Skunk: One double
Jack Daniel’s please, no ice no mixer, and ehm, what, one Coke? One orange
juice?
the latter order
offered as question to ache1 opposite at one of the hotel lounge’s
little coffee tables, Brother Skunk and her both still fresh in the only days’
old revelation of her pregnancy.
ache1:
Can you make that two double
Skunk
(spluttering): I think not, not for
you.
ache1:
Wh-, I’m drinking for two.
Skunk: Not on my
watch, lady.
ache1:
Well then you’re not either,
and to the hotel
cog
ache1: two orange juices please.
cog (smiling at
Brother Skunk): An excellent choice, madam.
and exits.
Skunk: Jesus Christ
orange juice? Orange juice?
ache1:
Don’t blame me, partner.
Autumn occurs
itself, each day just that gradual degree or so colder at its beginning and, as
here, its end, even if mid-day and those hours immediately either side could
still lay legitimate claim to summer, the hotel in its seasonal rhythm
noticeably quieter in the absence of summer’s tourists.
Both excited, even
if their excitement is muted and a little cautious, couched as it is in the
sense of that initial preciousness between them to which they are surprised to
find they have temporarily reverted.
ache1 (into
the silence): Speaking of orange juice, I had a bully at primary school who ah
Skunk resists the
urge to immediately interrupt with the myriad examples of his own unhappy
schooldays,
Skunk (working):
What eh, why were they, how come you
ache1:
God I’ve no idea, I don’t think, I mean, I never knew. It could have been
something to do with my mum being a teacher, she might have said something, or
had to discipline an older brother or sister of theirs or something, who knows?
But I was getting the brunt of something,
that’s for damn sure.
Skunk begins again
to form a response based on his own childhood, and again relents.
ache1:
Mum would make us these little packed lunches every day, just sandwiches and a
biscuit or something, and we each had a little flask she’d fill with Kool-Aid.
Anyway-
Skunk: I’ve heard of Kool-Aid, that... whole...
Jonestown thing?
ache1:
Oh God, Skunk, this is worse, believe me, this is much worse.
Skunk: Proceed.
ache1:
At some point I att-
checking to make
sure the nearby tables are still unoccupied.
ache1:
This kid, the bully, for whatever reason she decided she was going to take my
Kool-Aid, every day, and, every single lunchtime she’d stop by and it just,
really quickly it just became this accepted thing that I’d keep my flask for her
and hand it over without-
sighs.
ache1:
And once this thing started it wouldn’t have even... it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to drink it before she
came round, which would have been the most obvious-, because...
shrugging
ache1:
..I I, I guess I thought she’d just beat me up.
Brother Skunk
watches as the decision to continue or not plays out across her features.
ache1:
Usually she’d drink it down in one go, and I’d just sort of stand there and
kind of
now blushing,
ache1:
Oh God it makes me just fucking die
to admit this, Skunk, but I’d actually, I would praise her on her ability to do
this, you know,
suddenly wide-eyed
ache1: “Wow,
I just can’t believe you were able to drink that all down in one gulp...
with genuine anger
ache1:
..you fucking. greedy. bitch. pig.”
Skunk: Because you
were scared.
That he does not
phrase this as a question endears him to her all the more.
ache1:
Sometimes she’d just pour it right out on the ground, you know, if she didn’t
actually want to drink it.
Skunk: Right,
because even if she didn’t want it,
she still didn’t want you to have it,
right?
ache1 (pointing
at him with pistol fingers): Bingo.
smiling, though her
face appears to have aged in these memories’ telling.
The waiter returns
with a tray bearing two small bottles of orange juice, and two glasses weighted
with ice. Setting the glasses down, he pours into each about half of each
bottle, putting the now half-full bottles alongside. As he leaves, with no
request for either room number or signature, ache1 makes a point of
thanking him conspiratorially, to their joint and obvious amusement.
Skunk (watching him
leave): I know, I know, why even bother?
as they both
immediately empty the remnant juice into their glasses.
ache1:
Maybe he thought we wouldn’t drink all of it.
Skunk: Christ it’s
like a mouthful, if that.
ache1:
Depending on the size of mouth, of course.
They drink, both
wincing in the absence of what they’re not.
Skunk: Assuming you’re
not still doing this, how did it pan out, how did it finish up?
ache1:
Oh God, well, I only drank the orange
flavour stuff, right, that’s, I mean...
sighs.
ache1:
If the o-, I only drank orange
Kool-Aid. I had ah, I had the... the stamina for that, drinking the same
thing every day, but this kid really didn’t. And so as well as the... The
bullying then became about me having to bring in different flavours, and when I
asked my mum for, I don’t know, grape or blueberry or whatever, I think for my
mum that set off an alarm, and, you know because she was a
catching herself
ache1:
she is a teacher, she’s still a teacher, and I think you have an
in-built... in- in-
tuts
ache1:
instinct for that stuff, when something’s not right but you’re not sure why.
Laughing.
ache1: I
broke down under interrogation.
Brother Skunk sits
silent, allowing her whatever requisite space to collect together the
denouement’s various elements.
ache1:
My dad actually called the police. Mum must have told him, and next thing I
knew the police showed up at school. When I think about it now, I’m guessing
Dad probably knew a policeman and asked them a favour, rather than him actually
going to the police as a concerned... parent.
taking another sip
from her glass.
ache1:
So he showed up at school and spoke to our class, and actually named this girl,
in front of the whole class,
Skunk’s eyebrows
arc in surprise and concern, all too capable of conceiving whatever pending
retribution.
ache1:
and I remember after that she was crying in the cloakroom, and I sort of
thought, I hoped that would be the
end of it, but when I got to the end of the day she was waiting for me with a a
bunch of kids she’d obviously, sort of, threatened
together, I guess. Jesus.
Empathy stipples
the flesh of Skunk’s fore-arms; he rubs at each with its opposite hand.
ache1:
So now I had to try and think of a different way to get home, and there was a chase of sorts, but you could tell
the other kids were really half-assed about it, and when I think about it now
they were probably in the same boat as I was, just playing along for fear of
taking a beating.
Lifting her glass
again to drink prompts Brother Skunk to do likewise, the sound of ice loose
against glass.
ache1:
At one point I found myself trapped in a fairly new housing development, and I
ran up the driveway to the front door and I remember being horrified to realise
the house was empty, the doorbell hadn’t even been fitted and there was just a
bunch of wires sticking out, so I put my whole hand over the wires and I was
shouting “I’LL RING THE BELL! I’LL RING THE BELL!” which seemed to work as the
other kids maybe realised they could actually get into trouble, or maybe they
saw this as their opportunity to abandon the whole thing, and I think the bully
was probably thinking the same thing, you know, she’d done enough, she hadn’t
just buckled when the police showed up.
For no reason other
than to do something, ache1 scoops a piece of ice from out her glass
and sets it melting on the table’s surface.
ache1:
And that was that. The next day, or the Monday after if it was a weekend I can’t
remember, it was game over.
Pause.
ache1:
And then I was back to drinking all that fucking Kool-Aid myself.
Pause.
ache1:
Every day.
Skunk laughs.
ache1:
Jesus, you know she was probably ecstatic to finally have a reason to stop
drinking that shit.
Their next swallow
renders each glass damn near empty.
Skunk (tipping the
weakly-coloured ice this way and that in the evening’s last light): We’ve had
orange juice before now, though.
ache1:
What’s that?
Skunk: We’ve had
orange juice before, this isn’t the first time we’ve
ache1:
And?
Skunk: No, it’s
not, I’m not, I’m just wondering why you never mentioned this before.
ache1 (visibly
thinking): I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want to
sighs
ache1:
..maybe I didn’t want you to think of me as
trailing off,
remembering full well the context of their first encounter.
Brother Skunk
wonders too at this, how during their picnic, on what they have since
determined their first date, she had told him of her abortion, but he decides
in present circumstance to avoid its mention, perhaps recognising her attempt
to secrete those things she now affords importance within the very volume of
words deemed less significant, but which her subconscious might well have otherwise,
both with youth enough still that their mortality can remain invisibly distant.
Skunk: Oh hell with
this.
grabbing at a
passing porter with what is for him uncustomary brusqueness,
Skunk: Sir? Please?
Two triple Jack Daniel’s no ice no mixer.
ache1: “Oh
yeah!”
