Page 43 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #7

Heather’s serviette sits untouched on her side- plate, in defiance of the stream of grease that runs from the corner of her mouth and through the funnel of her pocketed chin. “I thought it’d be a mouthful of rubber bands, but actually it’s a real treat.”
“ I haven’t seen my husband in five years.
Five years tomorrow. He could be at the bottom of Hell Creek for all I know...”
“No, thank you. I don’t like tongue.”
In fact we used to eat it often, Joe and I. Not brine- pickled like Mom used to make – greying slabs with a shocking splurge of yellow mustard across them – but braised in a tomato sauce, with car- rots bobbing at the top. On the hob till nightfall, when the meat was melting into the gravy. Cheap and simple, when Joe was still a roofer and I was just starting out as a lowly administrator at the Church, which seemed like a lucky break when
“She did, Heather. That she did. And I blummin’ loved it!”
I still had college bills to pay. Innocent as a baby back then, I was. No idea of the Church’s power, the iron strength of The Gentle Family.
Heather blushes, pink tickling the grey above her bulbous forehead.
But there is something about Heather, this earnest soil scientist on the vacation of a lifetime, bossy
in her mission to share the joy, which draws me
to lie. And it comes easy these days, now that I’ve told so many. Daniel Windslake: this, like so many of my sins, sits at your door.
“I’ll take that, shall I, Heather?” Peter reaches over from the far side of the table and snatches the rapidly tipping plate from her hand. “We don’t want to lose the rest of the tacos while you flirt with Dodgy Rog here.”
“Well, you’ll have some, Roger, won’t you? I saw a woman selling these at a stand on the way up the hill. In goes the filling, pit, pat, toss it on the griddle. Made it look a doddle. And lovely to see such enterprise everywhere we go.”
“I wasn’t...” Heather blushes deeper, the sweep of rose reaching that mole, with its single hair, which crouches on the side of her neck.
Roger’s sitting at the far end of the table. Free of his floppy sun hat for once, the pink seam of his tan line segments his cheeks and snares the peel- ing bulb of his nose. “I’ll give it a go, Heather. You know me. Try anything once.”
“I know, Heather. Forgive me, I was teasing. I take you as a woman of rather more refined taste.” Pe- ter tucks the loose ends of his paisley scarf away into his shirt so that the silk doesn’t stray into the salsa-topped tacos. The flash of skin between the buttons is hairless and waxy pale.
“I can rely on you, Roger. A man with an adventur- ous palate.”
Heather strokes her serviette, looking for reassur- ance. Oily finger-marks streak dark across the blood-red tissue. Her eyes keep flicking towards the hummingbird, as it lingers around the scarlet trumpets of the sage.
“I don’t know about that, Heather. But my Rosie always used to say I’d eat a donkey’s bollocks laced with arsenic, if someone told me it was tasty.”
“I know fellow composers who would snap you right up, Heather. I’d snap you up myself, but my tastes lie elsewhere, if you know my meaning.”
“Oh, Roger! You are a card. I bet your Rosie had to keep you on a tight leash.”
“Oh gosh, Peter. I won’t tell a soul. You can rely on
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