New Flat


But there was a seriouser task at hand.  Martha insisted on moving her
things in herself.  The two young men had shrugged and sat on the
couch.  One of them pointed the remote at the TV but the power hadn't
been hooked up yet.  They looked at each other.  Jack dropped the
remote onto the arm of the couch.  There was an ethernet cable
stretched across the hallway and Martha caught her foot on it as she
came through with her second cardboard box full of books.  Penguin
editions and secondhands went everywhere.

“Are you okay?” asked Chris.  She had her ass on the floor and was
picking up the books.  She dropped her arms.

“I hate moving.”

“Yeah.  How about a break?” he tried to sound cheerful as he moved
into the kitchen.  The cuboards were empty except for two cheap
bottles of wine Chris had moved in as the first items to be so
honored, plus a half-full bottle of Irish whiskey contributed by Jack.
He came back into the hall/living room with one of the bottles of red
wine.

“Anybody have any glasses packed nearby?”

There were headshakes and he twisted the cap off, took a swig and
handed it down to Martha.  She put it down on the floor in front of
her amongst the books and looked at it.  Jack was looking at it too so
she held it out and he reached over the back of the couch to grab it,
took a draught, held it out back to her.

She stretched, fumbled, the bottle rotated, fell.  Red wine soaked out
in a large patch across the cream-white carpet.

“Goddamn!” said Chris who had lit a cigarette after passing the bottle
to Martha.  It fell from his open mouth burning to the carpet.  Ash
sprinkled into the wine stain and the burning tip of the cigarette
smouldered its way into the underlay.  The three looked at each other,
books, wine, ash, hopes spilt at the entrance to their new abode.

“Well, fuck.”