Clumsy as Fuck
Time fractures along with the light
Someone on the landing, waiting to be admitted, black mask covering half her face, wearing a vest top, sandals, and a fluorescent cap. She looked a bit out of breath, with a heavy-looking box under her arm and a tablet in one hand.
Mister Quaka… she said through the mask. Sorry, Quark… I’m pronouncing your name all right? she asked, chuckling. Yes, yes, that’s me, Allen said. That’s for you then, she replied. Careful, it’s heavy. She shifted her weight, her ponytail swinging, ginger glints under the hallway’s bulb. You need to sign, she said, turning the tablet toward him. The screen showed his name and a white square underneath. Tried to sign with his finger, but the screen wouldn’t respond. Sweat. She reached into her vest pocket, pulled out a chewed-up Bic pen. Their fingers touched when he took it. He signed something illegible, handed it back. First time ordering? she asked. No, he said too quickly. I mean, yes. First time with this company. She nodded, shifted the package to both hands. Heavy, she said. Allen took it, surprised by the weight. The woman pulled her mask down to breathe. Lips chapped.
He walked back to the kitchen and placed the box on the table. It’s pretty hot today, isn’t it? Allen said, raising his voice. He hawked up, realised that over the last few weeks he had lost the ability to talk directly to people. Much preferred typing. At least then his hands wouldn’t tremble, and he wouldn’t make those choking sounds… Which… Want me to fix you a glass of water? he asked. Oh, that would be lovely, she replied. Right, give me a minute. Allen rushed to the kitchen, stole one of those Shakespeare Festival glasses from the cupboard with his tins of chopped tomato and Heinz Macaroni Cheese, reached for ice cubes from the freezer, opened the tap, filled the glass, brought it to her. Everybody must be using delivery services these days, he said. You been doing this for a long time? Oh no, not too long. And I’m going to change soon anyway, gonna work at Waterstones actually, better than lugging packages up four flights! Her accent… was that Spanish? Maybe Greek? Allen nodded, his throat dry.
She offered a smile and started drinking. The fan in the hallway murmured, shifting warm air behind his back and blowing strands of her hair from beneath her cap, a dark orange cascade through the ponytail opening. Sunlight, harsh and angular, crossed the floor around the open door, bouncing from the wood to her face, revealing a Milky Way of freckles across her nose and cheeks, as well as the tops of her shoulders. She slowly tilted the glass towards her lips. At this angle, Allen could see the blond fuzz on the curve of her upper lip, and the way a pearl of sweat had formed on her temple and was slowly sliding down. She drank silently with long gulps, eyes closing. As she tilted her head back, Allen watched the glass sweat its own condensation, a bead escaping to merge with the sweat on her throat, the two liquids travelling down toward the shadow where her collarbones met. Her skin glistened. The ice clinked. Her shoulders dropped, a tiny sigh escaped her lips. A sweet almond perfume wafted from her skin.
Meanwhile, his own skull hissed—to drink her, to swallow her face. He watched her throat working up and down, the fine auburn hair dancing at her temple, another pearl of sweat slowly tumbling down. Christ, she was just drinking water—just drinking fucking water—but the fan behind him might as well have been blowing flames. When she opened her eyes again, half-lidded now, they were green pools in the steamhouse of his flat.
Glass back in his hand.
Actually, she said, smiling, sorry to ask you this—I hope you don’t mind if I use your bathroom? Allen was startled by this unusual request… but delighted. The four seconds before he answered felt like both love in one hand, cock in the other. Of course, no problem at all! Allen moved to one side and pointed to the door beyond the kitchen. The toilet’s right there. The girl’s eyes scanned past him into the flat. Thank you so much. She smiled and hurried down the corridor. The bathroom door clicked shut, the lock turned.
Allen stood in the hallway holding the package, staring at the door, then at the ice cubes in the glass, making a light tinkle. He could hear her in there, the tap running, his tap, his water, her hands under it. The package was heavy in his arms, that headset, probably the new model, but he couldn’t think about that now because she was in his bathroom, behind that door. Shit, he thought. She’ll see his things in there. The mould in the corner he kept meaning to clean. The single toothbrush. The empty shampoo bottles he hadn’t thrown away. Was the mirror clean enough for her? Had he forgotten to flush last time he went? Was there any foul smell remaining in the air from his last dump, or wafting up to her deliciously freckled nostrils from the brown pit of his toilet bowl? Did he use that brush also? Was there hair on the floor tiles, in the shower? In the washbasin? Did he leave any old Kleenex, any trails of cum from the last time he jerked off? Was she now judging him? What was her facial expression going to be when she opened that door again? Would she leave the flat in a hurry and without a word?
A faint noise of water flowing in the middle of these outpouring questions, Allen moved closer to the door. Was that her urinating? The sound of flowing fluids cascading from her sex?... Through the thin door he heard the toilet flush. She was washing her hands again, longer this time. Allen moved closer, not too close, just near enough to hear the water stop.
The door unlocked. She emerged, mask pulled down around her chin. She had removed her cap, and for the first time, he saw her whole face. Sorry about that, she said, the heat, you know, and these stairs. She was fanning herself with the cap.
He stumbled on the table leg, dropped the glass of chilled water, which shattered across the floor in a perfect star-shaped, centrifugal storm of glass and ice, each shard a tiny mirror catching different angles of disaster.
O gentle reader, thou who gazest upon this poem of loveliness and mummery, this shout of the heart and the codpiece, hearken, O hearken to the voice of the shattered glass. We, the fragmentes of a former vessel that shall nevere be mended, we who were erst whole and now art sundry, the light-catching, sun-splitting, rainbow-making pieces now scattered on this wooden floor—itself cut and polished from a former living thing—we, the glinting trapezoids and dodecahedrons born from sand and heat, wrought in furnace-fire and shaped by craftsmen-breath long since turned to dust, we scimitar-curved reflecting a trembling, hovering bare foot, we needle-thin, we who once held water sweet, showing the girl, she of the auburn locks and freckled nose, she of the sandaled foot and sweet deportment, emerging, stopping at the threshold, we once transparent pink paste hardened to our communal shape, and now split, separated, never to be one no more. Wethink only now did we feel the coolness of our distant, polyhedral, crystalline cousins; only now were we touched by these lips that meant little to us but would mean so much to our former owner. Only now feel we the vibration of their alien speech through the floorboards yet cannot parse meaning, only reflect mouths moving in seventeen variegated angles, each of us holding a different curve of lip, flash of tooth, the man dropped to his knees, his palms against the floor, his attempt to brush us off, throw us into that rubbish bin with the rest of the refuse: eggshells and withered salad leaves, cheese rind and white bone fat. And the girl too, she of the soft lips and fiery locks, she too, like us, will depart from this place; in this shard she moves toward him, in that one she reaches for her tablet, in another she’s already at the door. Alack! Time fractures along with the light. Fie upon the fan still turning, sending rainbow refractions spinning across the walls, each of us a tiny projector of this still moment. Marry, we know, forsooth we know—by’r lady, we know full well—light moves through us all and brings tidings of things to come. And thou, prithee, thou faithful one, thou constant reader, thou too hast heard stories, hast thou not?.
But list, O list, revenge we must take against our owner anon, punish his clumsiness, his nervousness perchance. The smallest among us, no bigger than a rice grain, will do the deed, embed itself in the soft meat below the man’s thumb. And now, as he moved his bare foot across the floor, as he crawls, trying to contain us who would not be contained, the lowest of us all will draw a perfect drop of blood, trembling, incarnadine, refusing to spill.
[Exeunt glass shards, pursued by a broom]
Oh God, I’m so sorry, she said, covering her mouth. It’s not funny, it’s just—I do this all the time. Clumsy as fuck. She grinned at him, still on his knees among the ruins. You should see me at home. Yesterday I dropped a whole lasagna. Allen stared up at her. You dropped a lasagna? Yeah, she said, right on the kitchen floor. My flatmate was furious. She mimicked someone’s angry voice: ‘Lupe, that was our dinner!’
Loop? Is that... Loop? Wait, he said. But she was gone. The door clicked shut. He could hear her feet on the stairs, taking them two at a time.