The Waiting Room
Jean
What am I doing here? I should just get up now and leave. I mean, really! How long have I been going through this… farce? Years… too many to remember, and always the same ridiculous advice: slow down, stop smoking, take it easy, stop drinking. Stupid old man. He knows that I really stopped caring about this old corpse long ago.
(There he is, with his beady little eyes and his absurd moustache and cherry drop breath. Who, or what, does he think he is? Shouldn't he be retired… or worse?)
Maybe he doesn't know. He looks a charlatan anyway. Like some bloody robot copy of what a doctor ought to be. How much can he possibly learn from his 'examination'?
(Surely too grand a word for such a superficial prod-about, anyway).
And where on Earth he finds the gall to suggest that I slow down…? The man moves like he's preserved in aspic.
I'd never have seen a doctor like this if Adrian hadn't run away with that bitch. I certainly wouldn't be stuck in the corner of this awful waiting room, or wheezing room, whatever the hell it's supposed to be. Waiting room? Half these people are waiting to expire.
Hmmm. Maybe that's the best to hope for when you have an empty life?
Hmph. These nails! The money I spend, you'd think they'd be flawless. Living beyond your means is all well and good if the results are worth it, but… Just look at those. Still, they're just about the only thing that isn't ten years out of date. Me included.
Why am I lying now? Before, it seemed like I was lying to the world and getting one over on them. Now, oh, now nobody's fooled.
Oh, shut up, you silly woman.
What I'd give for a cigarette.
. . .
Dr. Lutz
What am I doing here? I must be too old for this. Oh dear Lord: why Mrs. Taylor, again? All the joy of the girl she was fell out of her, and now here she is in my surgery. Again. Oh Lord, strange how quickly sympathy turns to exasperation, hmm?
I wonder what her eyes are like behind those sunglasses? Do they offer some insight, or manage to soften her face at all? Maybe those glasses have, at least, filtered out whatever it was that made the rest of her so callused.
Oh, I'm too old to see this everyday. This, and worse. I could be away from here. Away from the young people who come in with problems twice their age. Then again, is this worse than an empty house?
See her, picking at her lips, trying to summon a cigarette up out of thin air. How many does she smoke? More than she admits to, I think. Although she has always lied through her teeth, she sounds like an old recording of her original voice now. Why? She can't accept that things change, maybe?
Maybe. Yes... maybe that is it.
What would it be like to kiss her, hmm? Like a beached jellyfish, perhaps. Oh! A jellyfish in expensive perfume camouflage.
Oh, you silly old man! What a day. Already what a day...
Hmph. Almost time. This... stuff is cold now.
Oh, God.
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