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Sweet Scents of the night

Text: Sweet Scents of the night

from Gretchen Miller, 30.04.08

This is a little story I wrote the other day in a rare moment off... First bit of pure fiction I've written for a couple of years really... feeling a bit rusty! But that's ok... It's good to dream things up again.

Text

Jasmine coils into nostrils, hanging off terrace houses, uninvited, teenage scrappy, but welcomed for its two week gift to summer evenings. Darkness swings round corners, late, carrying spices, like notes in the air.
I can smell tom cat piss. The boys hit the town. The girls slink and scowl.
The bass line lies in petrol fumes, mown grass and spilt beer.

The man is hot and heavy. Sweating, weighed down by heat. Face is square and lined, hair back-street-fighter-short, arms tight and short too. Clothes look nothing special but must have cost a bit, to get that fit round this triangular form. He’s slipping unnoticed down the black footpath, headed for the Rose on Erko Road). In the shadows, down streets stilled by the heat, but edgy. There’s an argument going down over parking. Two cars. One space. No-one indicated. Who’s going to get it? Even the drivers don’t really care.

* * *

The girl by the fence over there is dreaming. She’s pregnant again. Test bought on a whim from the late-night chemist just showed the blue line. She’ll ring for an appointment tomorrow. Her poly-cotton dress is clinging a bit. Heat has made it damp. It’s too tight under the armpits. There’s wisps of hair sticking unnoticed to her neck. She can feel it all acutely, but feels nothing. A man just walked out and she’ll discard another, sniffing round, within a day or two, but, somehow, things are going to be fine. She’s made a decision and a head long full of twisting turmoil is now completely clear of stuff. The heat has washed it out of her. Shandy – nice name for beer and lemonade. She’ll have one shortly, just like nana used to. Maybe two.

The suburb creaks down, the houses shift and settle their bricks and bones into tarmac and small patches of dusty dirt worn out from an wearying overlay of lead and grime. The houses and the trees can’t breath. But the jasmine flowers float out their scent and the family, cooking make-do Indian, laugh into the night.

* * *

Give us a beer. He rubs his eyes. Fingers drawn across and dug down, he wipes the sweat and tries to press the tiredness away.

Today he lost a union fight down at the packing factory. Tonight the wife took off, again. The pub smoke stings his eyes, the skin feels paper thin, sore from heightened nerves that twitch across his body, unbidden and distressingly sensitive. His muscles contract in response. Shut down. The back a slab of flesh, frozen solid. I watch from over the bar, but I can’t help him. Who can?

Maybe the kids, the little one, four, arms round his neck, earlier in the night. 'I love you daddy'. The child hasn’t forgotten the wallop he got for one too many ‘no’s the night before. Already he knows a hug might buy himself a bit of insurance for the night, just in case. Yeah, the man says, distracted.

His wife eyeballs him. This is what I mean, she says, without saying it. He looks away while she finishes the job; grabbing the last of the things to take to her mate’s place. Taking both boys.
The man says nothing. Last night’s fight’s all gone.
He kisses the child who, relieved, skips out the door after his mother.
The man heads down to the pub.
Heavy-framed, heavy-hearted, he’s paying for the heat tonight.

* * *
From the balcony I can see them. The woman in her cheap linen dress, clutching her shandy. The man carrying his weight, moving slowly, schooner warming under his fingers. Over the course of the long hot evening they move like birds, wheeling slowly through the crowds in ever decreasing ellipses. And as the pub empties she nods to him and he bows to her, face unreadable for mockery or gentility.
They dance an ironic pas de deux, her head tilting to one side, eyes downcast, he gazing softly, his eyes on her face.
It’s a moment. And then without a word they turn in opposite directions and leave the pub.
She makes her preparations for bed, and sleeps quickly.
He sits with the child’s cap-gun to his temple, for a while.
And with a deep sigh, pulls the trigger.

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1 comments

  • Anonymous's picture

    06.11.08 — Nicole Steinke

    Gretchen, that is gorgeous,

    Gretchen, that is gorgeous, and until just now i never knew it was there. Hit the "last" icon, wanting to begin at the beginning of all these My Street stories to take a last look before we judge the comp, and there was something so beautiful and richly, damply evocative. Thankyou.
    Nicole