"SLOUCHED"
by Anita Kane Evans

He was reading an old post-modernist text. The Anti-Aesthetic, I believe it was called. Slouched against the bus stop. The bus came; I say ‘the’ because only one bus stops at that particular stop, the number 4A. I caught it. As it pulled away, I watched him there, bodily intermingling with concrete objects while hi s head space was no doubt filling with abstruse notions . He looked up from his reading matter, appeared to peer down the street at the oncoming traffic, consulted his watch, checked the bus times, seemed to sigh and then the bus, my bus, turned a corner and he was lost to view.

I press the bell and go down the stairs.

When I get back to the bus stop, he is still there. Still slouching, still reading.

“Anything interesting?” I ask.

“You what?”

“In your book, anything interesting?”

“Do you think,” he says, “that the demise of modernism has,” he looks down at the text, “left us with few defenses against the incursion of bad, I mean, debased taste?”

“Now, there’s a question for you,” I answer.

He smiles.

“Where you off to then?” I ask.

“The museum,” he replies, almost barking it out.

“Funny, I was just going there myself,” I lie, “to see copies of the Qilakitsoq Mummies, the replica of Grandmother’s Traditional Turf Hut and the photographs of the world’s smallest university. You?”

“Different but not totally disimilar, museumlike – museal - things.”

The next bus comes.

“About time,” he says.

We hop on, go up the stairs and sit at the front.

“A first class polar view,” I say.

It is ten to ten when we get to the museum. It doesn’t open until ten. We stand outside and stamp our feet. He reads the large sign: CLOSED. I read the smaller one: Please note that there is no running water, thus we recommend bringing your own water; however, there is a clean river running nearby. There are not toilet facilities in the museum; thus, visiters need to go in the nature. Please contact a staff member for further information. We stamp some more.

“Can I buy you a coffee?” I ask.

He cup s hi s hands and blow s hot air into them. I shiver.

“Sure,” he answers.

In the coffee shop, we both order black coffee so the porcelain, clay, bone china, whatever it is they fashion mugs out of at Sabrina’s Café these days, will remain hot longer; we put our hands around them, smiling a touch foolishly, happy to be out of the cold.

“Seriously, what is it you wanted to see, in the museum, I mean?”

“Rauschenberg’s Persimmon?”

“They have that in the town musuem?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

“Oh! No, sorry, I thought you meant, what did I want to see.”

We drink some more coffee.

“You know, they’re showing something at the Picture Palace at 10.30,” I say.

“What?”

“I don’t know, something with De Niro, but we could check it out if you like?”

He looks at his watch.

“Alright.”

As I pay the bill, he notes the Jane Austen in my bag.

“Someone told an economist acquaintance of mine that although the reader of a Jane Austen knows that nothing will happen, he or she cannot wait to find out. Is that true?”

“I think it was a good thing to say to an economist,” I reply.

We have to walk by the museum again, in order to get to the cinema. He looks over at the chunky building and bare s his teeth.

“You really don’t like that place, huh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.”

He chew's his underlip for a while.

“Do you think that the spatial ordering and classifying of objects can produce a representational understanding of the world?” he asks, “I mean, that ... that fiction,” he throws out an arm at the museum, “I mean, it’s nothing but bric-a-brac.”

We walk on in silence.

“Well, don’t you agree?” he asks.

“I quite like bric-a-brac,” I say, “and as for your book, I think it belongs in an institution.”

“You mean, the university library?” for a second he looks unsure, kind of puzzled.

I don’t reply, though I picture it potted in one of the greenhouses of the botanical gardens. Taking on board moss, perhaps some wild mushroom growing on page forty-seven, being cared for by green fingers; the scholarly learning quietly proliferating unto itself.

We get to the cinema. It’s Taxi Driver 2 they are showing. It’s picked up some awful reviews. But we have both seen number one and we are both curious about number two. I can go and not see the Qilakitsoq Mummies another day; I can buy him a book of Rauschenberg prints and watch him closely a s he flicks through the pages, a s he stops at one reproduction after another, reading the tags, seeing where the actual artworks are housed and I will find out how wide his definition of musuem-like goes, how smart he really is.

“My treat?” I ask.

“Sure, I’ll go get in the candy.”

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Anthony Kane Evans (born Manchester, England) has had over ten short stories published in various UK magazines/anthologies.  The first appeared in the anthology Signals 3 (London Magazine Editions; 2001).  When not writing, he produces/directs documentary films on a freelance basis for Danish national television.  He is currently doing a five-part TV series.  He lives in Copenhagen.

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