Resin

Resin

This Scrabble board is bright with possibilities, a grid of things that might be said if only I had the tiles. I chose it because it is not the dull, traditional cream and green. It lies there, bright as a primary-school classroom, waiting to be encased.

I have the resin. It arrived in plastic bottles, clear and chemical. I have the turntable—the Lazy Susan—a wooden circle waiting for its revolution. Of course, it is too small. This world is often too small for the games we try to play. To make it fit, I must perform a surgery. I must lop off the cardboard edges of my board. The triple word must fit a smaller, more rounded world.

But I am tired; a bone-deep weariness stills my hand and my thoughts are turgid. And I am afraid. The fear is a physical thing; it lives in the wrist. I have never been a creature of straight lines. My history is one of digressions, of sudden veers away from the intended path. If the blade slips, the board is ruined. If the resin pours unevenly, it will ripple.

One tremor. One word. One thought.

I know the protocols, naturally. I should use a level; I should ensure the table is flat before challenging its physics. For goodness' sake, I should ask for help. But help is a debt, and I am already so overdrawn.

I pull on the gloves. They snap against my skin, a sudden sound that cuts through the silence of my workshop garage. The scales are precise to the gram; Part A and Part B must be mixed in exact, unyielding ratios, or the chemical bond fails and the surface remains forever sticky, a trap for dust and stray hairs. I begin to stir, in slow, deliberate circles. Two minutes clockwise, two minutes counter-clockwise, scraping the sides of the plastic jug to ensure no unmixed fluid escapes the reaction. I must be patient, even as my head aches with the weight of the delay and the sharpness of the chemicals. If I rush, I will introduce thousands of microscopic bubbles, clouding the view of what lies beneath. And I need it clear.

Because, I can see them. They are already waiting.

They sit in the conservatory. They must be in their fifties now. Dyed blonde and faded red. A low table is between them, a disc of glassy resin and wood and a pink and blue grid. They speak in fragments and drink tea, the vapour rising in wavy plumes in the cool morning air. It's been such a long time. They talk of vapid things, children, work, the lovers who have been and gone. They inevitably talk of the game. Both had been A-grade players who competed with an intensity bordering on passion. Both had been mistresses of tactical aggression and spatial awareness. Both were experts in psychological warfare.

“I should have challenged entendre,” one had said to the other in a game post-mortem.

“Well, I thought you of all people would recognise it as a possibility.”

“Meaning?”

“As in,” she had leaned forward, “double entendre, my sweet. You know. Hannibal Lecter. I do wish we could chat longer…”

“…but I’m having an old friend for dinner,” they had finished together, laughing.

“I love a double entendre. It should be a Scrabble word.” All the while, the women had held each other’s stare.

They don’t mention the last time they said goodbye, at the Christchurch Masters Tournament, believing they would never see one another again—the way their lips brushed in an unsaid confession, the way they privately mourned as if it were a death.

The blonde woman reaches for the velvet bag.

“Shall we?” she says. Her smile is a narrow, practised line.

“We shall,” the other replies. The words are a contract. “You draw first.”

At first, the words come easily. They are the words of the surface: LUCID, RESCIND, built through the C, TRUTH through the R. The score mounts quickly, a tally of small, silent concessions.

YIELD is played on a double-letter score, fingers lingering a fraction of a second too long on the wooden tile. The red-haired woman counters immediately with STAY, blocking the path to the top triple-word lane. It is defensive play, a tightening of the borders. Every placement is a message, a coded transmission across the narrow expanse of the table. They do not look at each other's eyes; they look at the rack, at the remaining tiles, tracking the blanks and the four S tiles, like tracking a predator in the dark.

Slowly, in this room of glass, the morning light begins to shift.

Tiles click. Challenges are issued. Tiles are tracked with precision. Scores are noted. Heads now bent so closely they seem to share one breath. Another game begins. And then another. The board rotates between them—spin and counter-spin, an intimate orbit. In the conservatory, time is thickening into resin—viscous, heavy, clear. This game of ill-fitting vowels and consonants is now a confessional.

The silence is a weight, the pressure of the things they cannot spell: the way a hand brushed a finger, the way a gaze lingered on the pulse point of a neck. They rearrange their tiles, concentrate on their tracking, afraid to look up, breathing in the minutes.

I cut the lines, glue the board to the wooden surface, and pour the liquid glass. I start from the centre, watching the heavy, crystal-clear stream spread outward in a perfect, sluggish circle, swallowing the letters, sealing the grid forever. The heat gun grows warm in my hand as I pass it over the surface, popping the rising air bubbles, smoothing the imperfections until it mirrors the netting in the roof above. My hands are steady, even if my mind is not. They are waiting for their table. They are waiting to sit in that cool beginning light, and they will not wait forever…

“I will not wait forever.”

The words hang in this quiet workshop, clear and permanent.

There, I’ve said it.