Shooting in the Dark

piety and wit in the world would not erase a jot of it.
    Tomorrow: she’s always unborn. She’ll arrive with burdens, there’s no doubt about that, and there’s even a chance that parts of her will be splendid. But until she arrives we can only be certain that we have no knowledge of her.
    Which leaves a perfect hiding place. Today. And any man can fight the batdes of just one day. Any day you like, be it as bright as the sun or as black as Hell, Sam Turner can get up at dawn and take anything you care to throw at him. He’ll keep going until nightfall. It’s only twenty-four hours.
    Today has no possibility of madness or disillusionment. Today you can get through without taking a drink. And it sure beats sitting in a cell.
    He dampened the coffee beans and took in the aroma. He waited a few moments for the water to go off the boil before pouring it into the filter. When it was ready he transferred the coffee into bright red mugs and put them on the tray with milk in a small jug. Celia was used to things being presented properly. She would never criticize, no matter how things were served, but in her silent expectation she managed to raise the standard for everyone.
    ‘Is she here?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘I collected her a couple of hours ago. She keeps walking into things. She knocked the radio off the kitchen shelf; went into the garden and couldn’t find her way back. It’s not gonna be easy for her. She’s upstairs feeling her way around.’
    ‘Nice,’ Celia said, sipping from her cup. ‘This house needs a woman.’
    ‘If I say things like that, everyone jumps on me for being sexist.’
    ‘That’s because it would be if you said it,’ Celia told him. She sipped from her cup, her face wreathed with steam.
    ‘And another thing,’ Sam said. ‘When you say the house needs a woman, what you really mean is that I need a woman. That it’s time I settled down, all that stuff.’
    ‘Well, it is time you settled down, Sam. You can’t go through life on one-night stands. It’s not good for your health.’
    How does she know that, Sam thought. As far as he was aware Celia had never had a sexual encounter in her life. She’d never alluded to one, anyway. Until the last five or six years her life had been devoted to literature and religion and taking care of an invalid mother. Still, it could’ve happened and she’d just decided to keep shtoom about it. Ships did pass in the night, presumably anybody’s night.
    ‘You like her, don’t you?’ Celia asked.
    ‘Yeah, she’s fine. Bit uppity sometimes, but I like her. We’re not setting up house together, Celia. I like her well enough, but she’s a client, and somebody’s trying to do for her. I think she’s safer living here for the moment. But that’s as far as it goes.’
    Celia looked at him with a pair of eyes that had once belonged to an owl. She blinked them slowly. She dipped into her bag and came out with a sheaf of papers, which she passed over to Sam.
    He glanced at them and patted his top pocket. When he looked up Celia was handing him a pen. He took it from her extended hand and signed the letters: one to the bank manager explaining why last month’s payment on the overdraft hadn’t materialized, and another one, almost identical wording, to the landlord.
    ‘We must owe these guys a fortune,’ he said.
    ‘They can afford it, Sam. They know you’ll pay up in the end.’
    ‘It’s criminal, though, taking that much cash off a guy for doing nothing.’
    ‘That’s how they make their money.’
    ‘Interest and rent,’ he said. ‘Villains have used the same tactics since time began.’
    ‘Is this going to get political?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll stop. I don’t make it political. It’s the other guys hassling for money all the time. The middle classes. All criminals are middle class.’
    ‘Seems like a sweeping statement, Sam.’
    ‘But it’s not. Under the veneer of respectability we’re ruled by a middle-class Mafia. We choose not to see it most of the time because it’s too hard to live with. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’ve never met a member of the middle classes who wasn’t a criminal either in fact or by aspiration.’
    ‘Long live the revolution?’
    ‘Too right.’
    ‘I’m middle class, Sam. What are you going to do about me?’
    ‘You’re not middle class, Celia. You just talk posh and read books. Anyway, we’re gonna build in special dispensations for people like you.