A Story in Two Acts Where Nothing Happens – Twice
It’s a sticky night in Chicago. Lydia is on the back porch, pouring herself a fifth glass of wine. On the opposite side of the table sit Elaine and Anna. Lydia looks out on her sculptured Japanese garden. Fireflies illuminate the bushes for a second, then fade, like a miniature firework display.
“I was in Afghanistan in the 70s,” Lydia says and runs her hands through her bleached hair.
Daniel, her ex-husband, appears in the doorway with a fresh glass of vodka. He looks straight at her and takes a swig. When he walks down the steps to the table he is a little unsteady on his feet. Elaine looks across at Anna. They are both thinking the same thing. He’s drunk. So is Lydia.
A dog appears from the bushes and leaps onto Lydia’s lap. He has a long dreadlocked coat and his tongue is the only thing you can see in the darkness. His eyes are hidden by a long shaggy fringe.
“Yangtzee, my baby, my baby, my baby,” says Lydia, pulling him towards her and giving him a kiss on the nose. She turns him on his back and cradles him like a newborn.
“Look at my beautiful little oochie coochie poochie-pooh,”
“For Chrissake, Lydia,” says Daniel. “It’s a dog.” He spits an ice-cube back into his glass.
“To you, maybe. To me, he’s my baby. Aren’t you?” As if in answer to her question the dog gives a pert bark. “You see,” says Lydia, looking up at Elaine and Anna, “he’s agreeing with me.”
“He’s barking, you sentimental old crow,” says Daniel, “because there’s someone at the door.”
Lydia mutters quietly to the dog that she knows Yangtzee understands her better than her ex.
“I’ll get it, shall I?” says Daniel.
“You live here too,” says Lydia, without looking at him. He disappears through the glass doors. “It was a very different place back then,” continues Lydia. She runs her hand through her hair again.
Anna looks into her glass. It is almost empty. She doesn’t say anything to encourage Lydia because she’s heard the Afghan tales many times before. Lydia usually wheels them out in front of strangers because she thinks it makes her sound more interesting. Anna would like to spare Elaine, and is looking for a diversion when the kitchen door opens. A toy dog scoots down the steps and darts underneath the table. Yangtzee quickly rights himself, leaps off Lydia’s lap and starts to sniff at the intruder. He begins to growl, defending his territory. Unfazed, the toy dog dances around the bigger one, thinking they are playing. A tall, bronzed man appears, wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts, shouting, “Lychee! Here, boy, here. Hola everyone! Where’s Lychee?”
“At my feet,” says Elaine, “licking the polish off my toes. Is that tongue for real?”
“He has a fetish for feet. A bit like his master,” says Fallon.
Lychee’s tongue is too big for his mouth. Even when it is fully retracted, half of it spills out to the side, making him look permanently thirsty and somewhat stupid.
“Fallon, darling,” cries Lydia, “over here and give me a kiss.”
“I brought some vino tinto,” he replies, and hands over a bottle with a big pink bow on it.
Cheap, thinks Anna and reaches for the opened bottle on the table. Best crack on with this before they open the vinegar sauce.
“Hola, Anna,” says Fallon. He grazes his lips close to her cheek but doesn’t make contact. He looks up and waves across at Elaine.
“You’re looking well,” says Elaine, thinking his suntan even more orange than last year.
“If you saw my stomach, you’d vomit.” Fallon massages his belly as though by rubbing it, he might shed a few pounds.
Elaine looks at his stomach. It’s as flat as a board. “There’s nothing on you,” she says.
“Huh, I work hard at it. You’ve got to, just to keep the young chicos interested. I’m down the gym by 6.30, at work by eight and in bed by 9pm.”
Elaine wonders how he fits in the ‘chicos’ under such a regime. She looks at her watch. “It’s past eight now. Have we only got you for an hour? I haven’t seen you for a year.”
“’Fraid so. If I’m not tucked up by nine, I turn into a pumpkin.”
Elaine looks again at his tan and thinks the transformation might already be underway.
“Drink, Fallon?” asks Daniel, wiggling his own empty glass in the air.
“I’ll have what you’re having, but no ice.”
“One V+T coming up. Anyone else for a top up?”
Elaine wonders if Daniel worries about his stomach too. Vodka and tonic has hardly any calories, but if you start at eleven in the morning, it must clock up a few.
“Are we still on for tennis tomorrow, darling?” says Lydia, terrified that the focus has strayed too far from her.
“Si, señora,” says Fallon.
“We played today, didn’t we, Anna?” says Elaine, shuddering at Fallon’s terrible Spanish. She prides herself at being good at languages and gets a knot in her stomach when she hears people churning out Spanglish or Franglais in an American drawl. “I got trounced 6-0, 6-0, 6-1.” She sounds almost proud of such a defeat.
Anna grins back at Elaine.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You haven’t played for a year,” she says generously.
“No matter,” says Elaine. “When we first met…how many years ago is it now? Thirteen, fourteen? I used to beat you. Now I’m grateful if I get a game. You should’ve seen me running around the court when I took that one game off her. You’d think I’d won the Booker.”
Lydia, thin-lipped, gives Elaine a tight smile. The focus is wandering again. She says, “I should practise more, but my yoga lessons keep me very busy. Ewan is a great student and he’s really making progress.”
“You teach yoga?” asks Elaine.
“Yes, I’ve had my third floor converted into a studio.”
“Do you have many classes?”
“Just the one student at the moment, but he’s very devoted.” She tilts her head back and makes a ponytail with her hair. It makes her look haggard.
Daniel appears on the steps again, holding two large glasses, full to the brim. “Devoted?” he snorts. “That fat blob couldn’t bend over to pick up a matchstick.”
“Oh, Daniel, you’re just jealous because his business is successful.”
“The success of his business has nothing to do with that douchebag. He inherited the lot from his father-in-law. An orang-utan could run that show and still make a profit.”
“Orang-utans happen to be highly intelligent creatures,” says Lydia piously. “They are the most intelligent creature after man.”
“You think man is intelligent? Give me a break. Man is the dumbest asshole of all. Look at all those jerks strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing folks up. Call that intelligent?”
“Maybe those ‘jerks’ would rather die an honourable death than be at the mercy of your imperialist government,” says Elaine. She’s dating a Muslim and has been warned by Anna that Daniel has a strong anti-Islamic streak. Here it is, on display, and they haven’t even had the starter yet.
“When I was in Afghanist…”
“Don’t give me that crap about Afghanistan. That country,” says Daniel, spitting the word out as though he were tasting poison, “is the most uncivilized place on this whole miserable fucking planet. They live in the dark ages.”
“Why?” says Elaine. “Because they don’t use a knife and fork at the dinner table?”
“You’re a woman, goddammit. They sell their daughters for blood money. They chop off people’s hands if they steal. They stone people to death for adultery. How can you defend them?”
Still riled by the word ‘uncivilized’, Elaine says, “Has it occurred to you that drinking vodka from morning, noon till night might be seen by Afghans as a bit…savage?”
Daniel looks at his glass and then back at Elaine. Anna gets up and walks into the house. Elaine feels guilty. Although she knows Lydia and Fallon, it is the first time she has met Daniel. How would she know he drinks vodka before lunch unless Anna told her? She wants to go into the house to apologise but Daniel is back on her case.
“You wouldn’t be allowed to drink vodka in Afghanistan.”
“You could in the 70s,” pipes up Lydia. “Shall we eat?”
The following year Elaine returns to Chicago to visit Anna. They play tennis. Elaine loses 6-0, 6-1, 6-2. She thinks she’s making progress.
“We’ve been invited to Lydia’s for dinner this evening,” says Anna after the match.
“Really? Did I make such a good impression last time?” says Elaine. She wipes the sweat from her face with a towel. Her heart is pumping hard. “Is Daniel still living there?”
“Oh, yes. He’s still there, still on the vodka, still driving Lydia nuts and still an asshole. I don’t know why she doesn’t kick him out.”
“I suspect she needs him as much as he needs her. Somehow I can’t imagine Lydia without an audience. Will Daniel be cooking?”
“I guess so. Cooking is his rent money.”
“Well, that’s something. He might be an “asshole”, but he does a mean feast. Does he know I got married?”
“Yes, I showed him the photos.”
“What did he say?”
“He broke down in tears and said, ‘No, no, no, not to an uncivilized Muslim. She was mine, all mine!” Anna clutches at her breast.
“All right, all right. I didn’t break his heart then?”
“His heart, what’s left of it, is pickled in vodka. But there’s probably enough room in there to squeeze out another Islam versus the West argument.”
Elaine raises her eyes, “Not on my watch.”
As the two women walk through the kitchen, Yangtzee throws himself at Anna. He has grown a foot taller and is a little on the plump side. Anna strokes his head and gives him a kiss on the nose. Elaine hands Lydia the bottle of wine and they air kiss each other.
Daniel walks in holding a glass with ice in it. Fallon is right behind him with a bottle of wine in his hand. It is wrapped in a yellow bow. He is looking very tanned.
“Hello Daniel, hello Fallon,” says Elaine. “You both look well.”
“If you could see my stomach, you would vomit.”
“Elaine, congratulations,” says Daniel. He tilts forward towards her, almost spilling his drink. “I hear you got married. Where’s your husband? Under interrogation…?”
Lychee neatly sidesteps the broken glass that lands at Daniel’s feet.
Kerry Barner was born in Yorkshire but has lived in London since 1994. She is a senior publishing editor for an international academic publisher. She has been involved with the Short Story Workshops at Birkbeck College for several years. In 2009 she was shortlisted for Wasafiri’s New Writer Prize and her work has appeared in Brand, Notes From The Underground and Anthropology and Humanism (in press). She is co-founder of The Short Story competition, launched in 2011: www.theshortstory.net.
