Lit Skits

Suddenly Mary didn’t like the situation. It felt all wrong. The guy in the suit at the table isn’t smiling, for one. He should be smiling by now. Mary’s Mum is leaning against the sink and her Dad has his arm around her. They’ve got very lovey-dovey pretty quick, thinks Mary, but knocks the thought from her mind. This is what she’s wanted to happen for years. Her parents are showing affection. Her brother Phil is sitting at the table to one side of the guy from the Lottery, just grinning at him. There are three empty champagne bottles on the floor around the bin.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to get through this, but get through this we must,” says the man from the Lottery. “My colleague will be with us in a few moments, he’s just parking the car.”
“We don’t care about the paperwork,” says Mary’s Dad. “Funny how much we don’t mind the paperwork with four million pounds at the end of it!”
Everyone laughs except Mary and the man from the Lottery. The doorbell rings and Mary’s Mum goes to answer it.
“That will be Derek. He’s our solicitor,” says the man from the Lottery.
“Come in, come in, we’re through there in the kitchen,” says Mary’s Mum from the hallway.
“Thank you.”
The solicitor comes in and sits down at the table next to the man from the Lottery.
“Have you started?” asks the solicitor.
“I thought it best to wait,” says the man from the Lottery.
“Very good,” says the solicitor.

There is another pause that Mary doesn’t like and she starts to bite her fingernails like she always does when she’s nervous and despite the men at the table her Mum looks sharp at her.
“Mary, stop it,” says Mary’s Mum.
“Sorry,” says Mary.
Everyone looks at the man from the Lottery.
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” he says.
“What kind of bad news?” asks Mary’s Dad. “How many people are we sharing it with?”
“Well, there were two sets of winning numbers from last night’s draw, so if everything had proceeded as normal you would have split the jackpot in two,” says the man from the Lottery. No one says anything now, notices Mary. They don’t like this either. Mary starts biting her fingernails.
“There was…a problem,” says the solicitor.
“What problem?” Mary’s Dad, his voice is getting hard now. The solicitor and the man from the Lottery look at each other.
“Last night’s draw was declared invalid,” says the man from the Lottery, and all of a sudden Mary doesn’t like her family. They are shouting and screaming and her Mum is crying and her Dad shouts and stops and looks sad and shouts again and jabs his finger at the man from the Lottery.

“We have notified the police and the other…winner has been arrested,” says the solicitor.
Oh so now they quieten down, thinks Mary.
“What happened?” says Mary’s Mum wiping her eyes.
“The balls were tampered with by a television company employee. It would appear that six of them were weighted,” says the man from the Lottery.
“I knew it!” Mary’s Mum. “I told you! It was like they were going into the hole at the bottom of the drum all by themselves! I thought it was fate!”
Mary’s Dad shakes his head and looks at the kitchen floor and Mary wonders what he’s thinking.
“So what does that mean?” says Mary.
“Well,” says the solicitor and the man from the Lottery looks at him again, “the draw being pronounced invalid means that all prizes won are…well…they cannot be claimed.”

Mary bites her middle fingernail hard and tastes a little salt blood on her tongue. None of her family says anything; they’re just waiting for what’s next.
“It’s all laid out here and in the legal disclaimer on the back of your ticket,” says the solicitor, softly placing his hand over some papers on the table like he doesn’t want to break them.
“It’s not all bad news!” says the man from the Lottery. “You can sell your story to the papers. They can, can’t they?”
“Yes,” says the solicitor. “There’s no guilt or foul play at the Lottery’s door. You can take your story to the media if you wish.”
“No,” says Mary’s Dad. “We don’t want to.”
“I really think it would be your best course of action at this point,“ says the solicitor.
“No,” says Mary’s Dad. “We’re going to sue.”
There is a pause.
“Legally we’ve done nothing wrong,” says the man from the Lottery.
“You’ve been negligent,” says Mary’s Dad.

There is another pause and Mary looks at her Dad and her Mum is crying again and Phil’s face is blank just like it is at mealtimes.
“Our systems are checked and double checked for every draw.”
“But they didn’t work,” says Mary’s Dad.
“We’ll have to see in court whether or not any blame lies on shoulders other than those of the television employee under suspicion,” says the solicitor.
“Shit,” says Mary’s Dad. “In the meantime I suppose, I’ll just have a chat with the papers.”
“I can’t believe it, Harry,” says Mary’s Mum. “I thought…I thought it was all going to be all right. How much do you think we’ll get from the papers?”
“It’s not about the money from the papers,” says Mary’s Dad.
“The sums they pay for stories of the moment can be quite substantial,” says the solicitor. “Wise investment should see you in possession of a nice little nest egg in a couple of years.”
“I’m not interested in a nest egg. I think I’ll put that money towards legal costs,” says Mary’s Dad.
“You still intend to take legal action?” asks the solicitor.
“Fucking hell of course I do!” Mary looks at her Dad and he’s red. “I woke up this morning a millionaire and you’ve come in and told me that I’m not because someone fucked up! You took it from me! Of course I’m going to sue. I’m going to sue you, the bastard from the TV company, the fucking TV company itself, anyone, I don’t fucking care. It’s unfair is what it is and someone’s got to pay.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” says the man from the Lottery.
“Watch the apologies, Jim,” says the solicitor.
“What happens to the money?” asks Mary with her finger in her mouth.
“What love?” says Mary’s Mum. Mary removes her finger.
“What happens to the money? What people would have won.”
“That has yet to be decided,” says the man from the Lottery.
“Bugger everyone else,” says Mary’s Dad. “What happens to our money?”
“The jackpot fund will probably roll over to the next draw,” says the man from the Lottery.
“What about all the little prizes?” says Mary’s Mum.
“As I said, we’re not sure,” says the man from the Lottery.
“You turn a profit, do you?” asks Mary’s Dad.
“As a company?” says the man from the Lottery.
“Yeah. Do you take some of the money?” says Mary’s Dad.
“We do. We have outlays. Our operational costs, wages, ticket distribution, advertising…all of that. We are a company, sir. We exist to make a profit,” says the man from the Lottery.
“What about charity? Are you going to give all of the little prizes to charity?” asks Mary’s Mum.
“We’ll probably donate the usual amounts,” says the man from the Lottery.
“And keep the rest,” says Mary's Dad.
“It'll stay in the prize fund. It'll help boost the prizes in slow weeks, keep people interested, you know, keep them winning prizes and help us keep the Lottery going, help us keep doing good for charities and things,” says the man from the Lottery.
“Keep you making profits, you mean,” says Mary’s Dad.
“That’s a very cynical way of looking at it,” says the man from the Lottery.
“That’s all I want to hear,” says Mary’s Dad.
“Pardon me?” says the solicitor.
“That’s all I want to hear, you’ll make your ways out of the house now please, gentlemen, because I’ve got to call some newspapers and things,” says Mary’s Dad.
“I would really urge you to reconsider,” says the solicitor, standing up.
“No, no, no, I understand. You two gentlemen had best be off to hand out money to the poor and so on,” says Mary’s Dad.

Mary’s Mum looks upset and yet embarrassed and shows the solicitor and the man from the Lottery down the corridor and says goodbye to them hanging off the front door. Mary sits down opposite Phil, who still looks blank.
“Go and get me the paper from the front room, Pip,” says Mary’s Dad.
Phil gets up and goes to get the paper and Mary’s Dad follows him into the living room. Mary goes through too and sits down on the couch.
“They’re still there,” says Mary’s Mum, coming in.
“I can’t believe it,” says Phil. “I thought we were going to be rich.”
Mary’s Dad stands in the living room window and reads the paper.
“One of them’s on the phone now,” says Mary’s Mum. “They keep looking in the window.”
“Are you going to call the paper, Dad?” asks Mary.
“Not yet, my darling,” says Mary’s Dad. “Not yet.”
“They’re still there,” says Mary’s Mum.
“But go and get me the phone, would you?” says Mary’s Dad.
Mary heaves herself off the couch and brings in the cordless phone from the kitchen. Mary's Dad stands in the window holding the newspaper and the phone, staring out through the white net curtains.
“Harry…” says Mary’s Mum, looking back from the window. “Harry! They’re coming back!”

I need to unhinge and lose things. Lose all this framework and structure and shit all this built-up crap that I carrya round and carry off without ever really thinking about it and yet move into something I think about even less and don’t give myself a chance to stop to say ‘no’ or halt myself in the process of just hinking while staring at the kes like I’m doing now and not worrying about grammar or punctuation or any of that shit that I used to be so proud of but now is all I really have and is something I fall back on rather than use in any kind of interesting way. I fall into the execution of a comma or a full stiop or speech marks and try and build up things with these, the tinty tiny little building blocks while the huge big blocks of words slide around them and do their bidding. Slavery is what it is it’s a type of slavery where the little things are being controlled by me and are bossing around the big, useful, expressive things that could do so much more if only they weren’t being controlled by dots and dashes and commas anad speech marks and the little rhythms I’m trying tos et up with them rather than using the words themselves and this is really bad., It’s a really bad thing and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop ding it because in the middle of me controlling these fingers is a good boy who wants to make th e teacher proud and do good work and get a gold star and if I can’t beat that little shit out of myself and my writing, if I can’t get shot of that smug little bastard kid then I will never write anything good because I will always be doing this, always be typing with an eye to that litlt efucking kid who will in turn be looking towads the approval of a teacher who is no longer there.

It was night and there was an orange haze in the sky to the north. Phosphorescent red and green navigational lights on the ships in the channel picked out bright fractions of hull. The water carried a gentle swell and the noise of it slapping against the concrete walls of the fort reached the ears of the guards strolling around the perimeter. There was no wind, and with the grumble of the idling engines of the container ships came the sounds of a distant horn. Fog was on its way.
“I don’t get it, still,” said one of the guards, the younger of the two.
“They were a good idea at the time, mate. That’s all there is to it.”
“And it was…?”
“Because of the French.”
“Weird. I was in France last weekend on a booze cruise.”
“Oh? How was it?”
“All right. It’s not as cheap as it used to be.”
The younger guard’s name was Michael Goodie and the elder one was Brian Welch.
“Nothing ever is,” said Brian.
The foghorn sounded again over the water. Michael stopped and leaned on the railing over the central courtyard of the fort. He flicked his torch over the patio, the chairs and the swimming pool below him.
“I never thought I’d be able to come out to one of them,” said Michael.
“Yes, well, it’s not like you’re a guest, mate.”
“I know. I just…saw them, every time I caught the ferry or went to the beach or the funfair at Southsea, out in the water, and after a while I just never thought…you know?”
“I’ve been doing this gig for two years now,” said Brian. “You get used to it.”
“So we were at war with the French, then?”
“We’ve been at war with the French hundreds of times.”
“Hundreds?”
“I’m not lying.”
“Blimey.”
“Didn’t you ever pay attention in History?”
“Not really. I didn’t like school.”
“These were built out here in the water to protect Portsmouth and Southampton from the French navy. All armour plated, lots of cannon, twenty blokes, boats, the lot. Never used, not even once. Palmerston’s Folly, they call it.”
“Must have been quite impressive, even so,” said Michael.
“Yeah,” said Brian.
“Never once?”
“Nope.”
“Why did they build them then?”
“They seemed a good idea at the time, like I said.”
The two of them took some steps off the top wall of the fort and plodded down into the courtyard and the noises of the sea were muted and far off, the sound of the water gone completely.
“So we just tour the walls once an hour and keep an eye on the cameras the rest of the time, mate,” said Brian. “That’s it.”
“Okay,” said Michael. “But…seriously? Armour plating?”
“Armour plating. Enough to protect from a cannon shot, anyway. I’ve got a book on it, I’ll lend it to you. If you’re on this job for any length of time you’ll get into the habit of reading. Ain’t much to do here, but the owner, that millionaire bloke, he does insist on two of us. It was Jones before you. Know him?”
“Not really,” said Michael.
“He’s a good bloke,” said Brian.
They came into a small room with two chairs, some papers and a kettle on a desk set before a wall of small black and white television screens. They showed an array of brick walls, water, darkened rooms and a small jetty with a rigid inflatable dinghy moored to it, rising and falling with the gentle swell. Brian and Michael sat down, and Brian flicked on the kettle.
“Armour plating,” said Michael.
“Armour plating,” said Brian.
“So…if these things are built to withstand a naval attack…” said Michael.
“Yeah,” said Brian.
“With all that stuff…armour, the rest of it.”
“Yeah…”
“And it’s all out here in the middle of the Solent…”
“Yeah…”
“Why the hell does this guy want two security guards on the place?” said Michael.
Brian raised his eyebrows and blew between tightened lips.
“Sign of the times, mate," said Brian.

It was an old train. The fabric on the seats was thin and coarse to the touch and brittle and sharp where the manmade fibres had been scorched by cigarette lighter flames. Its only redeeming feature was the layout of the carriages. Compartments walled with battered and dark-stained wood separated the passengers.

When the train was pulling slowly over a level crossing past the hunched impatient faces of motorists and a man holding the leash of a black dog, Carmel Greening plucked up the courage to do something she'd been wanting to do for half an hour.
"Excuse me," she said. "Would you mind terribly if I read one of the other sections of your newspaper?"
The only other person in the compartment, an elderly military-looking man in a tweed jacket, looked at her blankly.
"It's just that I didn't bring anything to read, you see, and I'm a little bored."
The man frowned. Carmel pointed at the pile of newspaper sections next to him.
"I don't mind what it is, gardening, politics...anything!" she laughed awkwardly and wished she hadn't spoken.
The man smiled suddenly and handed her the pile of newspapers, urging her to pick.
"Please, please," he said, and Carmel gratefully took the papers.
"Habla usted espanol?" asked the man.
From the other side of the carriage the crest at the head of the newspaper had looked just like The Times.
"Oh," said Carmel, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish."
She slid the Sunday supplements of El Pais back to the man, who shrugged and went back to his reading. Carmel went back to looking out of the window as the train accelerated into open fields dotted with sheep.

-

Sheep. They had it all right. Stand around and eat for a year and then get serviced by a ram just once, bear the kid and go back to standing around and eating. Oh to be that ram. I can't believe she said that.

Unfeeling bastard. How can he just sit there? I didn't mean to say that but you'd think if he had any balls at all he'd react. I just don't get him sometimes. He's all talk and then when you stun him he goes quiet, just when you want to have it out with him and sort it out, get it over with.

She's too aggressive. But what kind of man does that make me? I don't want to fight with her. It's not right. But she's aggressive, she won't back down. We should just leave it, let it be. It makes no sense. It's not like we've stopped loving each other.

I just want to talk about it, it's not fair that we sit here in silence. We've got this whole compartment to ourselves and yet we're sitting here like strangers.

Let it be. Was John Lennon religious? He and Yoko used to fight, I bet. I can't believe she said that. Let's just get past Petersfield, let the heat of the moment subside a little, and then we can talk about it reasonably.

He makes my blood boil. Just sitting there. It's not good. This is happening a lot. If it's not sitting on a train saying nothing it's walking into the other room, reading a book or going out for a walk. He just doesn't want to deal with anything.

That's right, just count to ten, metaphorically speaking. Let it all quieten down a bit, then we can deal with it without being emotionally fraught.

I can't go on this way. It has to end.

Ah, this is Petersfield, isn't it? It's been about ten minutes now.

-

David Burrows had his eyes closed and his forehead against the glass. His mind was a kaleidoscope of rolling sound. The band was new and they'd only just started playing the bigger venues and started to get media attention off the back of the unique gravelly voice of the lead singer. David liked them a lot.
"What did you think?" said Alice Burrows, David's mother, from the opposite seat.
David opened his eyes as the train slowed and slid brakes screeching softly into a station. He couldn't see a name for the stop. How long had they been travelling?
"David, what did you think?" said Alice.
"S'all right," said David not removing his headphones. He was looking into the back garden of a house next to the train station where drying clothes on a line flapped in the wind.
"Well, I wasn't sure. It was very.." Alice was looking for the right word. "It was very urban, David. I'm not sure that's the right university environment for you."
David shrugged and began to nod with the music.
"This is very important, David," said Alice. "I wish you'd talk with me."
David watched a woman with a rolling suitcase walk along the platform.
Alice sighed and sat back heavily against the seat. The train started with a shudder and began to move slowly out of the station.
Petersfield, thought David. Only forty minutes until we get home.
It was an old train but it was quiet on the tracks and Alice listened to the tapping of her son's fingers on the aluminium window frame and watched the roofs of the town go by.

Maggie stood by her upbringing. She acted on the teachings of her parents as though they were far-seeing prophets, and not the district postman and office secretary they had been. Maggie's parents considered discretion the better part of valour, cleanliness next to godliness and politeness the flower of humanity. Maggie grew up straight and quiet. Wherever she came across ignorance and rudeness she bore it with acceptance and candour. Only with her own children, long flown from the terraced family nest, did she try to coax out anything like the social graces that had been instilled in her. She failed. The zeitgeist, the angry spectre of punk, had conspired against her.

Maggie was married to Derek. Derek was a nice guy, all told, but old age really didn't suit him. He became lethargic, morose, blindly accepting his daily timetable from the television schedulers. Maggie was only three years younger than Derek, but she felt that the gap was getting wider as time progressed, as Derek showed fewer and fewer signs of activity in the course of each passing month. There was one thing that Maggie despised most of all, and that was Derek's wandering attention, his vacancy. Just as Peter, the eldest, was starting secondary school, and Derek was in his mid-forties, he began the habit of losing his point in the middle of a sentence, leaving Maggie hanging, expectantly. A lesser person would have interrupted, but not Maggie. She stood by her upbringing. Never interrupt. Let the person finish their sentence. Do not anticipate.

But this meant that Derek could flatten entire conversations, like this.
"Margaret, I think, after this weekend, I'm going to need to go-"
At which point Derek's attention would waver and divert itself inside the maze of his mind, leaving Maggie standing in the doorway with a tea towel, frustrated, patient.
Twenty four years.
Twenty four years of hesitation, pausing, losing the thread, and jamming wide open gaps into perfectly good conversation, and never once did Maggie start again, nor jump into Derek's speech, nor complain. Her parents did a really good job on Maggie.

Now for a month when she was 67, Maggie started to get worried. She slipped herself an aspirin or two when she woke up in the mornings because she was troubled. She was getting headaches. At breakfast, which since Derek's retirement they always took together, Maggie started to feel odd.
"Anything in the paper, darling?" Maggie asked across the table.
"Not really." A full sentence! "Just Thatcher. They're congratulating her for becoming Prime Minister and generally..." he trailed off.
There it was, like the tension and ache of a frown, but inside her head instead of in the muscles of the brow. Maggie waited patiently and bit her toast. After two minutes Derek reached around the paper and picked up his tea. After sipping it and placing it back in the saucer, he turned the page. The ache at the front of Maggie's head got sharper.
"Oh, there's something here about pensions, love, if you want to..."
Maggie had to grip the edge of the table, the frowning pain in her mind was so tight and sharp. She gasped, and Derek dropped the peak of the newspaper and peered over it at her.
"Are you all right, dearheart? Do you want me to get you some..."
Maggie blinked.
...aspirin? She looks a bit pale. I hope she's not going to have a heart attack. I can't remember how to do the bloody chest thing. Oh god, now she's looking at me funny. Maybe I ought to put down the newspaper. I'll lose my place in this article. She really looks funny. Odd old girl. Quiet. ...was quoted as saying "We are thrilled with Mrs. Thatcher's appointment and wish her every luck with her
"I'm fine, thank you," said Maggie, still gripping the table.
"Oh, good, darling, good, but if you're feeling peaky you should make an..."
...appointment with the Doctor.
The newspaper jerked up again and Maggie let her mouth fall open.
Lord knows I could do with an appointment for my knee, but I can't get a specialist for love nor money, and this is the country they built with forty years of my taxes, is it? Is it? Woman in charge. Bloody stupid if you ask me. ...ministers liaising with the European commission on agri-
"Nobody did," muttered Maggie.
"What darling, did you, er...?"
say something? She's in a queer sort of mood this morning. Maybe I ought to book her an appointment, surprise her with it rather than making her sit through the suspense of the waiting list. That's a good idea. Hmm. I might make myself another slice of toast, but my knee hurts. Maybe I'll just sit. My word, you can say what you like about the ravages of time, but she's still a good looking woman.
"I'll get it!" said Maggie, standing up and stepping over to the bread bin and toaster.
"Get what?"
"Another slice of toast. For you."
"Oh, darling, thank you! I was just, er, thinking..."
about that. Yes, right enough, you're a lucky man, Derek Hodges. A lucky man. ...commission on agriculture met this week in Brussels to discuss new trade agreements within the
Twenty four years, it was. Twenty four years, iron-willed parents and the patience of a rock, and after that, after all that, Maggie Hodges stood next to the bread bin, waiting for toast, listening to the rambling internal monologue of her husband reading the newspaper, and she was never more in love with him than at that moment.

This man loading vegetables onto the back of a truck is Jerry Morgan. Jerry's 43, lift weights, bit of an athlete...oh, and he's recently divorced. He doesn't talk about the legal side of the split much - he's not that kind of guy. Jerry's an optimist. What you might catch him talking about is sports. Baseball is his favorite, and the Mets have been his team since he was five years old. He's probably mouthing off about their prospects right now. He does it as a management mechanism, something to be sure of. The only other guy on Jerry's port at the distribution depot - Mike, who we can't see right now, he's behind those crates - is used to this by now. Apart from sports, well. Come four o'clock on a Friday, Jerry will talk solidly about women and the weekend until clocking off at five thirty.

What Mike and Jerry's other workmates at the depot don't know is that Jerry hasn't been out for a beer since the day his wife asked for a divorce, and he hasn't looked at another woman since the day he told his wife he was having an affair, and that was eighteen months ago. I'm telling you. The guy's lonely.

That's Mike there with the forklift, shifting the bigger crates while Jerry does the fragile stuff like peaches and tomatoes.

Look, ah. Jerry's stopped. See the little shake of his head? I hate it when he smacks his own head like that. He's got some big old hands, I'm telling you. He keeps saying a good smack should do the trick. Dolt.

Jerry's getting worse, you see. He seems slow, stupid even, but he isn't. I've chatted with him a lot, he's a bright man. I wouldn't say intelligent, that's a word which is bandied around too much these days, but he's not dumb. He's just..well, it's hard to explain.
Let's take a walk.

He used to work in an office, about two years ago, I think. It was just after he lost that job that he came to see me for the first time. He's kept coming as well. I don't know why, I'm not a specialist. I'm just a regular doctor, I have my practice, I have my patients. Jerry came in one morning and for the first ten minutes I thought he was a complete nutjob. Totally off the chart. What did he say when he first came in? Oh, yeah, something like, "Oh, hi, there, hey." Nothing spectacular. I thought he was just a nervous guy, you know? Then he tried to explain his problem, but he kept stopping, kept tripping over his words.

Then when he finally got it out, all in a rush, it dawned on me that everything he had done since he walked into my office was weird. Not the actions of a nervous guy, but a regular guy who was just freaking the fuck out every few minutes. And the way he said hi that first time? Well, I think I must have looked a lot like that at med school, saying hi to people who I kinda remembered from parties. He thought he knew me. I hadn't seen him before in my life, I was sure of that, I have a great memory for faces...ha, yeah, except from parties...and I didn't know that man from Adam. So maybe I started to believe him.

Do you know what deja vu is? Yes well, literally it means 'already seen'. French. What happens is that while your brain is happily processing all the sense data that's coming in from the body, something short circuits. It's related to epilepsy, frontal-lobe epilepsy...I'll try not to get too much into the details. Anyway, what happens is that instead of experiencing something as it happens, sometimes it comes through in stereo - the brain sends it through the regular channels, and again through the bit of the brain that deals with memory, so it feels like you're doing something you remember from before. Everything matches up - every tiny little detail. It's not like remembering the last time you had the chicken at a restaurant - the thing that's the memory is exactly the same as everything you're seeing. The salt's in the same place, the waiter said the same things, your date said the same things and hell, that would freak me out, I can tell you. That's what Jerry's got, only it doesn't happen every so often. Jerry has it all the time.
All the time.

That's why he lost his job. He was sitting in a meeting, and it got really bad. It was an important thing, clients, suppliers, that sort of stuff, and Jerry lost it. He knew something was wrong, all right, but he got slow, really. slow. Kept having to talk himself through everything two or three times, and his company didn't want that. Said it was bad company image, yadda yadda yaddda, and they got rid of him.
You smoke, huh? You shouldn't. That shit'll kill you. It's your life, whatever.
Jerry, uh. I never would have put him down as the cheating sort, you know? When he told me he was getting divorced I was shocked. I asked him how it happened. That was when he started living with the deja vu thing the whole time. All the time, everything he did felt familiar, like it was already, had already been done. Man. I couldn't take that.

Oh, anyway, so he says, "Well Doc, I was going out of the city a lot, job interviews, and I was standing in the station and this woman stopped in front of me and I looked at her and I recognised the coat and her boots and the hat...hell, the angle of her hat was familiar, like I'd seen it sit on her head like that a hundred times, and her nose, chin, the lot, I was SURE, doc, really sure, I swear, so I went up to her and said, "Excuse me, but do I know you from somewhere?" and it all sort of took off from there."

Even with the best ventilation they can provide, the air is still damp and dirty-feeling this far down the tunnel. Most of the equipment is standing idle, and it is only a skeleton crew which is going through the motions of the longstanding shutdown maintenance regime for the big worm. The wide path of the treads for the worm stop eight feet from the workface and then the damp mixture of silt and gravel is churned up where the huge drilling machine reversed inside the tunnel.
The only two men in ties are standing close together, companiable, chatting, gesturing at the workface. The foreman for the worm's inspection crew comes towards them.
"All right David, hello Mr. Bertuzzo," says the foreman.
"Now then, Harry. How's it going?" says David. David is from Derby.
"All right. Be a shame to say goodbye to the money, but it was a great job while it lasted."
The rough-faced Mr. Bertuzzo laughs.
"Aye," says Mr. Bertuzzo, who hails from York, "that's true."
"Are you two going to be around for the breakthrough ceremony tomorrow?" asks Harry.
"I'm not, but Dave will be," says Mr. Bertuzzo.
"What?" Harry says, "But you're the Chief Engineer! Why aren't you coming?"
"He's got another job opening up in America," says David, opening a pack of chewing tobacco and pointing sideways at Mr. Bertuzzo. "This was a prestigious job for our good doctor."
"That's a shame," says Harry. "Never do a job like this again."
"Aye," says Mr. Bertuzzo, looking wistful.
David spits off to one side of the conversation and taps Harry on the shoulder.
"A word, lad."
The crunch of their feet on the laid-down gravel of the transit path seems loud without the usual background grinding of the digging equipment.
"What do you say," says David, "we nip through tonight? None of them buggers tomorrow will know, and the good doctor here gets to see the fruits of his labour. How far we got?"
"About two feet...I'd say eight inches in places. You're not serious?" Harry is whispering.
"Why not?"
"But the Minister and everyone are coming tomorrow!" his whisper is harsh.
"You know as well as I do that that man has done more for this project than any minister, and it means more to him than it does to them. Tell me you know that, lad."
"Right, but..."
"Your lads done with the worm?"
"Yeah."
"Send 'em packing then."
David wanders over to Mr. Bertuzzo, chewing slowly, his cheek rounded and bulbous with the new tobacco.
"All right?" says David.
"Aye," says Mr. Bertuzzo, just looking at the workface. The whir of the transit train taking the maintenance crew back to the tunnel mouth suddenly fills the space, and in the quiet after its passing there is only Harry's footsteps and a slow, constant murmuring that seems to come from the walls of the tunnel.
"Now then, lad," says David.
Harry is standing in front of the workface with a pick looking worried.
"What the hell are you up to?" asks Mr. Bertuzzo.
Harry grins.
"You know, this is the first time I've actually used a pick?"
Harry swings at the workface and it sinks a little way into the rock. He angles it back and forth and a large piece falls away. Another swing. Another. David and Mr. Bertuzzo watch in silence.
"Hey, I think I'm through," says Harry.
Mr. Bertuzzo and David move closer, and as Harry pulls the pick back the first thing through the tunnel is noise.
"The boys on the other side," says Mr. Bertuzzo, "they're still there!" He is excited.
Harry hacks away at the small hole and pulls back material and chunks of rock until there's a space large enough for a man. David pats Harry's back and ushers him aside.
"After you, doctor," says David.
Mr. Bertuzzo, crouching down, skuffles through the hole and straightens up to find himself in the middle of an arc of workmen, all staring at him. David comes through behind him.
"How do," says David.
Another man in a hard hat and a tie rushes forwards into the arc and grabs Mr. Bertuzzo's hand fiercely and shakes it.
"I know him," says David, "he came to one of the design meetings."
The foreman starts speaking excitedly, gesturing at the workmen and smiling and laughing and David and Mr. Bertuzzo stand awkwardly and smile. After a minute Mr. Bertuzzo bends down and yells back through the hole.
"Here, young Harry!"
"Yes, Mr. Bertuzzo?"
"How's your French?"
"Terrible, Mr. Bertuzzo."
Mr. Bertuzzo straightens up and smiles at the enthusiastic foreman again.
"Maybe we should have thought about that before coming through," says Mr. Bertuzzo.
"Aye," says David.

At this time of day you cannot tell the planes on the approach to JFK from distant birds. The horizon is white, bright with morning and a sense of freshness, richening at the top of the bowl of the sky to a pale blue. The air is pretty cool, and at the top of the Cadey Building on the corner of Duane Street and West Broadway, a gentle breeze is blowing through the humming air conditioning units and the vents.
A man sitting on a collapsible stool looks up over the parapet of the building and feels the air in his face for a few seconds before bowing his head to his work again. On his lap he holds a notepad and a calculator. The notepad is covered with neat mathematics and hand-drawn geometrical sketches. The man reaches into his bag and pulls out a small handheld device with three small cups mounted on the top, and he holds it, spinning in the changing breeze for a moment. He makes a note, and then puts his calculator and papers back into his bag. Rubbing his hands together, he nods, looking down at the street which, on this early morning, streams with free-flowing traffic. The man stands up. From the corner of the Cadey Building the man can see a long way down the expanse of West Broadway and all the way to the palm-treed pick-up zone of the Tribeca Grand Hotel. The man lays down flat on the uneven black and grey roof.

This is Mark. Mark enjoys travel and learning foreign languages, and when not travelling, he is an active member of his local archery club in Winchester, England.

Mark opens his bag and begins to unpack things in a regular, organised way. He is building a rifle out of separate components, and he is doing it very quickly. Once finished he spends ten minutes looking down the scope at the opposite parapet of the Cadey Building, making small adjustments to the alignment of the laser sight. When he is finished with this Mark lays down the weapon and checks his watch before reaching into his bag and pulling out a book.

Mark rolls onto his back and pulls his bag under his head, and holds the book above himself, framed by the darkening blue sky of the September morning. Mark isn't one for books, but in the past month he has flown from London to New York seven times, and the movies didn't change on the last two flights. The CD language course he brought with him is facile, too easy, and after ten minutes of mimicking phrases in Japanese while waiting for his flight at Heathrow he gave in, bored, and uncharacteristically started browsing the bookstalls in Terminal Four. Mark bought something he'd heard of, something which was meant to be good, and surprised at himself, he found that the seven hour flight went quickly while he was reading, and he enjoyed himself. In a quiet moment like this, reading was an ideal activity. Why hadn't he thought of it before? In fact last night Mark forwent the luxury of his hotel room on the Upper West Side and sat in the lobby, ordering coffee after coffee from the night porter, just...reading.

Mark is very near the end of the book now, and he is having trouble. He is finding it difficult to limit his eyes to a pace of scanning the words which his mind can keep up with. So eager is he to find out what happens, to seek out the climax of the book, that he is tripping over the words, scanning ahead and then forcing himself to go back and read it properly.
The final page turns and Mark lets his arm drop to his chest.
"Wow," he says, closes his eyes, and silently vows never to be on a job, ever, without a book again.
The helicopter is not close, but the chopping sound is enough to wake Mark, who has his hand on his rifle before his eyes are focussed. The sound of the traffic below is thicker, heavier. Mark stands up and looks down the street, which is choked with vehicles; garbage trucks, taxis, a bus, a police car, an inter-state coach, town cars, and bicycles picking their way through the mess of what is now West Broadway.

It is one o'clock in the afternoon, and Mark's target is in the air on her way to Florida.