Though
the settings controlling its colour, brightness, and contrast had been altered
to such a degree as to render the television screen inscrutably psychedelic,
the lack of ambiguity in its soundtrack betrayed the activity buried beneath
the hallucinogenic abstraction. Examining his Levi’s plimsolls by even such
skewed illumination Brother Skunk could determine they were filthy and would
need washed.
ache1:
Just put them out, if you leave them out in the corridor the nightporter will
clean them for you.
Skunk:
I thought that was just, is that not just for shoes they can polish? If you
leave shoes out, the kind of shoes you polish, I thought that was, I thought
that was what that was all about.
ache1
(setting her E.T. doll aside upon the bed): Oh give ‘em here.
and
before he could protest was already returning empty-handed from the door.
Skunk
(affected): That’s great, now I ain’t got me no shoes.
ache1:
Said Elvis.
He
stood in his socks as she approached to fasten both legs around one of his own
just above the knee, swinging her hips side to side in a strange little wiggle
dance requiring such exertion that each of her subsequent utterances came
punctuated with its remnant breath exhaled hard down through her nose.
ache1:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury
Skunk:
Uh-oh, where the hell is this heading?
taking
hold of her shoulders simply to remain upright.
ache1
(emphatic): Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… I submit for your
consideration… the following information:
For
Brother Skunk there was to these lines already an element of the rehearsed
routine, a feeling their sure-footed delivery served only to reinforce, but if
the words were not her own she gave no intimation as to their source.
Skunk:
Is there much more of this?
ache1:
must yet acknowledge… that he will indeed… at some point in the future…
actually cease to breathe… and that we must at that point… relinquish all
notion of the corporeal man… remaining on earth still amongst us.
Skunk:
Just, wait, what age was Elvis when he died?
ache1
(continuing to dance): At the announcement of his death… Mr Elvis Aaron
Presley… had passed only forty-two years… upon the surface of this earth.
Skunk:
Right. Okay. So… forty-two in ‘77, I mean, that’s not exactly old old is
it? If… He could still have years left in him. It’s not inconceivable
that he might have that length again, or longer even.
ache1
(incredulous): We would ask you to study carefully… exhibit A… in which
photograph… it is painfully obvious… and can be indisputably
discerned… that the deceased was in actual fact… a big fat fuck.
Skunk
(laughing): You sir, are a maniac.
ache1
(stopping to wrap both arms around him): Cintus suprimus!
Skunk:
Beg pardon?
ache1:
Cintus suprimus!
Skunk:
What? What’s that, some Canadian thing?
and
then in his best attempt at the accent
Skunk:
Canadian eh?
ache1:
Jesus God boy it’s from “E.T.”
and
then looking up into his face
ache1:
Your landlord better have a vcr.
