Little Bits of Baby Read Online Free PDF

pressed the stop button on Marcus’s new toy (which he had been sent out to buy with a bursting wallet last week). ‘Oy!’ said Marcus.
    â€˜Talk to me,’ replied Peter. ‘Tell me stuff. What’s new?’
    â€˜I’m dying.’
    â€˜I’ve heard that one before.’
    â€˜No, but really this time.’
    â€˜When did that scab come?’
    â€˜Days ago. But I got bored last night and picked it so it’s probably disgusting now.’
    â€˜What were you listening to?’
    â€˜Such Nazi trash, but so glamorous.’
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜ Ein Heldenleben .’
    â€˜Sounds appropriate enough. I’m afraid I don’t know it.’
    â€˜You don’t know it?’
    â€˜You know how ignorant I am. I warned you when you sent me out to choose you that machine.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Take those things off. You’re shouting.’
    Marcus took off the headphones and hung them on a hook by his bed. Peter was changing the water in Marcus’s flower glass but watched him do this in the mirror, watched him twice miss the hook like a drunk.
    â€˜How are the eyes today?’ he asked, setting the flower on bedside table.
    â€˜For me? How sweet, and such a pretty colour!’ Marcus exclaimed this over each day’s flower. The repetition had passed from joke to ritual; the delight, though still sincere, had crystallised.
    â€˜Who brought in all those compact discs for you? I only got you five.’
    â€˜Miss Birch, my ancilla constanta .’
    â€˜Is she still in your pay, or does she work for love?’
    â€˜But of course I still pay her. She has a small empire to run in my absence.’
    â€˜What do you do?’ Peter asked, smiling as he sat on the end of the bed.
    â€˜I told you. I’m an arms manufacturer. We sell death in all its colourful variety. Our catalogue is found at the bedside of each world power.’
    â€˜No, but really.’
    â€˜You want God’s own truth?’
    â€˜Please.’
    â€˜It’s not half as exciting.’
    â€˜Still.’
    â€˜My mother inherited a small fortune in Argentine beef, which she expanded by supplying machinery to abattoirs and children’s playgrounds. I never touch red meat and I never had much time for children so I branched out into optics.’
    â€˜Glasses?’
    â€˜And contact lenses and tubes that help people see around corners and down windpipes. Ironic really. Whenever they have to peer up or down at my decaying insides, they do it with a load of vaseline and a machine that bears my name.’
    There was a rap on the door and a nurse came in.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Medication time.’ She handed Marcus two tiny plastic pots, one with pills in, the other filled with water.
    â€˜Oh joy,’ he said quietly and drained them both. Passing the pots back to the nurse, he followed her gaze to the open window and flapping curtain. ‘My friend here has a problem with breathing second-hand air,’ he told her, quietly. ‘He apologises for any inconvenience and promises to close it before he leaves.’
    â€˜Good,’ she said and left the room.
    â€˜Well, now that I’ve told you the truth about my work, you can tell me the whole and nothing but about yours.’
    â€˜But I already have.’
    â€˜A kindergarten?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜But why? You have a brain, a wife, looks of a sort.’
    â€˜When we were first married I was a stockbroker.’
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜Why “ah”?’
    â€˜The finance houses are half-staffed with fantasists. They all want to do something else. Weren’t you anaesthetised by the money?’
    â€˜Not really. There was never any time to enjoy it. We had a nice house, of course, and short, full holidays, but the quality of life is fairly minimal when all you want to do in your spare time is sleep.’
    â€˜So when did you leave