THE NOVEL FELL APART IN HIS HANDS [Memo#4] - Sharkgirl & Ratfish

October 29th, 2009 by Alex - 'Camel'

sharkgirlratfish
He longed for a Kaiser coat made of green sea, trimmed with a lace of spray, lined with thick, brown glistening kelp and…
“It should have pockets deep enough to hold a swimming school of fish,” he said and since he’d had more neat gin than he could stand, James ‘Sharkgirl’ Wotsirb lay on the floor and looked up at the pressed metal ceiling of the Kimberly Hotel in Roeland Street. 4 Non Blonds sang the epic song 4 Non Blonds are famous for singing. At his heart, Sharkgirl clutched S,M,L, XL, the book thicker than two bibles and of silver cover.
“What’s that you’re saying Sharkgirl?” asked a man of great promise, but never enough courage. Slumped in a sack-back chair, this man had been telling chair histories ab aeterno in a language nobody at the Kimberly cared to understand.
“Ratfish took everything,” Sharkgirl said, holding the book tighter and closer. That is how he’d entered the Kimberly some hours before time began, embracing S,M,L,XL. Now he had a view all the way up the legs of a clutch of barstools plastered on their underneaths with months of old chewing gum. On one sat a lost man close to kissing a teenage woman with cigarette smoke for hair, so it seemed. Drunk, she looked down at Sharkgirl and his architectural novel. “Sharkgirl!” She giggled. “Sharkgirl! Is that really your name?”
“’A’,” Sharkgirl said. “Belongs to the Emperor. He’s the emperor…” Sharkgirl pointed at the lost man nearing a kiss.
“Why Sharkgirl?” persisted the ‘A’ with smoke for hair.
If Sharkgirl had been inclined, he would have unbuttoned his shirt to explain, but he was exhausted from chair histories and the 4 Non Blonds’ anthem…
“Stay!” called the ‘A’, but she had no chance of stopping him.
When next he knew, Sharkgirl was at Ingrid Jonker’s beach and he was flinging off his clothes like a first-rate carnival stripper. If that kid of an ‘A’ could have seen him then, why she would have seen the comely busty blue-fleshed babe who resided on his armswarmskin – the babe with a shark’s head – but she could not, at least not then, years later she did see the Sharkgirl in a dream.
“I’m coming Ratfish!” S,M,L,XL anchored Sharkgirl to the sand as he waded into his Kaiser coat and he was happy in the gentle silence with nothing left to fear or lose and pockets deep enough to fit a swimming school of fish.