His
eyes smarting and his throat parched from the toxicity of whatever it was the
other kp was mopping across the terracotta-coloured tiles of the kitchen floor,
Brother Skunk took the weight off his ankle, easing himself up onto the sink’s
rippled aluminium draining area, his knees tucked under his chin.
cog:
What are you going to do up there?
Skunk:
Up here?
cog:
No you dum-, I mean next week, when you go up t-
Skunk:
Oh right, right. Well, I’m not actually... I’ll find something.
pulling
the laces from his boots.
cog:
At least you’ll you’ll ah, you know, you’ll get to see your mum more.
Skunk:
Yeah yeah you’re right, and I suppose even without all of this ehm, you know,
even if I still, even if Leo
rubbing
his chin with his palm, creating saliva in his mouth against the dryness of the
air, and swallowing.
Skunk:
I’d’ve probably had to leave anyway, even without the salmon. She’s eh,
she’s not getting... Oh, I don’t know.
kicking
off both boots and leaning back against the window.
cog
(letting mop fall): Ah fuck this.
pulling
the sleeves of his blue overall from off his arms and letting them hang in
loose, empty flaps at his waist, jumped up full onto the other window ledge by
the broken still. An insectile tattoo crawled from under one of the sleeves of his
t-shirt and from the other he unrolled an asthma inhaler to take two quick and
audible puffs.
cog:
HEY! Lookit this!
Brother
Skunk twisted his upper body to afford a view of the untidy grass yard two
floors down, where two cats faced off in tensile stasis.
cog:
Catfight!
Skunk:
Oh Jesus, I’m not too f- I wonder how long they’ve been there.
and
cog:
SHITSAKE! Lookit that, did look ohhh fuck!
Skunk
turned and rose onto his knees to better see exactly what was happening.
cog:
Did you see it did you see that?
The
cats remained immobile.
Skunk:
What, they’re just
cog:
No no no look at the ginger one right? Just down, about a just about four o’
clock from it, follow a line about four o’ clock and you there! See it
moving? There’s a fucking mouse in the grass there.
Skunk:
Oh Jesus! I see it yes. That is one dead mouse. Oh Jesus.
cog:
Not yet it isn’t.
opening
the window.
cog
(shouting down): FUCK OFF FUCK OFF! LEAVE IT ALONE YOU FUCKERS! PSSSSS
interrupted
by a fit of dry coughing.
The
two cats remained immobile.
cog:
HANG ON MOUSE. Skunk have you got the keys?
Skunk
reached into his pocket and tossed the small bunch of keys across the kitchen.
The other kp plunged downstairs to the fridges, reappearing seconds later with
a dripping sliver which he threw down into the grass.
cog:
EAT THAT! EAT THAT YOU FUCKS! LEAVE THE MOUSE ALONE!
Inaccurate,
the throw left the fish like the mouse itself, equidistant between both cats.
cog:
Fuck!
The
little tableau still motionless.
Brother
Skunk felt his heart run quick in his chest. He wiped his breath from off the
glass watching tiny movement below as the mouse edged alongside the wet curve
of fish to gnaw at its raw white flesh.
cog
(laughing): You see that? Oh my God.
Skunk
(laughing): The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.
cog
(jumping down from the window): Well fuck that. Coffee time. Fuck.
and
laughing again.
cog:
I mean, you try to help, and what oh fuck it. Coffee?
pouring
two cups from the bulbous glass jugs that had sat upon the filter machine
hotplate since lunchtime.
cog:
I had this really weird dream last night about my son, you know. I dreamt that
when I was putting him to bed I found this Lone Ranger doll that I’d
Skunk
(sniffing tentatively at the handed cupful of coffee): I had one of
them.
cog:
Yeah I had one too. I think it’s a it’s a generational thing, you know, if you
trace if you go back through ahm, you know our age group, you’ll hit a point
where it’s all Lone Ranger stuff, but ah in the dream I found this doll under
his bed. You know, I was on my knees by the bed reading him a story or
something and ah, I was tucking him in or something,
wincing
at his first taste of the coffee before setting the cup to one side
cog:
and then under the bed was this Lone Ranger doll, and I remember feeling really
upset, because I’d got this doll for him and I’d really wanted him to like it
and everything, but ah... I mean, I asked him why it was under the bed, and he
said he didn’t like it. It wa-
Skunk:
I always had bad feelings connected to my Lone Ranger doll because he had a the
eh, that white hat that they had, the one on mine got a rip in it, so I always
felt that he wasn’t quite right and I always felt pretty bad about that, you
know. I didn’t like playing with him knowing he was imperfect. And then the
other thing that happened was his mask broke, that little rubber the little
piece of rubber the ehm, you know, that attached the mask to his head, that
snapped at one point, so he couldn’t wear his mask.
cog
(laughing): What good is the Lone Ranger without his mask? I mean, wi- without
his mask he’s just some guy, he can’t do anything without his mask
‘cause the whole point was that he was anonymous.
Skunk:
Well, he was just a a... You know, I can’t even remember if you ever saw him as
as... You know like Batman and Bruce Wayne or ehm... Zorro. Was he not a
nobleman or something like that? Spanish or Mexican or something. But I can’t
remember if you ever did see the Lone Ranger at home... with Tonto.
Laughter.
Skunk:
Did he even have a name, I mean, apart from the Lone Ranger, or Kemo
Sabe?
cog:
I haven’t a fucking clue. I don’t remember calling him anything other than the
Lone Ranger. I remember stealing these Lone Ranger comic books from this
dentist’s waiting room when I was a kid. I’d never seen them before, and I was
ah really, you know, waiting for some fuckawful dentist and here were these
amazing Lone Ranger comics in his waiting room.
Laughter.
Brother
Skunk swirled the last of the coffee round the bottom of his cup, draining the
loosened sediment with one final swallow.
cog:
Jesus I don’t know how you ca- the mouse!
Both
kitchen porters turned back to their respective windows: the cats crouched
still, yielding nothing across the stretch of grass now empty of its mouse.
Skunk
began to question either cat’s awareness of their prey, or whether in fact each
itself was of prime importance to the other.
