and pays the driver. Marvin watches her as she waits for the vehicle to move away before stepping over the kerb and crossing the road. She is wearing a long skirt, see through, with a white shirt over and long beads around her waist like a belt; they swing against her thin hips as she walks. Marvin watches as she digs down into her bag for what he imagines might be keys ' but she brings out a mobile and talks into it. She drops her bag down on the ground and leans against the wall, right opposite Marvin. She looks at him while she speaks, she laughs loudly before putting the mobile in her bag again. She turns to Marvin as she opens the door.
'What you staring at, creep?' she shouts. She is gone. Inside the same building as the other girl.
Marvin shuffles away, back into his room, back to the window. He gets undressed and sits once more on the bed. His skirt feels damp from the moisture in the room, the window is glistening with drops from the rain now falling and the condensation makes him cold. He pulls a cover over his body as he settles in to watch the room on the first floor, a different floor this time.
His mobile rings, he reads the number flashing in the screen. He doesn't want to talk to his mother. Not now. Not while he can watch a different girl. He turns it off. Wipes the window, waits.

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