Art Pact 11


"The whole idea is absurd," Christian complained from the end of the table. The tiny cuboid of lamb on the end of his fork, which had come dangerously close to its toothy nemesis, waved back and forth like the tip of a conductor's baton. Tiny droplets of juice dripped off it in either direction, falling onto the checked tablecloth. "The whole idea, I say." Christian let the morsel get closer, so close, but just as he was about to bite it off the tines he interrupted himself again. "Whoever thought of it should be fired. Fired or shot. Fired /then/ shot!" he concluded happily. He let his arm fall back down to the table, and his fork onto the plate, nodding to himself in satisfaction.

"I don't think we can ask them to kill a man-"

"-or woman!"

"...or woman," Allison said, "for the crime of a bad suggestion."

The lamb, which had once again soared up towards Christian's mouth, again halted.

"I'm not talking about the original moron," Christian told them. "I'm talking about the person who thought that it would be a good idea to commission it! People come up with bad ideas all the time, I understand that. But there are bad ideas and bad ideas. Most of us"--he looked pointedly at Rufus--"most of us are able to suppress our instinctual creativity and channel it into productive areas. And even when we can't, when we absolutely must speak aloud whatever drivel has leapt into our minds at the behest of some crazed muse, even then, we rely on the good sense of our peers and the community at large to drown out such nonsense with reasoned thought."

"I thought you meant-"

"Yes, I know, that is exactly my point. Having come to a misconception, you rely on others - on me, in this case - to point it out. You are of course grateful for the correction, and our dialogue continues."

"She doesn't look too grateful," Rufus pointed out. Indeed, Allison was frowning furiously at Christian and a more sensitive man might have shuffled his chair sideways in order to put himself out of striking distance. But Christian waved away Rufus's objection and pointed his fork - plus the now-cold titbit of meat still impaled on it - at the younger man.

"And you, I lay some of the blame at your feet."

"My feet?"

"Wasn't it you that told us to get involved with these charlatans in the first place?" Christian demanded. "I seem to remember some assurances, some fervent arguing in their favour by a young man not a million miles away from this very table."

"I introduced you to them," Rufus admitted. "But it's a bit harsh to say I argued for them."

"Well then I apologise for my harshness. But wait - perhaps... do I recall your exact words upon introduction? I do, Rufus, I do!"

"You do?" Allison said. "Why don't you ever remember anything I say?"

"I remember it," Christian muttered. "But you - you came to us with your two little friends in suits. Your good friends, that was how you introduced them to us: 'these are my good friends Brian and Karen', you said, your words exactly."

"That's not arguing," Rufus said. "That's an introduction."

"Any introduction is an argument!" On the words /any/ and /argument/ the older man stabbed at the air with his fork, as though trying to feed a recalcitrant baby of which he was not particularly fond. "You described them as good friends, and the implication was clear that you trusted them. That you had history, that they were, in short, people with whom I should conduct my own friendship. People who were trustworthy in the personal and business realm!"

"Perhaps Rufus should have had a disclaimer ready when he introduced them," Allison suggested.

"That would not have been a terrible idea, although I do recognise that you made it sarcastically and I am therefore unwilling to back its adoption with fifty thousand of my personal dollars," Christian said pointedly.

"Look," said Rufus, "I know plenty of people who I trust personally. That doesn't mean I'd give them my money."

"And suffering such a painful diversity of acquaintances, you thought that the experience was so enjoyable that Allison and I would like to be included, was that your motive?"

"I'm sorry," Rufus said, sticking up his hands in surrender. "I didn't know it was going to turn out this way. You know, I didn't think that they'd-"

"You can stop there," Christian said triumphantly. "That's the crux of it. You didn't think."

He smiled smugly, then opened his mouth for an instant to pop the end of the fork in.

When it emerged again, it was clean.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Art Pact 176 - In Memory

We gathered at the side of the road, one by one drifting in from who-knows-where. We didn't see, didn't know that another one of us had arrived until there was suddenly one more of us standing there, looking down at the metal. We didn't speak, either. Other people passed around us, but to us they were just grey ghosts in the rain. None of them had been there, so none of them mattered. They might have stared at us, might have cursed us for a minute as they came upon our little gathering stuck solid in the flow of pedestrians like a plaque in a blood vessel, but to us they barely existed. We came in, one by one from who-knows-where until all eight of us were we-knew-where, and all eight of us looking down at the metal and thinking our own cold thoughts. Seven was the last to arrive, as usual. Looking down at the metal I saw her shoes first, elegant black things with a high-heel filled in as is the style. Next to her Three: messy trainers. Next to him, Two in flat pumps. On
Read more

Art Pact 115

"Oh the worst thing about it was just the terrible cold," she said, peering out into the street. The bus pulled up at the lights, stranding her directly in front of an old man in a plaid cap who stared in through the window blankly. He was the same age as her father, but much thinner - a grey raincoat covering up a bony frame that somehow managed to impress itself on the clothes above it in the form of angular eruptions at the shoulder and elbows. From the long sleeves of the coat extended bony wrists that ended in hands white and pink where the strained handles of overloaded orange plastic bags cut into the flesh of his fingers. He looked like a special effects skeleton that had somehow escaped from the studio, donned a hat, and gone out shopping at Sainsburys. On the other end of the line Donovan muttered something trite about the temperature at which it would snow, and she nodded absently, forgetting that he could not see her. The old man looked up, staring directly int
Read more

Art Pact 50

Character is the choices you make in the dark. That's what they said, what my parents said. I can't imagine them ever in the dark. When I cycled home from the woods in the middle of the winter I would see the house from miles away, every light blazing, a beacon drawing me in to normalcy, the mundane routines of family life: breakfast, lunch, dinner, all at the same time every day - lunch and breakfast my mother's work, dinner that of my father except on special occasions. I always stopped when I saw it, the first moment that I could glimpse a spark or shard of brightness through the dark wall of trees, put my right foot down (always my right foot) and propped myself up to examine that evidence of my family. It was easy in the woods, in the darkness of the winter evenings, to forget that there was anything other than shadows and trees and the cracking sound of wood settling, but that first glimmer of light brought me back to myself. Now, in the house, there is no true darkne
Read more