Pay and Pay

Chapter 11

NEW Year's Day had come and gone, and by the end of the second week in January Kevvin already found the prospect of going to work the next morning intolerable. He had done as much work as he could over the holidays, but it still irked him that he had not been able to have the two full weeks he had planned. He had even lost Christmas and most of Boxing Day because he had had to rent a car to drive to his parents' house to spend Christmas with his family.

The weather itself had conspired against lightening his mood at all. It had been grey and bitterly cold for more than a week and he had not left his apartment except to go to the office and to return home at night.

His enforced confinement over the weekend had at least made him work on his writing. He had spent all of Saturday morning going through his notebook to find details for a new story he had in mind. In the afternoon he began to make up index cards with what he had found, and added them to the half-dozen or so he had already made with the major parts of the story on them. That evening, he spread them out on the coffee table in front of him with a glass of wine at his side and shuffled and reshuffled them to find out what would work best.

Sunday morning, after finishing his breakfast and reading the papers, he took the newly completed index cards back out and spent an hour looking through them again. He wrote down snatches of dialogue and other details on several of them. Finally, while he was eating his lunch, he neatly numbered the cards in order. He finally got dressed around 1:00, and discovered that he had no more clean shirts. He could not bear the thought of going out to pick his laundry up at the dry-cleaners and was forced to rinse out one shirt in his kitchen sink and iron it himself.

By 10:00 that evening, he was standing in front of the fire with a glass of scotch in his hands. He was wearing his new silk pyjamas, his final Christmas present to himself. He idly tilted the glass back and forth, looking at how the cut crystal caught the light of the fire. He was pleased that he had accomplished so much in the way of planning his next story, but he still felt unhappy. The oppressive feeling was like what people experienced after a long and happy vacation when they had to return to work. It bothered Kevvin that he had not even had a vacation. He had never left the grinding routine of working all day and writing all evening.

Kevvin was also bothered by his lack of enthusiasm for the new story. He knew the concept was good and he was pleased with the mechanical aspects of the planning he had accomplished over the weekend, but he did not feel excited about starting to write it. It would take him at least a week. Before he could start writing, though, he had to go to work the next morning.

He was so startled by a loud knock on the door that a few drops of scotch splashed out of the glass over his hand. He sat it down on the mantle and wiped his hand with a tissue as he walked to the door. The knock came again before he had crossed the room. Leaving the security chain in place, he unbolted the door and opened it. Through the narrow gap he saw Mike standing there looking around nervously. Mike was in the act of lifting his hand to knock again when he turned his head and saw Kevvin's face in front of him.

"Hi Kev. Can I come in? I got to talk to you," Mike blurted in short staccato bursts.

Kevvin closed the door wordlessly and removed the chain. When he opened the door again, Mike was again lifting his hand as if to knock once more. He looked jumpy and nervous. He shifted his weight restlessly from foot to foot while he waited for Kevvin to step out of the way.

Kevvin had to let Mike in. He did not want the neighbours to look out to find the cause of the banging, and he did not want to have to deal with Mike in the hallway in case any of them stuck their a head out to see what was happening, especially if Mike became angry.

The last time Kevvin had seen him, the boy had been excited and could not stand still. This was very different, though, and Kevvin knew it. The expression on Mike's face made it look as if he was preoccupied, but his twitching and fiddling did not seem to fit.