Lunch with Gina

The seagulls were harassing each other. One held onto a naan bread it had found from somewhere. It darted over the rooftops, swerving around chimneys and satellite dishes. It knew the racetrack which the others tried desperately to learn. As they chased and fled, disappearing and reappearing, they dragged the bread from each other. They exchanged the food so frequently it defied logic. They were too evenly matched. It seemed more reasonable for them to share their prize evenly. But this is life. Somebody needs to be the fattest.

I was watching the brawl from the top floor fire step, sat on a chair from the kitchen. The sun was heating my neck and the sky was that cloudless blue which made you think of Spain. Everything felt balanced. So rarely do the clouds, the sun and the breeze get along. The day was difficult to ruin. Bad news would probably draw you more to the scene. A terminal conclusion would make you wish you’d looked up more.

The seagulls stopped fighting once the bread was gone and all three of them stood on chimneys a few metres apart. The point of the feud was over for them and they began focussing on the heat. Each opening and closing their eyes slowly, somehow ignorant of the other’s presence. The gulls forget too easily but, what else was there to hate? The bread was gone after all. Maybe they were repenting in the sun. Who cares?

Elsewhere, another bird species chirped somewhere I couldn’t see, and below, a man smoked on the back steps of a restaurant kitchen. I watched this man’s head furrow as he analysed his fingertips. I couldn’t fathom why he was so unhappy with them, however, he kept pecking at them all the same. I felt for his condition. He held his cigarette at the bottom of his fingers, on the u-bend. I didn’t like this. People who did this were too comfortable with the habit and had forgotten death. I don’t mind a smoker or a drinker, but I want them to feel some guilt or sense of foreboding when they do it too much. You can’t be ignorant or naive as an adult. It’s stagnant. I started to feel contempt for him when I thought that he’d do me out of a hospital bed at some point in the future. He’d be a mass of tubes and I’d be left to die in the corridor.   

This thought pushed a change of scene, a need for some movement. The sun obliged, switching around the side of the house. Thankfully, the man didn’t kill the good mood and I took most of it through to the balcony. Our house was thin and had the fire step on the east and the balcony on the west. My wife hated the lack of space and the landlord told us we couldn’t use the fire step as it was ‘dangerous’. There’s ultimate value in what a good feeling can bring and, as I sat on the balcony, I longed for a recording to show to my wife and the landlord. They’d understand that safety and space are for those who can only theorise enjoyment.

I stood on the ledge looking out across the street. It was wide enough for the thin pavement and the one-way road. Gay couples filled the flats opposite. On weekend evenings, some of the rooms had odd coloured lights in them, usually red or violet. I had no idea why they wanted these colours and I didn’t think they really knew either. But they did it and I enjoyed theorising why. Of course, my conclusions always centred on some sort of orgy. Whether this was the half-homophobic musings of a straight man or the accurate view of these gay men, I don’t know. I will forever regret never asking them.

I stretched my legs on the wooden chair and curled my toes backwards as I thought of my surroundings. Down the road, a man was walking up towards me, away from the sea. He was carrying the innards of something large. Juice pattered on the concrete as he walked. As he came closer, I stood out of my seat, placing my arms on the warming iron. He didn’t seem to see me, or at least he didn’t look upwards when he passed under my platform. This wasn’t the lights of the gays, I needed a resolution and felt a safe enough distance to enquire.

‘Hey!’

He turned back around, looking down the pavement at the trail of blood and water.

‘Hey!’

He looked up.

‘Hey man, sorry I didn’t see you. I thought you were behind me.’

‘Well, I am, just higher up.’

‘Right… yeah.’

His face creased like the man I had seen looking at his fingers.

‘Sorry to bother you but what have you got there?’

‘Innards.’

‘Right, yeah, but from what? There seems to be lungs and… a heart and… intestines.’

‘Yeah, you’re right that’s what I’ve got. I’ve got liver and kidneys as well. Two kidneys, two lungs and one of everything else… including a trachea actually. Yeah, sorry, I forgot that. You wanna buy it?’

‘Erm no, not really. I want to know why you have it.’

‘So do I. I was walking down the road, just by the seafront up there.’ He gesticulated with the hand holding the organs, squeezing them a little as he pointed. This caused water to sponge out of something, wetting his shoes. ‘Ahh, Christ! How will I explain this to Gina?!’

‘How will you explain it to anyone? How did you get this?’

He was so annoyed and consumed by his shoes that he became temporarily deaf. Holding the innards as high as he could off the ground, he bent down to wipe his shoes with his free hand.

‘Ahh these bloody innards! On a day like today when I’m having lunch with Gina. She’ll hate this!’

‘Hey man! Look! What are you doing?!’

He looked back up.

‘Sorry, yeah, I found them… These fucking shoes!’

He was back at his feet.

‘Hey, man! Keep going. What happened?’

‘Right… Oh God! She’ll be so annoyed with me!… Yeah, so, I was at the seafront and this guy just dropped dead in the street. He stumbled to his hands and knees and was sick all over the pavement. At first it was normal sick, you know, yellow and lumps n’ stuff. Then this started coming up. His heart and lungs and throat, until, it was all up on the pavement and he was gone. So bizarre.’

‘What?!’

‘I know, it was odd. But I felt bad for him, so I picked the stuff up and threw his body in the sea.’

‘Right?! Why?’

‘What do you mean, why? I’m just trying to be good. It’s humiliating having to go like that. With everyone staring at your body after you’ve died. You don’t want people feeling sorry for you because your dead.’

‘Ah? Why have you kept the innards?’

‘If you’re dead, your dead. I’m not really into meat… Not his anyway.’ He looked up and smiled. My face was flat. He continued. ‘I gave the body to the fish, they’ll like it, they’ll eat it over time. I’ll have this stuff for my pot. Everyone will get something. You need to be kind to everyone and everything. Karma likes that sort of thinking.’

‘Right… I think you need to stay there for a minute.’

‘Look man, don’t ring the police. I’ve saved his family a funeral and the shame. Who wants to be related to the man who threw up the insides of his entire body? Just leave it and enjoy the sun.’

The seagulls came into my life again. They soared and landed a metre or so away from the man in cautious excitement, skidding in the dust to stop themselves. Each then took turns to extend their necks, jolting and jibing at the innards. The man became quite unhappy.

‘Ahh for God sake! Look! This is what I wanted to avoid! I could’ve avoided these fuckers if it wasn’t for you!’

A brown seagull sealed the man’s mood for the rest of the day. It sliced the large intestine. Shit and food flowed to the pavement, covering the left side of the man’s left shoe. Rage consumed him. He swung towards the seagull, who flapped unscathed. The other two then took their moment behind his back. One hit the intestine again, whilst the other sliced the liver. More fluid hit the pavement and the liver was split, half of it dangling on a chord. The man turned to the one who had hit the liver. The gulls knew he was overwhelmed. Two more came in from the tops of roofs, who were then followed by others. Soon the man was surrounded by at least twenty birds. They worked as a team to target their feast, each hitting opposite sides of the prize. As soon as a part was freed and a bird flew off, a few left the scene to take chase and fight some more. The man’s temples pulsated in anger and loss, eventually getting a grip of the situation by shoving the innards under his t-shirt. A few well timed kicks into the birds ensured they got the message and they all flew off. His shoes were ruined and his t-shirt was wet with innards.

‘God! Gina will be furious! I’ve got half a body and ruined clothes! God! My shoes, my beautiful shoes! We are going for lunch in an hour! Ahh, this life!’ On looking towards God in the sky, he saw me on the balcony edge. ‘Thanks a lot man! You’ve ruined a good time!’

I looked down, utterly perplexed by him, his body and his fight with the gulls. I said nothing and just nodded. What else could I say?

He turned and walked off up the street shaking his head like a man who was overwhelmed and surprised by the world’s deceit. I went inside and called the police; they’d be an hour. I couldn’t imagine what was more important to them, but I also couldn’t imagine anything I’d rather investigate less. I went back upstairs onto the fire step and tried to remedy the madness with the good feeling that he’d taken away. The sun wasn’t there anymore but the breeze and the sky were. It started to feel like it hadn’t happened. Even the seagulls willed me to believe it – just standing the on the chimneys, slowly opening and closing their eyes. War is everywhere or nowhere depending on where your sat. From then on, I chose to sit on the fire step.