Taming the Alien

London

Roberts was determined to tell his wife about the skin cancer. At the very least he’d get laid. So … so it would be a sympathy fuck, but who was counting? All the other ails:

dead bank balance

burnt car

nervous job prospects

he’d leave a bit. No need to tip the balance. He was almost looking forward to dropping his health bombshell. Move him centre stage for a few days.

A Big Issue vendor was sporting a spotlessly white T-shirt which declared:

70 % of Prostitutes are Convent Educated.

Roberts said, ‘What about the other 30 %?’

The vendor smiled. ‘They’re the education.’ Argue that.

When he got home he checked quickly to see if his daughter was home.

Nope.

He muttered, ‘Thank Christ for that’. Recently she’d been treating him as if he were invisible … no, scratch that — invisible and annoying.

His wife said, ‘You’re home.’

He was going to congratulate her powers of observation, but it wouldn’t be a loving start. Instead: ‘I have something to tell you.’

She hmphed and said, ‘Well, I certainly have something to tell you.’

Testily, he snapped, ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Oh, if your daughter being pregnant isn’t a priority then of course it can wait.’

‘Jeez … what? I mean, how …?’

‘Well darling, I know it’s been a while, but if you can’t remember how it happens … And she shrugged her shoulders. He couldn’t believe it. Worse, she walked off.

He thought: ‘Skin cancer that.’