You wake with a headful of cement and a Gobi desert-dry throat. You reach for the packet on the dresser and from the cement a voice yells: Bobby! You wrestle with your flaky conscience. Just one is served. Remember Bobby is returned. Your mind is a tennis court.
You get up, crave the packet which lies so near to hand but steel yourself against it, go downstairs, swallow a cup of strong tea and munch toast. You wash, dress, put the unopened packet in your pocket, drive to work.
Everybody in the office looks different, uglier, menacing. You grind your teeth, the need is desperate. Just one, please, a quickie in the toilet maybe. Bobby! is smashed down the centre of the court. You made a vow to him yesterday, didn’t you? Keep it. Honour him. You return to the screen. Call coming in. Polite voice. How can I help?
Mid-morning tea-break and the regulars have congregated outside the building, shivering in the January chill. One by one they light up. You remember the candles at the altar, and Bobby’s coffin just below them illuminated by their flames.
You want to join the freezing congregation under the veranda, you absolutely must. If not, then soon you’re going to be so rude to a customer, scream and drown them in a torrent of abusive bile. You grip your fists, walk past temptation, grab a quick coffee which can sometimes soothe the itch. Itch? It’s an overwhelming pain, a cross you’re carrying, the weight of which is pressing you into the floor.
You make it through to lunch, having kept your temper with the callers.
‘How’d it go yesterday afternoon, Jed? Uncle’s funeral, wasn’t it?’ Lloyd asks. He’s given up roll-ups, and vapes now. Bobby vaped towards the end and still got diagnosed. That’s why you’re not vaping. A clean break.
‘Difficult,’ you say.
‘Old was he? Time up?’ Lloyd says, keen to be under the veranda with the fixers.
You want to tell Lloyd about Bobby, a father figure to you when your old man died prematurely, who always showed up when you had a need. How you saw your uncle change, crushed, like an empty cigarette packet squeezed by an indifferent hand. He was so breathless that he couldn’t walk, his face was hollowed out, and he coughed continually, his body shaking like a sail in a storm. Still he vaped. He had no will power to stop.
‘Yeah, old age,’ you say and head to the canteen. Four hours done and you’ve stayed strong. That’s the way you’ll do it, in hourly stages; and when you’re mentally tougher, day by day. You will not be joining the crew on that icy veranda. First set to Jed Evans.
The corridor to the canteen rings with your footsteps. And Bobby’s. He’s walking beside you.
