DOOR TO THE PAST

“Hey, Bunny, get over here and take a look.”

The red head with the scarf, spreading brush, and paste-clattered apron stared incredulously at him over the table and reversed length of wall-paper.

“Are you, by any chance, KIDDING?”

“Oh,” he said, in deference to the impressive octave shift.

“Don’t know how you talked me into this bit of the redecoration, yet here I am. Now you want me to admire your skill at wallpaper-stripping?”

“Well, you chose the apartment, and…” It suddenly occurred that this mightn’t be the best tack. He shut up and made to resume his work on what was a poster, rather than wallpaper.

Her gummy hands were on his forearm, stopping the movement before the noise of brush plopping into the paste-bucket registered.

“Hold on, I know her. We went to drama school together.”

“Drama school?”

She raised an eyebrow at his tone.

“Really?” The tone metamorphosed into enthusiastic interest.

“I didn’t recognize her at first — the dated clothing put me off, but that’s her as Judas in our class production of Godspell. No-one else wanted to do it — something about that part.”

“So how — ?”

DOOR TO THE PAST

“We also did a few ballet productions earlier on. I remember her looking so much like an angel in the Wait a mo.” Bunny tore off a horizontal strip across the monochrome poster, revealing a scene from The Nutcracker. “There I am … and there’s Celine —”

“Doesn’t look very ballet-like.”

“It was freestyle, and we weren’t exactly Bolshoi.”

“More like — ” He turned away, fending her off as he coughed and spat the paste out of his mouth while rubbing the smears from his cheeks and lips.

“Fussake, Bunny, there’s anti-mould in that paste. It’s poisonous.”

“God, I didn’t know,” she said, desisting in her efforts and turning pale. “You okay?”

He waved her away and headed to the bathroom where he could be heard gargling fiercely.

She stared open-mouthed after him, then down at her hands. Gradually the shocked concern on her brow lapsed into something else. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. Paste everywhere.

“HEY YOU!”

The face in the poster hung like a door off its hinges as Bunny stomped after her boyfriend with the paste bucket.