He sat looking out from behind the two dried-up plants near the door and it made her laugh. Little garden Kabouter has a cheeky painted grin and the ability to wolf-whistle at you as you pass the sensor hidden strategically in the tip of his watering can. With his unashamedly plastic appearance and kindergarden colours, he didn’t exactly squeal style and good breeding. But he did squeal ‘HAPPY!’ and that was good.
He had been a present from Gerard after she’d accidentally flashed her pubes at him one evening, during a game of Bingo at the bar. She’d read her bingo card wrong, thought she’d won when she hadn’t and had to pay the price of a forfeit. This involved getting iced with slushy cubes thrown down the pants. Gerard had done the honours and in order to show that she didn’t mind, it was all just a bit of fun, she’d happily goofed about with him under the spotlight. By showing willing and pulling her jeans forward ready for the forfeit, she’d also managed to show her girlie bits. She didn’t care. It was funny. And anyways, she was drunk.
At Magnus’ party the following weekend, Gerard had brought along a gift for her – Mister Kabouter, the wolf-whistling molester of dried-up plants and accidental cat contact. “This is for you, because I got to see your pussy,” he grinned, solemn and spoofing an awards ceremony. The gift was delightful – even more so when she switched on the sensor and Mister Kabouter whistled at her belly-button. She’d taken him home proudly and there he’d sat ever since, on the round green tray in the lounge by the sofa. He didn’t exactly fit in with the décor but he looked more content inside.
“He’s wasted out there on the balcony so he’s an indoor gnome,” she told Gerard when he first exercised his visiting rights. “I took the batteries out though, the cat didn’t see the funny side.”
Since last week Mister Kabouter sports a cat-sized red Egyptian fez, something else the cat didn’t see the funny side of. He wears it at a chirpy angle in order to accentuate its rakish nature, the black tassle brushed elegantly to the right-hand side. With his pointy hat hidden beneath the fez, his blue jacket and watering can obscured by those half-dead plants, he now has the air of a rather beardy Turk. She can’t look him in the eye for too long nowadays or she’ll burst forth with a guffaw and spill her coffee.
Less entertaining is the stack of washing Magnus has left at her apartment. Neighbours since he’d moved into the ‘hood two months ago from the other end of town, they were like little kids together, revelling in having a playmate so close to hand. Until his washing machine was carried up another flight of stairs (and she wasn’t going to help), her place was also Widow Twanky’s Wishy-Washy Self-Service Laundromat. Which was fine, except now she found herself folding and bagging his smalls in order to make room for her own on the radiator. He had spontaneously tackled the teetering piles of washing up whilst hanging in the flat, however, so fair’s fair.
Now there was no excuse for getting on with that document for work. The road-block of kitchen chores had been removed to make way for a full day’s sitting at the laptop and cracking the back of the project. First though, just a little something to eat, to seed once again the pile of dirty dishes.
Looking into the fridge has become a favourite pastime. The kitchen cupboards too. She religiously opens a door and checks to see if kind elves have stocked the shelves with tasty treats. Perhaps if she looks again, she’ll discover a chocolate bar she overlooked. Or fresh milk, that would do. Instead her hand glides once again past the noodles and rice, over the tinned kidney beans and chopped tomatoes, the tuna and chutney, the icing sugar she never uses and Marmite she rarely eats. Her treat-seeking missile fingers retreat and close the door. Ingredients aplenty do not satisfy her diversionary tactics - calling for a pizza sounds more like a plan.
Instead she sms’s Magnus: ‘if you’re coming back today bring ice cream. Quality ice cream.’ He arrives at the door with Robert instead and a bag of chocolates from HEMA. For the next two hours work is an impossibility. In its place comes a barrage of banter throughout which Magnus demands cigarettes and plays showbiz scissor-happy stylist. He dyes Robert’s hair while she takes a shower and then cuts hers. He does good, concentrating for a change and even offering to blow-dry it – usually she has to bang on about it for days until he is worn down by bribes into wielding his scissors. Robert sits on the rug and fixes her new lamp together, searching unsuccessfully for bulbs in the middle drawer.
“This is your ‘hospital bed’ hair”, Magnus tells her. She’s going onto the ward again. This time it’s planned and not especially serious. Previously it’s been an emergency and friends have arrived to find her zonked out on morphine, extremely sweaty and sporting the limpest, greasiest hair ever. It turned into a measurement of mess. Moans of ‘I can’t go until I’ve washed my hair’ would be met with ‘why bother? Its got hours to go before its hospital-bad.’
She’s not worried about it but people still think she’s being brave. She’s known about her condition since she was in her early twenties and its old news. Yesterday’s fish & chips paper. Except she’s not supposed to eat that kind of thing any more. Her mother has never seen her in hospital, nor her oldest friend Elaine. With Elaine it used to be an issue created mostly by geography - being in different cities on every occasion. Elaine had also never had anything especially bad happen to her, and she’d certainly spent no time in hospital so her under-developed empathy skills really couldn’t get their head around the thought of a medical condition and all that went with it. She wanted to, it wasn’t that. She just didn’t have the appropriate wiring. It was almost a joke. Now, it’s not an issue. In the last couple of years, amongst other things, she’s experienced a broken wrist, a fractured ankle bone and the death of one of her friends to ovarian cancer. So she’s clocked up a few more miles to practice her empathy skills on.
With her mother, it’s just a hassle. “What will people think of me?” is always the first thing her mother says when she hears she’s in hospital. “People will think I don’t care. Let me come and visit you.” To her mother, a parental visit is the done thing and a natural reaction. To her, it’s fussing. If mother arrives on the scene somehow that would mean more than anything else that she’s really really sick. No amount of morphine, intravenous or otherwise, could better signify ‘medical crisis’ than parental attendance.
Instead, on one level she looks forward to being trapped on a hospital ward. There’s nowhere to be, nothing to do. But you can still surreptitiously sms people, so long as you turn the volume off. She wouldn’t dare if the ward was full of scary machines hooked up to skeletons, but mostly fellow patients aren’t that spooky. Last time, though, the sweetest old woman died during the night and that made her cry the next morning. She didn’t especially get to know her and she certainly didn’t see it coming; it was the shock combined with the rawness of emotions you have when too many new drugs curdle in the veins. The woman hadn’t been hooked up to any machines fortunately, so there was no need for sms guilt.
This time round she has plenty of time to get organised and give a few friends the ward details. Magnus has already complained that it’s further away than the previous hospital and will only come if she lends him her bike. Not everyone gets to know. At work, for instance, they just think she’s taking time off. Bet your life though, that next time the shit hits the fan she’ll remember to bring it up at just the right moment.