Western Hope

Robin sat down and relaxed his body lethargic from a days work at some inconsequential account of another face in another crowd he didn't belong to. Robin wasn't a special man, at his school in Brighten he one the junior house cup for mathematics but was a place short for the senior prize. he was liked but not overly liked by his friends and his wife in that oh so polite way did love him. In fact the only thing remarkable about Robin was that there was nothing remarkable about him, average height, weight, diet, hobbies, talents, career prospects and future placed Robin on the most predictable data stream the national bureau of statistics hold. Not a position the majority of the public aspire to, then again the majority of the population just like Robin do fit into the neat brackets of the average life style. Robin for one didn't care, his life was a reasonably happy if not tedious one. He ate, fucked and breathed and that was end of his mental experience, the puzzles of the world were replaced by the puzzles of getting a boil in a bag meal to actually boil in the bag. He always found those things to be quite futile.

The night was Friday and if it had not been an extra ordinary night for Robin he would be sitting in front of a TV his vacant eyed stare at the dream landscapes and blissful fantasies the tele vision fashions for everyone. No tonight was when his friend Tony and his wife would come for dinner at Robin's home. Robin's home, or say Robin and his wife Sharon's home was nice. No other word even though being aware of how ironic nice is to the situation can describe the flat they lived in. A semi detached number in London off Fleet street just outside the bank Robin worked in. It delighted him seeing the commuters trundle off to work whilst Robin could leisurely stroll over up the flight of stone set marble steps to his Bank door and start his accountancy before most even arrived at their place of business. Robin jubilated in the fact, he bragged to all his friends and sang loud praises about the easy accesses to his place of employment. Though the sad facts being he made up for his easy accesses to work by not being that good at his job and none of his friends really liked him that much. A bit of a bore, the kind of man that tells everyone he can get them into any party or show but hesitates to jump the Queue to a toilet and hasn't even visited the west end. Indeed Robin didn't even know what the musical Cats was until last Friday when one of his friends raised it in conversation, then of course Robin did know everything about cats. Robin in fact had went to cats the previous year and found is unremarkable. Blatant lies that no one believed but it kept Robin happy. All around Robin saw worn out faced, bright and early for this London sunshine hidden by the clouds. No expressions just the heel on floor, none of them were going anywhere. More often then not he drowned his sorrows in his work or the nail varnish smell of a shot of vodka. More often then not he never told anyone of these complexities of his character, the complexities that make him an individual amongst the crowd.

His darling wife Sharon was a home maker at present caring for their recently born child obviously making their way to the 2.4 children mark. For her age she looked quite pretty, a 34 year old woman with a neatly tied back hair and fashionable clothes. trying to express a last streak of rebellious youth but falling short and looking mutton dressed as out of fashion lamb. Robin felt that she probably felt a little over awed by Robin, Robin who had been to public school, that worked as an accountant in a bank. Robin who had so proudly declared that he soon would be a junior vice executive and earn a well proportioned 50 000 thousands pounds a year. Though Sharon did wish Robin would lose 20 pounds of weight from his waste line, like many men of 31 robin was digging his way steadily to an early grave with a beautiful combination of no exercise, no purpose and a dazzling array of junk food and late night whiskeys that helped him get to bed.

Robin eased back into the leather bound comfort held in the chair, he was about to instinctively go for the TV in front of him but then remembering like a broken vending machine he had company in ten minutes all at once decided to adjust his Tie in front of the bathroom mirror and practice the various physical gestures he was going to make throughout the meal. He inhaled the perfumed air of his sizable bathroom and detected the scent of perfume and a strange type of sweat he associated with sex for some reason. He shrugged it off, he was never really astute and the smell of a stew in the oven soon shifted his imagination onto thoughts of salivating meat and confectionary delights. His wife Sharon was gently stroking the gold necklace around her neck with a kind of loving action her eyes fixed upon it on the outside of her lemon pie colored blouse, she immediately put it away in a fumbling staggering way as she heard Robin raise his public school polished voice.

"How's the dinner going love?"

She hated how he said love at the end of all the sentences he addressed to her. she didn't know why but it was a phrase that got under her skin and made her cringe just like the smell of his Tesco bought after shave he splashed over himself clumsily in the mornings. She moved like a breeze around her apron swirling with her movement.

" It's cooking nicely, I might as well put the spice in now... Excuse me"

She swept past him in a hurried walk and grasped the spice before shaking it over the stew in a kind of I want to look busy way. Robin in his usual state of razor blade observation totally missed the actions lade square out in front of him and cut the air of vague hostility with a useless remark. A remark that of course she would have to answer.

"Is Jules in bed?"

Jules was their daughter, affectionately called Jules from Juliet being her real name, not Juliet as the family mutilated the Shakespearian language by referring to her as Julie or Jules, as the middle class have the knack of doing.

"Yes I put her in about 30 minutes ago."

She casually said. Sharon looked around, the house was in a neater then usual state. The threat of judgment by company even though it may be all in her head played out in neon imprinted bold spelt very bad things, so earlier on she rushed around putting their meaningless possessions in the nooks and crannies of the flat 20 stories up. She in particular focused on the various pictures and photographs placed along the walls. The visualizations all of times gone past, her and Robin kissing, or Robin and her looking sun burnt on a beach in Spain. An occasion she looked back through the vista of years and found tears appearing in her eyes, regularly trying to picture the firm and tanned bodies of the Spanish youth playing football on the beach. She wanted to play a pretend life out in those innumerable portraits, where everyone looked pretty and happy. Where the roads shone like cement ways to heaven and her family all lived, and emotions were real things of good and love and the horrible feeling of waste didn't exist. She wished all these things whilst Robin was engrossed in the latest Tom Clancey novel eyes down scanning and absorbing the same story as Clancey had written before, just with the characters and placed made different, Robin never figured that out, whilst Tom Clancey most probably was laughing his American head off at the stupidity of his audience that he could make 3 million dollars in sale bonus alone every year and spend two weeks writing the book.

"Excellent you know she gets tired out fast"

In fact Juliet was an energetic child, not that Robin would know that since he spent all his time either at work or doing the daily mail crossword, an endeavor he had yet to achieve. Though no doubt when he would eventually achieve the thing it would taste like gold to him, another experience he could add to social conversation over the water cooler at work.

"Oh is that them."

The door bell rang the sound drifting out through the ocean of background noise from the street outside.

"Better let them in"

Remarked Robin, like there was any other thing they could do and not letting them in was a possibility. Sharon walked over to the door and unlocked it whilst Robin hurriedly made his way to the hall behind the door and looked dignified reading the Times news paper he bought earlier at the new agents down the road. The door dazed upon and it revealed two middle aged people holding hands as if through duty and smiling. They immediately hugged Sharon and did the same to Robin. Robin was a little taken aback by Tony's hug because he wasn't used to males showing their friendship with a hug as a child in puberty does he almost instinctively draw his groin away from Tony as if something was going to leap out and attack him from his flies. Tony to Robin's eye at least looked different to how he usually did. Time had chiseled at a few wrinkles in what used to be an untouched brow. His hair was slightly whiter and red and purple veins were showing up all over the blood rushed pale face of Tony. Tony also had grown a slight beard, whether it was purposeful or not Robin didn't conclude but the usually clean shaven mental image of Tony was replaced by the new slightly ill and sour expressions man he saw before him. Robin spoke the first sentence separate to the rushed hellos the group had given.

"It's damn cold outside."

So stupid, he wished he hadn't said it almost immediately after saying it. What was the point!? He hadn't been outside so he wouldn't know and it had stopped the question he was making short and just made a ignorant statement. How he wished he could be a quick joke engineering gentleman and not the slow, slightly boorish businessman he had become. Of course he put to death the doubts of his ego almost immediately, Thanos subsiding and replacing with the super ego of the great man he was. He smiled his best professional smile and stared directly at Tony.

"It is winter Robin."

The January was cold, Tony's remark was even colder. His wife removed her had from his as almost it was a relief and replied.

"Yes Tony in an act of genius forgot to get the car back from the mechanic and we had to walk a mile to get here."

Tony didn't even pause to answer.

"Ah yes and who's fault is it in the first place that the car was in the mechanics?"

They both looked icily across at each other before looking at Sharon or Robin again.

"I'll show you to your seats then"

Quickly added Sharon as she escorted the biting couple to the table as Robin ganders over with various misconceptions and stereotypes floundering like various beached whales on the shoreline of his subconscious

"It smells delicious Sharon you out do yourself every time we meet."

Helen Tony's wife was sitting down opposite side to the table that Tony was one with a beaming lighthouse worthy grin on her face, the kind that covers up all types of stains but never obscures the shadows behind those pretty blue eyes.

"Ah yes I got the recipe from a cook book I got from Robin last year for Christmas"

"That book cost a small fortune, I tell you I almost protested when I heard how much it cost!"

"But you didn't did you Robin"

Replied Tony. Robin was left open mouthed staring into an unexplored personality that he thought he had known so well.

"Well of course I didn't I don't like to make a scene... But I tell you I was tempted I was tempted"

Robin adjusted the chair and sat down on it and abruptly coughed and poured himself some wine from the open bottle. Tony stared at him a few moments and sat down next to him pouring out a glass of wine, swallowing it in three mouthfuls and then pouring out another.

"For God's sake Tony don't get drunk again"

His wife said in a mental stabbing motion.

"I have to get drunk occasionally Helen."

Tony looked around smiling and continued.

"I do live with you."

That remark forced a smothering silence on the room that was only punctuated by the slurping of wine from glass by Robin his eyes full like over ripe strawberries positioned in the bush of his face darting around this way and that with an aroma of red wine drifting into his nose. Which made his mind jump for something to say.

"The wine's nice."

"Yes I bought it from Tescos, very cheap as well Robin."

Robin nodded before tilting back on his chair and like some pseudo wine tester sipped a few tongue drops and closed his eyes trying to project a look of concentration on his face before giving his prognosis on the liquid.

"Very fruity"

Sharon sipped it and slipped into the conversation another opinion on the wine very much like the last.

"Yes very fruity indeed."

Tony looked like he had a sour taste in his mouth hearing the group talking and turned his head to the kitchen.

"Shall we eat then."

"Yes I'll just go and get the food."

"Let me help."

"No No I'll do it."

Like a dutiful ant to a queen Sharon hurried over to the kitchen arranging pots and pans, dishes and bowls to get the food. She brought them over and tucked in. The food lubricated with alcohol like swarms of lemmings washed away in a flood went down easily, drowned corpses and all. Tony had drank 6 glasses of wine now and was swaying this way and that. The grandstanding and stone silences grew as the meal progressed. After numerous embarrassments and other ego damaging occasions Robin confined himself to eating the meal and looking mysterious with a glass of mind tilting back on the chair. The worse instance of his embarrassment was a miss quotation. Robin to add to his educated image tried to say a lot of things famous people had said. Reasoning that quotes that are intelligent would make him appear intelligent since he said them. True a well aimed quote in the heat of a conversation can be impressive but not the way Robin tells them. Indeed if you heard him it was like some giant knife stabbing you repeatedly in the back, you just wanted him to shut up. For example Sharon was talking in her usual high pitched whine whilst Tony was half slumped over the chair his face pitted with red blotches from the wine and Robin listening in intently trying to put his proverbial two cents in the rapidly growing pot.

"This war in Iraq business is awful, just the other day a friend of mine had her child killed in the war by a rouge American missile."

Robin haste filled searched through his data banks for some tit bit of information useful to him.

"Ah the death of millions is a tragedy but the death of one is just a statistic"

The room condensed in a quite for a brief time before the drunken Tony in a half inept but still concerted effort replied.

"Didn't Stalin say the death of one is a tragedy but the death of millions is just a statistic?"

Tony just looked right through him, eyes fixed positions of questioning Robin couldn't fathom or comprehend. Robin of just course smiled and dismissed the remark and hoped for another wave of speaking to cover up the shit he made in the sand. Which it did and all was futile and well. After a time the group finished eating and with a clank of cutlery and implements of eating they sat back well filled but slightly uncomfortable on their bargain bought chairs mouths filled with the bitter taste of wine and ASDA bought Ice cream, the wife liked to shop around to show some cosmopolitan streak within her.

"So Tony how long have Helen and you been married?"

"Just over 2 years now."

It was unusual how they didn't add the usual "And we love each other still" But that was all for show, perhaps ironically they were secure enough in their relationship to not say they loved each other. Though the looks they had been shooting each other throughout the meal told different stories.

"Well then again sometimes I don't think Tony wants to be married at all."

Tony slothfully reared up in a disgusting drunk stupor.

"And why's that?"

"Tony your drunk, horribly drunk."

"Ah and Helen your ugly, horribly ugly but I'll be sober in the morning"

Cue a stunned silence from the onlookers. Tony sat back and laughed to himself mumbling some other come back in his wine glass before drinking richly in it.

"Ah yes is that why you go off with your little whore's at nights and come back high and smelling of cheap perfume and nicotine."

"Well my little whores appreciate me more then you"

The drink had done what it was designed for, it loosened feelings that were embedded only in the looks and meaning filled words and propelled them to fully fledged speech. Robin looked as if he were having some kind of internal reorganization searching so hard for something to say. Whilst the fire works display outside his head went on.

"Ah you have deep relationships with them huh? You fuck them twice do you."

She slapped him, the forces of the blow leaving long talons of flesh whipped red along his face. His saliva dribbled out of the corner of his mouth before gripping her hair and whispering to her.

"They're better then you"

She was shocked, Sharon was morbid and Robin in a kind of monumental idiocy butted into the conversation with a.

"Happiness is love, calm down."

He at the moment of saying it hit himself mentally being it was love is happiness not visa verse, he didn't notice the crass vulgarity of his actions.

"I'm leaving you Helen for my whores."

Tony lifted himself up, sardonically bowed to Robin and Sharon before spitting at Helen and storming out. Helen was left weeping into a bowl of salad dressing whilst their motor started off and headed off in the distance for a remote red light district somewhere.

"Oh god."

Helen wept before vomiting the food up and running out of the house along the same exiting line as Tony had done without the spitting. Her frantic escape into the biting frost of the January London night. Sharon perplexed fantasied in a lovelorn way of her fate. Mentally imposing herself walking to her dead body as the crude sun discovered her there beneath the stare of some monolithic creation of industry. Her bargain bought Silk dress torn, Her raven hair that was dyed from blond Flowing into gown her beauty silenced and all together bared. She saw her starred with gothic fallacies of frost, lost in the rough emotions Sharon longed for the dead, she wept till her tears crept back to an empty prayer. Robin was silent, thinking of some words but lacking in anything.

After a while of this imposed absence of all communication Sharon made her excuses and wondered contrary to bed, eyes forlorn and filled with something deeper then woe. Robin was giving himself chances to be the man he knew he was but was losing quickly to the harsh critic he was becoming inside, hating his arrogant self exposed cliché admiration for everything he was. He sat and watched the news, the horrors of an industrial society sliding in front of his eyes like the odours of food and after shave that clogged the room. He heard the bath running upstairs and the smell of exotic kissed fruit came sliding down the red carpet stair. The walls white shook and span as the wine started to pin prick his brain. An hour later his switched the TV off in a sudden flick of a changer, the room plunged into the swirling darkness that could contain anything at all with the sounds of traffic and hushed talking out side on the street. In tune with a drum he climbed the stairs, one after another one. To get to the top of the flight of the stairs seemed pointless almost because he knew he would have to come down again but either way he stil climbed the stairs out of habit until he reached the top, his reward being a bed he would have to get out of the next day, a bed that faced the bank he worked in.

He eased the door of the bedroom open so not to awake his wife but found her not in bed. he was puzzled and looked around the shadow filled room. The dark had always discomforted him, the crawling feeling of being watched never found a nice place to stay inside himself. The bath was still running, Jesus what was his wife doing. He opened the bathroom door and his feet were at once greeted with a flow of water that spread past his shoes going into them and soaking his feet. The bedroom behind him was now flooded likewise, he was very angry.

"What the hell are you doing Sharon."

There she was held in all her glory arms out stretched from the white bath tubs edges taps still on and the air smelling of cinnamon and salts. Salts that a human makes. A razor was in her strangely disjointed hand and her face was that of some release, a cliché suicide that could find it's way into the morbid writings of a romantic author. Robin was just left like a spilt drink, empty drained and tossed out.

As his eyes focused he first denied what he saw. Pictures rushing in from a cold and worthless surface. Windows shattered behind his eyes, broken machine that he couldn't repair. A puzzle piece thrown out of place bitten and gnawed by a feral thing. He kept seeing some thing but as the image was conceived it was aborted as you would a hideous child. Flashes of a scene, the scene growing stronger and stronger as he kept looking. Kept trying to piece out what it was.

"Why?"

But his question had answered itself, the why was all it was. The night from outside swirled and had entered him. She was dead, It was too real, the strawberry eyes had turned to strawberry blood, loosing himself in that berry rich blood. Dripping down her gored wrists that she her self had slit. Bits of blush from her makeup and bits of jagged veins mixed like some cocktail of delusion over her am. Robin's eyes suddenly couldn't fix on any thing. Visions swam in the carousal of the bath scents and bubbles. The soapy rich lather had collected all around his knees that he dropped to hands writhing in the clean water gone brown. Memories of her smiling and memories of them making love melded into her bleeding. Her dying, crawling towards him with life leaking out of her mouth. Until all of his memories were stained by her blood. Leaking and spewing in a decaying mass of agony. He couldn't weep, couldn't think. Invisible Robin could not escape from it. Leaving him spent and worn, surrender had beaten him. The surrender of the heart utterly to this feeling of loss. Swallowed up into an incomplete oblivion. He leant on her, a faithful dog hugging her close to him. She did not move, he did not move or feel he just cried and tried to feel the initial feelings of loss again in that hot steamy room and failed, all he felt was the cold water that split on the floor under him and a kind of grey acceptance.

He had loved his wife, he may had crammed into behind the keyhole of a door he would never unlock but he had loved her in that middle class sort of way. He would have died for her if circumstances had permitted but instead she never knew. He knew himself to be so ignorant, so filled with his own inflated sense of being that he hadn't understood till too late that he loved her and she never knew it. He wasn't the kind of man in society who told a wife in passionate heat that he loved her, he was a withdraw man from emotion, he never coherently could phrase strong feelings and instead he had crawled into a hole and waited for her to die from suffocation of feeling.

"Dear Helen, I always love you"

So there he stood still with stained hands on the Balcony of his house, his fingers gripping the black painted rail as a starving man would grip a loaf of bread. The wind bit and chewed upon his face and his balding head was shown the wonders of the stars he had ignored until now. His hands ached and grew weaker between the bars of the railing. His heart cut open and made to be for the first time beating decided. So by accident or whether by choice he could not define he fell. Fell until the wind cut, his form disrupting the glare of a neon light that split the night and painted him traffic weary yellow for a second and then the ground punished him and all his sins fled away with gravity in some great act of personal judgement. As he fell a bus drove by and driving scream released was smother at that moment by a simply endless stream of traffic that was passing over the road. As he lay down on the pavement just outside the steps to bank he worked in. the marble singling nothing anymore and all but deserted. With the fumes and the many people walking the London night he replied to an unknown question an unknown verse he knew once more.

"And the rest, is silence."

As the gritted sun rose and the concerto of movement below the house grew and trundled Sharon woke from her bed and stretched life feeling better somehow, her hair still tied from last night in a ball behind her head. The sun blasting away some shadow left within her, all was polished and clear with the smell of bath soap and fragmented sheets she rolled in. Robin wasn't laying beside her, which was unusual for this time in the morning. She got out of bed and walked onto the balcony and starred in her nakedness she undid her hair so the blonde locks held took to the thing air of England with beauty and a kind of goddess like potential. Knowing no sin in her dispersion she looked and saw Robin surrounded by police and onlookers. Around his smashed corpse they were, but around them she saw faceless people marching to faceless tunes in that all together faceless London morning. All walking their paths, all chewing their tongues and blinking their separate eyes totally indifferent to the dead body below. She saw more people enter the bank, more people go to work and suddenly it dawned on her. The angels would not catch her. And she did not care. She smiled and turned around to the west, opposite to where the bank stood in the shadows it made away from the sun away from the dawn and she smiled there. Her skin radiant and she smiled again the rays making dreams through her long golden hair. And that sun never went down for her. Never went down to the pavement, never went down to the fumes of the cars and never to the people that drove them ever again.

As the setting sun rose on the beauty of desolation Robin lifted himself up, brushed himself off and walked utterly silent into the thickening light. Shaded by the simply unending man shadowing pillars that stretched into the sky and held the bank's roof.

The end.