Al Pacino's Soup

Al Pacino's Soup

He'd probably loved her for years. Since they were kids even. At least
he thought he loved her and at the moment didn't feel like doubting it.
She moved to the till and rang up the seven tins of soup. Though he was
never likely to stoop to the truth for any length of time he had to
admit it, her looks were fading. Fast. An early bloomer, gorgeous at
fifteen before the long trundle downhill to the scowling travesty of a
face like a well skelped arse. Maybe she hadn't even been that bonny
back then. In this matter, in fact all matters, his memory couldn't be
trusted, the problem being all the Hollywood storylines he weaved into
his life, which left any remaining reality relative to those fictions.
And her memories? Well he had his nagging suspicions, had done for
years. Plooks. It was plooks she'd remember. She saw him and thought of
plooks or thought of him and saw plooks. Plook Central, that's what
they'd called him, her included. With this in mind how could he even
love her at all. Maybe he didn't and it was just the emotional
equivalent of athlete's foot, a reassuringly uncomfortable presence
that no matter how hard he scratched never went away. That was about
right, Christ knows he'd never had a chance to scratch at her, not even
a faint hope of a furtive rub.
He put his hand out for the change and their fingers touched,
consummating their relationship for the third time that week. The
French called soup consomm?, so consummation and soup reflected the
other in some way he reckoned. Out of the same circular and improbable
logic he had come to see soup as the central symbol of their
relationship. Pea and ham, tomato, chicken, leek and potato. Five days
a week for months, years he'd been coming down here buying the stuff to
satisfy his Dad's appetite. And she'd always been here. Him and Sheila,
they'd shared a lot down the years, a lot of soup. He noticed some
flour on the tips of his fingers. Sometimes she left a light dusting on
his hand that she'd picked up when getting his rolls. She was watching
so he didn't do anything that could be construed as odd or even
obscene, like licking the flour off. He nonchalantly brushed his
fingers against his trousers like Al Pacino would and walked out the
door. Cool as you like.
Baltic outside, wind scything off the moor. Four vague tyre streaks on
a carpet of white stretched into the distance, all that was left of the
road. Houses clustered across the way, hunkered down out of the
weather, black windows staring blind into the murk. Old MacKinnon would
be peering out at him from some hidden place, silent in his fusty
house. He'd not been in the house since he was a kid out guising years
ago, but it would still smell the same. Had to. Old MacKinnon. Woke up
one morning to find his wife dead beside him. Story went he made a cup
of tea for them like he'd done every morning for the last sixty odd
years, sat there awhile, looking down and chatting softly, no tears
yet, pushing the grey hair from her face and looking for as long as he
could before everything changed.
Course his Dad wouldn't have the fire lit. No doubt he was still
sitting there with his boiled egg, picking out the last of the white,
that rubbery stuff that clung and peeled away from the shell like a
membrane. Probably was membrane, not proper egg at all. Drove him nuts
to watch the methodical peeling and scraping, really put him off eggs.
He'd escape the torture and do the fire himself, clean the embers out
from last night. Four am he'd been up till again. Not doing much. He
watched a film and had a couple of beers. Cold as well, freezing in
fact. He was near sitting on the hearth by the time the credits rolled.
Al Pacino had been shouting. New York City had been noisy. Gunshots
echoed and people scattered in Grand Central as he peered out the
window into the snow, trying to put his disembodied reflection back
together. He had to stay up but wasn't sure why, maybe to prove some
vague point about his existence, that he was still alive in the night,
make sure he made it back out of the movie, or maybe stayed in. Sleep
would've been bleak, a long way from New York. He stuck a poker in the
fire until it glowed red and seared his initials onto a log, over and
over, scarring the wood, trying to make the perfect job of
himself.
A car appeared, slipping all over the road, some madman doing fifty in
snow. In a Lada. It had to be MacHardy and was, slaloming past flinging
wet snow over his trousers. Not a wave of greeting or apology, just a
flash of black beard and curly hair and gone. Despite this MacHardy
remained a minor planet in his deranged universe. He, on the other
hand, pulsated in the centre as the super dense lunatic gas giant. No
reason for change there. Just had to look at what he'd been doing a
moment ago.
Eleven am.
Zero degrees and snow.
Wind chill nasty.
A man stands in the middle of a road.
He's hurling snowballs at a telephone pole that's way out of
range.
He's not thinking about snowballs.
He thinks he's Al Pacino.
That kind of awareness sent unsuspecting strangers running screaming
up the nearest hill, but round here this behaviour went unremarked, if
not quite accepted at least silently understood. Had someone passed the
greeting wouldn't have been a concerned question like, morning, why are
you standing in the middle of nowhere flinging snowballs? No way. The
person would have said bugger all and joined in.
Eleven am.
Zero degrees and snow.
Wind chill nasty.
Two guy's hurling snowballs-
This wasn't a sign of approaching madness. It made total sense as a
logical moment in his life spent here, a progression of facts and
events that could've led nowhere but snowballs. Not throwing them
would've been an impossibility. Such was the logic that couldn't be
explained to outsiders with any hope of building a trusting
relationship. These folk misunderstood and didn't see the underlying
sense, they could only pore incredulous over his deranged universe.
Would Pacino get it? The man was a professional liar so he could
understand anything. Fine then. He lied as well of course, but
furtively and only to others, never to himself, which was fine as well.
Suddenly he felt depressed then realised he was making it up and
stopped it just as quick. See, he couldn't lie to himself.
He trudged on, kicking at the hard lumpy snow. The thought of running
back down to the shop and pouring his heart out to Sheila occurred to
him again but was immediately dismissed. The urge swept across him
three days a week and he hadn't followed it through yet and never
would. Truth was he didn't know where pouring his heart out would
actually lead though no doubt it would be somewhere implausibly
frightening. God only knew what drivel would slop out if he started on
that, something salty and over flavoured no doubt, like monosodium
glutomate. Cup-a-Soup confessions, no reason why it couldn't be soup
causing these moods, too many dimensions for it to be a bi-polar thing.
Maybe it was all the familiar space. Could be, but town was too much
hassle and not enough money. Here meant cheap beer and telly? Toasties
as well. Cheese and ham. Sky movies. Seeing him slumped in front of the
box on a weekday morning would no doubt annoy the old man though no-one
really knew what he thought these days. He was sure he could still
speak despite the stroke and had chosen not to, preferring to let the
world shrink till awareness was only of himself, his own dirty plates,
his own cup of tea, his own silence. Might've been natural, after
seventy-seven years he'd maybe looked around and thought, fuck this,
packed up and moved on, someplace where he was developing a whole new
way of being, more than simple presence and past basic experience,
dense and monolithic. A suprabeing. Maybe even a souprabeing,
considering how much pea and ham he still put away. Whatever it was, it
was unnerving when those eyes followed him about the place with that
quiet stillness. Moments like that he wondered if there'd been a choice
to the changes and whether the stroke hadn't just stripped him bare,
mugged him of speech and condensed all remaining communication into
that watery gaze that watched from far away, saw him, but couldn't say
a word.
He shoved the gate open, pushing the snow back. He'd maybe clear the
path later but probably not. Snow would cover it again in a couple of
hours anyway and he wouldn't be out again that day. The gate clicked
shut and he rubbed his hands. White all around, patches of green spruce
here and there. A sparrow flittered over and he turned to follow it,
feet crunching. The bird dipped over the roof but his gaze had stopped
on the kitchen window, glowing there warm yellow, the tone just past
sickliness. His Dad sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with something.
A boiled egg probably. He watched him for a long time until a low drone
rose in the distance. A car in low gear crawled along the road. As it
moved past he thought a face turned his way. He raised a hand in
melancholy greeting like Al Pacino would but it was too gloomy. He
couldn't tell if Sheila waved back.

Tom McCulloch