Venom in Black and Yellow

They opened the curtains to reveal a gargantuan spider on stage. Each of its eight legs were chained and it tried to rear up, but its forelegs couldn't clear the ground and it crashed back down in a fall that shook the theatre. My pepsi cup was drained and the feature presentation was over, so I slipped out through the lobby and hailed a cab.

"Good show?" asked the driver.

"Greenlight district," I said, "Just north of Howe and Dylan. The show was alright. Rain much tonight?"

"Just eased off," he said. He was a black-skinned guy and was curled up over the wheel, too tall for the standard sedan cab. "Its a quiet night out, yeah? Cold, I think this sudden wind has put a hold on everyone's plans."

He spoke for a while, and my attention turned to the streets - couples clutched together by their forearms, wearing thick felt coats and scarves. Window displays were darkened and lined with thick metal bars. An orange-flashing tow truck was parked by a dinted hatchback. A woman walked by in a black dress with two bold yellow stripes under the bust.

"Stop for a second," I said.

"Huh?"

"Just stop, alright?"

The car pulled up against the curb and I got out, leaving a ten dollar note on the back seat. I hurried back along the sidewalk to where the woman in the black dress was walking in high heels towards the theatre strip.

"Jessica!" I called. "Hey, Jess!"

She turned around and I jogged towards her.

"Who's that... Kurt?"

"Yeah, it's me, Kurt - what are you doing here? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm staying at the Plaza. Just for a few nights."

"How's Toronto? Here, I'll walk with you."

"It's good," she said. "Not like it used to be. They pay me well up there, though."

"Glad to hear it. You're not missing much, same old freakshow down here."

We walked for a while, eyes low to avoid the passing headlights. The pavement was still damp from the rain and the wind was cold under my shirt.

"Here, you need a jacket? Cold night," I said.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm meeting someone for dinner."

I grabbed her arm and stopped.

"Is it important?" I asked.

She turned around and we looked at each others' faces for the first time in a while.

"Is what important, Kurt?"

"Dinner. I haven't eaten." I gestured to the street. "I miss you, Jess."

"Don't," she said. "This is it. We're over, right?"

"What's a few nights?"

She turned, wrestled her arm from my grasp and kept walking. I followed a little behind her, and she stopped again.

"It wouldn't be right."

"It would be so right."

"I have plans."

"Cancel them."

Later that night, after we ate big meals at an organic steakhouse and spent hours drinking beers and cocktails, I undressed her in her hotel room. She shed her thin stockings and her black dress, a flimsy layer, and I sunk into her dark, warm places and clutched her thigh closely against my cheek. Her fingers crept through my hair and flattened themselves down my neck and the rain outside started up again.

Far From the Kitchen

The instructions were simple: three tablespoons of salt, a cup of ash and seventeen ground tomato seeds, spread in a circle the width of your index finger. Ben made the mess on the countertop, between his cup of apple juice and the dirty dishes, and uttered the incantation as it was described on the printed email.

"Hexam lacunae disperse!"

At first nothing happened, but he knew it had worked when the circle of powder caught alight and the apple juice turned back into an apple and popped right out of the cup. It hit the roof and bounced once on the floor beside him. Quickly he took off his glasses and clutched them in his hand.

Vanishing feels strange, he thought. It's like waking up. However sure you were that you were in a kitchen, you're now even more certain that the kitchen was a vague hallucination and you're really lying on the white sand of a beach, the palm jungle hooting to your left and the waves crushing over a reef somewhere far to the right.

He stood up and brushed the sand from his back and shook his legs to get it from his trousers. He walked up to the edge of the dense plantlife and kicked aside a coconut. There was a path which led straight to the other side of the island.

"Am I stuck, then?" he asked aloud.

He circled the island. It took less than five minutes. He spent an hour breaking through the leaves and bushes until he was sure he'd stepped every step it was possible to take. The only interesting thing he found the whole time was a bean plant growing up a metal spike, its fat pods ready to be plucked.

"I'm stuck," he said.

After a while of lying on the sand, he realized he still had two dry tomato seeds in the pocket of his trousers. He quickly walked to the centre of the island, the point of the path from which he could see both sides of the sandy beach, and dug a hole the depth of his thumb. He dropped the seeds in, spat on them, and covered the hole back up with the dry dirt. For now all he could do was chew on a couple of bean pods and hope for rain.

"Cooee," called someone from the other side of the trees. "Anybody about?"

Ben ran across the island again, careful to not stamp on the freshly dug hole in the path.

"Hey!" he cried. "Help!"

"Ah! I thought I saw something land!" The grown-up was standing at the front of a canoe. He was wearing shorts and a patterned shirt and he had his hands on his hips. "Hello there kiddo! Come aboard then, there's not much to do here."

Ben waded out through the clear water and pulled himself up onto the canoe.

"You ready to go the the Crystal City, then? Or there's a hot meal waiting at the old McMahon's homestead, if you like farms, that is. Just let me know before we get to Spring Island because I need to change my course accordingly."

"I've never been on a farm before."

"Very well then, McMahon's it is." He moved the boat in broad strokes quickly through the water, jutting up and over the incoming waves at the perfect moment between breaks. Soon the water settled again, and it was a smooth and relaxing ride despite the ocean's growing depth.

"Look over there - a colossal sea turtle!"

The hump breached the surface of the water, its rock-like surface wide enough to be an island of its own. Ben watched it cascade back below the water.

"Hey mister, can I get back there? To that island?"

"Sure!" said the man. "I bring the ferry over once every year or so."

Ben smiled, and leant to scoop his hand through the cold water as they moved on towards a growing island in the distance.

The Cougar

We walked along the river, my hands in my pockets and hers in woolen gloves, clutching my arm. We were looking at the logs, in rows and rows, being floated down towards the harbour. The wet, golden pine steamed, and the steam grew into the fog overhead. It was morning and we'd already had coffees, and the day was unplanned, our only course the packed dirt path underfoot.

"Did you speak to your Grandmother?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Is she okay?"

"Still upset," she said. I nodded, and we continued our matching step through the wooded trail.

"Nice to be back here," I said. "You want to stop for a moment? We can sit on that log."

"Looks wet," she said.

"Alright," and we kept walking. The edge of the river curved and we followed it, lined with trees at some points and at others rocky slopes. Eventually our path rose away from the river and back into the dense pines.

"Did you hear something?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, and stopped for a moment. "Just a bird, probably. Over there."

There was another sound of movement in the undergrowth.

"Sounds too big to be a bird..."

It was a cougar, and it came out over a fallen tree quickly and went for my leg. I kicked out and knocked it under the chin, but it got up quickly and jumped up at me. I fell over with the claws deep in my chest but managed to roll onto it. It was heavy and strong underneath me and it squeezed out, but Kelly kicked it under its belly twice and it vanished again. I rolled over, my leather coat pocked with holes and the scratches on my chest bleeding underneath.

"Oh god, oh god," she said.

"I'm alright," I said. I could feel the cold and wet on my back. "I'm alright. Give me a moment."

She fell down to her knees beside me and her face went red and she cried, eyes covered with her hands, and I wanted to hug her but the cat had taken the wind from me and I couldn't get up. I looked up into the pine branches and the grey sky and waited until my chest started to sting and Kelly put her arm under my neck and helped me up.

Such a Moment

This part is the genesis, which could be skipped but is in fact essential. I'm not going to tell you why.

Curly-lashed Freida shoved up against him at the bar; she smiled and asked in her accent what he was having, with a nod towards the spirits rack. He was having beer but he said 'Gin'. 'Would you get me one too?' she asked. The child who was born twenty-years earlier (when the name 'Desmond' was scribbled on a piece of paper) could only flop open his wallet and pull out a note.

'My friends are boring to me, can I sit with you for a while?'

They went outside to a spot beneath an umbrella which would have been green in the daylight. It might have looked nice with the stained wooden table under it, and the wooden planks of the deck, and the wooden chairs.

'I like your shirt,' Desmond said to the horizontal pattern of red and purple.

'It's a sweater, you silly,' she said. 'I knitted it.'

'Then it's a nice sweater.'

---

Now you really have to listen!

Freida's mother called every second night, at that precise moment between 8:29 and 8:30. When Desmond moved in it was the second unusual thing he discovered; the first being the closed room he was not permitted to enter. The door to that room had a hole, straight through the chip-board so that only a flimsy layer of paint on the anterior side seperated the room's contents from the rest of the house. Desmond often had the temptation to poke his index finger through this fine layer but never had the courage in the face of the home's matronly regime.

'You can put your things in the other room. It has a window. You can paint in there, no?'

He liked to cook but it was not a home for cooking; the kitchen was so narrow that the counters almost met each other in the middle, and every cupboard with the potential to become a pantry was filled with clear tupperware containters with blue lids. Freida cooked in there occaisonally, vegetables hopping straight from plastic bag into the pan (sometimes a ribbony receipt would flit dangerously close to the stove's flame), and after dinner she would pack the leftovers carefully away in the abundant tupperware and label it for the freezer. In such a manner was the freezer packed, dinners stacked and labelled like library books, the fridge below home to only three expired mayonaisse jars and a tub of natural yoghurt.

It is easy to imagine that in such circumstances Desmond's artistic skills withered; after a haiatus inflicted by stunned confusion, he returned to his canvas to find that all he could paint was an orange stick-figure in a trapezoid boat. Over three nights he returned with fresh canvas, and when the fourth orange man appeared with its bracket smile he threw his paintbrush down in frustration. At that moment the telephone rang to pronounce the strange moment just before 8:30, a moment which, under the circumstances, seemed perfect for some fresh air.

'Dessie!' cried Freida, tilting over the chipped white railing, cordless phone clutched against her very heart. He stopped in the damp street and looked up to her. 'Will you bring me back a diet Coke?' He nodded and carried on along the asphalt.

Oh, what fate! But as he paid with three dollar coins for the cold bottle, ready to turn around on the mission of delivery which had cut short his adventure before it began, he wondered if it was all so bad; wondered if, after all, an orange stick-man was not a worthy companion - wasn't it his own creation? In that room with a window and an easel, with his suitcase still lying open and empty, what better companion could one have? All these thoughts he was having at a time he should have been having thoughts about the bottle-cap; which he twisted and opened in his vacancy.

The ramifications, you'll understand, were severe.

Entrenched

There were rats in the trench from the second night it was dug. They bit holes in the sandbags and shat all through the dirt. The soldiers would grab them with fast hands and chuck them like grenades over the razorwire. Sometimes a rat would be shot in frustration and the guts would splash darkly against the packed dirt in a grim mimicry of the situation.

"You want one?" said Gill. He tilted his cigarette forward before lifting it into his mouth. The rat scuttled awat. "Stupid rat."

"Talking to yourself, Gill?" asked the Lieutenant.

"I'll tell ya, Muzz, these rats are a fucking curse. Smoke?" He passed a cigarette to the Lieutenant, who lit it behind his cupped hand. "Don't you think it's a bad sign?"

"Sign? They'll be dead by the weekend. Base is sending up ten kilos of rat sack. That'll be a sign."

"Looks like rain," said Gill. "Does it rain here?"

"Now and then."

"Christ, this place is going to be a muddy cesspit."

"Enjoy it," said the Lieutenant. "If we're driven out of here you won't even have a cesspit."

The rain came during the night, hard and constant. It didn't stop until eleven the next morning. The trenches had flooded to thigh height, the water coffee-grey, its surface filmed with old paper and rat shit and dirt. Gill waded through it, tired, his rifle held above his head in one hand, a bucket skimming along in the other.

"Hey! Gill!" Gill turned - Reggie, a tall, pale soldier was behind him. "Forget the bucket. We have to get out of here. Boss says we've got orders to retreat."

"Retreat? But we haven't even-"

"Doesn't matter. It'd take a week to drain this place and the locals would have us in a real tight spot if they got here before that. The front's withdrawing. Forget the bucket."

Gill glanced back towards the other side of the trench before he let the bucket go. It bobbed in the water. A rat paddled past it, claws flailing desperately, its wet, hairy body hardly able to keep above the surface. The soggy troops retreated in open-roofed trucks, leaving the crates of rations and beer hidden silently under the now still waters.

Much later, when the trenches had dried, the rats came back; scurrying along the empty corridors, they gnawed at deserted boxes and slept in hard-packed corners. For a long time the trench was this way, inhabitted by only the rats, wood, dried paper and empty buckets.

The Furthest Place

Such white sands as footprints never before tracked across; such clear waters as were never swept behind in gliding strokes. A palm tree with lazy leaves framing the scene from abundant angles. And quiet; only the slosh of a hand in still water came when eyes were closed. Nothing else. This was a sand-circled hump in the azurest sea.

Our hero paces the island. His back dries behind him, salt stinging when he stops to pull on a shirt. He hums. Falls to his crossed legs. Next to his towel are sandy sunglasses which he puts on to stare at the flat horizon. This must be the furthest place, he concludes. Far enough, at least.

"Hello," he calls, and not a fish to hear him. He takes off his sunglasses. Lies back, and sleeps.

Thundercrack. He wakes up with his hands deep in shadowed sand - the sea-green bulkhead approaching fast. He takes his towel and glasses and trots quickly towards the framing palm and its dancing leaves. Hangs the towel over it. Wears the glasses again, then removes them. Folds his arms and jitters his leg. Lightningflash. It hits a swelling wave in the blackening sea.

A deeper shadow coats the shadowed island and our hero looks up to the sky; is punched in the cheek by fat cloudspit. The ceiling is pot-bellied and green still. Hail, he concludes. He goes to the ground and crams his neck under the curve of the palm-trunk. Across the ocean great waves break into white over unseen corals, but these lapping shores remain gentle. Gentle enough that he sees the sheet of bulletholes coming quickly closer. Hail, he concludes.

And all at once a hundred dimples in the sand; the tat-a-tat of blows to the palm trunk against his neck; the cold wind that creeps beneath his still-crossed arms. The leaves dancing now with a violent partner. Even the serene curve of shore is tugged and spread by heavy waves.

All around him the hail bounces. It bounces from the trunk, bounces from the leaves; bounces off his leg and bounces around the island. The white beads rest and seep into the sand. When the last bead has bounced and melted in its bed and all that remains is rain, endless skin-splashing rain, our hero stands. Stretches the towel above him and pads down to the push-pulling shore. Around the sand-hump's circumference.

He stops. Crouches. Rain still pattering on the covering towel. Resting in its crater, a hail-sized jewel. Glimmering ruby. He looks to the grey sky and it punches him thrice, thrice again, twice more. He looks back to the fallen gem and scoops it up along with its crater. Lets the sand seive between his fingers. The ruby rolls into the bowl of his palm. Squeezes it shut, forever captured.

Our hero stands. Looks out to flat horizon. Paces the island's circumference once again.

The Unworn

The clock ticked, leaves of Jacaranda rustled outside, and Todd took off his jeans. It was a dark time, reminiscent of a blown fuse, and quiet too; the Essential Stevie Wonder having scuttered past its last song ten minutes earlier. The jeans unworn, Todd lay back on the bed and felt Wendy's hand slide through his hair and down to his cheek.

"Smooth face, smooth face," she sung.

He hummed. "Long day," he said. "Stay in tomorrow."

She pulled all fingers away except for the one tip which trailed down to his chin and then up to his lip. He flinched.

"Sorry," she said.

"Do you ever wonder..."

"Huh?"

"How easily we might not be here. We might be somewhere else."

"Where would we be?"

"No, I mean," he trailed off. Wendy's hand slid through his hair. "You and me. We might be different places."

"We're not," she said.

"I'm glad we're not."

From his hair, Wendy's hand crept again across smooth cheek and, leaping neck, it tugged limp collar, then circled button idly. Todd sat up, unbuttoned, and lifted the shirt from his shoulders. He stayed stooped at the end of the bed as the clock ticked. The motley cotton pile of discarded clothes watched from beside his feet.

"Put some music back on?" he asked.

"It's nice quiet," said Wendy. She pulled up and hung herself across Todd's back, her knees sinking the mattress. Balm lips left shapes lingering across his neck as he craned and cracked it. "You need to relax."

"Just a long day," he said. "I could sleep."

"Then let's sleep," she said. "Go brush your teeth."

"Yeah."

The sink-tap ran and clean teeth were sucked at and shone to the mirror; weak eyes squinted in the bathroom light for a brief time, before the house was returned to its fuse-blown state. Other silences were had in the gaps between words as the space between people was filled under cover of warm sheet.

new worlds

I'll tell you, Son, I couldn't believe that there was a beach there. The rocks themselves were an exciting sight after three months - or was it five? of salt air and empty horizons, but to round those rocks and find a beaten but sandy shore! I was shackled but the crew had all moved to the starboard side, were hanging off it as if the meat had gone bad. When they'd sucked in their fill of land they couldn't pull our beast in soon enough.

That night, a way back from the beach in the low-lying scrub, we lit fires and danced. I tell you, the Captain even danced. The boys who were too sick to stand were propped up against logs and despite their weak bodies and pale skin they grinned and laughed. We all drank our fill of rum and didn't mind that the barrel was empty when it came time to carry on. For a few fleeting days we were neither crooks nor sailors nor officers but men glad for the warmth of a blaze and the crunch of grass underneath our boots.

None of us knew where we were, mind, and I'm not sure if it was I alone who harboured a fear of what lay beyond the dark undergrowth around us. A couple - Taylor and Gimmy - must have been braver than I, for the third night they vanished, leaving only the wrinkled hemp blankets they'd slept under. Who knows what they escaped to? Was this an island that they had stranded themselves on, or did they reach some foreign village? What great or dangerous new world awaited them? Son, I ask you never to leave your fate in the hands of a land you are blind to, because unlike the boundless sea, which is old and spiteful and as hard as any piece of rock, it can be commanded and mastered; its waves can yield great treasures. But earth is fickle and will decide what it provides before you have a chance to say yes or no.

So we carried on, to the great new land. I'll tell you the Captain's hopes were much greater than all of ours. He was privvy in his cigar scented cabin to some letter or past conversation which assured him our course was true and noble. He promised the low-lives like me, below the deck, coughing and cold, that even we would own our piece of the New World; that we'd need not steal chickens and bread for abundance of our own.

Chickens have nothing to do with it, Son. Land cannot be tamed; a chicken in the New World is a different animal to one at home. Whatever spell this place would cast upon our meagre stocks, whatever rot it would set upon our wood and whatever sickness it would inflict upon our mates, Son, I feared it, and I was right to. Or was I? If I hadn't feared I suppose those last moments at sea, as we set away again from that once joyous stretch of white-washed beach, might have been the last moments of peace I ever had.

Rice

Jesse slid an empty coconut half to me over the table. There was a wad of rice in the bottom and I tilted the makeshift bowl to look at it. A mosquito buzzed around my ear but I didn't have the energy to beat it away. I just looked at the stodgy rice.
- Can I have water? I asked.
- There's none. I'll go to get more in the morning.
- I need water. Is there any left at all?
- No, Charlie, there's no water. Hear me? None.
- Well what's the God-damned point of boiling up this rice if there's no bloody water left?
- Forget it, okay? The rice is from yesterday. I didn't boil it, I heated it over the fire.
The mosquito buzzed and I lifted my heavy arm up over my ear to shoo it.
Outside the hut the bush creaked.
- I'll go now, I said.
- Don't be stupid, Jesse said. It's dark already.
- Well? I need water, I said.
- Please? She moved her hand across the table and onto my shoulder. You're still weak, Charlie.
- I know, I said. But I'm thirsty. I can't eat unless I've had something to drink first.
- Fine. I'll go.
- I didn't mean -
- I'll go, okay? Christ.
She brushed aside the thin curtain outside the bedroom and I saw her silhouette perch on the end of the bed to strap up her thick boots. She slipped on her jacket and then came back to where I was sitting with my head low at the table.
- You'll eat the rice when I get back, she said.
- Yes, of course.
She trod over the wooden floor heavily and descended into the dark night outside. Her torch beamed awkwardly into the hut for a moment and then her sound and light disappeared into the dense jungle.
I waited, listening. The mosquito buzzed about my ear again and I twisted and jerked my head until it buzzed away. A spot behind my ear was starting to itch. I folded my arms in front of me and dropped my head between them on the table.

I was woken by footsteps behind me, and I lifted my head.
- How did you go? I asked.
She said nothing.
- I'm sorry if I was short with you.
When I looked up it wasn't Jess but a stubbly-chinned man in a strange uniform holding a rifle against his chest. He stepped around the table and stared at me as he lifted the cocount bowl, then looked down at the rice. He grunted, spat in the bowl, and placed a thick dirty finger into the rice. When he pulled it out it was covered with the soggy stuff and he sucked on it, then spat again.
- What do you want? I asked.
He turned and pulled aside the bedroom curtain and looked in there. He didn't say a word. After he circled the table again he left the hut and was swallowed by the night.

I waited until Jesse came back, still too tired to move, unable to shoo the mosquito that buzzed around my ear.

Nicely Fielding

"Stoic Earth is in the lead but here's Nicely Fielding... Nicely Fielding... Is it? Oh!"
The nailbiting finish to the race was heralded by the shouting commentator as onlookers brought their hats against their hearts. James missed it as he was in the bathroom, fucking a woman dressed in a tiny green dress, as she tried to keep the champagne in its plastic cup. It was a hot day and James was sweating in his open-collared suit and all he could think about as he pushed the slim woman back and forth against the mirror was about how much he wanted to lean over to run the tap for a long drink of water.
"Shit," she said, and hopped down. "Race is over. Let's get out of here."
"Sorry," said James. "Thanks anyway."
"What?" she asked. She grabbed his wrist - her hand was damp. "Come on."
"I'm staying," said James.
Three men walked in, shoving each other and grinning widely. One took off his pinstripe hat and stopped suddenly when he saw the woman. James leant over and turned on the tap. He submerged his face as the water poured coldly over his hands.
"Hey girlie," said one of the men. "Ladies is the other way."
The two others chuckled.
"Fuck you," she said.
"Woah, settle there, no harm meant." said the first man. James looked up as she pushed apart the three of them and left. "So, how's that, boys? Nicely Fielding, I knew he'd come through."
In the milling hall James stood for a few minutes. Drinkers bustled around him, all moving, waving white tickets in the air and laughing with loud heavy breath. James pulled off his coat as he started move, shouldering through the hordes until he came outside, the day hot, the air smelling of chip grease and Jack Daniels. The crowd thinned. He pushed through a turnstile and trodded between cars in row A, then row B, until he found his hatchback. He threw the jacket in the back seat but when he sat inside the car's interior was roasting and it stung his forearms when he leant against the steering wheel.
He retched heavily, his stomach uprising, the water flowing stinking through his teeth and pouring onto the asphalt of the carpark. James was dizzy and the vomitting made him feel no better. Soon his chest's heaves settled and his head began to crack with his heartbeat. There was no relief until the sun receded behind a cloud and even that brief curtain was shortlived.

In Flight

You fly in and you realise you could be anywhere. The black spaces between the blinking lights and glowing buildings, HSBC signs and airport markers could be the palms of Honolulu; the parks and creeks of Sydney; the farms of the delta near Vancouver. The airport is much the same, and you lean in to drink cold water from a fountain, knowing where you are but imagining it's somewhere else. If it's a transfer, even better - the reality doesn't matter. You can be anywhere you want.

I open a foil packet of chips, tearing the packet carefully to spread it across the bar. A familiar chime rings in from a distant wing and an announcement is read in Japanese. I can only make out two words; O'Reilly, Bill. I'm Bill, but not O'Reilly. I have to listen again. She certainly said O'Reilly. The flight number is foreign as well, so I'm safe to return to my task of spreading the chip packet squarely in front of me.

Would you like a chip? I ask an old man wearing a hearing aid who's sitting beside me. I slide the square towards him. He looks at me, grey eyes behind thick glasses, then stands up, takes his book and leaves. I take a chip, crush it, press a crumb between my fingers until the oil has wet my fingers. I eat one or two.

Can I get another Heineken? I ask.

You hide from things, in the spaces between reality. The no places, like this. On the second leg I don't watch the movies or listen to the radio channels or read the thick book I've slipped in the meshing in front of me (between the in-flight magazine and the laminated safety sheet). I keep the television on the channel that shows you how far you are from your destination in three languages, the wind speed and your precise location above the Earth. Somewhere above the Middle East I figure it's the perfect place for an emergency to occur requiring an unplanned and violent landing.

Refreshments? Orange juice, tea coffee? asks the attendant.

Could I get a club soda, please? I ask.

Would you like lemon? she asks.

I wake up when my ears begin to pop and my chest tightens from the descent. People begin to remove their headsets and the attendant is clearing empty plastic containers on dinner trays. The air is heavy. I missed an omelette.

When you've broken through the soupy fog you notice something along the black river that places you in London. That building, round and green, tall along the south bank of the Thames. It would be nothing in any other city, just a tower, but here it's a monstrous egg - an abberation. You remember that Heathrow waits for you and the tube ride and the apartment in Chelsea and you wait for everyone else to file out and into the cold night before you grab your bags from the overhead compartment and say goodbye to the attendant at the front and thank-you to an airport employee in a flurescent orange vest.

Someone waits for me in the quitely milling group at Arrivals but she looks different, wearing a coat I haven't seen before. She smiles and I frown a little and look down but when I reach her I slip my arm into hers and kiss her on the cheek.

Can we talk? I ask.

Let's get you home first, she says. And home is what you get.