Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro

Bunny taps at the tabloid with a manicured nail and looks up at the waitress and says, ‘I mean, have you read this? Jesus.’

The waitress looks at Bunny blankly.

‘Well, don’t. Just don’t.’

She gives her head a little jaded jerk. Bunny folds the paper in half and moves it out of the way, so that she can put the breakfast down.

‘It’s not something you want to read over breakfast, particularly when you’ve got a bloody cement mixer in your skull. Christ, I feel like someone actually dropped the mini-bar on my head.’

Bunny notices obliquely that a shaft of yellow sunlight has crawled across the dining room and moved up the inside of the waitress’s leg, but because the waitress has started to jiggle impatiently, it gives the surreal impression that a light is short-circuiting up inside her dress or that there is a sort of seepage of luminance over the pale dough of her inner thighs. Bunny can’t decide which.

He stares down at his breakfast, adrift in its sullage of grease, picks up his fork and with a sad poke at a sausage says, ‘Jesus, who cooked these eggs? The bloody council?’

The waitress smiles and covers her mouth with her hand. Around her neck, hanging on a delicate chain, is a dragon’s talon made of pewter holding a small glass eyeball. Bunny catches her smile, unguarded in her enormous, toneless eyes.

‘Ah, there we go. A little drop of sunshine,’ says Bunny, squeezing his thighs together and feeling a pulse of pleasure register around the perineum or wherever.

The waitress fingers her necklace and says, ‘You want tea?’

Bunny nods, and as the waitress moves away, he clocks the sudden and self-conscious seesawing of her retreating haunches and Bunny knows, more than he knows anything in the whole world, that he could fuck this waitress in the blink of an eye, no problems, so that when she returns with his cup of tea, Bunny points at her nametag and says, ‘What’s that? Is that your name? River? Where did you get that?’

The waitress places her hand over the nametag. Bunny notices the frosted, achromatic nail polish she is wearing corresponds in a suppositional way with the non-colour of her eyes. They both have something to do with the moon or the planets or something.

‘My mother called me that,’ said the waitress.

‘Oh, yeah? It’s pretty,’ says Bunny, bisecting a sausage and forking it into his mouth.

‘Because I was born near a river,’ she says.

Bunny chews and swallows and leans forward and says, ‘Good job you weren’t born near a toilet.’

A crease of ancient pain ruckles around the waitress’s eyes, diminishing them, then they clean-slate, blank-out, and she turns her back and begins to walk away. Bunny laughs, apologetically.

‘I’m sorry. Come back. I was joking.’

The breakfast room is empty and Bunny clasps his hands together in panto-supplication and says, ‘Oh, please,’ and the waitress slows.

Bunny zones on the afterpart of her lilac gingham uniform and a glitch in the pixels of the crosshatched pattern causes time to deregulate. He begins to see, in a concussed way, that this moment is a defining one for this particular young lady and a choice is presenting itself to her. It is a choice that could mark this waitress’s life for ever; she could continue to walk away and the day would roll on in all its dismal eventuality or she could turn around and her sweet, young life would open up like, um, a vagina or something. Bunny thinks this, but he also knows, more than he knows anything in the world, that she will, indeed, turn around and willingly and with no coercion step into the slipstream of his considerable sexual magnetism.

‘Please,’ he says.

He contemplates getting down on one knee but realises that it is unnecessary and that he probably wouldn’t be able to get up again.

River, the waitress, stops, she turns and in slow motion lies back in the water’s drift and floats towards him.

‘Actually, River is a beautiful name. It suits you. You’ve got very beautiful eyes, River.’

Bunny recalls hearing on Woman’s Hour , on Radio 4 (his favourite show), that more women prefer their men to wear the colour maroon than any other colour – something to do with power or vulnerability or blood or something – and is glad he has worn his shirt with the oxblood lozenges. It just makes things that bit easier.

‘They go deep,’ he says, spiralling an index finger hypnotically. ‘Way down.’

He feels a simple shift inside him, and the miserable machinery that has been grinding mercilessly in his brain all morning suddenly and effortlessly self-lubricates and moves into something sleek and choreographed and he almost yawns at the inexorable nature of what he is about to do.

He throws out his hands and says, ‘Guess what my name is!’

‘I don’t know,’ says the waitress.

‘Go on. Guess.’

‘No, I don’t know. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Well, do I look like a John?’

The waitress looks at him and says, ‘No.’

‘A Frank?’

‘No.’

Bunny limps his wrist, goes ham-homo, and says, ‘A Sebastian?’

The waitress cocks her head and says, ‘Well… maybe.’

‘Cheeky,’ he says. ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘It’s Bunny.’

‘Barney?’ says the waitress.

‘No, Bunny.’

Bunny holds up his hands at the back of his head and waggles them like rabbits’ ears. Then he crinkles his nose and makes a snuffly sound.

‘Oh, Bunny ! Suddenly River don’t seem so bad!’ says the waitress.

‘Oh, she’s got a mouth on her.’

Bunny leans down and picks up a small suitcase by his chair. He puts it on the table then shoots his cuffs and snaps the locks. Inside the case are various beauty product samples – miniature bottles of body lotion, tiny sachets of face cleanser and little tubes of hand cream.

‘Here, take this,’ says Bunny, giving River a sample of hand cream.

‘What’s this, then?’ says River.

‘It’s Elastin Rich, Extra Relief Hand Lotion.’

‘You sell this stuff?’

‘Yeah, door to door. It’s bloody miraculous, if you must know. You can have it. It’s free.’

‘Thanks,’ says River, in a small voice.

Bunny glances up at the clock on the wall and everything slows down and he feels the thunderous journey of his blood and his teeth throb at their roots and he says, quietly, ‘I can give you a demonstration, if you like.’

River looks at the tiny tube of lotion cradled in the palm of her hand.

‘It’s got Aloe Vera in it,’ he says.

Bunny turns the key in the ignition and his yellow Fiat Punto splutters sickly to life. A low-level guilt, if you could call it that, a nagging consternation that it was now 12.15 and he was still not home, rankles at the borders of his consciousness. He has a vague, unsettling memory of Libby being particularly upset the night before but he can’t bring the reasons to mind and, anyway, it is a beautiful day and Bunny loves his wife.

It is testament to Bunny’s irrepressible optimism that the glory days of their courtship refuse to relinquish their hold on the present so that it does not really matter how much shit intersects with the marital fan, when Bunny brings his wife to mind, her arse is always firmer, her breasts are shaped like torpedoes and she still possesses that girlish giggle and those happy lavender eyes. A bubble of joy explodes in his belly as he emerges from the car park into the glorious seaside sunshine. It is a beautiful day and, yes, he loves his wife.

Bunny manoeuvres the Punto through the weekend traffic and emerges onto the seafront, and with a near swoon Bunny sees it – the delirious burlesque of summertime unfolding before him.