Pep Talk

A pep talk, Harriet says to Gordon. It’s time we had that pep talk.

Here, he replies, in an airport?  Stay classy, love, he says. He blows her a kiss.

You always get to pick the place for the pep talk, she says.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? Gordon is laughing at her. She hates him laughing at her. She wipes her nose on the sleeve of her blue floral dress and looks around. There’s only them and a man holding hands with a little boy in red dungarees on the other side of the hall. The boy is staring at Gordon and picking his nose with his pinky. The man is checking his phone.

Behind Gordon there’s a clunk and a revving and a whirring. He adjusts his position on the large fluorescent pink trolley suitcase. His jaw tightens. He puts his hands on his hips. Plants his feet hip-distance apart on the floor of the carousel. He and the bag move off. A jolt first. Then an increase in speed, and a steadying. As he passes her, his pale blue eye stands on hers. Out on a wheaten stalk.

Did I mention he has just the one eye?

Paris was a mistake. Paris is always a mistake. But they go anyway. For birthdays. For their anniversary. And for every Black Moon. He throws armfuls of leaves at squirrels in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and howls like a wolf. He sits down on the pavement in La Huchette, takes his shoes off, and plays piano with his bare toes along the tarmac. He does handstands in the hydraulic lift in the Louvre and pockets the euros the tourists tuck under his thin spread fingers. He does a headstand in front of the Mona Lisa. We need to talk, she says to his upside down form. We are unaligned, undetermined. We can’t go on like this. He spins three full revolutions and folds back onto his feet. Takes her arm. Kisses her elbow. Pulls a new Hermes scarf out of her ear. They eat escargots in Café de Mars. He makes her an anklet out of the shells.

Her crotch itches. Candida. Always after Paris. And they haven’t even made it home yet. You should go commando style, he says, if he catches her hand creeping her groin. He is heading towards the black curtain flaps where he’ll burst out of sight for a few seconds. She rubs at her groin through the thick cotton of her dress.

She looks around for the security guards. No walkie talkies. No running feet. The airport is small, rural. It had been her idea to move out here. Parochial, Gordon always says. Properly Parochial. Only twenty people on the flight and the rest of them had hurried on, exiting with carry-on luggage only.

Daddy, the child shouts. I want to ride the carousel like that man! The man puts a hand over the child’s mouth. Whispers in his ear. Takes something out of his pocket and waves it in front of the boy’s face. Whatever it is, is on a heavy glinting chain. It swings back and forward in front of the child. The child’s face follows it. Tick tock. Tick tock.

He’s never told Harriet how he lost his eye. Or why the remaining one is stuck on the end of a wheaten stalk. In their twelve years together she has never asked. He bursts back into the hall through the black curtain flaps, still astride the pink trolley suitcase. He has lifted his legs up and is balancing just on his bum. He no longer has his shoes. His Union Jack socks are on his hands, aloft. The eye on the wheaten stalk swings and dips on the shuddering ride. She should buy yoghurt for the itch. There was no plain yoghurt in Paris. But then, nothing is plain in Paris. Nothing at all.

I wrote this piece off the back of the prompt ‘pepper’ in a café with a friend this morning.