Olympic commentary.
And the judges are very happy with that. Look. He looked like he’d clip his feet on the way down, but the drop was clear and… yes, his neck is broken. Oh, I think that the judges are going to award top marks for that. A perfect execution.
The fear comes in the morning, even before the sun’s rays have had chance to warm the room. The cold feeling in his stomach as he wakes, a full three hours before the alarm is due, and unable to rest again as his mind is taken over by the threat of the day.
He knew he should just leave, move on, but it was never that easy. Never easy to get out of a situation when the next one might be worse. And besides, if he stayed as he was, and continued to complain, he knew his place in life as a martyr, a complainant, and the voice from the sidelines.
The one who sighs.
As usual, it was the sigh that woke Maggie. She turned to stare at him, bleary eyed and no longer sympathetic from the daily alarm call.
“Just.. go back to sleep.”
He didn’t reply. There was no point – how could he explain, other than it was the weight of the world that pressured his breathing.
The day ahead was still to come. Friday. The challenge of work, then, was nearly over for the week. But the weekend wasn’t long enough, and besides, that brought its own feeling. He considered everything, and ran to the bathroom to be sick.
The sky was still grey, but he could see without putting on the light. In some ways a relief. In others… admission that sleep had escaped. Early morning seemed odd, the half light between the full darkness of the night and the sun rising. Not that he’s see it through the bathroom window – it faced the wrong direction. IT always seemed like the entire house faced in the wrong direction, there was no sunrise, no sunset, and just the coldness of the wind on the wall of the bedroom. But the house had seemed a good idea at the time. And it was too difficult to change.
A cough brought nothing up, to start with. More emptyness. A pain all across his chest. It had been getting worse this last week. Should see the doctor, he supposed, but he’d started on the fags again, and the whisky was noticibly down, and somehow it didn’t seem the right time to get an appointment. Besides, he’d have to wait a week and he could be feeling fine by then. Or be dead. Either way, it wouldn’t matter any more, so why waste their time?
Another cough. This one seemed more contageous, shaking his entire body. Bloody fags.
I was in the back as the car sped down side streets away from the hotel, down main streets until we were given one final look at the Fred and Ginger building, and once again I marvelled at how the modernity of its entinwing concrete and glass had somehow retained sympathy with the surroundings.
Up the hill. The glorious facade of the station – or was it the museum? – was on the left. Something else for next time. And she jumped on the brakes as the car careered right, into a cobbled street.
“A short cut!”
She always did this, tried to find new routes or short cuts, and claimed that she was making time when I could see the seconds fall away in waste.
“Andy?’
He ignored her. She wasn’t the cause of this. No. This was worse. This was an absolute total return to the past. And there could be absolutely nothing that he could do that would be more wrong. Especially now. And, worse still, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
First lie of the day. Best not to look at the clock. He felt that there would be more to come.
We were running late and the train would leave without us. Of course, we didn’t know this. Stuck in the Empire, trying to check out whilst the girl behind the desk filed her nails in disinterest whilst the credit card machine failed to connect. Again. We’d stood there fifteen minutes and it was steadfastful refusing to accept any friendship from our flexible payment.
“I’m sorry, Mr Schott. It’s very busy today.”
Back to the nails.
Maggie swore again, and walked over to the door.
“Andy come on. This is the last taxi.”
She turned round to face me and missed seeing the car drive away into the distance. I looked back at the desk.
“Do you have any other means of payment?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Of course. I’ll try again.”
Maggie walked back to the desk. She always hated times like this. For her, leaving a hotel should be just that: walking out. Let them send a bill if they care; let her pay it if she could be bothered. Aside from tossing the keys across the counter, she found the whole exit messy, and an invasion of her time and privacy. No patience, that was the trouble, but she had a point. Maggie was known here. Known everywhere I suppose, and the sooner she could leave a place the better. I wasn’t No idol me – and perhaps that was why she liked me. The anonymous face without a life to detract from her own.
Today, though, she was not happy with me. It had been my idea to take that final walk by the water, and my fault, by extension, that.. well, it was my fault the money was gone. And my fault that we were now trying to leave the hotel with the one final card, continually being rejected or not even talking to base camp with its call for approval. Until..
“Sign here.”
Even on the best of days, my signature looks like a drowning spider has staggered across the page still covered in the ink from its final accident. The girl behing the desk didn’t look closely. I could have called myself Mickey Mouse and she would have taken the payment. Nothing to do with Maggie, this was her own rejection of the world around. Why pay attention to what is around you if you can’t stab at it with sharpened talons?
Maggie saw that the transaction was complete and dragged me to the door, yanking my arm from its socket as I just succeeeded in picking up my small shoulder bag from the floor.
“Come on.”
We ran outside and she saw for the first time that the taxi had gone.
“Fucker. Fuck. I asked him to wait.”
We looked at the road and the cars running past. There were others, like us, who were looking out from the side of the hotel. I thought that the place would have arranged a car for us. No such luck. Not here. Not after the weekend that we had just faced.
“STOP!”
I always hate cotradicting Maggie when she’s wrong, especially when she’s so wrong as to be standing in the middle o the road, arm outstretched to deflect the journey of an oncoming volkswagon.
“Maggie, MOVE!”
The car stopped. She moved then. To the door.
“We need to get to the airport.”
I will never, ever, forget the look of terror in that poor woman’s face as my demented love took control of the car.
Sitting in a meeting barely awake and staring at the others, all non-hierachical in a circle, with the non-leader talking, not interested in anything, reflecting on the imperfections of the weeks past and ahead.
There is a mouse in the corner and it coughs, attracting his attention, and he turns around in his chair. The others are discussing how to align business processes into discrete flow diagrams. The one called Colin has started to argue about the colour of the lines. No-one notices him turn.
“Over here.”
That’s not right. Mice aren’t meant to speak.
2 minute warning. Sketch outline for short.
At table. Radio and TV on. Reading paper.
spread out.
Dipping soldiers into an egg, that spills across the news.
Pan to headline.
He ignores spillage, turns page.
Attention to radio. Warning of something immanent.
Radio is turned off / goes off.
TV. View of 2 anchor people. Male and female.
Final warning. 2 minutes. Man at table opens a bill for electricity. presenters speak rhetorical questions of what to do. Male answers. Wants female. Tries to atack / rape when no response. Man at the table pours out a cup of tea. Takes another bite of soldiers. Looks at a picture on the fridge. A family. He is not in the picture. TV shows pictures of army movements etc. Back to presenters. Male is being hit back by the female.
The okay sounds. False alarm. Announced by the female.
Ends.
When I wake up, every muscle aches from the severe beating of the night before. I can’t easily open my eyes. They are glued shut with congealed blood, and it proves hard to wipe it away with both hands still tied behind my back.
They looked at each other from across the lift.
Hannah’s right breast was beginning to melt. She was regretting the cheap surgeon.
“Hot, today, isn’t it.”
Rhietta nodded. As she did so, her hair caught on the back wall of the lift. There was a slight sizzle, to add to the smell of burning.
“Yes.”
She stepped away from the back wall, clothes restricting her movement because of the perspiration. The floor of the lift was also restrictive. It was Jennings, from accounts. He appeared to have reached a point of negative equity.
“Been on holiday this year?”
“Yeah. Barbados.”
“Ooh. Nice.”
The lift reached the ground floor, and the doors opened slowly.
They walked out of the building.
Plotline note.
After car accident, lead to notebook conversation of K+A to be rewritten for the new names.