Wright Left

by Peter Marks

  Suddenly, from under the front door, a distant voice told her to shift herself.

  ‘Nathan, you idiot, what are you doing?’ She asked. There was no reply. All she heard was some heavy breathing emanating from an empty space beneath the locked door and the hall carpet so she knelt down to speak to this verbal breeze coming in at her from outside - just as Fionna came bowling out of the lounge.

  ‘Kelly.....what are you doing down there?’ she asked, wondering if Kelly had decided to embrace Islam. Kelly looked up from her prone position thinking that she must look ridiculous. Or like a praying Muslim.

  ‘Nathan’s on the porch playing silly buggars. I gather there’s a full moon tonight so he’s obviously out there transmogrifying ..bloody lunatic,’ Kelly stammered, trying to explain why her head was pressed to the carpet like an iron to a a newly washed frock.

  ‘Oh,’ Fionna smirked, readily accepting Kelly’s strange explanation. Fionna thought that, in truth, Nathan was terminally mutant, not temporarily moonstruck but she didn’t share her wisdom with the carpet crawling Kelly. With an almost empty glass pressed to her dry and painted lips, she headed for the kitchen in search of another bottle of acid red.

  Kelly meanwhile was up and ambulant. On hearing Nathan’s laughter pouring in at her embarrassment from under the door. she was off on the chase. Bastard she hissed, throwing open the door in fevered pursuit of the still laughing, fast fleeing Wright who now seemed to have also sprouted wings (to complement the masses of extraneous body hair and three inch eye teeth probably. It was Wright the Bewarewolf).

  Without too much trouble Kelly snaffled the giggling fool and bundled him into the car before he went walk-about again (or the moon really did start interfering with his lunar tickled brain).

  ________________

  The party was only two suburbs away so it didn’t take long to get there. It took even less time to leave for they’d forgotten to buy anything to drink.

  ‘You forgot the wine,’ Wright told Kelly who smartly set him straight. Her index finger crocked in obvious annoyance, she stabbed at what passed for his chest with a long crimson nail. Impaling him; cross.

  ‘You forgot the wine,’ her digit corrected.

  Nathan, deciding discretion was the better part of valour, grudgingly accepted the blame. Wright understood from bitter experience that being a passenger in this car, with this female, was fraught with peril - dangers other than her often erratic performance behind the wheel. Things like the ever-present threat of eviction for instance. It was a knowledge born of prior convictions that convinced him that she’d not hesitate to maroon him in the middle of no-where if he tried arguing. Such duress was irresistible, and certainly sufficient to convince him of his guilt (and Kelly of her power).

  She made him pay for his mistake by using his Bankcard for the grog.

  ________________

  With considerable dexterity Kelly slid the car, which she’d saved slavishly for, into the curb. It was a flame red Ford Laser that had cost her the entire contents of her last fifty pay-checks, or so she claimed, but even this had not been enough to pay for the damned thing as her earnings had still only managed to cover the deposit. Or, in real terms: the dash (which Nathan’s feet were currently positioned) the two uncomfortable seats (ergonomically unsound and chiropractically crippling) and the front left hubcap (that Nathan had drawn a smiling face on with Kelly’s pink lipstick). As for the rest, the bank owned them - the engine, the boot, the other gleaming hubcaps, the charcoal carpet, the valves, the pistons - everything (except the dash, the seats and the smiling front left hubcap). Even the lighter Wright was currently trying to ignite his fag with, the bank owned. (Not that this was an unusual circumstance for Wright to find himself in for everything Nathan owned, the bank owned. Even the lighters he didn’t own the bank owned for Nathan owed more than he owned).

  “I’m a valuable asset!” the inflated one would often exclaim to his fagan Bank Manager.

  “Lighters were more useful,” said the Bank Manager.

  ________________

  ‘Nathan,’ she snapped, turning to grab her black leather bag from the back seat. ‘You’re not playing human chimney in my car, put those hideous things away!’ She ordered. ‘And get your feet off the dash,’ she hit, whacking his thigh with a palm punch before patting the dash as if the mere presence of his feet, or the smoke from his treasured Alpines’, was an affront to the tender sensibilities of her precious new vehicle.

  ‘Why?’ he asked innocently. ‘Cars don’t get cancer,’ he informed her (and the delicate vehicle) and removing the offending (and offensive) feet. ‘Cause it maybe, but don’t actually get it ..when was the last time you saw a car strapped to a gurney to be led off for chemotherapy at the Peter McCullam?’ Wright argued clinically.

  ________________

  There was a hospital in Melbourne which specialised in cancers. It was called the Peter MacCullam Clinic and was known locally as the Peter Mac. which Wright thought made it sound more MacDonalds than medical (although such an impression wasn’t completely without relevance for The Peter Mac indeed did deal in the Taken-Away).

  The fact that there was an entire institution devoted to this particular form of death was a worrying development as far as Nathan was concerned. Obviously there was a market, a huge one judging from the size and number of the buildings there, for idiots like him. For anyone who chose to smoke and ignore the horizontal consequences of the horrible habit.

  Realistically the human chimney knew there were other ways to achieve the ‘Big C’ other than the perpetual inhalation of tar and nicotine and other such crap into ominously fouled lungs. Wright realised that not everyone chased it with the vigour he did, that it could grab even the innocent. Sure the location of the killer cells may be different but the results were identical and even those who had never smoked could still attain it. Somehow, somewhere. Somehow the fact that at least he’d chosen to assist its remorseless progress made him feel that, in some pathetic sort of way, he’d at least taken some control over his destiny.

  That at least Nathan knew what was going to reap him.

  Wright also knew there were a million other ways to find himself six foot under so why not smoke? There were just too many alternatives for God to chose from when God wanted him as dead as some of his closest friends did. Hell, he could kark of car crash or reach terminal velocity on kevlar ski’s and wrap himself mort around a lift tower. Or find nirvana dead from dog bite. Or heaven only in his wildest dreams.

  But Wright’s money was on the ‘Big C’.

  Really, it was scary just how many and various ways there were to shuffle off this mortal coil, but Wright still thought that it was odds on, at the rate he smoked, that his lungs would get him before anything else did. He figured that when, not if, this breathless fate indeed transpired then the least the board of governors could do in honour of his diligence would be to rename the place in honour of him and his habit.

  Call it the ‘Nathan Wright Clinic’ or more aptly: ‘The Fuckwit Suicided’.

  ________________

  Kelly said nothing in reply to Wright’s car sick story. Moving quickly, she simply snatched the fiend fags from him and, looking like Nathan remembered his mother looked whenever she was about to punish him, she reached casually into the packet where, stretching agile fingers, she removed one cigarette. And broke it in two. Then she grabbed a second and broke that one in three. Wright, feeling like an accessory to murder, sat stunned. He was powerless to stop the carnage and simply looked on aghast. Desperate times called for desperate action so he did what he always did when he didn’t know what else to do. He started to jibber. Tried to bore her into stopping, telling her the story of his life and begging her not kill his kindle.

  ‘Oh god no! Please, have mercy!’ he wailed. She shred the twelfth.

  ‘Women smoke too you know!’ He was desperate. Wright foolishly hoped that the introduction of her gender into their
argument might help. Stammered: ‘Great women smoke. Have smoked. Bonfire Maggie...’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bonfire Maggie.....don’t you know anything? Then there’s Paula the Pyro, Phyllis the Flame, Kate ‘The Burning’ Bush, Cilla Blackened, Gracie Burns..’

  ‘Gracie FIELDS you damn moron.’ Kelly groaned, reapplying summer pink lipstick to dulled lips using the rear-view mirror, wondering what all this had to do with Nathan’s horrible habit.

  ‘Joan of Arc!’ He shrieked, his bird brain working overtime.

  ‘You’re quite demented Nathan.’

  ‘Mrs. Raliegh.’ Wright was clutching at straws.

  ‘Who?’ She queried, brushing her hair back, free hand fumbling in her bag in search of a box of matches to set fire to the about to be incendiary, but always idiot, idiot prattling beside her.

  ‘Sir Walter’s wife.’

  ‘Your brain is taking liberties again Nathan.’

  ‘Honest. They’re all famous. Household names. Go to the library and check.’

  ‘Crap!’ She said, mildly amused, brushing her pale cheeks with the fine powder from a tortoise shell compact. ‘What do I do? Whiz down there and search under ‘C’ for Crap?’ She asked, not interested in any reply, gazing in the mirror trying to ascertain if she was party presentable yet.

  ‘Look under ‘C’ for ‘The Pacific’ for all I care,’ Wright sighed. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t recall any women of note who had the habit. Or had ever had the habit.

  He hated this about women, hated the way they were so smarter than men. The very fact that not one woman came to mind now that he needed a famous female smoker to assist his argument made this sad fact even more evident. So he tried the infamous instead.

  ‘Your gran. Your mum.....’

  ‘My mother doesn’t smoke!’

  ‘Oh.’ Wright lamented, thinking she would if I got near her with my trusty blowtorch. ‘Well okay. So she just fumes,’ he admitted.

  ‘Only when you’re there.’

  ‘So it was a bad example,’ Wright continued, thinking Kelly’s mum was about the worst example he’d ever met. ‘What about those lovely young girls in all the ads? They smoke and there’s nothing wrong with those wenches.’

  ‘Just because your lot continue making money from impressionable teenagers too young to know any better doesn’t make the habit any more acceptable.’

  ‘My lot?’ Nathan queried.

  ‘Your advertising cohorts’.

  ‘Its not us. It’s Peer pressure.’

  ‘Beer pressure...You’re all drunks’

  ‘Why do you always interrupt. I was talking about smoking, remember?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, searching the mirror stunningly disinterested.

  ‘Joan the Salmon smokes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Joan the Salmon ....the woman down the road who smells like a fish but looks like a vulture.’

  ‘Or an ashtray.’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Kelly sighed, back shredding his cigarettes.

  ‘Okay! Alright already. Only joking! Don’t maim my children. Have some compassion,’ he cried as Kelly broke another, the cast out tobacco spilling onto her expensive black with small white polka dotted dress and the floor of the car. It wasn’t until she’d demolished almost the entire packet that she noticed the tobacco torrent. And that her car had turned into one huge joint. Screaming abuse at him she leapt from her seat. (Kelly hated him smoking at any time but couldn’t stop him. Unless he was in her car. Then she could not only stop him but she would kill him if he even tried, even though he try every-so-often to test her resolve. And her aim).

  Nathan sat there laughing at the Alpine’s revenge.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she screeched, brushing herself off, ‘its all over my best dress. This shit is all over my clean floor. You and your bloody cigarettes...’

  Nathan looked hurt. ‘Me? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t spread my ashes all over your floor,’ he giggled, peering inside the almost uninhabited packet of cigarettes trying to ascertain how many remained. Undamaged.

  ‘I’ll be spreading your ashes one of these days you poncing great idiot. If cancer doesn’t get you, I sure will,’ she promised on hands and knees not in, but not out of the car either, trying to brush the mountain of stray tobacco from inside to out. Out onto Tobacco Road.

  ‘Kelly?’

  ‘What?’ She grumbled, slowly lifted her blonde head from the red carpeted floor, a broad smile for some reason now fixed to her face. Then it became clear. Triumphantly, she held aloft one of her favourite earrings, an oyster fake, that had gone missing weeks ago.

  ‘Nathan look! My pearl earring ...I thought I’d lost it.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you, now stop rooting around like a pig in a pen and get back in the car. I want to talk to you’.

  From the street lights above, a mute luminescence pervaded the interior in which Wright sat. Subtle yet comforting, it crept in from the wood and ghostly poles that, guardian erect, lined the street to shine lighthouse safe through the curtain rain of another Noah night.

  ‘Why?’ She stopped fumbling to confront him, a concerned look sweeping an angel face. He brushed it aside telling her not to look so worried, reassuring her that it wasn’t that serious. Then he paused. He was strangely, suddenly, really aware of her. He was struck by the vision now frowning at him. Kelly was beautiful. Absolutely, fabulously, beautiful. Wright was reminded how lucky he was to have her. Intently, he gazed lost into her deep blue eyes, saw twin crimson bonfires glowing fierce from the satin depths. He watched mesmerised as delicate splinters of reflected lamp danced light within. Entranced, he traced her fine lovely profile of nose to lips to pert chin. Kelly smiled, Nathan enjoyed. He sighed contentedly knowing how fortunate he was that she’d adopted him for she was sincere, pleasant, classy, sensual, desirable. And for the moment - his.

  (Mind you there were a few peculiarities he could do without. Things like her constant attack on his lungs and how he employed them for instance, but nothing too outrageous. Nothing he couldn’t live with. He loved being with her, he truly did love her).

  ‘Well moron?’ she frowned, breaking the spell. Wright, awakening from the trance, noted that there were occasions when her vocabulary didn’t quite match her beauty.

  ‘..what is it?’ She finished, toying with the recently located earring.

  He took a deep breath, preparing to battle sanity.

  ‘Do you ever get the feeling of deja vu? Do you ever think that some things, odd situations or places, or people, were familiar but shouldn’t be?’ He wasn’t explaining it too well but she seemed to get the gist.

  ‘Sometimes. Why?’

  ‘Just asking. You know lately I’ve had a couple of really weird days. It was as though time decided to perspire because one day seemed to dribble into the next.’

  It was Wright’s armpit theory. And it stunk. He tried explaining himself and his nonsense idea by telling Kelly that time seemed to be misbehaving. That it seemed to be using him as an experiment.

  He said this because of a couple of very peculiar days he’d recently wrestled with. Now, sitting by her side in the car, sheltered from the rain, he decided to get a second opinion and attempted to verbalise an explanation as ridiculous as the purported experience for temporarily, Nathan Wright, intellect of an ant, believed time was like sweat.

  His asinine analogy went like this: that no matter how much chemical defoliant was sprayed on the hirsute pit between arm and shoulder heat would win, and moisture roll on. Like time seemed to. It would leak. No spray could control the glands, no deodourant could dam the flood just as no clock restrained his hours. Just as the shifting body coolants would still stray to turn shirt to wettex, Wright’s days ran.

  Sweat would stray. And so would his time. Or that’s how it had seemed to Nathan for recently there’d been a couple of
his days which had expanded into an accumulation of hours that defied logic and the laws of nature to spread themselves over a greater span than was normal. Or possible.

  Occasionally of late Wright had found himself waking up to read a paper he was sure he’d read yesterday. Or watching the same television programs he was certain he’d watched the day before. He found himself fielding identical, day after the original, questions which he was convinced were merely an instant replay of yesterday’s demands. Weird. He was sure strange things were happening to him; or he regarded certain utterings from a fading memory as strange. Wright knew it could be senility. But he stuck with strange because it sounded less threatening.

  His mind it seemed, a creative cesspool at the best of times, was playing tricks on him. But the results did seem to be a bargain. He seemed to be getting a tax free, two for one, illogical and completely lunatic deal - a 48 hour, so, double day.

  ________________

  Although Wright knew, however vaguely, what he was prattling about Kelly, being more sensible than the senseless one next to her, had absolutely no idea what he was on about (imagining it was about 40 milligrams of some mind altering substance basically).

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She sighed, gazing out the window at the wet drops high diving onto a cement pavement. Nathan, noticing her distracted gaze realised his explanation had lost her so dropped it, suggesting she forget the whole thing and make a move before the local constabulary arrested them for loitering (or charged Wright with intent to commit himself).

  ________________

  That Wright’s concept of life and the days that measured it should alter should have come as no great surprise to any-one. Wright included. Bored with it, he shuffled from day to day cultivating his monotony. He was all too involved with the debilitating effects of chronic disinterest to appreciate his environment or his friends or even begin to count his myriad blessings.

  Or keep a girlfriend long enough (or drugged enough) to marry him.