A Streetcar Named Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce

Author:Malcolm Pryce [Pryce, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zoo of Words
Published: 2024-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The following day Calamity took the afternoon off to be with her aunt who was visiting. I was sitting alone in my office dozing when a strange sound from the stairwell woke me.

A voice cried out, ‘Anybody home!’

I looked up and saw that the voice came from a giant teacup framed in the doorway. I focused, and the image resolved into one just as strange: it was Rapunzel, standing in a fibreglass teacup held aloft by ropes to her shoulder, her legs emerging from the base of the cup. She walked into the room, the cup swinging gently like a tutu. ‘Louie! I got the job.’

‘What job is that?’

‘I told you I was going for a job interview. This is it.’

‘The job is a teacup?’

‘It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.’ She giggled in a way that suggested she wasn’t accomplished at telling jokes.

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be Aberystwyth without someone walking up the Prom dressed as a cup.’

‘I’m advertising the café on Constitution Hill. They are running a prize draw. I have to hand out tickets. If you put them in the tub in the café, you go into the draw and hopefully buy a cup of tea at the same time. It’s meant to be a way of drumming up business.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘You don’t have to pretend. It’s a crappy job. But Mr Griffiths said if I did it for the month, and increased his sales, he would write me a good reference.’

‘A job is a job.’

She let her gaze wander round the room, doing a quiet inventory of my life. She turned to the door and read the words on the frosted-glass top half: ‘Knight Err Investigations. You’ve lost the “ant”.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t you replace it?’

‘Because I hate it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a silly conceit. I’m no knight errant. Just a man doing a job.’

‘Where’s Calamity?’

‘Her aunt from Dolgellau has come to visit. She’s taken the afternoon off.’

‘So you are free then?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘Good! You can come with me as I hand out the tickets.’

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.