February 15 'This constantly clunking manhole is driving us mad'

 She stands up and makes a toast.

“To getting through this.”  

They drain their glasses together.

Sophie pushes the metal to the side, “Do you want to play cards?”

Paul shakes his head, “Let me see that postcard again.” 

She points to the sideboard against the back wall, “Top left.”

“Why’d you keep it?” 

Paul cradles it like a priceless museum artefact.

“It’s just stuff, I didn’t decide to keep it, I just didn’t get rid of it.” Sophie answers.

He balances the postcard on the lump of metal.

“That could have caught me on the head, and then it’d be my funeral.”

“Why d’you say things like that?” Sophie snatches the postcard and stuffs it back in the draw.

 

Paul sees himself behind the wheel and hears the squeal of the tyres, the thud, and the smeared windscreen, if anyone deserved to be shot down from above it would be him.

 

In cartoons it’s an anvil that falls from the heavens, not a fragment of unidentified machinery shooting upward. Those below always deserve to be floored; good always triumphs and the road runner runs off into a painted hole. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to stop, its white not black, the hole, the light coming at him. Maybe that’s a good sign.