COSY THROW

I had a piece of grit stuck right down at the edge of the fingernail on the little finger of my right hand. A tiny black dot sticking out against the pale pink of the skin under the nail. I tried everything to get it out, even went as far as to stick a pin down there, but the pain level was indescribably high. So I went to work with the piece of grit stuck into me, and as I was on the bus, I thought: How did it get in there without me noticing? I held my finger up to the light and tried to work out what the black dot was and where it came from.

When I got to work, my cubicle looked strangely different. Something wasn’t right. My finger was throbbing by this point. I had been picking at it with my thumb in my coat pocket for the entire walk from the bus stop to my office and it was so sore but I just couldn’t stop aggravating it. But what the hell was up with my cubicle?

Craig walked past then and tapped me on the shoulders with both hands in a weird way. Craig was always behaving in ways people really shouldn’t. He rode a scooter everywhere, for one thing, and had a girlfriend who was morbidly obese and dressed like the host of a 1930s horror revue. This morning, Craig is eating prunes and I know this because I can see their sludgy remains in his mouth when he talks at me.

“How’s it going, Ted?” Sludge. Munch. Prunes.

“Alright. How are you, Craig.”

“Fairly rocking.”

“Good for you.” I tried to squeeze past Craig and into my cubicle, which is a difficult manoeuvre, but one I have practiced often enough. Except this time, he stepped in front of me so I couldn’t get past.

“That’s a sweet throw,” he said.

“A what?”

“That cosy throw, on your chair.”

I looked over to my chair and sure enough, that was the thing that was different about my cubicle: a soft throw rug slung across the back of my chair. “That’s weird,” I said.

“How’d you score it?” asked Craig.

“I didn’t score it,” I told him. “I’ve never seen that thing before.” Craig nodded, but didn’t move, as if I was holding something back from him. “Anyway,” I said. “Should probably start some work.” Craig threw three more prunes to their death.

*

All day, it was either the grit in my finger (which I swear was getting bigger) or someone popping their head over my cubicle to check out my new throw. “Looks cosy,” they all said, and it was cosy, but I couldn’t understand why it was such an attraction. Some of them lingered there, disembodied faces above my wall dividers, waiting for something. I even offered it to Trudy from accounts, who had begun to look like a dog at a butcher’s window, but she just turned up her nose at me when I held the throw out to her, like it was a poisoned chalice. “Couldn’t possibly deprive you of such a soft, luxurious throw,” were the actual words she used.

By the end of the day, an official memo landed on my desk, put there by Craig himself, who had left tell-tale pruny fingerprints all over the manila envelope. Employees are NOT to bring to work any “comfort” accessories, i.e. cushions, pillows or fuzzy warm throws to work unless otherwise approved by a medical professional and management. Not only does this issue contravene many Health and Safety issues, it does affect the morale of other staff members, those of whom who do not have the financial security to purchase such luxury items as a chocolate cashmere shawl to cuddle up to during the day. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read.

I stuffed the throw into my bag, now that it was banned from my workplace, and set off for home. I was only fifteen metres from the bus stop when I fainted. As they told me in the hospital later, the black spot under my fingernail had turned out to be a particularly aggressive cattle tick, which I can only assume had burrowed into me on a recent bushwalking trip. The doctors kept saying how lucky I was to have collapsed in such a well-populated area. Apparently if it had gone untreated over night I may well have died. But what the doctors were really interested in was my cosy, comfortable throw. When I finally offered it to a particularly insistent toxicologist, he just shook is head and said, “You just really don’t understand anything about your throw, do you.”

WHY RICARDO WAS WHERE HE WAS

When we cracked open the door, and the smell hit us, and Shawn went What the freaking Jesus is that? this was the smell of Ricardo Rezlik. We thought he was just a pile of clothes at first. He had slumped straight to the floor and wasn’t moving, but then Cathy poked him with her foot and he groaned. That’s a dude! said Shawn, and after our initial shock, we helped Ricardo up and took him out to the lounge room and got him a glass of water and some banana chips.

At first, Ricardo wouldn’t talk at all, and then he just made hand-gestures and I said we should get him some paper to write on in case he was mute but we didn’t have any paper because none of us had really unpacked yet so Shawn ripped some particle board from the kitchen wall where someone had tried to cover up a crack and Cathy found some lipstick in her pocket and we gave them to Ricardo and tried to show him what to do, but he just started drawing patterns instead of words⎯intricate, ever-repeating patterns⎯and eventually we gave up.

Should we put him in the tenant’s report? said Shawn drily. I was making us all toasted cheese sandwiches with cheese and bread I had bought from the corner shop at the end of our new street, and Cathy was sitting with Ricardo trying to draw a map of the world so he could point where he had come from. What if the people before us kept him as a slave or something? she said, suddenly worried. I told her we’d have to ring the real estate agent the next morning, but that it was too late to do anything now.

I was so tired after a day of moving, and I knew the others were too. Really, we should have called the police or something, but all we wanted to do was get to bed. Cathy and I hadn’t had our bed delivered yet, so we gave Ricardo the couch, and then we all climbed awkwardly onto Shawn’s futon. Normally, I suppose, this would be weird, but tonight w just wanted to sleep, no matter how or where. From the moment I lay down my head, I didn’t think of Ricardo once.

The next morning, we woke together, an embarrassed tangle of limbs and dry mouths. Hot summer sun waffled the uncurtained windows. We wandered out to the lounge, remembering, all at once, our mysterious house guest. Wonder if he’s going to talk this morning? said Shawn wearily. When we rounded the doorway, and when we saw what Ricardo had done, our stomachs tied themselves in awful sour knots.

What the hell? said Cathy.

That’s disgusting! said Shawn.

I’ll grab his arms, I said. Shawn, get his legs. Cathy, you open the cupboard.

FRESH TO THE END

When Celandine reached the end of her life, she realised that yes, she'd been right to hide a little toothpaste aside each day. She got her nurses to lift her gently into the bath. She enjoyed the minty-white caress against her skin just as much as she thought she would. She died, just as she noticed a small strip of blue, just by her knee, that had survived intact all these years. Her smile, when she passed, it was perfect.