Reheated Prose

Content note: sex, drugs, swearing, mental ill health (stress, anxiety, self-image).

7.34pm

‘So Prof M is brandishing his coffee and pronouncing some shit about how this prose only has meaning when you heat it up -’

Simran flailed an imaginary mug at the others: Nevaeh, Austin and Tabby.

‘And we’ve had a term of this now -’ added Nevaeh.

Simran continued. ‘He was just pissed off we’re not lapping it up any more.’

‘I was trying to understand what he was on about,’ admitted Nevaeh.

‘So just out of fucking spite,’ said Simran, ‘he demands “our best thoughts on modernism and transience by five pm tomorrow”.’

‘An essay? Tomorrow?’ Austin winced.

‘Twenty-four hours? Fuck him.’ said Tabby.

‘Honestly - “heating up prose”?’ Simran looked completely at a loss. She turned to Austin: ‘You’re lucky you never get this in Medicine.’

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he said, with caution. ‘If it’s not too triggering.’

Without replacing the water, he flicked the kettle on.

The four sat in the basement kitchen, a shared intersection between two student houses. A table for four fitted snugly into the central space, surrounded by commercial-looking cupboards and white goods that were less world-leading than this institution’s reputation.

‘This place,’ said Nevaeh, head in hands. ‘It’s another world. I can’t understand - it’s…’

Her gaze caught a silver implement on the sideboard: a flattish spoon with sort-of-devil horns.

‘This,’ she said, grabbing it. ‘Case in point. It’s been here for a term. What the fuck is it?’

‘An oyster spoon,’ said Tabby. Then quickly - ‘nothing to do with me.’

Austin grabbed two mugs from the side, gave them a cursory check, a rinse, and overall a poor duty of care - for a medic.

‘Milk?’

They nodded.

‘Henry’s last night as Guildenstern tonight,’ said Tabby, as Austin illuminated them with fridge light.

‘He’ll miss it,’ said Simran.

‘Bad news, guys. No milk,’ said Austin.

‘I don’t even care,’ said Nevaeh.

Austin handed her a black tea in a mug bearing the words Main Character Energy.

‘It’s Henry’s,’ he said, sitting opposite and nearly losing his balance on the chair he always forgot was unsteady.

‘Checks out,’ said Tabby.

Simran sighed. ‘I better make a start,’ she said. ‘This essay crisis is gonna go through the night.’

Nevaeh watched her go. The door stayed open, wedged by last year’s Examination Regulations. The others clocked Nevaeh waiting until Simran had climbed the stairs.

‘What’s up, chick pea?’ asked Tabby, arm round Nevaeh. ‘Other than the oldschool prof.’

Nevaeh leaned across the table, shoved aside a packet of oats she knew were Simran’s.

‘Dunno what right she’s got to be pissed off,’ she said. ‘Found out today that Prof M’s picked her to enter the Hayden Prize. Only the top three from each year can enter. At least she knows all this effort is for someone who rates her.’

Tabby’s embrace was automatic. ‘Who gives a shit about what that dinosaur thinks? You’re amazing.’

Austin joined on the other side. ‘Focus on getting through tonight.’

Nevaeh’s throat burned at the prospect of reading A Room of One’s Own before dawn.

‘That,’ said Tabby, ‘or you could both come to Laundrette with me.’

Laundrette - a club named in honour of Dance Yrself Clean - was at this rate, the institution most likely to award Tabby a degree.

‘No, you irredeemable wreckhead,’ said Nevaeh.

‘I’ve got my first observed clinical exam tomorrow,’ said Austin.

Tabby’s reassurances happened to coincide exactly with the time it took her to coat herself in edible body glitter. Eventually she left them to their worry, leaving in her wake a shimmer, and a forgotten faux-fur coat.

10.22pm

By the time Tabby came back on a pit-stop between parties she was chewing up her face and had absolutely no need of the coat. She went to the fridge in search of something fizzy - no luck. She sipped water from Main Character Energy. The fridge door stayed open. In the light, her gilded body gleamed, the glitter yet untasted.

She checked the corridor then yanked the Examination Regulations from the doorframe, slid them onto the table, nudging Simran’s oats aside. As the door shut she perched on the unsteady chair, feet tipping it back.

With breathless, practiced delicacy she took a little bag from her pocket. She tapped out onto the university’s insignia a generous line, which she disappeared in an instant.

She leaned back, started to hum. Propped her phone against the mug, flicked through her Notes. From the tune came words she’d already written. A love song - her own. Tabby’s voice was a pack of cigarettes down, soaked in drink and chemicals, and still somehow channelling pure fucking love for someone she called The Prince of Versailles.

She sang a cappella, tapping the rhythm out on the Examination Regulations. But it sounded too thuddy, too dull. Then inspiration struck - she grabbed a fork and the oyster spoon, their chimes breaking light through the rhythm.

This was good. She imagined his fine fair eyebrows, arching, impressed.

She pressed record.

Outside, Nevaeh hesitated. She heard the lyrics. She knew she should stop Tabby. She didn’t.

Tabby sent the song recording to The Prince of Versailles, along with an orgy of red lips. Then a selfie of her actual lips, which is, precisely, the moment Nevaeh had decided it was safe to come in.

‘You have your own room!’ Nevaeh groaned.

‘I needed a drink.’

‘Thirsty is the word,’ said Nevaeh, jabbing at the kettle.

‘How’s the essay?’

Nevaeh covered her face. ‘Don’t ask. Need caffeine.’

She contemplated asking for something stronger, but Tabby interrupted.

‘Did you know your accent’s changed?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Yeah, from when we arrived,’ she said. ‘All the Ts have started finding their way back. Water. Kettle.’

‘I don’t think they were lost,’ said Nevaeh.

Tabby’s phone buzzed. She rubbed her nose, grinned.

‘Summoned by The Prince?’

‘Indeed,’ she said, running her hands through her hair. ‘Au revoir!’

‘Have an opulent night!’ called Nevaeh, shovelling instant coffee into the mug which was very intentionally without Main Character Energy.

12.05am

‘He really despises us, doesn’t he?’

Simran boiled the kettle for her three-ginger tea, in the mug Nevaeh had pointedly left out for her (MCE), after pointedly not making her a drink. She had Tabby’s fur coat slung over her shoulders.

‘The delicious irony,’ she went on, ‘of letting us all sleeplessly stew in ideas about transience and instability as a weapon. He’s probably getting off on it right now.’

Nevaeh agreed. She just didn’t want to.

‘You do, literally, have a room of your own,’ she pointed out.

‘That I have to move out of every ten weeks.’

The door opened; it was Austin, morose in his uni-branded pyjamas.

‘Thought you had your thing tomorrow?’ asked Nevaeh.

‘Observed clinical exam. I can’t sleep. I get stress insomnia.’ He reached for one of Simran’s teas. ‘Can I?’

‘Sure.’

He rummaged through cupboards, opened the fridge, was met with cold, bare light.

‘How have we lost all the mugs?’

‘Drink from the oyster spoon?’ offered Nevaeh.

Austin dropped into the nearest chair and nearly went over.

‘This chair, man!’

Simran flinched. He dragged himself into a steadier one.

‘Jesus, Austin.’

She tried the oats under the chair leg. Too thin. Looking around, she seized the Examination Regulations and, in one violent rip, tore out a thick chunk of pages. She jammed them under the chair leg, then shoved the book behind a cabinet.

He looked at them with pleading eyes. ‘You keep thinking: you have to sleep, you need to be focused, if you’re tired you’ll fuck it up,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried grounding, I’ve tried everything.’

He folded into himself, spoke into the table.

‘I worked so hard for the privilege of being this stressed. I moved continents.’

Nevaeh rubbed his back.

‘At least you know why you’re here,’ said Simran. ‘You’re healing people. I’m losing a night’s sleep to the fact that some primadonna professor thought we didn’t appreciate his absolute fucking nonsense.’

‘At least he likes you,’ mumbled Nevaeh.

‘As if I want that,’ spat Simran. ‘I heard he fucked his way through his students in the two-thousands. Thank god he’s too old for that now.’

‘How can I get this far and not want it?’ Austin said, to no one.

‘It’s a bad night,’ said Nevaeh. ‘We just need to push through.’

‘I wish I was Henry,’ said Austin. ‘All he wants is to act. He must be flying.’

‘Wish I was Tabby,’ said Simran. ‘Completely off my face.’

4.51am

Tabby binned the oyster spoon as soon as she got back. The voice notes were already deleted, even though he’d heard them.

You’re so sweet, Tabby Cat, he’d said, licking edible glitter from her neck.

I can’t believe you wrote that for me, he’d said, looking up from between her thighs.

And that was all he had to say about it, until the drugs ran out.

‘Can’t I stay here?’ she’d asked.

You know I only sleep alone, Tabby Cat.

How could someone pour that much ecstasy into their system, and still be incapable of love?

As she left he sang a few bars - teasing, tuneless. The sound tipped her straight into the fringes of a comedown.

Back in the kitchen, she noticed the Examination Regulations behind the cabinet and tried to wedge the door open, but it didn’t quite hold any more.

Footsteps in the corridor.

‘Guildenstern is alive!’ she called.

Henry, though fey, crashed into her and held on tight. When they pulled apart he face-palmed, brows drawn up tight.

‘It’s all over, Tabby,’ he said.

‘No, it’s the start of something big.’

‘I’ve messed it up,’ he said.

‘You want a bump and tell me all about it?’ she asked, reaching into the pocket of her coat, back on the chair. It was empty - she remembered then, she’d already taken it.

‘Fuck.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If I’m going down, I’ve got to eat.’

‘You got any food?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

They both looked at Simran’s oats, lying on the table.

The fridge was bright and empty. No milk. No bowls. No spoons. One boiled kettle later, they sat either side of a Main Character Energy mug of watery porridge: Tabby wobbling on the now-unwedged chair, one eating with a fork, the other with an oyster spoon rescued from the bin.

A gallows meal. They met each other’s eyes and laughed.

‘At the after party, it was bouquet after bouquet - like, metaphorically,’ said Henry. ‘They'd been all over me, I was lining up the next project, we were talking about doing Cabaret - Tabby I've always dreamed of being the emcee - and then Producer Mark invites me to a little one on one in the bathroom.’

‘Gorgeous Mark?’ asked Tabby.

‘Gorgeous. Charismatic. But also powerful Mark,’ said Henry. ‘Kind of guy who makes your name.’

‘And you’re on his good side…’

‘And we get in his bath, right? And he starts telling me all about -’

‘- his cock.’

‘- Shakespeare, you punk.’

‘Mm, hot.’

‘About this bit he loves in Twelfth Night, where Olivia flips the blazon, you know, that kind of OTT love poetry. Your eyes are like stars, your lips are like blossom, whatever. She inventories her body to Viola - who’s dressed as a man - with this like, wry queer ownership -’

‘She sounds like a babe.’

‘Anyway next thing I know, he’s blazoning himself to me, right there in the bathtub -’

Tabby cackled. ‘He did not have to go to that much effort to get in your pants.’

Upstairs, footsteps crossed the floor.

Henry sat back, let her take in the full picture: his wine-stained lips, musk of stage-sweat, day-old clothes, porridge on an oyster spoon.

‘For this, henny? Of course he did.’

‘Fair point.’

‘Anyway after he’s blazoned himself, he starts on me. My hair, my eyes, my shoulders -’

‘Let me guess where he stopped.’

‘Go lower,’ said Henry. He began to prepare his reveal from under the table. He held Tabby’s gaze, as he very slowly, gradually, revealed - a little waggling toe.

‘He’s a foot guy!’ yelled Tabby - just as Austin appeared in the doorway.

‘Guys, shut the hell up!’ he shouted. ‘I can’t sleep!’

‘Sorry, sorry!’ they whispered, falling into giggles.

‘Henry gave a footjob in a bath,’ said Tabby.

‘I do not give a shit,’ said Austin, rolling his eyes so hard they seemed to carry him back up the stairs.

‘Anyway,’ said Tabby, turning to Henry. ‘What’s the problem with a little foot play? You looked so miserable when you came in.’

‘Ah, yeah,’ said Henry. ‘I missed out the part of the story where, while he’s blazoning all over himself and over me, people are trying to slam the door down.’

‘You can’t be holding the bathroom hostage at a party.’

‘So there’s been hammering on the door the whole time, but then it goes a bit quiet. And there I am, my toes getting their little freak on and, well, I guess they thought he might be in trouble, ‘cause they kicked the door down.’

Tabby grimaced.

‘Before that moment, the most memorable thing about me on the theatre scene was Guildenstern. Now I’m just going to be “foot guy”.’

He shrunk in the chair.

‘Well, at least you didn’t write a love song for The Prince of Versailles,’ said Tabby, porridge dripping sadly between her fork prongs.

Henry reached for her hand. ‘Tabby, he doesn’t deserve -’

‘And sing it to him using an oyster spoon as percussion.’

‘Oh,’ said Henry, and thought for a second. ‘Tabby, there’s a bright side here.’

‘I’d like to hear it,’ she said.

‘It’s a win for your coordination, my thigh muscles - and between Shakespeare and the oyster spoon, god damn, we’re classy whores.’

7.34am

Tabby had dragged the unsteady chair under the window, scattering pages of the Examination Regulations across the floor as she did it. The kitchen being a basement, the window was near the ceiling, so she’d had to haul herself up onto the ledge. She sat there now, wrapped in her jacket, smoking. Henry had long since gone to bed.

Footsteps padded down the corridor. Austin came in, took in the scene - ripped packet of oats, dirty mugs, fork and oyster spoon abandoned in the sink - and sighed.

‘You get any sleep?’ asked Tabby.

He shook his head and opened the fridge. The same brutal white as the winter morning outside. No milk. Of course. He swore under his breath, flicked the kettle off with a vague gesture and left without a goodbye.

‘Good luck!’ called Tabby.

She inhaled deeply, trying to reheat the dregs of whatever high was left. Every time she thought about the fact she’d sent that song, she felt like that god damn spoon was jabbing her right in the diaphragm. She double checked the messages - still deleted. Good. She hoped that he was so out of his head when he heard it that the tune, the adoring words, the L word, would have chilled to inertia, like the heat out of a ginger tea.

Nevaeh came in, shadows under her eyes.

‘How’s it going?’ Tabby asked.

‘I literally cannot hold onto meaning any more,’ said Nevaeh. ‘I think I’m just going to record myself gibbering for half an hour, submit that, and make him listen to it. Revenge by stream of consciousness. Perfect, right?’

Tabby took another drag.

‘I hate to say it,’ she said. ‘But I think he might be onto something with the heat thing, y’know.’