It's Still Life

Previous instalments of this story: Part 1: The Pull Back  Part 2: The Measure of Her   Part 2: The Gatekeeper’s ResponsePart 3: The Colour of Walls  Part 4: Tectonic Shifts Part 5: Out of the Frying Pan 

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At an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Part 3: The Colour of Walls

When you’re in the middle of a street you shouldn’t think of something that stops you dead in your tracks, particularly when a black cab is racing the traffic light, its horn fisted for attention, and the cabbie pops his head out the window, shouts something drowned by street noise … but I wave and smile; deflect if possible, is my way,

“No, thank you,” I say, “I’ll walk – it’s such a lovely day.”

And at an Intersection named after an English King and a Saint, the 5 p.m. traffic hums like bees, the tram rattles a language of scratchy loudspeakers, and I deeply miss trees, green, their justifiable disorder, and I long to wake and be swallowed by verdurous leaf and rising petrichor … the lack of which is becoming a dizzying ache along with …

… that outlet from the French restaurant’s kitchen extractor fan that seemingly empties under the floorboards of my flat with its chiselling noise like cicadas, and last night I dreamt that sound was the peal of church bells and singing pigeons nested in the belfry, and since every story needs a valley, tonight’s Plat du Jour is my precipice and downfall.

My head floats in the aroma of Boeuf Bourguignon: a field’s worth of garlic, Maillard-reactionary beef, pearl onions, red burgundy … and I am sleeping with the perfume of a French dæmon chef named Pierre …

… and the man is bleeding money out of my petty-cash-sometimes-cookie jar.

I grab my folding metal chair, trounce downstairs, plant my chair near the front door of Arpège, and I sit as if hit by a heatwave … and Pierre says, “Brigid, nous avons des chaises – il n’est pas nécessaire d’apporter une chaise – Arpège has chairs; you needn’t bring your own,” and of course he smiles (he’s always gracious; he’s always smooth as Russian vodka) and I say, “Juste un avant-goût d’air frais, Pierre, just some air – your plat du jour, bœuf à la bourguignonne, is triggering my hunger dæmon … ” and so Pierre gives me a choice: he’ll give me an empty tin can to rattle at passers-by, or he says, “Come back after hours, ma petite fleur, and have dinner with your Pierre.”

After dinner, and after we’d emptied off a few bottles of leftover champagne that customers hadn’t finished, Pierre and I decided what colour to paint the walls of my flat, and I say, “So, we’re agreed, dead flat ultra matt Green Smoke #47, smoky blue green, deep weathered familiarity, leafy calm and serenity and the sash window frames and mouldings in a colour named dead flat Shaded White #201,” …. and then I hand the card left in my post-box to Pierre, and I say, “Tell me about him, this NtGK,” and Pierre sniffs and says, “Nick, he walks a dog that’s not his own.”

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “outlet”. 525 words. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2024.