The
curled stairway is stagnant with only remembrance of exhaled smoke and he finds
her with E.T. at its top as per map and her instruction, sitting before the
doorway built into its abrupt truncation and surrounded by a string of tiny
coloured Christmas lights unwound upon the carpet, their glow bland beneath the
single window’s ambient late afternoon light.
Skunk
(whispering): Are you allowed in here?
ache1:
Ahm, I ah, I’m not sure actually, and probably not. I’m not doing any harm
though, so...
Skunk:
How on earth did you find it?
ache1:
I don’t know, it just sort of occurred itself to me on my wanderings.
Skunk
(sitting down): It occurred itself?
ache1:
Well, yes, and it’s too late to change it now, so, rightly or wrongly, yes. Oh
can I see
noticing
the little skunk ear-ring bright amongst his hair.
ache1:
You’ll have to watch that doesn’t scab over.
Skunk:
Yeah, I’m... a little premature, but I thought, you know
touching
his ear with a deal of tenderness.
Skunk:
Where did these come from?
ache1:
There’s a whole bunch of Christmas stuff in here, they’ve got bagfuls of
tinsel.
rapping
a knuckle off the cupboard door beside her.
ache1:
They’re better later, they look sort of... diluted just now.
Far
below them now sounds distant and indistinct, from out which muted voices
attain increasing clarity in their approach,
ache1:
Uh-oh.
to
come suddenly loud in the opening of the stairway’s bottom door.
cog:
Well I mean they brought s- six... eight checks, must have been eight checks
all,
Skunk
looks up quickly with some alarm to see ache1 smiling back behind
the finger crossing her lips in an exaggerated gesture willing him to silence.
cog:
all at once, and the first check was two à la carte and two tagliatelles, and
they take time to do, especially if you want them to be nice anyway, you know,
and even if you don’t want them to be nice they take time to do, you
know, it’s a pain in the arse and we don’t, I don’t take any à la carte these
days.
cog:
Mm-hm.
cog:
So I had to run downstairs to get that. Meanwhile, there’s another seven checks
come on.
cog:
But isn’t that what he did this morning as well?
and
gone again behind the closing of the stairway’s other door below the curve, to
continue only as sound muted beyond meaning.
Presently
the fresh smoke of their cigarettes will ebb out into the stale air.
ache1:
It’s a staffroom or a smoking room for the kitchen staff.
Skunk:
Do they know you come up here?
ache1
(shrugs): I doubt it.
Skunk:
Hey maybe I could get a job as a kp here.
ache1:
What and wash my dishes? No way.
Skunk:
I thought you washed your own.
ache1
(quickly): Oh. Why don’t we get some room service? I could pop back up to my
room and phone it in for here, ahm, get the guy to bring it here.
Skunk:
Ehm
ache1:
No? Some whiskies and sandwiches? They have my Moosehead in the fridge down
there, we could get just some beers and peanuts or something.
Skunk:
Well it’s tempting, but then
ache1:
What?
Skunk:
I don’t know, I just, I don’t like the idea of someone knowing you come here.
If they don’t know you come there, then it’s, you know it’s it’s it’s a... it
would be a violation of that. They’d know we were here. I like eh,
ache1
(smiling): Okay. That’s okay.
and
then dramatically
ache1:
We’ll just starve to death, or ah, what’s, what’s the word for... if you,
what’s the word for if you don’t have a drink, if you
Skunk:
Dehydrate?
ache1:
That doesn’t sound right, “we’ll dehydrate to death”. Is it “thirst”? We’ll
thirst to death? That doesn’t sound right either.
It
is with an unmarked slowness that the balance of natural light tips in favour
of their artificial atmosphere’s quiet surge, until the voices emerge again
upon dead smoke,
cog:
It’s not, it’s not something that I... am... doing on purpose, b- believe me.
cog:
No but conscience, uh, subconsciously you must be.
cog:
No not at all because I, it was half, my clock’s half an hour set in front, and
the alarm goes, and, you know then I press it, and then it goes again, and then
I turn it off, right, right I’ve got about half an hour to get myself together
but I just slept through the half an hour... gap period.
behind
which the bottom door closes to.
As
the voices fade entirely from out their hearing they sit in obligatory silence,
holding on beyond into some unrecognised context both know will collapse around
the words next spoken, knowing too these words will bear revelation of current
quiet thought.
Skunk:
Do you think you’ll still be here at Christmas?
ache1
(gathering E.T. into her lap): I have no idea. It’s possible. It is
a possibility.
So
they talk, trading memories here in spring of their plural Christmas past in
distant winters, and pursue those subjects as occur at tangent to both while
the sun settles down around them. Its diminishing further consolidates the
colourful brightness of each little nimbus, and it is to this growing warmth of
light they gradually surrender speech, sitting comfortable and silent, now
separate in their melancholies.
Mother: I remember because we
didn’t have electric light and there was a tiny lamp like that one that sits on
the thing at the top of the stairs, on that stand, you know, into the bathroom,
that little one there, and there was one like that at home with oil in it, and
I used to... pinch that, or steal it, and matches, so I could light it on
Christmas morning, because we had no other light in the house. I used to get
that and take that upstairs, and then I’d go down for my stocking. And as I
say, I used to get an apple and an orange, a packet of dates, a pair of
knickers. And I used to remember going down to Whitney’s and telling them, and
they were always those fleecy-lined knickers, warm ones. I’m sure they must
have wondered the funny things I got for Christmas.
laughing.
Skunk: And now the kids will watch tv
and ever- you know, and the catalogues
Mother: Mm.
Skunk: and everything and they all, everybody
knows what they want
Mother: Mm.
Skunk: long before
Mother: Before Christmas comes. We took
what we got, and we weren’t at the shops. And we didn’t have a Christmas
tree we used to just have a branch of a tree that we decorated, we used to have
the... little things that clip on, you put a real candle in them, and lit them
on the tree. You wouldn’t get away with that now.
He
palpates the ring-filled puncture of his soft lobe, wiping away the little
consequent blood between his fingertip and thumb.
The
words when she speaks come as if perhaps rehearsed, and for longer maybe than
their short time together.
ache1:
Here is a list of my demands: I want a card on Valentine’s Day, a cake on my
birthday, and chocolate coins at Christmas.
Brother
Skunk allows himself a smile acknowledging that implicit in her words,
forgetful in the moment’s fresh context of their inedible referent.
ache1:
Half dollars in gold foil, with Kennedy’s head on ’em.
