4.5

 

Dressing in her last set of clean underwear, her last clean top and the same jeans she'd taken off to have her shower, she put her boots back on and stomped into the kitchen. Her foray into town for bedding yesterday had also been a day to purchase some basic foodstuffs, and she made herself tea and toast with margarine. She would have bought butter, but her overdraft was approaching her maximum far too quickly for her liking and since margarine was half the price of butter, she decided that was a good place to start economising. At least the toaster worked, even if the oven was what might be described as an Object d'Art had it been anywhere but a kitchen, and since she'd missed the bus on the Dada movement by almost a century, it was destined to stay a broken oven for ever.

Disdaining the use of a plate, since it would mean extra washing up and toast crumbs falling on the floor were negligible compared to all the dirt and gravel that was already there, she wandered through the flat toward her room. She gave Paul's door another knock, on the off chance he'd been asleep earlier and had smelled the toast she'd made, but there was no reply this time, either. Folding her last piece of toast in half and cramming it in her mouth, she tried the door, not really expecting it to open despite Paul’s assurance of trust within their little household. Trust was earned, and they hadn't known each other long enough for her to trust him, and if she didn't trust him, what chance did she have of his trust in her?

A soft click allowed a vertical line of light to pierce the gloom of the hallway, and cautiously she opened the door wide enough to stick her head through and view the room within. He was right. This room was less than half the size of hers, even without the massive stone block on an oak stool in the middle of the room. It could easily be viewed from the bed, and she could only imagine the hours he must lie there staring at it. At least the room was empty. She'd been half expecting him to be lying there, testing her promise to not enter his room but her heart didn't beat any less loudly for the knowledge. She knew in her gut she shouldn't be in here, and the certainty was tying her bowels in knots to the point she'd have to cut short this impromptu spying session and empty her bowels.

But first, she had to see what he had been carving. The block wasn't on a turntable like the one in the living room, which would indicate it was finished, at least for the time being. There wasn't room in here to swing a chisel hammer, so it must be a piece he considered ready to exhibit. Checking that her feet wouldn't encounter any obstacles, for she wanted to leave no trace of her intrusion, she edged around the stool to the side of the bed, which Paul had left as neat as a squaddies, though perhaps not as clean. The whole room smelled of aftershave, deodorant, sweat, and used matches; not a combination that would have interested her ordinarily, but here it stirred a memory of sorts, or if not a memory, a gut feeling she'd smelled it before.

A glance at the bedside table showed her that Paul was bedtime reader, with a copy of both Gombridge's The Consolidation of Art and Desire, and Joseph Heller's Catch 22, both the choices of an intellectual reader, and neither of which she had read herself, though she'd read a synopsis of the latter when she had to write an essay about contraindication for third year Dialectics, so she knew the gist of the story. If you're insane, you can be discharged from the army, but anyone who declares themself insane cannot be, by reason of self-awareness. What did that say about Paul? That he was insane? Probably not but judging by what she knew about the conjunction of art and desire, she would be disinclined to put her finger inside any hole in his artwork.

Finally, she turned to see the block of finished stone. She couldn't make it out at first, since it seemed to not be stone at all, but a twisting series of animated holograms made to look like a sculpture. She stepped closer, the image resolving into that of a figure rotating slowly as if on a dais, except the dais was a wooden stake upon which the figure was impaled and not rotating but writhing, the expression on its face so agonising as to be beatific, as if carved by the like of David or Michelangelo. It seemed familiar, and it was only as she got closer that the figure seemed to expand as if under a microscope and she could see a little placard at the base with a title on it.

It was her own name.