Mat Johnson - Drop

‘We’ve got to eat soon. I can’t keep reheating all of this,’ Fionna didn’t bother to whisper.

‘We will, just a second. As soon as David makes it up the walk, we eat. I promise. Just come upstairs. Let’s watch one of the movies. Margaret left her book in the car so I already started running the previews.’

‘No.’

‘Do you need any help? I could be doing something.’

‘No.’

‘Would you like me to kiss you and hug you and make everything better?’ Comedic failure. Fionna turned away from me. The hair on her head was straight and long, most of it even hers. Unable to leave without having something said that would make things better, I leaned against the doorway, watching her. That was my punishment, it seemed we had wordlessly decided, for me to stand there with a frown, wanting her to talk to me, only to be ignored as Fi move around in an effort to keep the food warm. Lifting and placing and closing and waiting and then repeating. Each flash of upturned ass as she bent to remove a dish from the oven became an accusation, until I became content with my silent flogging and went upstairs.

Two hours can go by rather quickly. If you’re watching The Great Escape , for instance, and you start counting from the moment the title comes across the screen, two hours is not even long enough for Steve McQueen to ride his motorcycle unsuccessfully towards the Alps, or for Charles Bronson to float to freedom in that little boat of his. Two hours was, however, enough time to realize you didn’t know when a certain nigger was going to arrive at your door, or what to say to the wife he had deposited in his absence. And if she was by birth British, regardless of the fact that both her parents were born in Trinidad, her destiny would be to sit a rigid deposit of angles, frozen by embarrassment, unable to share the anger and therefore converting it into pain and humiliation. I tried to give her something to read, but the closest I could come to a mystery novel was my copy of ‘Benito Cereno,’ which made Margaret even more anxious when she found it lacked the correct formula.

Fi was downstairs, seeming to make more noise than when she was cooking for real, when the bell finally rang. I ran to it before Fionna could get a chance.

There he was—

‘Christopher!’

— drunk already, falling in the doorway. In, oh God, a glowing cherry Kool-Aid British colonial officer’s coat with blue shoulder pads, gold buckles, and a white wig—

‘The red-coats are here! The red-coat is here! Revenge for the Empire.’

— reeking of something sour and strong. How did he drive here like that? Pushing past me David dropped a duffel bag in the hall and headed for the kitchen. Fi came out, and I was studying her face to see whether she was going to smile or scream when David pushed by her, glancing her with his hip hard enough to make Fionna’s little body bounce like a marionette being slapped. She didn’t even have time to cry, she was too busy making sure she landed right, and David didn’t stop, he just disappeared into the kitchen. I went to help her but Fionna slapped my hands away, fast. In the kitchen, David was at the table, an entire husk of corn in his mouth, digging into the mashed potato pile with his fingers.

‘Fucking hell, David, easy, man! Easy!’ I was pulling him by his arms and he was giggling. When he turned to me he held out a collection of mash-covered digits, each one waving at me. ‘Good,’ David said, letting the half-chewed husk fall to the floor.

I got some paper towels from over the sink and wiped off his pudgy brown paws, ‘You’re a mess, cuz.’ David was still looking at the food, his body slowing. And then with another burst he started yelling at Fi.

‘Luv, you are amazing! This is just brilliant! It’s everything he’s been on about.’ I turned around to see her, David’s messy hands still in my own. Fionna stood leaning into the corner, her knees slightly bent, her arms hugging herself.

‘Lovely, this. I can taste the butter,’ David said as he broke free from my hold and lifted the remainder of the starchy mess to his mouth. Laughing, looking at me and smiling as he continued to chew. I tried to get Fi’s eyes, but she kept looking at him, her face nearly devoid of expression as her body rocked back and forth. No anger, no tension, just not there. When David stomped upstairs, calling Margaret’s name, I reached for her. ‘He’s an asshole,’ was the first thing Fionna said, coming to life, hot and wet and into my chest as I hugged her. I said I was sorry.

‘Obviously not too sorry,’ she said, shrugging me off. ‘You shouldn’t let any man act like that in our house.’ But he pays for this house. And the food. It wasn’t that bad, was it?

‘I don’t care what he thinks he pays for. If Margaret wasn’t here I’d tell him to leave. I would, Chris. I don’t know how she puts up with him.’

Apparently she put up with him by pulling him into a small room (like my upstairs bathroom) and first yelling (as if maple could contain such trebles) and then, after he attempted to sing songs over her shouts (‘My One and Only’, first verse), by just crying.

I stood outside the door for a while, listening, wanting to help someone inside. Wanting them to come out and fill their plates so we could all talk about what a pretty day it was and where are we going to take that group holiday we’ve been talking about? When the door didn’t open, I went back down to Fi to help her get the dishes ready. The kitchen was empty. The door to my study was now closed and locked. I didn’t bother knocking. I wasn’t prepared to begin an entire apology session. I wasn’t prepared to admit that my dreams for the day had come to an end.

Back out on the deck, I made the perfect beef patty with my hand and laid it on the grill. The peace of coals. Me, my meat, my park. What a lovely day to be in Brixton. Sunshine being replaced by red skies and air cool enough to make your sweat tingle. I pressed down on the hamburger with my spatula so it would sing its tribute. I heard slamming doors inside, but I didn’t know if they were for me, or for him. Didn’t matter, really.

I saw the fireworks about six burgers later. I heard the sound, got excited, and when I looked up there they were. The first thing I thought was, look at all the colors. They seemed so out of place in this sky, like a Cadillac on the M4. Ducking my head inside, I yelled frantically for Fi, but she wasn’t answering. The house seemed empty. Margaret’s pocketbook was gone from the living room. The study door was now open, but the bedroom door was now closed. When I heard the next rocket shooting up I grabbed my keys, a four-pack from the fridge, and went outside.

In the park, David was sitting on a child’s wagon; I don’t know where he stole it from. His white wig had fallen off and hung loosely behind him, the ponytail caught limply between his flesh and the back of his collar. The red coat was open now and the bear gut had appeared, dominant and hairy. As one firecracker shot upwards the next was pulled from the duffel bag, his little silver lighter igniting a moment more of life. The sky was in its blue-to-black phase, and David’s fire laid pinks and reds and greens upon it.

‘Surprise,’ David said without pausing from his ritual. ‘It’s why I was late, this. I had to go all the way over to Peckham. In the Fiat. Try telling the missus, right?’

‘Are these illegal?’

‘Yes,’ he said, lighting the next one, watching it shoot up in a tan line, curve into a fall, and then explode louder than a car backfire. I could hear the sound echo off the apartment complex behind us and pass us again as it flew downhill to the east.

FEEZZZZ12!! is the sound of the whistle as one of these babies (huge like hoagies) flies up in the sky. POCK13 times ten is what it was like going off. Between these explosions the polyrhythmic silence, Monk-like in its pauses. In the sky neon spiders threatened their own constellation, an electric arachnid orgy. SPEEZ the lighting of a wick was a brushed snare. Above us, the last shudders of energy at climax, shooting pieces of itself randomly away from its source.