Page 35 of The Love of My Afterlife
I have started. I have started this way and now I cannot stop.
“Mercy, mercy, oh mercy me, my whole life feels like a cage. Yet onstage…I am free.”
I hear a snort. Cooper’s eyes are wide, and he’s covering his mouth, though I can see that his shoulders are shaking. His parents and Lester throw him a curious look, but don’t seem to have realised that I am on the spot adapting “Boom! Shake the Room”so that it sounds less like a bop and more poet-y.
When I’m done, they give a slightly bewildered round of applause. Cooper joins in. He’s managed to stop laughing, but his face is still a little flushed from it, his eyes glittering in a way I haven’t seen since the first few weeks he lived in the building.
“How interesting,” Amy says. “That’s a new one to me.”
“Who’s the poet?”
“I believe he’s called William Smith,” Cooper answers, expression serious. “A modern poet with a very important oeuvre of work. ‘Wild Wild West’ is a favourite of mine.”
“Gosh,” Malcom says. “Thank you for introducing him to us, Delphie.”
“Most of Cooper’s old girlfriends wouldn’t know Keats if he bit them on the behind.”
I laugh heartily, also not knowing anything about Keats.
“I didn’t come here to get bloody read to.” Uncle Lesterpours himself another glass from the bottle. “Let’s play, damn it.”
“You can choose the game, Delphie,” Cooper says, to which his mum awws as if he just offered me a kidney.
I nod and look up and down the pile, eventually pointing at my selection. “I choose Pictionary.”
It might have been many years since I last played Pictionary, but I’m as competitive about it as I ever was. Amy has set up an easel in the middle of the room and, of course, I’ve been paired with Cooper, who, as it happens, is shite at Pictionary. We’re getting annihilated by Amy, Lester, and Malcom. It doesn’t help that Cooper’s sketches are thoughtless, the lines lax and unfocused.
When it’s my turn to draw, Cooper gets so frustrated that his voice pitches an octave deeper—an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the frustration.
“You’re shading? You’re shading right now, Delphie? The clock is ticking.”
“The reason I haven’t correctly guessed your drawings, Cooper, is because your drawings lack basic information,” I reply through gritted teeth. If he is managing to keep his shit together, then I will not be the one who gets visibly angry.
“It’s Pictionary, Delphie. We don’t need bloody chiaroscuro. Just draw what it says on the card.”
“Iamdrawing what it says on the card, Cooper.” I speed up my rendering of a surprise party because we only have fifteen seconds left.
“Come on, come on!” Cooper stands up from the sofa, the top of his curls almost touching the ceiling.
“Please refrain from speaking unless you have a reasonable guess, Cooper.”
“Well, clearly the sex is dynamite,” a now-sozzled Lester says, grinning from ear to ear. The rest of us studiously ignore him.
I finish my final flourish—the object of the surprise party, her mouth open in a scream. “There. Come on! Surely you can see…”
“Oh…oh! It’s a surprise—surprise party!” Cooper yells, hands on his knees.
“Yes!” I squeal, fist pumping the air.
Cooper crosses the room and pulls me into a celebratory hug. I immediately stiffen. Not overtly but enough for him to realise. He immediately steps back. He doesn’t say sorry, because that would look totally weird in front of his family, but he gives me a small apologetic shrug.
“Don’t know why you’re getting excited,” Lester says. “You still lost.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lester.”
“Congratulations to you all,” I say with a little bow. “You were worthy winners. Good game.”
“I rather think we are the winners for having met you tonight!” Amy says, also pulling me into a hug. This time I’m prepared and don’t flail on her. I sort of melt into the hug, the soft cottony smell of her blouse sending a soothing, comforting sensation swimming right through me. She pats the back of my head softly. To my mortification, my eyes fill with tears. Great. I don’t cry in over ten years and now twice in the same day?
