The
first thing Brother Skunk was obliged to do when he arrived at the hospital for
a second time was dry off; the rain had been coming down hard enough to drench
him even in the short distance between the bus stop and the main entrance. He
rubbed his hair this way and that in the blast of the bathroom’s electric dryer
until his ears began to ache with artificial heat, and then raked it back
through with a smear of dispenser-soap leaving it to stand on end like a wet
question mark.
Her
bed on the ward was empty, but the staff-nurse directed him to a different ward
two floors down where he did indeed find her, asleep. Taking the plastic chair
bedside, he examined the somewhat disturbing sepia postcard upon the cabinet,
bewildered by its blank and sinister reverse.
A
passing nurse mistook his expression, with
cog
(whispering): It’s okay, she’s only sleeping
smiling
reassuringly in a way with which he was already familiar from the visits to his
mother.
Skunk
looked up at her with something he then suddenly felt to be inappropriate, as
if his own smile was nominally wrought, a meaningless by-product of his other
features’ orientation at that moment, and this confirmed when he directed it at
an elderly woman crossing the ward for the toilets; she did not smile back.
Familiarity
made him easy too with the latent rising tearfulness held in check.
A
convex beneath the bedclothes he assumed was E.T., rising and falling with the
rhythmic constant buoyancy of sleep.
Certain
factors brought to bear if he looked at her face, still wearing its damage.
Skunk
(muttering into his hands, prayer-pressed together): Hi... Ehm... It’s a bit,
it’s a bit stupid to ask you how you are and everything. I don’t...
He
was no stranger to bedside monologue, and this one he addressed to the wreckage
of her arms, lying discoloured and cooling both outside the sheets.
Skunk:
I’ll tell you something, the last thing I did at the shop today before I came
here, I was eh, there was a lady came in, she was American too, if you are
American, although I suppose she could have been Canadian as well, and eh, she
we have these bookmarks in the shop and ehm, they’ve just got a list of the
different branches of the shop on them, you know addresses and phone numbers
and fax numbers and whatever...
He
imagined her, in her sleep, to be out walking in the sunshine somewhere with
her E.T., perhaps even the E.T. at that, and him with his words trying
to drop a smile over the whole synopsis.
Skunk.
And we usually, you know, they’re free things, there’s nothing special
about them but eh, it’s always nice to give them to people wh- who’re here
from, or who you assume to be here from abroad. It’s like a little extra
souvenir or something for them. I had, she must have been paying by, she was
paying by credit card and everything so eh, I put a couple of these bookmarks
in her bag with her books and I was eh, swiping her card and checking it and
stuff, she signed the slip and when she gave me it back I eh, I noticed that
she she eh surreptitiously took a couple extra of the of the bookmarks and
eh... I thought this was kind of weird just because, because of the way she did
it, you know it means nothing to me. I don’t, I don’t mind. You know she
could’ve, she could’ve asked or whatever. Maybe she thought she was eh... maybe
she thought she was only supposed to get a couple but she would, you
know while I was doing something else she would help herself. So what I
did was when she when she
smiling
Skunk:
when she was putting, when she was putting her card and receipts in her purse,
I eh, that’s purse like here not... In America a purse is a handbag
isn’t it? I don’t know what you call a, what we call a purse, I don’t, a
wallet or whatever I don’t know, but she was putting her card and her
receipts in there, so I kind of picked up the bag and, that with the books in
it to hand it to her and I s-, I just grabbed this big thick probably about,
the rest of the bookmarks, probably about two inches thick, a stack of them
about two inches thick and just put them in her bag and eh, she didn’t see and
eh I think, you know, kind of like that thing, you know, everybody has that
fear that they, that they’ve done something... and...
Bending
forward, he dropped the weight of his head into the ready bowl of his hands,
felt it descend his arms and absorbed from elbows to mid-thigh.
Skunk:
..perhaps people think they’ve got away with something but they’re not sure if
somebody saw it or not, and sometimes you don’t, you don’t want to say oh I,
you know, like I didn’t say to her today, you “Help yourself, you can take as
many as you like” and maybe she’ll go home and she’ll think that, I don’t know,
but when she opens up the, when she opens her bag and sees all those bookmarks
she’ll know, she’ll know that I knew. Sometimes that’s...
yawning.
Skunk:
Sometimes that’s the best thing...
looking
at her face.
Skunk:
I think I’m probably in love with you.
He
didn’t see it, was looking down at the floor, but a slit broke fissure in the
worst of her ruin and there afloat upon the wet bed of broken veins beneath, a
bruised eyeball that wept in exertion of reconnaissance, before closing.
