Bad News

THE RED GERANIUMS fluorescing on the terrace, the wind swaying the daisies, the baby’s milk-fed eyes focusing for the first time on a double row of beloved teeth – what is there to report? Bloodlessness puts her to sleep. She perches on a rooftop, her brass wings folded, her head with its coiffure of literate serpents tucked beneath the left one, snoozing like a noon pigeon. There’s nothing to do but her toenails. The sun oozes across the sky, the breezes undulate over her skin like warm silk stockings, her heart beats with the systole and diastole of waves on the breakwater, boredom creeps over her like vines.

She knows what she wants: an event, by which she means a slip of the knife, a dropped wineglass or bomb, something broken. A little acid, a little gossip, a little hi-tech megadeath: a sharp thing that will wake her up. Run a tank over the geraniums, turn the wind up to hurricane so the daisies’ heads tear off and hurtle through the air like bullets, drop the baby from the balcony and watch the mother swan-dive after him, with her snarled Ophelia hair and addled screams.

The melon-burst, the tomato-coloured splatter – now that’s a story! She’s awake now, she sniffs the air, her wings are spread for flight. She’s hungry, she’s on the track, she’s howling like a siren and she’s got your full attention.

No news is good news, everyone knows that. You know it, too, and you like it that way. When you’re feeling bad she scratches at your window, and you let her in. Better them than you, she whispers in your ear. You settle back in your chair, folding the rustling paper.