Overrated
“There’s no place for me there.” Said Angela.
“There’s no place for any of us.” I said. “Who is it bothering you? Samuel?”
“I just don’t see where I fit in.”
“Because if it’s Samuel, he may not be around for that much longer.” I said this quieter. I was on my mobile, in my room. I don’t know where Angela was. Devon somewhere. I imagined her still in Chris’ car but I guess she was in his house. It was about nine this morning when she called me back.
“I said I don’t see where I fit in.”
“To what?”
“To anything. It makes more sense here. I don’t even know why you’re asking me to come back.”
“We’ve got something we need you to do.” I said, being mysterious. I’d planned out exactly how much I could say on the phone, and how to phrase it.
“What? I bet it’s nothing anyone else you know can’t do. Why are you asking me to come back?”
“Look, this isn’t Trisha. I don’t have to offer up a dissection of everything that’s said. You live in the spare room. That’s where you fit. Instead of which, you’re with that idiot.”
“And that’s all you’re going to give me.”
“I don’t love you if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good enough for me.”
Angela called me again at eight this evening. She’d got as far as the services near Reading, but with all the snow coming down, her lift wasn’t going any further till the morning. The motorway was clear, but his drop off was a few miles into the panic zone. Norman and I took Samuel’s car to pick her up. Norman spent the first hour of the journey peering up into the night like he expected to see fully formed snowmen plunging to their death. For the entire journey, he kept looking over at the hard shoulder and the grass embankments, trying to gauge if it would settle – if it could settle. I remember ten years ago it properly, properly snowed – thick enough to build an igloo and smash into it on a sledge. I haven’t seen proper snow since, no matter what the news tells me. Everyone acts like suddenly the ground’s become this perilous eggshell, and if you step on its surface you don’t stop sliding until you fall in the sea. It’s like God contemplated a bit of snow for one of the plagues to visit on the Egyptians, but changed it to boils when he calmed down.
When we found Angela she was halfway through a cup of tea and a burger. Somehow these places that only exist on motorways manage to reproduce food as though they’ve referred to historical documents and tried to recreate meals based on analysis and supposition. I looked around at the moulded seats bolted to planter-walls, the plastic, turquoise trim running along the décor – grey with pink flecks, the baseball cap uniforms worn by people who travelled to work there. After three hours of arguing about music with Norman, I started grumbling about how bland and soulless it was, compared to somewhere real like the market. Thousands of people pass through everyday, and the most they can hope to see is an inoffensive print and light wood veneer.
Angela, after sitting there alone for three hours, took issue with me:-
“What is it you want? To come up the slip road into a country lane that splits off and round the corner, so everyone gets their own Edward Hopper gas station, with cherry red petrol pumps and a mechanic in dungarees.
“It should be soulless. It should be forgettable. What would it say about us if we got our cultural highs at the motorway services? What would that mean? It’s like when they complain about supermarkets not having character. They’ve got food. They’ve got trolleys full of really good food. Not every place you go has to be a branch of the Tate in its spare time. If I stop on a seven hour journey, I don’t want my emotions to be provoked. I don’t want to start thinking about sexual politics in the twenty-first century. I just want the toilets to be clean. And they are, you should check them out before we go.”
Norman looked at me to check I hadn’t changed my mind, but we brought her home anyway.
“There’s no place for any of us.” I said. “Who is it bothering you? Samuel?”
“I just don’t see where I fit in.”
“Because if it’s Samuel, he may not be around for that much longer.” I said this quieter. I was on my mobile, in my room. I don’t know where Angela was. Devon somewhere. I imagined her still in Chris’ car but I guess she was in his house. It was about nine this morning when she called me back.
“I said I don’t see where I fit in.”
“To what?”
“To anything. It makes more sense here. I don’t even know why you’re asking me to come back.”
“We’ve got something we need you to do.” I said, being mysterious. I’d planned out exactly how much I could say on the phone, and how to phrase it.
“What? I bet it’s nothing anyone else you know can’t do. Why are you asking me to come back?”
“Look, this isn’t Trisha. I don’t have to offer up a dissection of everything that’s said. You live in the spare room. That’s where you fit. Instead of which, you’re with that idiot.”
“And that’s all you’re going to give me.”
“I don’t love you if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good enough for me.”
Angela called me again at eight this evening. She’d got as far as the services near Reading, but with all the snow coming down, her lift wasn’t going any further till the morning. The motorway was clear, but his drop off was a few miles into the panic zone. Norman and I took Samuel’s car to pick her up. Norman spent the first hour of the journey peering up into the night like he expected to see fully formed snowmen plunging to their death. For the entire journey, he kept looking over at the hard shoulder and the grass embankments, trying to gauge if it would settle – if it could settle. I remember ten years ago it properly, properly snowed – thick enough to build an igloo and smash into it on a sledge. I haven’t seen proper snow since, no matter what the news tells me. Everyone acts like suddenly the ground’s become this perilous eggshell, and if you step on its surface you don’t stop sliding until you fall in the sea. It’s like God contemplated a bit of snow for one of the plagues to visit on the Egyptians, but changed it to boils when he calmed down.
When we found Angela she was halfway through a cup of tea and a burger. Somehow these places that only exist on motorways manage to reproduce food as though they’ve referred to historical documents and tried to recreate meals based on analysis and supposition. I looked around at the moulded seats bolted to planter-walls, the plastic, turquoise trim running along the décor – grey with pink flecks, the baseball cap uniforms worn by people who travelled to work there. After three hours of arguing about music with Norman, I started grumbling about how bland and soulless it was, compared to somewhere real like the market. Thousands of people pass through everyday, and the most they can hope to see is an inoffensive print and light wood veneer.
Angela, after sitting there alone for three hours, took issue with me:-
“What is it you want? To come up the slip road into a country lane that splits off and round the corner, so everyone gets their own Edward Hopper gas station, with cherry red petrol pumps and a mechanic in dungarees.
“It should be soulless. It should be forgettable. What would it say about us if we got our cultural highs at the motorway services? What would that mean? It’s like when they complain about supermarkets not having character. They’ve got food. They’ve got trolleys full of really good food. Not every place you go has to be a branch of the Tate in its spare time. If I stop on a seven hour journey, I don’t want my emotions to be provoked. I don’t want to start thinking about sexual politics in the twenty-first century. I just want the toilets to be clean. And they are, you should check them out before we go.”
Norman looked at me to check I hadn’t changed my mind, but we brought her home anyway.
posted by The son of Edward Fold at 2:43 am
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