CITIES, PLAINS, and PEOPLE

 

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Picking Up the Pieces

Stephen watched the deep amber liquid poured into the glass with increasing
gratitude. It frothed invitingly as it began to settle, the effect of gases from fermentation
interacting and dispersing in that joyous chemistry that is alchohol.

'So tell me,' said Rupert. 'Can you remember what you were doing four thousand
days ago?'

Stephen looked at him quizically. He appeared careworn and tired, his mousy
brown hair fading to grey, his eyes bore darkened circled visible through his spectacles
even in the gloom of the public bar. 'Why,' he began slowly, after a long pull from the
glass, 'that particular number?'

'Ten years,' replied Rupert, 'and a bit. Give or take. Just answer the question.'

Stephen did a quick calculation. 'I was on my own,' he replied, 'wishing that I
weren't.'

'Self-pity and reproach,' said his friend. 'Try again.'

Stephen looked confused. Perhaps it was the ale - he had been drinking rather a
lot already before he had agreed to meet at the pub. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, what were you doing that you interrupted for this woman, this creature
from hell who by all appearances has ruined your life?'

Stephen paused to think for a moment. At this precise instant, he wasn't entirely
certain. Like most people, he could recall approximately what had been happening in his
life ten or eleven years ago, but, again like most people, those events were so jumbled
with previous and post-decade ago events that he found it impossible to keep them
straight.

He explained all of this to Rupert, who merely nodded, sagely. 'Well,' said the
latter, 'when you've worked that out, you'll be a great deal happier.'

'And that's supposed to help me, is it?'

'Naturally.'

After long consideration, during which Rupert worked his way steadily through
his pint of cider, Stephen said: 'I was a painter. I was just getting to be a rather good one,
I thought.'

'And what happened?'

'Well, obviously, I met Deirdre, and my priorities changed.'

'Why?' Rupert was relentlessly monosyllabic.

'Why? For fuck's sake, what do you mean, 'why'? Why does anyone's priority
change when they get into a relationship?'

Rupert nodded. 'That's the question exactly. Answer it.'

Stephen was exasperated, an emotion which he did not hide particularly well.
'Because,' he began slowly, saying in his mind "you great pillock", 'because, we needed
things. It became more important to have curtains for the flat than for me to piss about
trying to paint portraits.'

'So?'

Stephen could feel the ache in his jaws as his teeth ground together. 'So...so I
don't fucking know.'

'Language, dear boy. So, what do you want to do, now that you have your
freedom and a reasonably improved income.'

'I...I don't know. Buy some fucking curtains, maybe.'

Rupert smiled. 'How delightfully prosaic.'

Stephen considered his glass, because it made him desire slightly less to bash
Rupert's smug grin through the back of his head. 'How about another drink?'

Rupert kicked his chair back, lazily. 'I'll get it.'

'Thanks,' murmured Stephen as he walked away, only half referring to the drink.
'Thank you so bloody much.'

At another table, he noticed a man and a woman , deep in conversation, it seemed,
but without saying a great deal. He started out noticing the woman, who was unself-
consciously gorgeous, in a dark suit with shoulder length brown hair, and eyes like twin
points of blue fire, but it was the man to whom he found his attention drawn: he seemed
to be genuinely at ease, listening, occasionally interjecting, but, for the most part, simply
being there, exuding a confidence that Stephen knew was lacking in his own life.
Rupert returned. The pint of cider was accompanied by scotch, on the rocks, and
Stephen could tell just by the way that it billowed around the melting ice that this was no
mere cheap knock-off. Aside from that, Rupert had good, expensive tastes, and he
appeared to have brought scotch for himself. Reluctantly, Stephen drew his attention
back to the drinks and his generous companion.

'He's a writer,' said Rupert. 'I heard him talking to a man at the bar that he
knows...just published a novel. The woman's a producer for one of the big cable news programmes, who turned up here out of nowhere.' He thought for a moment. 'Well,
presumably, she turned up out of somewhere, somehow, but that's beside the point.'

'So you still read minds?' asked Stephen drily. 'I'm surprised that you haven't
made your fortune in the circus by now.'

'Drink up,' replied Rupert, unbothered by the suggestion that he was merely
circus folk. 'You've still got a pint to get through after a treble scotch. Then, I think,
would be a fine time for a game of darts.'

Stephen's eyes narrowed. 'I'll wipe the floor with you, pissed or not.'

'We'll see. Drink up,' he repeated the admonition without any sense of shame.

'Bit much at lunchtime, isn't it?'

'Time is an illusion. Lunch-time doubly so'

'Now where have I heard that before?' mused Stephen.

'Never mind your philosophical questions. Anyway, it's four in the sodding
afternoon. Drink.'

And Stephen did, and won at darts anyway.