Homily

Martin tossed his backpack aside and dropped his trousers.
“Christ, I’m bloody red raw,” he said, peeling his boxer shorts gingerly away from his thigh and stooping to peer inside. “It’s like bloody beetroot”.

Sian Kennedy

“I’m going to take a shower,” said Abigail, “there’s Neosporin in a ziplock in my case.”
“It’s ridiculous, I mean, two sodding miles and it must be ninety degrees. What was he thinking, for God’s sake? It’s weeping. It’s probably infected. Christ. I can’t do it tonight. We’ll have to cancel.”
He listened to the water hissing indifferently behind the door. Trouser-manacled, he shuffled across.
“We’ll have to cancel!”
“In the ziplock!”
He cracked the door. “We’ll have to …”
“Hey, shut the door!”
“Abi, we’ll …”
“Martin, shut the damn door, you’re letting the air out”
He shut the door. Perched on the corner of the bed, he wafted the leg of his underpants clear of the wound and winced. He unzipped her suitcase. Odd that a woman so abbreviated and geared to forward motion would keep her toiletries in a plastic bag: the little travel toothbrush, the Tom’s of Maine, Advil. Odd. But sweet. A hint of the lie, maybe. The germ of that childishness which, if he dwelled upon it, could bring everything rushing back. He squeezed the tube more gently with this thought hovering, eased open his groin and dabbed flecks of ointment along the crease at the edge of his scrotum.
“Any chance you could do that somewhere else?”
She was mummied in a bath towel, carefully tucked, turbaned and backed with steam. A moment’s glance took in the shallow slope of her chest from her sternum into the towel, barely a hint of contour, flat and bound like a geisha. He shuddered lightly.
“Sorry, you were in the bathroom.”
“It’s all yours.”
He rose carefully, tenting the fabric away from his thigh.
“It’s so bloody sore. You know, we’re going to have to cancel.”
“Oh, and by the way, what’s the deal with opening the door when I’m in the shower?”
“You didn’t seem to be able to hear.”
“So shout louder.  I was in the shower. You can’t just walk in.”
“I only cracked it …”
“Yes, well don’t do it again. Or anything else, actually.”
He resumed his gerontic shuffle.
“I didn’t see. I wasn’t looking.”
“Not the point, Martin. Why don’t you take your trousers off?”
“I’ll do it in the bathroom.”
“Suit yourself. Be nice if you put them back on before you came out.”
She waited for him to close the door before reaching for the ziplock. With some relief she verified that she hadn’t put her diaphragm in with her toiletries. What was she thinking, offering him unrestricted access to her suitcase? She needed to be more careful – exasperation had bullied down her guard. She hardly needed that skinny bulb of hope in him to be nourished inadvertently. She pulled a blouse from the suitcase and held it up. Tossing it aside, she returned to the suitcase and retrieved a patterned sun-dress; an appropriately startling choice, wholly out of keeping with the firm air of circumspection she had been at pains to establish. And it would slip easily over her head. She moved around the bed and positioned herself directly in front of the bathroom door, placing the dress on the vanity within reach.
“You okay in there?” she said flatly.
“Yeah. Cold washcloth seems to help.”
She moved to within a foot of the door. With one hand she reached across her chest and unclasped the bath towel letting it fall to the floor.  She felt the chill of full exposure waft across her.  Staring at the door, she began counting silently to herself at an even, steady beat. At five, she heard movement from inside, a gathering of effects. She counted on, eight, nine, ten, an elongated eleven. She let the moment hang, thicken, before reaching for the dress, lifting it above her head and pulling it down over her shoulders, chest, hips in a single movement. She moved away from the door and eased the curtains apart as he emerged from the bathroom.
“I think we should cancel, Abi.”
He had put on trousers but was barefoot and shirtless, beetling across the room at a slight crouch, cradling shoes, socks and a towel. She registered his skinniness, the knuckles on his shoulders and that his hair was wet; but she hadn’t heard the shower. He dumped his stuff on the bed and, toweling his hair, straightened up to find her looking at him. Intently? Blankly? Certainly directly, but with a palpable absence of engagement. He half-smiled and focused on the bedspread. Jesus. That sun-dress. He sensed the gauge of the cloth, the faintest barrier interrupting her from the air and the room and him. Jesus. The drop of the fabric from that neat, small shelf. The pocket of space that would lie beneath the taut swell, the faint curve and crease, shaded and dappled through the flower pattern. He toweled more vigorously and almost began to whistle. In the periphery of his vision he could see her still watching him, neutrally, meaninglessly.
“I really think we should cancel, y’know,” he said, still toweling.
“Great.”
“It would be a pity to be below par on our first outing.”
“Sure. Suits me.”
She moved away from the window and began leafing through the staggered folders on the desk. Guest Information, Room Service, Local Attractions. He thought she had something else to say but he spoke up just in case.
“So, that’s okay then? We’ll let it go and see how things are tomorrow?”
“Sure. There’s plenty of other things to do.” She tossed a brochure onto the bed – Cave of the Leprechauns. She smiled and flared her eyes in mock mysteriousness. His stomach fluttered and the moment was gone. She uncoiled the towel briskly from around her head.
“I’m going downstairs for a drink.”
She shook loose her hair and took a plastic key from the vanity before crossing to the bed, making a cursory search of her suitcase and pulling out a pair of panties. She moved towards the door and in the shadow of the hallway, her back to him, slipped the panties on under her dress with practiced efficiency. His breath stopped and his ears rang with tinnitus.
“Don’t catch cold,” he said.
“Hmm?” She looked at him, but the lights were out.
“Your hair.”
“Oh. Right. See you down there.”
And she was gone. He watched the fire-drill notice on the back of the door and registered an inkling to masturbate which he knew he wouldn’t act on. Distractedly, he lifted his foot to scratch an itch on the opposing calf. His toe moved across a little lump and he felt a jab of pain. He looked down. A dunnish-brown tick the size and shape of a lentil sat fatly on the muscle of his leg where the hairs thinned at the long-sock line.
“Fuck. Fuck. I don’t fucking believe it. Fuck.”
He sat on the bed and crooked his leg, inspecting the tumid little blob from the middle-distance lest it leap from its perch and go for his face. He could faintly make out the triple segments of its body rendered indistinct by fatness; weak indentations across its back, cilia, perhaps even the upper portion of a face ducking into the flesh of his calf. He stared it, his face curled into a tragedy-mask of disgust. He imagined he saw it moving, shuffling its position the better to suck. His stomach shifted. He crept along the edge of the bed, keeping his leg raised; pressure on his foot would surely thicken the pulse of blood up his leg and further engorge his hideous passenger. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a book of matches. Trattoria Firenze. He tore off a match and advanced it towards the turgid monster, pausing a few millimeters away before tremblingly slipping the tip under the swollen butt of its body, easing it upwards. It had mass. He sensed it tighten its grip, hunker down, and he was suddenly aware of cold perspiration on his forehead, a brightening of his vision as it narrowed into vignette. He groaned and pulled his hand away, leaning back on an elbow, gazing out toward the blank television. His mouth was hollow and pasty, his tongue a furred mouse. Addicted to the horror, he peered sidelong at the awful gray teardrop far away at the other end of his body, feasting. He reached over and picked up the phone.
“Yes, I’d like to reach a customer at the bar please …”

(cont’d – ‘Song of the Best Western (II of III)’)

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