hungry.
Her flat smells green. She walks to the kitchen and opens the fridge door.
Juice, cheese, salad dressing, anchovies, mustard. She pinches an anchovy from its jar and lobs it onto her tongue. She opens the Dijon mustard jar, scoops a dollop with her fingers and smears it on top of the anchovy.
She wants her mom.
“Never spit, baby, never spit—it’s vile,” Mom said. They had been walking down Race Street near Franklin Square in Philly, the trees yellow, red, the leaves kickable at her feet, the fountain making a dome of itself, and a great big horking gob had come out of a fat man standing on the corner of Sixth and Race. Her mother had grabbed her hand, pulled her closer as she declaimed loudly enough for the fat man to overhear her, and they’d quickly moved across the street towards the store where she would buy her daughter a new dress for going back to school. For fifth grade and all its pressures, like knowing the thing that love comes with: the other thing her mother had said to her on that day. They’d bought the dress and her mom had said it, that thing about love, for the first time, and it was less than a year later that she had repeated it, for the last time, in her hospital bed.
Now Francine needs a kind of back-to-school dress again, to wear Monday, to be seen in, because invisible is not the right choice now. She has to keep her job. “Love comes with … not panicking,” she says to the jar of creamy French vinaigrette in her right hand.
OLIVIA
He’s not Slow-Moe now. Moe is not molasses today. Too right. Student union leader Moe has his hoodie up, a fag between his fingers, and is walking like for once he hasn’t been blazing all night and is clear-headed in motion towards the M4 bridge where the Bridge Men of Heston will still be sleeping. Olivia feels the swoosh of the traffic on the M4 up above, even this early in the morning darkness. Her knapsack is heavy, filled with water and tins—tuna, beans, soup. Her fingers are falling-off-cold and she shoves her hands into the coat that she’s sick of wearing, sick of patching, sick of pulling on every morning when the end of February is supposed to be the end of winter not the beginning. Everything is arse backwards and, shit, if Ed loses his job like he said he might—shit. She has to think. But her heart is racing beside the mostly racing Moe as they hurry along Heston Road to make it to the bridge and the men of Little Punjab below the M4 flyover before daybreak. Moe has agreed to help her out, even though he really wants her to help him organize #Demo, as it was her emphasis on an ENTIRE GENERATION that was being affected, saying, “E-E-E- entire, Moe,” which he went on to adapt into themovement’s manifesto: to educate, employ, empower the young people of Britain. But Olivia has too much going on for all that. This visit is different; this is specific, contained, urgent; and she has to get right back to the library. She has to do her project, and all she thought she had to do with Ed was to help him make things pretty, the way Catherine likes them. Catherine and her lacy bras, her underpants that look like they’re supposed to be on a cake. She thought that if Ed just made things a bit more frilly then Catherine would be sure to go for him again. But Catherine will not go in for a jobless bloke. Sod it. Catherine is not going to like all that death shite in any case. Catherine thinks death is for dead people. But the funeral wasn’t so bad—even a few flowers in a glass vase at the front of the chapel, the priest said good stuff, and it’s not like she saw a dead body or anything; it was just a box, not bad for cardboard, not something that someone could fall out of. Death isn’t so scary. Catherine’s got to respect that. Oh, Wood. It was his chin mostly, as he talked about gold and towns that sound like ships—his chin that she stared at because this was the bit of him that she thought she remembered: the feeling of
Her flat smells green. She walks to the kitchen and opens the fridge door.
Juice, cheese, salad dressing, anchovies, mustard. She pinches an anchovy from its jar and lobs it onto her tongue. She opens the Dijon mustard jar, scoops a dollop with her fingers and smears it on top of the anchovy.
She wants her mom.
“Never spit, baby, never spit—it’s vile,” Mom said. They had been walking down Race Street near Franklin Square in Philly, the trees yellow, red, the leaves kickable at her feet, the fountain making a dome of itself, and a great big horking gob had come out of a fat man standing on the corner of Sixth and Race. Her mother had grabbed her hand, pulled her closer as she declaimed loudly enough for the fat man to overhear her, and they’d quickly moved across the street towards the store where she would buy her daughter a new dress for going back to school. For fifth grade and all its pressures, like knowing the thing that love comes with: the other thing her mother had said to her on that day. They’d bought the dress and her mom had said it, that thing about love, for the first time, and it was less than a year later that she had repeated it, for the last time, in her hospital bed.
Now Francine needs a kind of back-to-school dress again, to wear Monday, to be seen in, because invisible is not the right choice now. She has to keep her job. “Love comes with … not panicking,” she says to the jar of creamy French vinaigrette in her right hand.
OLIVIA
He’s not Slow-Moe now. Moe is not molasses today. Too right. Student union leader Moe has his hoodie up, a fag between his fingers, and is walking like for once he hasn’t been blazing all night and is clear-headed in motion towards the M4 bridge where the Bridge Men of Heston will still be sleeping. Olivia feels the swoosh of the traffic on the M4 up above, even this early in the morning darkness. Her knapsack is heavy, filled with water and tins—tuna, beans, soup. Her fingers are falling-off-cold and she shoves her hands into the coat that she’s sick of wearing, sick of patching, sick of pulling on every morning when the end of February is supposed to be the end of winter not the beginning. Everything is arse backwards and, shit, if Ed loses his job like he said he might—shit. She has to think. But her heart is racing beside the mostly racing Moe as they hurry along Heston Road to make it to the bridge and the men of Little Punjab below the M4 flyover before daybreak. Moe has agreed to help her out, even though he really wants her to help him organize #Demo, as it was her emphasis on an ENTIRE GENERATION that was being affected, saying, “E-E-E- entire, Moe,” which he went on to adapt into themovement’s manifesto: to educate, employ, empower the young people of Britain. But Olivia has too much going on for all that. This visit is different; this is specific, contained, urgent; and she has to get right back to the library. She has to do her project, and all she thought she had to do with Ed was to help him make things pretty, the way Catherine likes them. Catherine and her lacy bras, her underpants that look like they’re supposed to be on a cake. She thought that if Ed just made things a bit more frilly then Catherine would be sure to go for him again. But Catherine will not go in for a jobless bloke. Sod it. Catherine is not going to like all that death shite in any case. Catherine thinks death is for dead people. But the funeral wasn’t so bad—even a few flowers in a glass vase at the front of the chapel, the priest said good stuff, and it’s not like she saw a dead body or anything; it was just a box, not bad for cardboard, not something that someone could fall out of. Death isn’t so scary. Catherine’s got to respect that. Oh, Wood. It was his chin mostly, as he talked about gold and towns that sound like ships—his chin that she stared at because this was the bit of him that she thought she remembered: the feeling of
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