The Listeners
“She lay on her back, her large head flung like a stone into the creased pillow. An ashtray rested on the front of her slacks. She had not taken off her boots. Exhausted boots, pleating at the ankle, gum and something else on the soles.
It was a high wooden bed with cat-scratched knobs the shape of lidded chalices. The brown corduroy cover did not hang down far enough to conceal cardboard boxes and balls of fluff underneath. Because the whole building had settled slighly soon after it was slappe...d up twenty years ago, the wardrobe tilted forward, so that the bottom drawer hung like an underlip and the narrow door swung open when the children ran overhead. One night a body would fall out, toppling on to the linoleum with a gangster’s hat and staring eyeballs.
The woman shut her eyes, but the lids were pulled back by the weight of the words behind them.
Don’t be such a bore.
It’s Thursday.
Well, Christ — do we have to stick to the same freakish routine till the end of time?
She would listen to the words for ever, licking them over and over, like a dog with a torn nail.MoreLess
It was a high wooden bed with cat-scratched knobs the shape of lidded chalices. The brown corduroy cover did not hang down far enough to conceal cardboard boxes and balls of fluff underneath. Because the whole building had settled slighly soon after it was slappe...d up twenty years ago, the wardrobe tilted forward, so that the bottom drawer hung like an underlip and the narrow door swung open when the children ran overhead. One night a body would fall out, toppling on to the linoleum with a gangster’s hat and staring eyeballs.
The woman shut her eyes, but the lids were pulled back by the weight of the words behind them.
Don’t be such a bore.
It’s Thursday.
Well, Christ — do we have to stick to the same freakish routine till the end of time?
She would listen to the words for ever, licking them over and over, like a dog with a torn nail.MoreLess
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