Be Seeing You?
I’d never seen Number Six so preoccupied.
He’d been given the number six, which was unfair. I’d been in the Village far longer and received a much higher number. We’d met the day before. I was immediately drawn to his deep blue eyes and the piping around his lapels. His hair was good: thick, assured. You never saw that in the Village. Most heads were tentative, as if held back by something. Number Two, a bald man like myself, always said, “God only made so many perfect heads, Number Seventy-Eight. On the rest he put hair.”
At least the last Number Two said that. I haven’t met the new Number Two yet.
Something was catching Number Six’s eye today. Par for the course, really. You could never pin down Number Six. One moment he was your friend, the next he was barking orders.
“They say we’re in for a spot of rain,” I said, mopping up the rest of my egg with my breakfast muffin. Fifty-Three told me they called them “English muffins” in America. We had a good laugh about that, then went back to our chess game. Americans. So predictable.
“Mm, yes,” Six said, dabbing the corners of his lips, clotted cream having caught the edge of his day-old mustache. Six was always impeccably groomed. Where he’d learned this, one couldn’t say. We all had backgrounds; we just couldn’t say what those were. Who we were, what we did, where we were from — all of it a distant memory, a tinkling of the bell in the commissary of time.
“Attending the concert tonight?” I asked, sipping some Earl Grey.
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“Concert?” Six asked, gazing intently over my shoulder. He was definitely focused on something. I stood and turned. Nothing, just the hustle-bustle of Village life.
“What is it, man?” I queried, adjusting my beret and circular badge. “I’ve never seen you so preoccupied.”
“Sorry, old boy,” Six said, taking a generous sip of black coffee. “You were saying? Concert?”
“Yes,” I said, glad to be back on track. “The works of Bizet and Saint-Saëns, I’m told.”
“Have you got the advert?”
“Yes,” I said, fishing out the clipping I’d removed from that day’s Tally Ho.
Six stared at it. Rubbed it between his fingers as if it meant something. “Hm, yes,” he said, a mischievous look in his eye. “Concert indeed. Thanks, old chap. I owe you one.”
“Uh, certainly,” I said, unsure what he was on about.
Six stood, saluted from his eye with the familiar “OK” gesture, and trotted off down the lane. Within moments, there was a frightful roaring noise. A bouncing white orb that resembled a weather balloon was on him, suffocating him. Three men in striped shirts removed Six’s body from under it, placed his limp frame on a stretcher, loaded it into a taxi, and sped off.
I finished my breakfast, tucked the Tally Ho under one arm, and perambulated to the lawn by the helipad, where Decoupage lessons were underway.
