The
staffroom carpet is dark enough to be absolutely without colour, and no matter
how many times it is vacuumed Brother Skunk understands that it will never be
clean, the dirt so ingrained as to almost be part of its very weft. He despairs
to even look at it, wonders if this is the result of amongst all else, the
years of smoke, infinitely rising up from off the end of infinitely lit
cigarettes and then slowly falling, always falling, each exhalation decades in
its eternal descent.
Even
with the window open, the smoke never seems to leave this room, and with the
staff’s coats hung on hooks along one wall, at the end of his every shift Skunk
must leave wrapped inside this selfsame stink.
Random
across the large dark wooden table in the middle of the room, each of the
ashtrays sits thick with detritus: ash, matches, the crumpled remnants of
extinguished cigarettes.
Central
to the attention of almost all the half-dozen staff currently taking their
break is one young trainee chef, aggrieved and clearly agitated.
cog:
I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t think it’s fuckin’ fair at all.
The
walls too are dark. In their actual colour, they are perhaps a sort of dirty
ivory or magnolia, but in the context of this room they appear as large hueless
panels of gloom, compounding the sense of claustrophobia so that Skunk feels
himself borne down upon, crushed back into his seat as if in here gravity was
just that percentage more intense.
Perhaps
one tenth of the wall opposite where Skunk sits is a shade of light blue, the result
of one particular member of staff’s initially enthusiastic attempt to
cog:
brighten this shithole right the fuck up
but
accidentally knocking the open tin of paint from off the ladder had been enough
to break his spirit, and he was quit even before the receiving of his first
wages.
cog:
Seriously though, who the fuck does that cunt think he is?
cog:
Well he’s the chef, isn’t he?
cog:
And it’s my understanding he’ll also answer to Leo.
There
exists in the room a split between those who are already bored, for whom the
novelty of this has by now long worn off, and those as would exacerbate the
situation just to see where it goes, no doubt borne of that exact same boredom.
cog:
Exactly, and if he is a cunt, at least he’s earned the right.
If
Brother Skunk was to stand up where he was, he would be able to see the large
section of carpet that had been scrubbed stiff and thin, still defiantly
unclean after the attempt at the paint’s removal.
cog:
No, but then if that’s what he wanted done he should have been in the fuckin’
smornin’.
cog:
The fuckin’ when, sorry?
cog
(not realising even in its repeating, and as if to an idiot): The. Fuckin’. Smornin’.
And he wasn’t, was he?
Over
by the window, the window always open at breaktime no matter the weather, at a
separate and smaller round table clearly designated hers and hers alone, sits
the head waitress, an elderly woman in possession of a crown of highly styled
and un-naturally blonde hair, and what could only be called a sizable bosom.
More often than not, her white blouse sits pulled awry so that through a
stretch between the buttons a surge of her brassiere strains visibly against
the seam’s stitching. Crushing out the first of those two cigarettes she will
consume in this short break, Skunk watches as, underneath the table, she begins
to fold down each of her fingers, first those of one hand, then of the other,
then back again to the first.
cog:
He’s doing it deliberately, that much I do fuckin’ know. I could be
doing the fuckin’ starters and he could have that fat bastard doing all the
prep.
cog:
And that would be Terry.
cog:
Actually he’s right though, Terry really is a fat bastard.
cog:
He is fat, yes.
cog:
And, a bastard.
cog:
He thinks he’s making a fuckin’ point, but all he’s doing is making himself look
a right fuckin’ dick. Or he could even have the fuckin’ kps at all that in the
afternoons
At
which point Brother Skunk lifts his head, and looks across.
cog:
Well why not, what the fuck else are you doing? It’s not like it takes all
afternoon to do the fuckin’ cleaning, it’s not like you couldn’t get the
fuckin’ parsley chopped and the melba toast all done before we come back on.
Every fuckin’ day it’s the same, curling the fuckin’ butter and chopping the
fuckin’ parsley. I mean, if that’s all that fuckin’ bastard’s going to let me
do I don’t see the fuckin’ point in even staying.
The
silence that follows is indicative of exactly how many people in the room would
try and prevent his departure should he attempt to leave right this minute now,
each of them wearied of his tedious profanity.
cog
(despairing and dismissive): Ah fuck it. Fuck the lot of you.
Brother
Skunk sees the head waitress now lift her hands above the table, watches the
calculations manifest upon her face.
cog
(laughing as she speaks around the second cigarette, in her mouth and as yet
unlit): So if I’m counting right that’s one cunt, one dick, eleven fucks, and
two bastards. Story of my life, that is.
