Eclipse

Tongue-in-cheek

Disasters come and go, like children’s parties and kitchen floods but, deep down, you know there’s going to be one, at least one, full moon eclipse where the sun never recovers.

 

The girl is young and beautiful, hair that dances as she smiles, eyes only on you. In the men’s room, you’re moving your mouth as you pee, practising lip work and your false tooth, the front one, falls out and you panic, half-crouching there with your hand up to the wrist in urine, desperately fishing and pulling your sleeve back with your teeth and suddenly realizing that you’re peeing onto your shoe.  Moaning and cursing fate and all the gods, you hop to the sink and place the tooth safely at the back. Then you zip up, at speed, one eye against the door, praying that no-one comes in. On one leg you wash your hands, then walk, carefully one-footed, to a cubicle for paper to clean your shoe. Then you try to wash away the smell and dry the shoe under the hot blower. You check your sock and the end of your trouser leg for splashes. Just in case, 

 

It just sits there. A one-toothed skeletal grin. Come and get me, it says. You know where I’ve been. Let’s see you fit me back where I belong. Your tongue shivers, covers the gap. I’m not having that...thing...back here beside me.

Your lips wrinkle. You swallow.

To be humiliated as you face the beautiful girl with a gap in your mouth and try to explain, then take the tooth home and sterilize it. But she’ll always know...

Or to wash it and, sourly, bite the bullet.

But when you kiss her, and you know you will kiss her, perhaps even more, you will know where the tooth has been, know this dark gift you are pressing upon her.

What to do? How would Shakespeare resolve this dilemma? He knew his plots!

And the scales of honour come down on the side of lust. You wash the tooth twice, three times and, sitting like an elephant on the cover of your unfriendly imagination, replace the tooth.

 

She’s cooler, the edge of her smile now faint. She picks at her food, doesn’t finish. Her eyes are on you but, somehow, no longer connecting. She knows, you think, she knows. How could she know? There is no way...

 

At her door, she folds her arms over her chest, defensive. She is no longer decisive. Perhaps, perhaps, another date... The wind has more substance.

And the kiss, when it comes, is a peck on the cheek.

And the hand and the urine, the tooth pushed back and cuddling up to your tongue; all this revolting bravery wells up like a fiery tear.

 

She moves away and the paper she drops is engraved with the waiter’s phone number. As you crumple it into your pocket, a sly smile crosses your mouth, the black moon passes on and sunlight comes streaming again.