Thanksgiving

Twelve-fifteenish at night:

Hen enters the room, mad marmoset. Writing like locusts clouds his
ceiling and walls and scarred desk. He idly throws his deckchair to the
floor, and boots heaps of documents and clothes out of his path. The
floor is too choked with sand, soil, sugar, cereal and ammonium alum to
be written on. There's some space on the back of a curtain, he
remembers, and the window only has notes around its edges, but he wants
a clean page.

He kneels down to think, urgently. The mirror? He couldn't bruise the
mirror. He crosses his arms across the bed. The bed!

Hen throws back the covers, and dips his fingers into the memory of
bodies. The sheet is hot and unblemished, so he begins work, writing
like a fury throwing snips of her wild, black hair into the fire. The
rhythm stalls here and there as his hand trips over itself, but each
time he recovers and intensifies his effort. He bites his tongue; his
wrist begins to pang. The letters swarm, spiralling outward, buzzing in
the heat of their conception. The bed croaks.

Hen dashes off a last sentence and falls forward onto his hand,
puffing. He thinks of how quickly he is turning his room to soot, and
how much of it he will ever need to use. He wonders if there is any way
to wipe it off, keeping the best cuts, and begin again. Then he
supposes that he should make more use of his notebook, and his letters
to K, and he gets onto the bed, fully intending to lie there for two
years.

"Hen?"

Si?n is at the door. She knocks.

"Are you in there?"

Midnight, a quarter of an hour earlier:

Helen and Mary are drunk on cheap shiraz in the H1 kitchen. Mary does
her cut-apple glow, and Helen counts the moles on her arms. Her eye
shadow is gold tonight. She stops at twenty.

"There's far too many of them!"

Mary laughs. Her freckles are ladybird spots!

"Your moles are cool," says Hen, who sits across the table from them.
"They're the signatures of moths that have fallen in love with you. I
only have a handful."

"Well&;#8230;" says Mary. "Helen is covered with them, so she must
be the moth queen."

"Oh, Mary!" says Helen. "I love you!"

They are camped among the ruins of Thanksgiving dinner, drinking the
remains of the wine. For a tablecloth, the harpies have used a maroon
bedsheet, doubled over. Unwashed plates kiss atop of it, shadowing slug
trails of peppered mashed swede and turkey scraps. A copy of Vanity
Fair curls its pages in the center of the table. The cooking cove is
crammed with gutted dishes. Cloudy glasses with smeared rims are
everywhere. Mary snorts wine back into one as she and Helen laugh
uncontrollably.

Hen sips the last of Lianne's fig vodka and checks his reflection in
the window. Too much backbrushing, he decides. Si?n was right.

"Do you drink ale, Hen?" asks Mary.

"What a weird question!" says Helen, and they laugh again.

"No, no, it's not a weird question. Because&;#8230;there's a
village near where I live called Felinfoel, where they brew famous
ales. Their most famous one is Double Dragon - I wondered if you'd
heard of it? It's really nice."

Mary's Gaelic accent is coming through keenly now. Hen shakes his
head.

"No. I'm not really an ale connoisseur. I'm not really a connoisseur
of anything. But if I see it, I'll try it."

Helen stifles another giggle, and swigs the rest of her wine.

"I think your hair looks nice today, Hen."

Hen stops looking at the window.

"Really?"

"Yes, it's very pretty."

"I only grew it long to hide my cheekbones. I don't like them,
especially from the side."

"Oo!" squeaks Mary. "Can we see? Is it allowed?"

Hen's eyes snap to the table, and he stammers something. Then he lifts
up his bangs with one hand and uncovers his face fully. Helen and Mary
inspect him closely, saying nothing, then sink back into their seats.
Mary spies the model on the front of Vanity Fair.

"Oh, I like her make up," she says, laying a finger on the cover.
"It's like yours, Helen."

Hen takes a brief glance, and harrumphs.

"I don't like her. She looks like a shop window mannequin,
spray-painted and kept in a freezer."

"She's a very fine-looking lady," says Helen.

"Not particularly. I find both of you far more attractive than any of
these poster girls."

Helen and Mary look at each other, then at Hen.

"Oh, thank you," they coo, and Helen adds, "Well, Hen. You're a
fine-looking man."

Hen smiles just a fraction, finishes his vodka. He puts the glass down
on the table and gets up.

"Are you going?" Mary asks.

"Yes. I'm tired."

Seven-ish in the evening, same day:

Besse and Lianne fold the bedsheet in half by taking two corners each
and moving towards each other. Their knuckles meet, and their noses
come to millimetres apart. They manoeuvre the makeshift cloth onto the
table, making sure it is absolutely straight from all sides.

"That looks fine," says Lianne. "Are we all sorted then?"

They scan the work surface, counting the dishes of swede and carrot,
pumpkin casserole and apple cranberry crisp, the number of plates
stacked up beside the sink.

"Just Fred to come," says Besse, "and he's almost done. I could only
just fit him in the oven."

'Fred' is the 19.6lb turkey Besse has bought for the meal.

"Have you told all the boys to come up at seven, and to bring their
own plates?"

Lianne thinks back, humming to herself and playing with an earthy
whisker of hair.

"I told Hen this afternoon, and said to pass the message on to the
others."

Besse sighs, and scratches above the nosepiece of her glasses.

"We'd better go down and knock on their doors."

"Do you think?"

"Yeah."

"Wait for me to fetch my nasty German vodka from my room then.
Hopefully, someone else will finish it tonight!"

"Alright, but we'd better be quick. Fred's no good to us
charred."

Lianne stops playing with her hair, and goes to open the kitchen door.
A thought strikes her.

"Do you not like Hen, Besse?"

They go out into the hallway.

"I think he's arrogant, childish, rude and unpleasant," Besse replies.
"How about you?"

"Nuh. I guess he's alright. Doesn't bother me too much - I mean, I can
talk to him about manga at least."

They move through to the H1 corridor. The firedoor shuts behind
them.

At the foot of the stairs that lead up to their hallway, Hen, who was
hidden beneath them, turns his Russian hat over and over in his hands,
and wonders if he's at all cut out for pole-vaulting.

Midday, same day:

"Hey, old man! Open up - my hands are full."

Hen boots Manley's door a couple of times and sucks at the rim of his
coffee cup. There is some muffled, ghostly groaning, ringing in the
breezeblock, then the door is slowly opened.

"I brought you coffee."

Hen proffers a second cup.

"You brought me coffee?"

"I brought you coffee."

"Oh. Thank you."

Manley takes it from Hen's hand and he sinks his lips into it humbly.
Then he looks at his watch, mutters that it's nearly twelve, and
withdraws into his room.

"You look the worse for wear this mornin'," notes Hen, following him
in. "Not looking forward to the Thanksgiving do?"

"I feel ill."

"I'm not surprised!"

"Don't you feel ill?"

"No."

Hen grins, as if that is explanation enough. Manley sips more coffee
and shrugs confusedly at him.

"I stayed up late and drank lots of water," Hen explains, "so no
hangover pour moi. You just stumbled straight into bed, I'll bet,
because you're bankrupt of willpower. You don't have the same stamina
as me."

"Stamina my foot. I bet you couldn't go to sleep because of Si?n's
snoring."

They sit down on the bed and drink in synchronity. Hen sucks on his
teeth and taps the cup.

"You look pensive," says Manley.

"I was just thinking - you know my memory technique? The one where I
pretend to write on myself?"

"That old thing. Yes."

"Well, I've run out of space on me, so I started writing on
Si?n."

"Hen!"

"I was drunk! Anyway, she woke up and found me at it, only she thinks
it was a dream. She told me she'd dreamt I was writing over her arm,
and that I was covered in them too."

"Well. That's very strange. I hope you've learned from the experience.
You can't go round writing your memoirs all over people, whatever your
relationship to them - it's a violation! And I can't believe you've
really run out of space on yourself."

"I have."

"What about between your toes?"

"Each and every."

"Armpits?"

"That's where I keep my notes on restaurants and cafes."

"Behind your ears?"

"I can't see back there very easily, but I probably put down a remark
or two about your Hitchcock collection. Hey! I dreamt about you last
night, you know."

"After you'd gone to sleep bloated with water and finished frightening
Si?n, eh?"

"Zactly."

Hen drains his cup and puts it at the foot of the bed, next to
Manley's slippers. He rubs his hands together, as if preparing to throw
ingredients into a flaming pot.

"You were surrounded by tall, green candles and you told me I was too
obsessed with beauty. Then you told me that sex is small enough to bite
my ankles but tall enough to leap to the top of the fence. I murmured
in agreement - I think I must have been your pupil - and you carried
on, saying it was a rat with a baby's bite, and that I must never get
too close."

Manley fondles the cup handle with a thumb and smans.

"As if I'd ever recklessly bestow my valuable advice on you,
Hen."

Eleven-ish in the morning:

Hen and Si?n tell each other about their dreams.

"I dreamt that Manley was sitting in a room filled with candles,
wearing his dressing gown, and he was telling me, 'Hen, you are too
obsessed with beauty.' Then we talked about sex."

Hen bows to the mirror and its blonde stains, backbrushing his hair
furiously with a tortoiseshell comb, to make it thick, to keep it out
of his eyes. It springs up in swollen clumps. Si?n is still in bed, the
covers drawn up to her lips.

"Sex?"

"I didn't say much. It was just Manley in the candles, telling me,
'Sex is short enough to bite ankles, tall enough to leap to the top of
the fence. It is the craziest rat, with the wickedest little baby bite.
Don't go too close, don't go close at all, unless you're afraid, in
which case nuzzle up as close as you can.'"

"You remember all that?"

"I'm filling in the gaps. I do a lot of that when I repeat things. How
does my hair look?"

"Awful. I wish you wouldn't do that - just brush it normally."

"I can't. It's too long. I hate it long and straight. You should get
out of bed."

"I want to sleep a little longer."

"You can't compromise with sleep. You must hurl yourself out of bed or
be overrun. Get up now or you'll lie there all day and miss Besse's
Thanksgiving dinner."

"I'd forgotten about that."

Si?n sits up, and the bed clothes fall around her middle. She
instinctively checks her shoulder for traces of the dream, but it is
white and gleaming like bone. She slips out of bed and puts on Hen's
dressing gown. Hen bares his teeth at the mirror, and gauges their
colour.

Si?n woke in the middle of the night believing that a nest of money
spiders had broken out across her right shoulder. She flinched, and
rose into a gasp of moonlight. They blackened her arm - miniscule and
threadlike - thousands. She struck out at them in a panic.

"Hey! Hey - calm down," hissed Hen.

He was kneeling beside her on the narrow bed - poised as if weaving,
covered in them, black as a golliwog.

"I've run out of space on my body, so I needed to start on yours. I
hope you don't mind."

His mouth. Red plush opening out in the swarm. He leant down onto her
and pressed her shoulder with the tips of his fingers. At his command,
the spiders began to multiply, and she saw, looking closely, that they
weren't spiders at all, but words. He was writing on her, in letters so
small and tightly wound she couldn't make them out.

"Hen, stop it! I don't want to be written on."
Hen kept scribbling.

"In the morning, you won't see a thing. It's just a memory technique.
Go back to sleep."

"What do you mean? That doesn't make sense."

"To sleep, wild honey, to sleep. Trust me."

She huffed and lay back on the pillows, trying to ignore her maddening
nerves, the faint itch of his paragraphs. She closed her eyes.