Guy
Fawkes’ night, another year.
With
his landlord out at work, Skunk sat in his room with the lights off, listening
to the air outside ripped apart by domestic explosives and watching shadow
after shadow drop regularly green or red or just plain light down the closed
curtains. He sipped at his hot coffee habitual in the wake of dinner, relieved
to be still after another day in his new job at the bookshop.
Something
cracked and spat in a neighbour’s garden, throwing light about the ceiling
overhead.
Skunk:
Oh Jesus, I felt like I was... It was after eh, I think it was after lunch, it
may have been when some of the others were on their afternoon break because the
boss came out the back and asked if I would go out into the front shop. I was
processing invoices, I’ve been doing them all day and my head is killing me
just now from it, sitting at the computer and ehm... So I went, I went out on
to the shop floor, to the information desk just to help, you know, whatever
people were needing and eh, I looked up and there was this girl there and damn
that’s glass on the floor, where did that
a
tiny shard on the carpet beneath his finger which he pressed just hard enough
to lift in his skin, and then flipped toward the wastebasket.
Skunk:
Anyway, she was looking for a book, ehm... Oh I can’t remember the eh, what was
it... something like “Introductory...” Hang on, “An Introduction to Using
Statistical Tests in Psychology”, something like that and eh, I asked her if
she, I remember looking straight into her eyes which I don’t, I don’t usually
make that much eye contact, I asked her if she’d looked for the book on the
shelf. She said she hadn’t seen it so eh, I walked out across the shop floor
and I was really self-conscious about it ehm, to the psychology section. She said
she hadn’t actually looked in there, she, she may have looked under statistics
or somewhere, and I had a look on the pallet as well, there was nothing there.
I checked the statistics shelves as well, and she was following me around the
shop, so ehm... I’d seen one, I’d seen that one of the other branches of the
shop had a copy of the book when I’d checked the stock levels on the computer,
so when we were walking back to the desk I was kind of talking to her over my
shoulder saying I’d, I’d call this other branch and see if eh, if I could get
it transferred over. I mean, the computer said that we had five of them
in stock, but, it’s not to be trusted.
swirling
the last of the coffee to free up its silted caffeine for one final swallow.
Skunk:
So I called the other branch and then it, I mean, it only said that they had
one in stock so the chances were zero and they were engaged and it took ages to
get through and meanwhile I was saying, looking over at this girl and telling
her the line was engaged and other banalities, ehm, and ehm, I did get
through and they didn’t have a copy, which wasn’t a big surprise so I asked her
if she’d like to order it and she said she needed it by Christmas so... eh, I
took her details, her name and eh address and everything. Victoria May, eh, is
her name. Miss. I always get really embarrassed asking women, you know, if
she’s a lecturer then you should ask if they’re a doctor or a professor or
whatever, ehm, when it’s a student, I suppose, you don’t know if, I just,
actually I think most people just usually miss it out but ehm, she... Oh well I
said, she said it was Miss so eh, I put through the book order, eh...
His
shoulders lifted and settled with the sigh, prompting silence.
Skunk
(eventually): It’s just, it was one of those, it was really Jesus my head
hurts, I’ve got a fatal headache on. I hope it’s not from that computer screen,
all those tiny little numbers moving around on a monitor in front of your eyes.
It was a very strange sensation because, I mean, there are tons of ehm...
students who, who pass through the shop every day and ehm, we, we’re always
talking about them. The staff, some of the staff anyway, come out the
back and, in the back shop area and say, I mean, “Oh I just served the most
beautiful woman”, you know, and I mean we’re always saying it but eh, it
wasn’t, I mean, it wasn’t that this girl was particularly beautiful, but it was
something else, it was something else and ehm, and when I was typing out her
name and everything, all that Miss stuff and your eh, your surname, your first
name whatever, your address, your postcode and I really wanted to keep on going
and pretend I was typing all this sort of spurious information in, you know,
your address, your postcode, eh, “Could I have your telephone number please?
Eh, do you have a partner? Ehm, are you going to a bonfire tonight?”
Jesus
smiled. The past fortnight, with children burning fireworks in the nearby
streets, shredding the sky with noise and colour that sucked air out of the
dark and spat light back into it, had grown in Skunk a predictability adhering
to the recognised universal requisite with only the transitory and involuntary
anonym undivinable, so Jesus knew that for Skunk, in common need amongst the
unanimous mass, Guy Fawkes’ night in the midst of melancholy autumn was not
time to be passed alone, and as such fell middling on a gauge extending from
something as self-evident as eating on out to the annual insular finity of
Advent and Christmas Eve itself.
(Christmas
Day proper persistently fell short of expectation even for Jesus, its sense of
comedown abrogating the previous evening’s atmosphere of tension and wonder.)
With almost two months’ pending grace and not a blade in the whole house sharp
enough to do him any real damage, he knew he need not worry. Tomorrow when the
streets would be strewn with skinny black sticks and burnt-out cardboard tubes,
Skunk would have forgotten both face and name, such being the absolute total
knowledge he would ever have of that whole other existence so briefly connected
with his own.
Jesus
returned his attention to the young man’s prayer.
Skunk:
Ehm, “Would you like to go to a bonfire tonight?” And just pretend that,
you know, this was all somehow relevant to her ordering the book but obviously
eh, ehm... Ah it doesn’t help that my boots are in the cobbler’s just now. If
I’d had my boots on... actually
suddenly
wincing
Skunk:
Jesus. My head is killing me. I have to get some paracetamol.
