Lunchtime in Hell

He sits in a cafe cubicle crammed into the tiny allotted space, legs on the chair, sucking a milkshake from a straw, a tense silence in the air. His food is a mass of congealed flavours on a plate with some generic happy go lucky title chalked on am menu, the word "surprise" or "special" tacked onto the end. Rosny doesn't the ambiance of Paris, it has blank eyed coffee drinking bogans swearing loudly, so he shuts them out by pulling his hood so tightly over his head it shuts out a hangover and means he can't see left or right, just straight ahead. The waitress, hair coiled, lips pursed, the venomous eyes of a cobra not offset by the wacky badge of the day, she doesn't look at him of course as she brings the food to him, her own dreams left behind long ago some time about the 3hrd kid or 2nd year uni...her story is unimportant to him since he can't wait to pick fitfully at his bacon because it means he no longer needs to talk. Since he can't formulate or articulate concerns of meaning or anything or value from his sentences, he tells a well worn story about a comedian who sat at the bar at the end of a performance, how depressed he was, how pained his expression. He strings the anecdote out as long as he possibly can, maybe throwing in a voice here or a patently untrue fact there. He's not entirely sure if anyone is listening to his story, but it's his story to cling to in times of trouble. And when he's poured the anecdote out he's able to forget all his troubles, pull his hood even more tightly over his ears, and try and figure out from the receptors in his memory bank exactly which bits of his meal are meat and which bits are bread related. As the whirring and soothing tones of a generic rock band - if you can pick individiual members of the Script you are some kind of genius - fill the air he's able to relax for just a moment, triumphantly holding his food up on the end of a fork for his paramour to bite off, completely and fatally forgetting in the mania the Script have caused that is completely angry with him...

She's a mass of different coloured fabrics, her skin the colour of emaciation, her lipstick stressed and worried. Her hair is immaculate though, her food thin and weak, her coffee untouched. The waitress keeps hovering with a refill that proves unncessary in the wash up. She's leaning precariously over a plate of beans, almost getting her best Big W top in the saucy mess. She wants to talk about something, and she wants to talk about it now. Anxiously, she wants to know why he didn't want to meet her after work on Friday, why he went somewhere else, out with the boys or out with the girls, or out with the boys to meet girls out with the girls. She's trying desperately to pierce his well worn stock of distracting stories and recaps of events she's been through before. She won't let him off the hook, tapping a store bought shoe off the ground impatiently. When she mentions something about him being rude, she almost leaps off the chair, saying it so loudly that well rehearsed composure melts away even more easily than the stick of butter they've been generously apportioned for their toast. Even the Script sound uncomfortable listening to the conversation. An old man from a Jewish stereotype catalogue at the table next to them starts talking loudly to his wife about The Nut in Stanley, and he winces, non verbally communicating that she's making a scene. She sits back down - she takes a bean and stares at it for an age, hoping to find some kind of inspiration. They sit for an age silently, oblivious to anything but their own problems and the poorly constructed meal in front of them. Like an attention starved child he pulls and chews on the toggle of his Reebok hooded top, hoping for a smile, an acknowledgement, anything to make this cheaply affordable meal and painfully constructed conversation more palatable, but it fails, and he shakes his head and resumes eating without ever 1nce answering the question...

She tries herself to steer the conversation onto blanker, easier to digest topics - she will 1ne day I'm sure see the ironic connection between steering the conversation to easier to digest topics while choking on inedible gristle, but it will have to be pointed out to her, since an earlier attempt to explain a rather complex and involved Nun joke with a punchline about kicking a habit had left her expressionless - but it's all gone, and she trails off a story about going to Allans birthday party and eating far too much cake. At which point, he perks up. It's established through the rapid fire volley of phony anxiety he expresses that he knows no Allan, and is keen to gain for himself some sort of moral foothold. If he can disappear endlessly, he says jabbing another wise innocent piece of egg westward the way Jon Snow used to tell our family with a pointer Labor had lost to Margaret Thatcher. She's sure she told him about Allan - a nice man with a nice beard and sensible shoes...well travelled...she's sure she did. They exchange the mutual non communicative sign for we'll finish this conversation later, as the waitress shatters the poignancy of the moment with a loud call to see who wants coffee. She bellows it like a Foghorn, overshadowing whatever generic rock band - maybe it's Lifehouse, is that a band - is tootling over the PA system. The Jewish stereotype takes all the oy glavin coffee he can neurotically drink while complaining about how cold it is. Neither of them take the opportunity to use his obvious qualities as a comedy foil. She takes a coffee, he doesn't, and for all I know, there they could have sat, in mutual silence for the rest of eternity, or until the toast tasted good, whatever came first...

I leave them to it in the end, of course I do, I have to, I have inconsequential things to do, a pile of them. A book to pick up, glasses to repair, hell to escape from. I tip my waitress, and she genuinely beams, or at least I think she does, I have long forgotten the sarcastic way Ayrshire vixens used to smirk at me in nightclubs. Maybe my tip was too cheap. I see the 2wo of them later towing a small child with them, a Yo Gabba Gabba toy under her arm, her face painted silver like a cat. She looks at me and smiles, making a pawing motion with her hand. I smile back, even though I'm not fond of children, be they sharing my love of poster paints or not. They pile in together like circus clowns in a tiny car, and off they drive, the small child continuing to paw in my direction until a plume of black smoke and the thumping sounds of Jay Z signal the end to my observations, like the jarring noise of a stop button being thumped on an old timee tape recorder, but with more mentions of "Hova". I realise I have no adult concerns - I've just had my birthday, but it signalled nothing. I have no child to paint and preen, no adult themes to dissect, no frosted relationship to pick at. My concerns at this exact moment are getting a Jane Bussmann book home to read, how I can get a Peter Combe song out of my head, a bad loss in a game of Fantasy NFL and why my sports team continue to let me down, when they represent me - ME - in this world! How dare Leon Davis not run hard enough for me...such is the lack of my adult responsibility as I stand there, I might as well have my face painted like a cat. The thought makes me giggle, I pop a suitably immature flavour of jellybean into my mouth, and walk off into the day, humming the 3hrd verse of Newspaper Mama as I go...

And the modern name for Nyasaland....that's been bugging me all day...