Etiquette for a Dinner Party: Short Stories by Orr Sue

Author:Orr, Sue [Sue Orr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978 1869792176
Publisher: Random House New Zealand

Lunch is chicken soup and salmon quiche. The soup is clear, with teardrops of fat on the surface. There are tiny slivers of white meat and custom-cut carrots which used to be frozen. Soup is messy to manage since your hands started to shake. You think about leaving it, about the advantage this would give you in getting to the telephone and the settee. Your sick kidneys will thank you for the lighter load too. But it won't do to draw attention to yourself, not today. One is constantly being watched, monitored for unusual behaviour. Not by the staff — oh no, they're no bother — but by the other residents. The home attracts nit-pickety types with a penchant for minding other people's business. So you drink the soup and eat the quiche, and resist the urge to hurry.

When you're done, you put your knife and fork together on the plate. Then you fold the napkin carefully, as you always do, and put it to one side of the plate. Because you feel the eyes on you, you pick it up again, dab at the corners of your mouth. You leave faint red traces of lipstick on the linen. Sometimes they come out in the wash, sometimes they don't. Finally, with no apparent haste, you push your chair back, rise, and leave the table.

Slowly (as if you have a choice!) you take your usual route from the dining room towards the bathrooms. Listen — already behind you chairs are scraping against the lino, cutlery tinkling to the floor. There is a hum of voices which, up close, may or may not constitute conversation. You have noticed over the years that certain lunch dishes fuel soliloquies.

You are ahead of the others — around the corner in the corridor before the first of them moves through the dining room doorway. You lean into the bathroom door and push hard — as hard as you can — against it. Then you step back, letting the door crash to a close. They will be thinking you are inside the bathroom. But you step quietly back from the door and, ignoring the pain that comes from pushing so hard, slip into the day lounge next door.

The telephone sits on a glass-topped table just inside the doorway. The phone is made of a type of plastic and it is light to lift. But you have forgotten that it is an older type, with the handset attached to the main unit by a cord. You look at the phone, then at the settee nearby. It will reach. You pick up the telephone — one hand under the base of it, the other on top, ensuring the handset does not fall. You take the entire thing to the settee, and settle yourself in the middle of it with the telephone on your lap. The two cords connecting the telephone to the wall are stretched tight across the carpet.

And that's how they find you, the others, when they enter the day lounge.

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