ache1:
SKUNK!
Slumped
against the unlit gas radiator and dressed only in his Levi’s undershorts,
something to the colour of Skunk’s skin being so visibly empty of heat
convinces her he himself is the source of the bedroom’s chill, a temperature
preternaturally colder than that of the winter incipient outside.
Having
telephoned the bookshop only to discover his absence and then receiving no
reply from the house itself, she had caught a taxi from the hotel, gaining
entry with her own key even as she battered frantically upon the door.
She
has every reason to presume his condition one of drunken-ness: the bottle of
unfinished whiskey; that his eyes move but fail to locate her approach; and
upon his face today’s beard consolidating that of yesterday. Kneeling at his
side she immediately notices his lobe empty of its ear-ring, the torn hole
filled with a blood of such freshness as to be still wetly reflective and the
little silver skunk nowhere to be seen. The hand tucked in awkward at his back
comes around clutched tight to a shotglass she has to loosen from his fingers,
her initial presumption confirmed by its content’s colouring but confounded by
the unfamiliar scent, an odour of such potency as to proscribe its tasting.
ache1:
- the fuck is this? It stinks.
She
suffers a sudden momentary lack of balance and disorientation, severe enough
that she must reach out to the wall for support, her eyes still fixed upon
Skunk as if ordaining him involuntary compass to her equilibrium.
There
is a dragging clamminess to the passive weight of his skin beneath her hands as
she helps him toward the bed, his ankle’s blemish an awful muted puce from
which she must forcefully avert her stare.
ache1:
Are you insane? Ah? Are you insane?
In
its proximity to his mother’s funeral the tactlessness of such an utterance
suggests an awareness that in this context he is beyond her reach, that she
speaks less to him, more for herself.
She
lays him down upon his back and packs the eiderdown close in around him.
ache1
(breathing heavily from exertion): Do you feel sick? Skunk? Do you feel sick?
Have you been sick?
Looking
for anything in his impassive eyes she runs her palms back flat across each
side of his face.
ache1:
This isn’t fair to me. Skunk. Skunk this isn’t fair to me. Look at me. Look at
me. Please. Please. Please will you look at me, cowboy. Please, Skunk. Please.
His
eyes still lacking focus he mumbles
Skunk:
Forgive all men their sins.
before
they roll up white inside his head and he drifts off from the issue of his own
breath.
With
an unmistakably maternal pragmatism already evident these months before her due
date she ignites the fire to heat the room, and begins to clear up the debris
of his drunk. In collecting his shirt up from off the floor she is distraught
to uncover a shop-bought Christmas cake gnawed at as if by ravenous animals,
and shivers with sudden horror at the portent implied by the inch of
amber-coloured liquid remaining to the abandoned bottle of bay rum hair tonic.
