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Picnic

Posted on October 20, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

They were lying side-by-side like cutlery on a checkered tablecloth. Which was sort of funny because they were lying on a red checkered tablecloth but it was only the grassy ground underneath them. They didn’t think it was particularly amusing for two adults to be lying on a picnic table. By her feet and to their right was a wicker basket filled with the goodies that would make their picnic a treat when they got down to the eating and drinking portion of the afternoon. Right then, they were just lying side-by-side and looking at the sky.

It was a beautiful sky, like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki animated film. Impossibly blue and strewn with clouds that possessed a definition rarely seen by the human eye unless they were being projected onto a movie screen. They had their arms across their chests, like corpses in open coffins but their eyes were open and both of them were breathing, and if anyone checked, they would have recorded matching heart rates.

Whenever he looked at her, really looked at her, he was amazed by the realization that this amazing girl was in love with him. And also he realised that he only knew she was in love with him because she told him so. He had battled depression for most of his life and even then he was capable of canceling out the beauty of a moment shared by two people lying side-by-side like cutlery on a picnic table by thinking that sometime soon, the moment would pass and he would be left with little other than the mundane. From where it was difficult to close one’s eyes and see the perfect Miyazaki-blue sky and imagine what it had been like to own one moment of delightfully pressure-free bliss.

She inhaled deeply and he wondered whether she would close her eyes and sigh about what a beautiful day it was. He needn’t have worried. She wasn’t predictable like that. Instead she said, “It seems they’re making a Kurt Cobain biopic.”

“Huh! Is it already time for that?”

He imaged her nose wrinkling in thought even though he couldn’t see if it was or wasn’t because he was looking straight up, “Why? What time?”

“Y’know…exhume the dead to remind the living that there once lived a great but troubled rocker who succumbed to his demons one lonely afternoon…or night or whatever.”

“You don’t like the idea.”

“In a word? No.”

“Why not?”

“What’s to like? Troubled soul who lived a tortured life, plagued by bad health and worse drugs. A marriage that was God knows what really and a tragic death at the rock star age…what’s to like about the potentially reductive movie they’ll make out of something like that?”

“What’s the rock star age?”

“Twenty-seven.” He turned his head towards her in surprise, “You didn’t know?”

She turned her head too and they looked like toothbrushes lying facing each other. She blinked and shook her head, as effectively as she could under the circumstances of her position and said, “No. Why twenty-seven?”

“The three Js died at twenty-seven. Hendrix, Joplin and Morrisson.”

She frowned, “That’s one J.”

He returned his attention to the sky and smiled because he really relished it when she offered him the opportunity to do this, “Jimi, Janis and Jim.”

She turned a shade redder because she hated appearing dumb around him, not that she was, but he sometimes made her feel like a naïve ingénue. Of course he always wrapped his arms around her and allowed her to hide her face in his chest whenever he noticed her embarrassment. She just felt bad on the occasions that he didn’t notice or realise and she had to bare her embarrassed face to the world.

They lay like that for a while, unaffected by the effects of stock prices on Wall Street or the rising demand for ethanol as an alternative source of fuel. They didn’t care about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or whatever other celebimbette was traipsing around her pissing ground in inappropriate attire. It’s not that they didn’t care about Sierra Leone or Malawi or Rwanda but in the moment they were not aware of it. All there was, was the rolling field of grassy quiet, the sky above and the soft cool breeze that played ‘poke the little shrubs and shake them up’ every once in a while.

She was about to close her eyes and nap for a bit when he said, “I wish they’d make a biopic about the Js who are still alive.”

“Who?”

“Well…there’s triple J and double J. I could deal with either even though double tops triple. In this case.”

She shoved him in exasperation, “Who!?”

“The three living Js? Jessicas Alba, Biel and Simpson? That would be a biopic I could handle, especially if it involved the three of them in their underwear having slow motion pillow fights for three hours.”

She actually turned on her side to shove him and she was strong enough to roll him right off their checkered-tablecloth-that-doubled-as-a-blanket, “Shut up!”

He feigned outrage, “What? The people need to know! They have the right.”

“Shut up.”

He rolled back onto the blanket and she resumed staring up at the sky. A little cloud sped across like it was late for school. She smiled to herself at the idea that the cloud might be late for cloud school. She was about to nod off when something occurred to her so she opened her eyes and asked him, “Who are the double Js?”

“Not ‘are.’ ‘Is.’ And I thought you’d never ask.”

He got to his feet and she looked up in some surprise at his tall, lean form that was transformed into a clearly outlined silhouette by the sunny sky beyond. With a deep breath he said, “That would be Jenna Jameson.”

She frowned, “The porn star?”

“I’d watch an eight-hour-long movie about her. Especially if they set most of it in her work place. I think it’s important for people to see.”

And he tore off into the distance with her in hot pursuit. From a distance they looked like two children playing catch on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The breeze picked up a little and in the distance she let out a high shriek as he reversed roles and began chasing her.

On their tablecloth blanket, their picnic awaited, and for the moment, all was right with the world.

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