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01 April 2008
40. Kidman Ruins It
“No, no, no! Absolutely no way! There’s just no possible, conceivable way I can do that! You are crazy if you think I’d even contemplate that!”
Of course, Kidman ruined it. The good feeling that I’d had towards her the night before obliterated as if shot dead at point-blank range. Well, that’s what I get for letting my guard down and for asking her again about her plan!
“What other choice do you have? Look at you! Are you a woman with choices? No. Shit chooses you! Bad dress sense chooses you! Solitude chooses you! Lord, even the ghosts of the dead choose you! You, my dear, have no choices!”
“Fine, but you must be out of your international superstar freakin’ mind if you think I’ll do that! Choices or no choices!”
“Hold on. I’ll get something for you. I know just what you need. This might bring home the reality of your shittiness!”
“Nope. Won’t work. You’re out of your Oscar-winning freakin’ mind, Kidman! Oh, there’s a title for your autobiography!”
And then she disappeared out of the room. As she left I knew I had the look on my face. I knew that my eyebrows were raised, my nose was elevated imperiously and my breasts were slightly thrust forward, with shoulders slightly back. This is what it had come to overnight: me adopting Kidman’s haughty sensuality, and not even desisting when I realised I was doing it!
Was it really my fault? Oh, perhaps it was! Well, what isn’t my fault! I slept well, yet I awoke with the sun streaming in and a sudden sense of panic about Kidman, man, Kidman! Since I’d heard her crying upstairs I’d heard nothing. This imaginary presence, so real and so totally thorough in her imaginariness, so there in every fact and fiction of me, had taken on a life of its own. While, I suppose, still being me. Of me. Ooh, there’s a great title for my own autobiography: Of Me. How about I change the name of this blog to: Of Freakin’ Me!
We were upstairs when she started to tell me her preposterous and humiliating plan. Just an empty room with a solitary wooden desk in it and some scraps of paper, paperclips, a rubberband, a crushed hat, a little roll of blank paper for one of those little calculator machines. When I entered she was looking out of the window, arms folded, silent.
Now that she was gone, I followed suit. I folded my arms, I stood silent and I peered out of the window at trees, the Clansman in the distance, a shed, and the start of the wall that circumvented the rear of the house.
Kidman reappeared. She had a bag of sesame seeds that I sometimes used in salads and smoothies. I watched, my own arms still folded, as she took out the seeds and scattered them on the wooden floorboards in front of me. Then she stood tall, looked at me and nodded towards the seeds.
“There you go, chicken. Breakfast!”
“You hypocritical bitch! Me, chicken? Who ran away the other night when the astronaut was outside my door?”
“There’s a time and a place to be courageous and a time and a place to run like the chicken who has both spotted and recognised the farmer’s axe – especially after what he saw happen to his cousin the previous week! That was one of those times! This is one of those times when you peck the farmer and hold his wife hostage for the ransom of a fully-fuelled jet to the nearest vegetarian-owned coop!”
“Oh, is it! Says you!”
“Says me.”
“And who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Kidman, man, Kidman!”
With that she walked out, a slight flick of her long skirt as she spun out of sight.
I kept telling myself: don’t rise to it, don’t rise to it! As I went back to my rooms and made breakfast, I told myself: forget about what she said, forget about it. As I ate it and watched as the bright day glistened, all sizzling and plump, I told myself: what does she know? nothing, nada, hee-haw, bugger all, Scooby!
Then, at the side of the window, I saw a little hill of flesh push forward covered in a dress. At first, I wondered what it was; then it was instantly clear to me that it was Kidman’s bosom, outside of the window and pushed forward. Then her arm appeared, the rest of her still unseen, and her hand pointed demonstrably towards her bosom. It disappeared and was replaced by the sight of a nose – one solitary nose. The arm reappeared again and pointed at the splendid conker.
I scowled, frowned, twisted my face in a hard-set, indomitable manner, and told myself: don’t give in, do not give in!
Then the nose was gone and her face appeared at the window, eyebrows raised as her hand pointed at their profoundly curved arch.
“Fine!” I shouted. “Fine! I’ll go and see Mrs Ormsley and ask her about the history of this house! No matter how much she insults and humiliates me, I’ll do it! Now, get lost!”
Kidman’s face disappeared. And then the arm reappeared in the window with a single thumb raised towards me, the sun beaming around it and giving it a glow as of some divine illumination.
Oh, damn that ENP of hers! And damn its general all-round effectiveness!
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08:15 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal