英语短篇小说 A Tray of Ice Cubes(12)

英语读物

“I think it s too late, Love.”

The bed is warm and wet. Suddenly Colin clasps his swollen belly, shouts to

Daphne,

“It s coming, Daph. Get something to catch it. Quickly, Love, a bucket,

anything.”

She rushes to the bathroom again. There is nothing suitable. She has to go

downstairs to the kitchen. The only thing she can find is their non-stick wok. Daphne has only used it once in five years.

Colin is moaning when she returns. She puts the lips of the wok up against his perineum. Thin, cloudy liquid dribbles into it. The bedroom reeks. Colin is crying, tears running sideways down his face, his lips wide, his tongue like a plump little plum in his mouth.

Later Daphne clears up. She yanks the sheets off the bed, piles them into the

already overloaded washing basket, then wonders what to do with the mattress. Colin is downstairs on the couch in a dressing gown. She has given him a bath and he smells nice. After she has sorted the bedding out Daphne comes downstairs into the tv room and kisses Colin on the crown of the head, where his hair is thinnest, taking in the fragrance of his scalp.

“How about a drink?” She says.

Colin thinks for a moment, then nods, almost apologetically.

“A nice gin and tonic?”

Colin nods again.

Daphne goes to the kitchen, takes a tray of ice cubes out of the fridge. A dozen nuggets of frozen water. As usual she has trouble extracting them. She bends the tray as much as its metal will allow, and there is a tired, creaking sound. Then something snaps and an ice cube pops out and clatters on the worktop. She has to use a knife to get the rest out, levering dangerously at the chipped edges of each cube. There must be an easier way of making ice, she thinks as she divides her four cubes between two tumblers, splashes some gin and tonic water on top of them and listens to the wheezes and cracks as they expand into the warmth of the alcohol.

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