David

Six months ago I started working at the Key Music Shop, but before that I was a was a water for a catering business by the name of L.C. Chester Cuisine. The last job I ever did for them before they politely let me go was at the after party for the opening night of the British Tour of a distinguished German orchestra. Being musical myself I was incredibly excited but I don’t think anyone noticed. I never quite understood how to use facial expressions.

The banquet hall was plush as you like, all crushed red velvet and gold brocade. It reminded me of the carpet slippers one senile old war veteran had worn back when I worked at the West Port nursing home. It was my job to clean him up when thin rivers of saliva slipped out of the corner of his mouth. The frosted-glass champagne flutes the host had selected were the same colour as the war veteran’s eyes. I started to develop a headache.

The waiters, us waiters that is, had been trained to present the plates of food in perfect synchronicity, which on more that one occasion I had been told was ‘a little eerie’, which didn’t surprise me. I couldn’t quite comprehend the guests that night. They were creatures of excess, all of them, particularly when it came to gold jewellery and the consumption of wine, I noticed. Eventually I stopped attempting to pick them out as individuals and allowed the crowd to merge into a pulsating mass of wrinkles and screeching laughter and satin and seersucker. Once I had reduced the diners to a generalised monstrosity with flapping gills and mascara congealing in the corner of its huge, single eye (a mess of sleep and cataract, not pleasant), my headache eased a little.

There was due, that night, a big surprise. It wasn’t a surprise at all really. All the staff and half the guests (guest?) knew already, and the other half had most likely caught on. The situation was in control though. All present were professionals, and when the time came I was safe in the knowledge that we could all feign shock and delight so well that our non-existent audience would never suspect a thing. Yes, we were all well-trained, instinctive liars, it comes with being a master of etiquette. The ‘big surprise’ was that the conductor of the orchestra would be making an appearance. Five minutes before the man himself was due to appear (cue applause), I turned to one of the sous chefs standing next to me in the banquet hall kitchen and said

“It’s all very droll, isn’t it?”

Prior to this sentence I hadn’t spoken an unnecessary word for around three months. The chef made a face at me I can’t quite describe aptly and continued slicing porcini. I resumed my voluntary dumbness, quite unphased.

I watched from a crack in the kitchen door as the conductor made his entrance, a roguish, winning grin worn with majesty on an elegantly lined face. And oh, what applause! I felt something start to move in my stomach which I assume was probably emotion- after all, this man was one of my heroes. But then I noticed his right hand, outstretched to shake one of the monster’s countless extremities. His left was the same. Heavily built, masculine hands crammed inside silk gloves. Straining painfully. Processed meat packed too tight. Fit to burst. THE SKIN! IT DOESN’T FIT!

I fell through the kitchen door onto my hands and knees and vomited steadily for a long time onto the cochineal-coloured carpet of the banquet hall.