(12) Five Day Forecast
Looked like overcast and cold for two days, then sunny breaks and still cold. And in two days it would be December, and as Andrew had a thing about November, he was glad just for that. Touring the virtual world, now that he was bedroom bound and free from expectations, he noted that Christopher Hitchens was still hammering away mercilessly at Kissinger’s reputation. After all these years there couldn’t be much of it left, but these days globe trotting millionaires didn’t seem to give a toot. Whether it was drunken anti-semitic film stars, child molesting tycoons, mega-drug dealing presidents or besuited bankers bloated on fraudulent profits, all they seemed to care about was status, power, influence, and maybe regular holidays in sunny places. The public now expected CEO’s to be as corrupt, mendacious and jaded as Mafia dons. The shockability quotient had been lowered irreversibly. Would ritual disembowelment in the back garden be the last stop before hell on earth?
Reading the headlines often made Andrew into a bit of a sourpuss. He switched to YouTube for some uplifting music and found a not-too-distant Paul McCartney concert where the band turned in an incorrigibly zesty rendition of the first Beatles number one hit single Please Please Me. With the crowd going wild of course. The giddy joyfulness of it all sopped up all his spilt milk.
Asha had not been overkeen at the police station idea. She hadn’t run out of the room screaming exactly. Scowling had been more the order of the day. Scowling and carefree excretions of foul language to be exact. Imrat had called in the middle of it and she’d grabbed the phone from Andrew and shouted You fucken douchebag get outta my life, thrown the cell on the couch and stomped off, with Lara following discreetly. Andrew had picked up the tiny implement, it must have been Lara’s, and asked Imrat if he was okay. Imrat chuckled and they’d begun a queer man-to-man talk which ended with Imrat assuring him that she wasn’t pregnant, and if she was it certainly wasn’t him. Then he politely declined an invite to visit, which Andrew implied had been issued by Lara before the outburst. He was, however, very grateful for their continued protection of the girl and promised to call back soon.
Lara had heard more in Asha’s room, where she’d ventured after the ritual door slamming and mutter of curses. She felt like the girl’s mother, and was waiting to be accused of such very shortly. She placed herself on the bed a foot or two from the seething and asked why she was so upset. It was, apparently, merely the prospect of the cop shop followed by Imrat, whose voice, never mind face, just reminded her of all the men in her family who thought they knew it all. She insisted she couldn’t be pregnant, and had blown him as she’d said. Lara wondered, she hadn’t even asked. Asha went on, as though she had, however, telling her that a lot of girls in her position took it in the ass to keep their maidenhead intact. Lara acted shocked, and to tell the truth she was, kinda, even though she’d known a couple of well-off Rowanton white girls who’d done the same, but more to keep the boyfriend happy. Boyfriends from good families who sometimes married them. Usually before divorcing them, but still, the thought counts.
The calming process had been slow to get going but with careful tending and empathetic muttering, had begun to pick up in minutes more than few but less than many. Eventually Lara had been able to leave, with Asha promising to rest and then come down for supper and maybe a movie. On slipping into Andrew’s room, she’d realised he likely didn’t have any movies that would interest her. Andrew, of course, took this as a challenge, and began listing comedies that almost everyone liked, ending with The Life Of Brian, which Lara had to admit, would be a likely candidate for the evening’s somewhat charted conviviality.
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