Free For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins Page B

model. She held his hand. The men bent down and lowered the fish into the water, and for a moment the trout’s dark shape was motionless—then it was gone. After that the men waded up the river and disappeared from sight.
    They sat up and she asked for more wine.
    Did you see it? she said
    Yes, he said.
    Did you?
    Amazing, he said.
    She said, wasn’t it wonderful they let the fish go. And he said, yes but if it had been him he would have had a hard time deciding; the trout would have made a beautiful dinner. But you would have let it go, she said. For a moment he thought about telling her of the cockabullies. You threw a three-pronged hook into the water, waited for the little fish to surface, then you yanked up from underneath, snaring them through the belly. Sometimes they landed beside you on the pier, ripped open.
    I know you would have let it go, she said. I know you too well. That’s what’s wonderful about us.
    She had, he noticed, a few pieces of grass in her hair. Why did that bother him? Yes, he said, you’re right, and he poured himself more wine and he forgot to pour some for her. Then he remembered and she said thank you darling. They listened to the river and the birds. He was already thinking of the next day. He could wait, couldn’t he? They both could. Actually, when he considered it, they were pretty young.
    All the way home they looked for trout. She said, the first person to see one wins a prize. It was a slow trip. She’d lift her paddle and look fixedly, grimly intothe water. One time he thought he saw something—a kind of shadow that moved alongside the kayak, then drifted off—but in the end he kept his mouth shut. After all, he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything down there, and also she seemed to want to win so badly.

wisdom
    They told me I had to have two wisdom teeth out. It was going to be a wonderful procedure. As instructed, I handed in the CD I’d chosen to listen to while they were to cut into my gums. Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue . Yes, I know, a boringly unassailable choice. I had toyed with the idea of AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’, a song which always puts me in a good mood, but then it would have had to be on repeat for an hour and my mood might have changed.
    The receptionist gave me a few tiny pills to swallow, which I did right there in the waiting-room. Then I waited, along with a couple of other patients.
    I picked up a magazine and I was thinking, these pills aren’t working, I’m going to have to ask for a top-up.
    Suddenly the receptionist and the oral surgeon’sassistant were at my elbow. ‘I think we’re ready now,’ said the assistant. They lead me to the surgery with a surprising kind of insistence and it struck me, pleasantly though, that I might have done something very stupid in the waiting-room. Had I been dancing on the table? Had I been singing ‘Highway to Hell’? Oh, little pills. I felt nuts.
    They were definitely trying to get me out of there fast.
    I was in the chair and they put the headphones on me and Miles Davis played a very short set, about twenty-five seconds. Wow, what truculence, I thought.
    Then, as they say, I came round. I was in the car going home. ‘How do you feel?’ asked my wife.
    ‘Goush,’ I said. It was true. I was in high spirits. Was I driving, or was she? Everything familiar flowed by changed. I did experience the beauty of things, in the way a petrol station can seem suddenly lovely. But there was the tiniest presentiment of disaster.
    The next day I went to the chemist for some antiseptic mouthwash. ‘I bet you’re sore,’ said the chemist.
    ‘Yoush,’ I said. It wasn’t good. The oral surgeon had called to say that it was the most difficult extraction he’d ever performed. I nodded but he couldn’t hear me. There was a truckload of swelling and pain—and not like a toothache. More like someone had leftsomething inside me and they weren’t coming back for it.
    A second chemist was talking to the person next