The Small Square
The café was getting the beginnings of its winter appearance; trying on the drab apparel for the first time. A couple of precautionary raincoats hung by the door, no umbrellas as yet, the real tell-tale sign was the margin of condensation around every window and the necessity to keep the lights on even at ten thirty in the morning. In sum it was a flat, indeterminate weekday in November and Kay stirred her cappuccino with a slow but relentless determination to put some kind of sympathetic spin on her spirits. She should have been looking forward to the next few weeks for a number of reasons; there was more work to be produced, more people in the gallery and most importantly more income between now and Christmas than in all the other months taken together; but today was a bad one, and she knew damn well why.
“What’s bugging you?”
Trisha filled the table with bustling concern and the deeply comforting smell of oil paint. She slapped her notebook down and propped a packet of cigarettes open upon it, removing one and waving it about as she talked, fully aware that Kay and most of the staff were terrified that she would light it and force one of them to tell her to put it out.
“You’re staring into that coffee as if it were a crystal ball. Is this to do with your latest conquest? He doesn’t look that bad, but you can never tell from appearances.”
“No, he’s okay; well quite pleasant actually,” replied Kay.
“Oh, really; do go on,” in her enthusiasm for romantic detail, Trisha almost, but not quite, sparked her lighter. Kay took a long breath of linseed and frying sausages, seeing nothing but the dissolving chocolate dusted foam.
Trisha’s hand, wrist made strong by the multi-coloured fabric woven around it, clamped down over Kay’s, stilling the nervous turning of the spoon. “You know Frank isn’t real. We checked it out, we checked everything out. Frank never existed, he was never your shrink, he had nothing to do with the pharmaceutical company. He’s just more of that shit that you were left with by your parents…”
“By my dad.”
“Sorry, by your dad; but he’s paying for it for the rest of his life.”
“Is he? I don’t think he even knows he’s locked up. Apparently he’s developed some sort of late onset autism. Anyway, what’s prison for? It’s obviously not making him a better person, or any kind of person, and I’m sure society doesn’t care enough about what he… they… did to me to think his sentence constitutes revenge.”
“So?”
“So he knew Frank.”
Trisha was the only person Kay had ever met whom she could read emotionally. Now she sensed the tussle between exasperation and sorrow.
“Drink up. Forget about it. We’ve too much to be doing in the gallery. Your elves are flying out the doors.”
Kay smiled despite herself. “Not literally I hope.” Well done Trisha. Perhaps she was right. In the end, when everything except your memories tell you that someone never existed, and she had to admit her memories had already been shown to be unreliable, perhaps it was better to go along with the general consensus. She shook Frank’s image out of her head and prepared to make more elves. At least they were real.
The café was getting the beginnings of its winter appearance; trying on the drab apparel for the first time. A couple of precautionary raincoats hung by the door, no umbrellas as yet, the real tell-tale sign was the margin of condensation around every window and the necessity to keep the lights on even at ten thirty in the morning. In sum it was a flat, indeterminate weekday in November and Kay stirred her cappuccino with a slow but relentless determination to put some kind of sympathetic spin on her spirits. She should have been looking forward to the next few weeks for a number of reasons; there was more work to be produced, more people in the gallery and most importantly more income between now and Christmas than in all the other months taken together; but today was a bad one, and she knew damn well why.
“What’s bugging you?”
Trisha filled the table with bustling concern and the deeply comforting smell of oil paint. She slapped her notebook down and propped a packet of cigarettes open upon it, removing one and waving it about as she talked, fully aware that Kay and most of the staff were terrified that she would light it and force one of them to tell her to put it out.
“You’re staring into that coffee as if it were a crystal ball. Is this to do with your latest conquest? He doesn’t look that bad, but you can never tell from appearances.”
“No, he’s okay; well quite pleasant actually,” replied Kay.
“Oh, really; do go on,” in her enthusiasm for romantic detail, Trisha almost, but not quite, sparked her lighter. Kay took a long breath of linseed and frying sausages, seeing nothing but the dissolving chocolate dusted foam.
Trisha’s hand, wrist made strong by the multi-coloured fabric woven around it, clamped down over Kay’s, stilling the nervous turning of the spoon. “You know Frank isn’t real. We checked it out, we checked everything out. Frank never existed, he was never your shrink, he had nothing to do with the pharmaceutical company. He’s just more of that shit that you were left with by your parents…”
“By my dad.”
“Sorry, by your dad; but he’s paying for it for the rest of his life.”
“Is he? I don’t think he even knows he’s locked up. Apparently he’s developed some sort of late onset autism. Anyway, what’s prison for? It’s obviously not making him a better person, or any kind of person, and I’m sure society doesn’t care enough about what he… they… did to me to think his sentence constitutes revenge.”
“So?”
“So he knew Frank.”
Trisha was the only person Kay had ever met whom she could read emotionally. Now she sensed the tussle between exasperation and sorrow.
“Drink up. Forget about it. We’ve too much to be doing in the gallery. Your elves are flying out the doors.”
Kay smiled despite herself. “Not literally I hope.” Well done Trisha. Perhaps she was right. In the end, when everything except your memories tell you that someone never existed, and she had to admit her memories had already been shown to be unreliable, perhaps it was better to go along with the general consensus. She shook Frank’s image out of her head and prepared to make more elves. At least they were real.
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