DAY 17
Bev finds a reduced-price chess set in the supermarket and doesn’t hesitate to part with the cash. On recommendation, she watched The Queen’s Gambit with her husband, Wayne. Once Wayne had stopped grumbling about a female lead in a show based on chess, he admitted it was fantastic and spoke of a yearning for the days when up to three games would be played at a time in the local pub.
Wayne returns from the dog walk to a candle-lit room, glasses of his favourite whisky poured, two arm chairs and a wooden table set up in the centre of the room. On top of the table is a wrapped gift. If it is what he thinks it is, business has just picked up.
“Go on, love, open it!” The glow on her face is pure and he cannot hold back his own smile.
“Hold on, hold on! Just let me wipe his paws and get my wellies off!”
“Hurry up, you’re going to love this!”
He has not the heart to say anything and manages five excruciating games of draughts before Bev checks the box for horses .
A tiny owl is on the mend after being rescued from inside the Rockefeller Centre Christmas Tree.
Jacqueline forces her eyes to remain on this tiny crack of light, in the news headlines between the raging Gods above, in their story holes, newly and unnecessarily introduced to Twitter. If she looks at them, final judgement of inane bullshit awaits. Below is worse; she has no desire to walk off the cliff into the burning fires of anti-nuance and ill-considered shouts. Edging the cursor to the log out button for the last time, she hits it on the fourth click. The nightmare is over.
***
Ian is desperate was desperate for a proper night out. What that entails is down to individual preference, but for the divorced 39-year old postman, it must be authentic, not some fondly remembered highlight reel.
At 5pm, he takes a nap, throws an oven pizza down his neck, showers and sprays ¼ of a bottle of Joop! on his neck.
By 5.30pm he wears a two-tone shirt, smart jeans and white Kickers shoes.
At 6.30pm, after downing a can of Fosters, listening to 50-Cent, he takes a walk in the cold, without a jacket and arrives at his mate’s house. They drink pints of Carling and do shots of red Aftershock. He eyes his mate’s wife over the kitchen island, but she is on Facebook, clearly unwilling to indulge him.
Undeterred and drunk, at 10pm he arrives to find a long queue outside his house. Bass rattles the front windows and when he finally reaches the door, he is challenged by a prick of a bouncer, he says he’s had too many. After returning to his mate’s house, he changes clothes and returns in a different shirt. He gets in.
His feet stick to his laminate flooring. Ian spent early afternoon spilling a range of drinks on it. It’s all in the detail.
He dances like an animatronic giraffe, gets so plastered he is sick in his wardrobe and is abruptly turned down as he tries to kiss a disgusted selection of local women as per their freelance role here tonight. The last thing he remembers is bad mouthing a neighbour who asks him what the fuck he’s thinking during a pandemic, before he is dropped with one punch. He wakes the next day with a tray of chips strewn across his bedroom carpet, a black eye, shoes and coat still on, trapped in a sinewy, diabolical hangover. The final and most important detail is revealed when he fishes in his stained trouser pocket for his wallet. A notice spells out a hefty fine for breaking lockdown restrictions. Ian smiles and sets off for the local shop to get a cheap sandwich and some Lucozade, falling off the kerb several times. It was just something he had to get out of his system.