An Event

I hate fast food restaurants, the funk of steaming fat and too many people in too small a space sticks to me like a second skin but we're in a hurry and given the choice I would rather eat than not. So I sit and take in the detail. Outside its collection day and just feet away from where we're going to dive into our food there's a pile of leaking refuse sacks tall as the children playing hide and seek about them. Brown water congeals along the footpath and congeals in the evening sun inches from our feet. But for the window we'd be ankle deep in it. People walk past, they break my train of thought but not the overall effect of the scene: I can still smell the rubbish so I look away, up and down the street, anything to distract me from the stink, real or imagined.

"What are you staring at?"

It's Brian with the food, he's noticed my pensive mood, I should be writing something in my notebook, a plot synopsis or an a-priori critique of the lead but I don't have it in me yet to be fair, later when I calm and am less bound by necessity the analysis, reasoned and upbeat will flow but not here, not now.

"Nothing," I reply. "Just kids out the window."

"Eat fast we're late."

"I know. I hate this place."

"I feel your pain. Eat," he says in his best deadpan.

So we do, quiet and purposeful as sweatshop employees. Over my right shoulder a woman with a high-pitched voice complains to one of the floor monkeys. Brian looks at her over my shoulder. The novelty of a real row with natural dialogue unfolding but feet away distracts me from the food, this is a good thing in comparison to what I fear may be but minutes away: A tale of a Irish emigrant who returns home after a year on the sites to find his sister pregnant with the child of a black African immigrant. Very now. "A valid piece full of contemporary significance; sparkling performances; especially by X in the role of Y, a serious theatrical event directed with bravery by Z etc." I've got half the work done before even setting foot in the place you can be so sure of how everything will pan out once you know the rules. I need real drama, something unpredictable and inexplicable, some of what Brian's having.

"What's the story?" I ask, feigning disinterest.

"Stain on her white blouse, looks, expensive."

"The blouse or the stain?"

"Both."

"So why's she eating here then?"

"Fucked if I know. You eating all those chips?"

"Go nuts."

Brian reaches in and I go back to staring at my festering rubbish bag only now I can see something else as well, a sliver of tail coiled around the bottom of heap. It twitches, unfurls to full length and back again people seem to be giving it a wide berth but without any commotion, just another occupant of the street. Back inside the lady complains away.

"This is unacceptable," she says, "why should I have to foot the bill for cleaning when you made me drop this mess in the first place?"

Brian's stifles a laugh and Lord knows he shouldn't, when he laughs people notice. It's embarrassing, causes more trouble than he's worth sometimes. But we're late for the show so I don't say anything, just shovel in the food, stare out the window and dream up superlatives. Neutral stimuli only, but it's hard to stay aloof.

"Stop nosing," I say.

Brian turns to me, falls back into line.

"Bitch is really making a scene isn't she? I think she's going to slug him," he whispers, leaning in, hunched over his food and mine.

"Fine, I hope she clocks him one right on the nose, we've got to be moving in a minute."

I look away, he slinks back into place, takes another mouthful. Pauses, we really have no time for this.

"How's your view?"

"Fine."

I stare back out the window but I can't see anything amiss now. There's nothing to tweak my interest, to rouse me from my mixed state of hurried indifference. There's just the rubbish and the water trickling to a stop just outside our window, inches from my feet. I imagine stepping in it, the detritus sticking to the soles of my shoes. Disgusting. The lady rants on and I get ready for the sounds of impact but all I hear instead is a feminine scream and everyone just has to drop everything and look around. It's the same lady with the dirty blouse up on her seat pointing and sheet white. She holds her skirt about her knees, clutching at it with white knuckles.

"Holy mother of fuck," whispers Brian. "It's huge."

It was huge and dirty as well and it had a tail at least twelve inches long and it was running through the restaurant past us to the far exit, a straight-line south.

The biggest fucking rat I had ever seen.

It squealed and scratched and rammed the glass door and nobody wanted to get up and let it out, as much as nobody wanted to see it there, we just froze. I looked back at Brian. White as a sheet, he hates rats, mice anything that carries disease. Me too.

Someone gets up, a workman still in his work clothes and he's got a hammer, well used and he just goes up behind the rat, which hasn't noticed anything but the exit and he goes over and just smashes its head in calm as you like. One fell blow. Thud. Just like that its head becomes part of the floor plan. I don't see the blow but I filled in the blanks. Very Jackson Pollock. Then, cool as anything, the guy just sits back down and eats away like nothing happened like errant vermin were everywhere at this time of day. Am I the only one to see this as being more than a little out of sorts? Shouldn't there be a bigger commotion? Shouldn't someone here complain about what's going on?

I shift in my chair, try to turn around.

"Don't," Brian says. "It's not for us."

He's right so I stop and I don't, I turn the other way and look out the window instead, as if that were a soft option.
Brian looks at the burger in his hands. Lets it drop.

"Ah fuck it," he says.

The Lady gets down off her chair and everyone settles into stunned silence filled in by muzak. I hadn't noticed it before.

"Let's get out of here," Brian says.

I nod, shaken but still in a hurry. Someone in a uniform brushes past us with a yellow bag and a scoop. The man with the hammer chomps away on his burger like he couldn't give a fuck and the lady has a cup of tea put in front of her while one of the girl floor monkeys sits with her, rubs her shaking hands. Nobody else seems bothered.

I pick up my bag, check I have everything then I make sure Brian has finished. I click my fingers like I always do when I'm trying to remember something important, waiting for a prompt but Brian's miles away, looking out the window right through me and on up the street to God knows where. I turn around to follow his stare, to see whatever the big swing is. All I find is the reflection of the rat being scooped into the yellow bag with all the clarity of a projected image burned into the glass: all tail and teeth and crushed matter and no one bothering to step around it. And then somehow the image multiplies and for a split second its almost as if the streets were awash with dead rats piled high over the roads, the cars the parents, the children the noise and then the image shattered by the lumpen slapping sound of flesh impacting on tiles as the complaining lady faints and her collapse is like a gunshot compared to the eerie calm everywhere else but all I can see is the window with its frozen reflection of the dead rat passed over by professionals and parents and neglected-looking kids in filthy tracksuits all the way across the central reservation and down to the bridge where everything fades out. And all I can wonder is: are we looking out or away? Out or away?

Normal service resumes, a din of the ordinary that fills me with incoherence - it drowns out everything but the most basic responses: I'm either half asleep or half sick. Brian tugs at my arm, it brings me back, kind of. Out or away and just thinking about either option fills me with a cold, irrational sense dread and loathing that slithers its way from the pit of my stomach out through my spine and down to my knees that turn instantly to jelly. Christ can't we just leave things alone, why do we have to be disturbed now of all times?

"Sandra?"

My turn to be roused.

"You coming or what?"

"Yeah."

We shuffle past the fainting lady, the crowds with their trays looking for seats and the blood on the floor. It's a hard push to get through with the bodies and the noise and the heat. I grip Brian's clammy hand but the closer we get to the exit the looser he holds on. I should say something but somehow I doubt he's listen, it's like he's there but not, a ghost, white as a sheet gliding to an out, filtering away anything to tie him to the last few minutes. He lets my hand drop and walks through the door, alone. More people come in, some for the food, some to see the marks on the floor and the fainting lady. You can tell by the look of them, laughing kids mostly, must have seen the whole thing from the outside. This is their theatre, their moment of action played out for their benefit. Drama, conflict, people lap it up, from safe distances both temporal and geographical. Content in knowledge the rules will carry them to a satisfactory conclusion - just enjoy the ride. I bet someone even caught it on camera.

I check my watch. Brian stares with that pale face as I step out onto the street.

"We're not getting any earlier are we?" Brian says, but he's moved on ahead of me before I can answer. As I struggle to keep up I am overwhelmed by a wave of nausea, an urge to go home. Just to be anywhere but here, tainted by the memory and stink of incident. Brian gets further and further away from me. It's not for us, not our story, not our problem. I just want to be home. I don't need this, not now, in public. My eyes well up with tears, I can feel the colour drain from my face. I grab hold to the wall of the fast food place and bring up my food, splashing down all over my bare legs and shoes. People walk past me some stop and watch, most move on like I wasn't even there. But I am, doubled over and in pain.

"Are you Ok there love?"

I look up, search for Brian but he's disappeared into the crowds. A jacket is placed around my shoulders. I shiver and am guided, half dragged, to the ground. I don't want this. Not now, not ever.

"Give her some air."

More commotion. Jesus just let me be. Just let me sit here for a while, I'll be fine. Really I will.

Really.

^

Biography

Penniless Writer available for heavy industrial labour: Niall Kitson, born 1977 and in possession of a fine sturdy skeleton, good teeth (mostly his own) and thick skin lives in Dublin near the industrial base. A conscientious worker with a high pain tolerance other examples of his output can be viewed at this location and now at Virtual Writer.net.