Sweat

Eugene slapped a fiver down on the café counter to pay for his bottle of water. He got back far less change than he remembered from his childhood, but then that’s always the way innit?. You’re not going to pay the same for something in the summer of 2018 as you did in the spring of 2006, are you?

Stepping out onto the Camden high street, Eugene spotted a really fit bird across the street. The warm weather meant she was showing more than she was covering and that suited him just fine, until she looked his way. A downside of the same weather was that he couldn’t get away with wearing his favourite denim jacket, which would have made him feel confident enough to return the look. But as the only armour he had on was a slightly damp t-shirt advertising the Snooker club he belonged to over on Holloway…he pretended not to notice and threw back a good portion of his water.

Luckily, she looked away rather quickly and so he didn’t have to rush the bottle. He didn’t have enough change for another one. It could be worse, Eugene supposed, he could have had to kill a man for it like those poor buggers in Africa and the Middle East. Plus there was some of that going on in the middle of the U.S. wasn’t there? He’d have to look it up online, but he didn’t feel like figuring out the settings on his new watch. But then, maybe things would be a bit more exciting. Nothing much ever changed in London.

“Oh don’t be stupid” he mumbled to himself while crossing the street “You don’t need rocket-propelled grenades going off left, right and centre to make things interesting”. He was still mumbling a little bit as he entered the unisex hair salon where he paid more than he ought to for the little pleasure of the managers company. After being a patron for three years and making the effort to be sociable, Eugene had earned the privilege of being able to always get his hair cut by a woman he should have asked out ages ago. “Oh hello Eugene, how are you darling?” Charlotte greeted him “Just grab yourself the third seat down and I’ll be right with you”.

She was chewing gum, naturally. Someone had left a newspaper on the seat and Eugene feigned reading it for a moment as cover for admiring the wiggle in Charlotte’s walk as she headed over to the cash to ring the last customer up. His pupils slid from the corners to the centre of his eyes and focused on the latest headlines. Armageddon abroad, annoyances at home and celebrities misbehaving all across the globe. Things seemed pretty much as they should be until he came to a small article on page five.

“This is a bloody outrage” Eugene half-said to the room. “What’s that then?” Charlotte inquired as she began to moisten his hair. “Well, according to this article here” he thrust his finger at the page the same way he might try to provoke a fight with someone on the street “Council tax is no longer going to cover garbage collection. I mean, why do I even pay the sodding thing?”. Charlotte peered over his shoulder to read the article. She didn’t need to, but this way she got to put her face right up beside Eugene’s. “Ah” Eugene thought “Cherry flavoured gum this week”.

“Ohhh I’d say that’s worse” Charlotte pointed to a different corner of the page which announced the death of the last two Polar Bears still living outside of captivity. Remembering what she was being paid for, she set to cutting Eugene’s hair while he read the article in full to her. Apparently the two bears were mates and had been tagged and monitored by wildlife organizations from five different countries. Realizing that they would not likely be able to cope with the further reduction in the arctic ice shelf, the Canadian government had dispatched a pair of helicopters which would airlift the bears to safety in Nunavut. But by the time the helicopters arrived the bears were both dead in the water, floating just below the surface where they had simply collapsed from exhaustion at trying to cross the growing distances between sufficiently thick ice masses.

“Christ, makes me cold just thinking about it” Eugene exclaimed, shivering as much from the cranked up air conditioning as anything else. Charlotte bent his ear forward to get in with the trimmer. “I think it’s quite sad, actually. I know it’s not quite like Romeo & Juliet but you can see why I might think of them” she said, bending the other ear. “Yeah, I can see why you’d think of that” he replied while having loose hair dusted off his shoulders. He wasn’t sure but he thought he heard her make a small noise in the back of her throat. A choke? A sob? Or was she just clearing her throat? God he wished he hadn’t damaged his hearing at all those Blave shows he used to go to.

Charlotte surprised Eugene by swinging him around in the chair and placing her hands on his knees, looking him dead in the eye as she fulfilled a fantasy that had kept him going through many a bad day. “Eugene, I think death is a terrible thing that can creep up on you at any moment. I think we’d be fools not to make the most of the time we have, don’t you think?”. Eugene nodded uneasily, wondering if this wasn’t some kind of trap – despite the years he’d known her. “Wait a moment love, don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Do you really care?”

Forty minutes later the two of them lay in bed, staring at each other. Charlotte couldn’t afford air conditioning for her apartment as well as her salon. The sheets were soaked with perspiration but the two hadn’t quite made love, underwear hadn’t quite been removed. It was just too hot and now both man and woman had a serious dehydration headache.

They both tried to say an apology, but their mouths were just a little too dry.