Soggy Kite

Soggy Kite

A young man, smelling slightly too much of aftershave, sat alone at a
two-seat restaurant table. He had a gentle face with doughy eyes and
looked quite feminine in the way he perched his head on steepled
fingers, moulding impressions of the room onto his unbaked eyes. He was
half-admiring, half-abhorring the IKEA-ish design of the restaurant.
The exposed brickwork and tiled wood floor were very nice he thought,
although the floor was beginning to look like cheap laminate the more
that he gazed at it through the burnt-orange half-light pouring out of
fake chrome stems. A waiter floated past him with a water jug clinking
with ice, the reflection of an open wood oven slipping over the curve
like time in a black hole; slow in the middle, dashing at the
edges.

The restaurant was cheap for what you got: The people around him held a
certain kudos which matched the IKEA setting.

Ponsky range: each model coming complete with Camper foot rests and
overdone messy hair. Self-assembly not required.

The young man sipped his Budweiser slowly ("Its called Budvar actually"
the floating waiter had corrected him), trying to stop his pennies from
draining away too fast. As he was putting the bottle down he glanced
toward the door, which sported an almost unintelligible stencilled
logo. A young woman called Ruth walked in and he lifted his eyebrows
and his head from the steeple. She walked with confidence in her
elegance and wore clothes which accentuated her natural grace, but as
she passed a group of eager eyed salesmen a faint downward flicker of
her eyes somehow betrayed her walk, causing her to clip one heel
against the other and blush in doing so. She looked up and saw the
young man, smiled and walked over to his table.

As Ruth reached his table the young man rose and they both said "Hi,
how are you?" and "Fine" at the same time making them both laugh at
their clich?. They sat and stared and smiled. After the moment, Ruth
said
"So, Jennifer says that you've been doing some interesting work for
your dissertation. Something about killer starfish or something?"
The man smiled his eyes and said "well in effect yeah. I mean they
don't mug swimmers or anything, but they did make an idyllic island
disappear and everyone on the island had to leave."
"How? You've got me intrigued now." The waiter breezed over to them as
though on a puff of wind and handed them oversized menus describing
undersized portions. The young mans eyes lingered on Ruth's hands with
which she clasped the broadsheet menu, or rather on the fine suede
glove she had kept on her left. It was of such a light tan that it
almost blended with the skin on her arm.
"Would you like to see the wine list?"
"Yes please" said Ruth. They ordered a bottle of light white wine and
after a brief interlude the waiter returned with it and took their
order. Ruth had recommended pizza saying "everything else on the menu
comes in stingy portions" then she turned back the young man.
"Go on".
"Well, these starfish, Black starfish, eat coral. They've been growing
in number all over the south pacific and they're threatening whole
reefs. So the Australian government decided that they should do
something about these guys before they got to Australia's biggest
tourist attraction and started messing it up so they sent teams of army
divers to wipe them out."
"Good plan"
"Well yes and no. I mean, it was great that wanted to do something
about these little guys destroying poorer countries' reefs, but they
didn't plan it at all well. Basically as soon as it was handed over to
army control all the science went out the window and they just went
around slicing all the legs of the starfish in an aqua Rambo
frenzy."
She wrinkled her nose but not squeamishly
"I don't know?you men?as soon as you've got a power drill in your
hands, let alone a real gun, you think your Pierce Brosnan's
replacement. So that was the end of that then?"
"Well no, that's the thing you see. Starfish are rejuvenating animals.
If they loose limb they just grow another one. Not only that but if the
limb isn't in a fishes belly then it will grow a whole body and four
other legs too."
"So you mean..?"
"Exactly. They just made the problem five times worse and left these
islanders to deal with it." He took a gulp of wine aware that maybe he
was talking too much.
"Basically several island reefs were completely destroyed. This meant
that there were no fish for the locals to catch and whereas the reef
had protected the islanders from storms, once it had died it lost its
flexibility and storm waves smashed through it swamping villages and
farms and? well? everything"
"God. Didn't anyone do anything about it?"
"Don't get me started on that one or ill never stop talking. Basically
the Australians would say yes and the refugees and I would say
no."
Ruth sat back in her chair looking, the man thought, suitably shocked.
After a couple of seconds she said.
"So you spent a whole year studying this?on the islands?"
"Yeah pretty much. It was just me and three New Zealanders. And all my
five- legged friends. It was so weird you know? Just us in these
deserted villages. Sometimes we were living in two feet of water. Again
the man was conscious that their conversation had been entirely about
him; as though he were at an interview. Although it did not seem to be
bothering Ruth, he wanted to change the subject anyway.

They spoke about their mutual friend Jennifer, their courses, the
people in the restaurant and IKEA lifestyle and the party at which they
had met a week before. The meal they were eating became nothing more
than punctuation marks to their easy conversation. The evening closed
in around them. Outside the restaurant the streetlights began to
flicker and the drifting clouds grew distinct against the speckled sky
beyond. Puddles froze and gripped the pavement against the brittle air
above.

Having finished their meal, the young man asked.
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
"I'm glad you asked" Ruth replied quickly, pulling out a pack of
Marlboro Lights and offering one to the man.
"No thanks, I prefer roll-ups" He started to roll one as ruth watched
his hands and pulled out a lighter with her gloved hand, lit hers and
inhaled deeply. Resting her chin on her right hand the young man
noticed how the green stone on her third finger flashed like her
fresh-grass eyes. She caught his eye and held the gaze.
"I'm surprised you haven't asked yet"
"What...? About the glove?" She nodded, still holding his gaze. "Well I
didn't want to be intrusive. I?" but before he could finish fumbling
for the right thing to say Ruth said
"Jennifer might have told you that I'm doing my dissertation on
prosthetics?" she looked at him. "?artificial limbs" intonation made
this last almost a question.
"Yes I know what they are." The reply was defensive. Ruth smiled and
looked down into her glass.
"Yes? artificial limbs? she repeated.

When I was a little girl I used to think that I was the only real
person. I mean I thought that everyone around me was either a scientist
studying me or a robot or an alien or something. Everyone had something
like that i'm sure but?well maybe I took it more seriously than other
people. I thought that when I left the room it kind of didn't exist
until I went into it again. In fact I was convinced that I never moved.
Like I was stuck in this laboratory and the scenery moved around me
like some really high-tec film studio. Even if I was walking down the
street I still thought that I was on some sort of treadmill while this
scenery went past.
Well this came to a real head the winter I turned five my parents, well
my dad really, decided that it was time to go on a Foreign Holiday, the
first we had ever been on. They were just beginning a long, drawn out
and religiously complicated divorce. Anyway my dad?well my dad was
quite eccentric in a lot of ways. He had this thing about not opening
car windows. He said that he didn't want to let the Road Air in. We
were never allowed to do it and my dad wasn't the sort of person you
could ask why. It's really stupid but I ended up thinking that even in
a car I wasn't going anywhere, I was just in this simulator while the
sets were changed for when I got out. I remember thinking that the
windows must be T.V. screens to keep me busy while the set changes went
on. Im sure I must have been in a car with the windows down at some
point, but I wasn't really allowed many friends; only ones from our
church. And you know what kids are like. I probably forgot or came up
with some other reason for how it all fitted into this world of
mine.
Well we drove to the airport and my mum was saying "isn't it exciting
Ruth, were going on a plane", but I was on to them and I knew that the
plane windows would be sealed too. I think I even asked my dad "will we
be able to open the windows on the plane?" I can't remember how he
replied or what I said back but he clipped me around the head. For
smirking at him apparently.
We walked down the boarding tunnel and I felt like this tunnel was the
closest I had ever come to seeing whatever it was outside of the set.
The windowless walls seemed so flimsy and fragile. I remember that the
stewardess smelled like old flowers like the ones we had in
church.

We landed in Geneva in the dark. I remember leaving the terminal to
find our hire car and the air felt like icecream in my lungs. Well, we
drove to a hotel for the night and I was more and more convinced that
the scientists had figured out that I was getting suspicious about the
whole set changing thing and that was why I had been sent on holiday.
Just to convince me that there was real stuff out there. The next day
we began driving to house that a friend of my mother had lent to us. I
remember waking up and looking out of the window at the impossible
scenery around me and I knew that I was right; that nothing real could
look like this and that I would have to find out what was outside of
the set.

She paused and took another cigarette from the pack stretching
backwards to remove the ache which had been growing in her spine from
leaning forward, her elbows on the table. The restaurant had been
emptying slowly around them as she talked and their floating waiter was
chatting to the chef behind the pizza counter, the flames of the oven
behind illuminating them like silhouettes. The young man had his chin
resting on steepled fingers and he said nothing. He just waited for
Ruth to finish the cigarette. The waiter had noticed that they had
stopped talking and drifted over.
"would you like the bill?" The question came out more like a statement,
like when the dentist asks you to keep your mouth wide open while he is
drilling. Ruth flashed her eyes at him and asked for another coffee.
The young man declined. He didn't take his doughy eyes from Ruth and
they gave nothing away but, he had an air of impatience about him so
Ruth continued, her voice had gone gravely after the cigarette.

Well, we started driving. Dad was particularly tetchy and I think he
was pretty nervous about driving along those high winding roads with a
sheer drop at one side. I sat behind him trying to find a flaw in the
landscape we passed. The deep valley at the bottom of the mountain was
scattered with houses which looked like the ones I had seen story
books; high pointed roofs heavily laden with snow, wooden walls and
smoking brick chimneys. Pine trees stretched out in long swathes down
the mountain. I remember the smell. Like other peoples houses at
Christmas. Well, my dad was busy with the road and my mum with the map
and I thought to myself "I'm not going to get a better chance than
this" and I quietly opened the door. The wind was so strong that it
sucked my door open and I went out with it. I must have clutched onto
the door handle in fright at the shock of it: the road was rushing by
at such a speed and above was the landscape I wasn't expecting to
see.

She sat back lighting another cigarette and her coffee arrived. After
the waiter had sailed off she said
"I was lucky you know. I guess kids bounce. The road barricade stopped
me from going down the mountain and the Swiss emergency services were
so quick." She was pulling off the soft glove slowly, stretching one
finger at a time, starting with the thumb and moving down, then
starting with the thumb again. It reminded the man of his little cousin
who counted so sensitively on her little fingers.
"My dad was so angry I thought he would hit me" she smiled in that
funny way people sometimes do when they remember something unpleasant.
The young man continued to gaze from his steeple and Ruth continued to
pull gently at her fingers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5?
"We flew back to England a week later - after I got out of
hospital."
1, 2, 3, 4, 5?
"I?" she said but stopped and her eyes dropped as they had done when
she had when she first walked in.
The glove dropped heavily to the table weighted by something in the
fingers in the fingers, like a waterlogged kite dropping out of the
sky, its tail trailing behind it.
The man looked down at the raw scarred stump where the bottom two
fingers were missing, the third a stump and the fourth warped and
sinewy. His mouth twitched and he looked up and away towards the flames
of the pizza oven. Ruth quickly replaced the glove and stared at his
eyes, her hands in her lap. She saw his eyes bake hard under the
reflection of the flames and her right hand tightened over the left.
She knew the look and she waited, her teeth and hands clenched hoping
that his eyes would soften again.