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by Debbie Moorhouse
Science Fiction, 23 pages.
Originally Published in NFG, 2004
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It was grey. It was grey when the sun was supposed to come up, and it was grey when it was supposed to go down. For days, we hadn’t even seen the sun.
Christmas.
Eighty years ago, maybe more, maybe less, they had these fogs, or smogs. In cities. People wore masks, so they could breathe.
The day before Christmas Eve, two o’clock in the afternoon, and it’s grey. The crazy thing is that although it isn’t Christmas everywhere, and it isn’t two o’clock, everywhere, it’s grey, everywhere. On land. At sea. Southern hemisphere. Northern hemisphere. Everywhere.
I contact Dark Hollow. It’s grey there. It’s also Christmas. It isn’t two o’clock. I ask what the time is, and the woman who answered the phone laughs, and tells me, but I can’t remember, now, how many hours they are ahead or behind. Launch in two hours, she tells me, it said on the news, and they’ll have pictures maybe thirty minutes after that. I break the connection. Maybe someone will ask me for that information and I’ll have it.
That would be good.
It’s cold, and every day getting colder. Heating’s on all the time, everyone wears their thickest clothes, and eats too much.
Explorers at the Poles ate pure fat, lard or blubber, and it kept them warm. Low fat diets would have killed them. Starved, frozen to death.
Sometimes I think that if the grey lifts, we’ll see icebergs offshore.
“The sun’s not gone,” someone’s saying, out in the street. “How could it be gone? If it was gone, it’d be dark, we’d be frozen solid... obviously it’s not gone.”
“Where would it go?” someone else says. A third voice says something which I can’t make out, then laughs.
Everyone took it differently. Laughed, or cried, or went mad, or ignored it. Just ignored it, and came into work and carried on.
I contact Dark Hollow again, remembering that I hadn’t called to ask what the time was, or when the launch was, but what had happened, might I enquire, to our order?
“Is anyone going to need sunglasses?” the woman asks me. “Ever again?”
“I haven’t been instructed to cancel the order,” I say.
“I haven’t been instructed to cancel the order,” she repeats, her tone sharp. “I just wondered if you really wanted it. I mean, sunglasses.”
The summer job at the tiny beach-side shop that turned into an all-year-round job, because I couldn’t be bothered.
“Okay, cancel it. Do we get our deposit back?”
“You could transfer it to something else. How about kites? The wind hasn’t gone.”
“Okay.” Leaning back in my seat. “Red and blue ones.”
“How many?” she says. And then, “What are the men like, where you are?”
“Twenty.” I write it down on my pad. “Don’t know. Don’t look at them.”
“All right—what are you like?” A humming sound, a scratching, as she writes something down. “Hmmm?”
“Ordinary. No money, no style.”
“That’s not what you say, when a beautiful woman asks you about yourself.”
“Twenty, blue and red. Did you get that?”
“Your order number’s ZK43902. Did you get that?”
“How do I know you’re beautiful?” I say, writing the order number down next to the details of the order.
I can be organised.
Two weeks of grey. Four days since Rose, the owner, had come in. People walking past in the street.
“It’s the Russians,” one says. “They’ve put up their stupid fucking mirrors, and it’s gone wrong.”
“Yeah.” Another voice, even more aggressive. “They never own up to anything.”
“I’ll send you a photograph,” the woman says. “With your order.” She laughs. “If you send me one.”
Footsteps going past, running, childish voice, childish enthusiasm. The sea.
“Made in China?” I say.
“What?”
“The kites.” I look down at my pad. Above the order is written, ‘Ring Rose’.
“Made in China?”
“Taiwan.”
“Do you sell kite strings, separately? Sometimes the strings break.”
“Minimum order’s a dozen.”
Who takes a seaside holiday at Christmas?
Childish disappointment.
“It’s not open, Mummy.” The door rattling. “Look, it says it opens at ten o’clock.” Rattle rattle.
“Got to go.” I put the phone down, even as she wants to know, do I want the kite strings or not, do I want her photograph, or not?
I open up.
The child’s a girl, maybe six or seven. The woman is in her late twenties, anxious-looking, her skin dulled by the grey light.
“I guess you don’t get many customers, this time of year.”
What’s the correct answer, I wonder, is this a test?
“No.” I back away, leaving the door open, making room for them to come in. The girl enters immediately, looking around the shop with sharp, curious eyes. The mother hangs back. Even with the lights on, it’s grey. The mother has one foot in the shop, one on the pavement. I go back to the counter, sit down, check my pad. ‘Ring Rose’.
Making a living from a tiny s -- [End of Preview.]