Free Mountains of the Moon by I. J. Kay

them again at the meeting last night.”
    He keeps asking and means well, but if there was an official paid job, it wouldn’t be me that got it.
    “I’m not qualified, Tim, not with clay or mental health.”
    “No one would know,” he says. “I mean, look at me.”
    I look at him. He is a blue genie. Loves his job, his beautiful schizophrenic wife and pregnant schoolgirl daughter.
    “So what did King Cuckoo say?”
    “No money.” Tim shakes his head. “And there you are putting bloomin jam in bloomin doughnuts.”
    “There I
was
putting jam in doughnuts.”
    “Where, why, what?”
    “I shouldn’t have done it, Tim. I was supposed to finish at two last night; it was quarter to five in the morning. The thing is: they said I might be asked to do an extra hour occasionally, but it’s not occasionally, it’s two or three hours every night. I’ve already done fourteen extra hours this week. I’m going home, I said.”
    Tim likes the way I tell them.
    “‘
That’s it—you just think of yourself
,’ the Blue Icing Bride spat in my face. ‘
I’m sorry, Elspeth, but someone’s got to tell her, I don’t know who Ashley thinks she is.
’”
    “Who’s Ashley?” Tim says.
    “Search me. I’ll come in for my shift tomorrow, I said, I’ll work eight hours according to my contract. I’ll do an extra hour occasionally, but now, I said, I’m going home.”
    “Well, if that’s what your contract says,” Tim agrees.
    “‘
No one’s allowed to go!’
” Elspeth was screaming at the back of my head as I parked the white wellies in my locker. “I just walked out, Tim, past all the icing brides.”
    “Heart in your throat then tonight?” Tim says. “Icing brides.”
    “They were sharpening their palette knives, in the gaps between their teeth.”
    Stupid. Principle isn’t going to pay the rent. Volunteering at the pottery isn’t going to pay the rent. I notice the time.
    “Fuck! The kiln, Tim!”
    “The kiln!” He stands up and runs to reduce the temperature.
    If I get sacked Unemployment and Housing Benefit won’t pay me a penny for six weeks; they like to give you a massive financial slap as punishment for your courage or stupidity. I rummage about in my bag for a crumb of tobacco that I know doesn’t exist. A primrose letter from my solicitor is still in my bag, didn’t have time to open it this morning. Bastards. I rip the letter open and prepare to spit tacks. Re: your accident, in the previous decade. Phone urgently. Pain and suffering. Eight thousand pounds. I check the letterhead; it’s definitely addressed to Beverley Woods.
    “Eight thousand pounds will put some electric on your meter,” Tim says.
    It will. It will pay the rent if I get fired at the doughnut factory. That’s not the point. Eight thousand pounds isn’t meant for paying rent. I want to smile but it slides away from me. Tim hands me a sheet of kitchen roll.
    “It’s just a shock, that’s all, Tim,” I say. “Now that they’ve backed down, on principle I feel like telling them to shove it.”
    “You can fix your apartment up now,” he says. “Get a carpet; get a fridge, a cooker—washing machine.”
    “A machine gun to shoot the neighbors.”
    I read the letter again. Phone urgently, to accept, says Mr. Mac.

    Tree commotion wakes me up. There’s a lorry with a container outside my window, outside everybody’s window. It’s Heath; he’s trying to park the lorry on the pavement, tight against the vicarage wall, tangling with trees. The taxi man doesn’t know whether to guard his car or the telephone box, but he needn’t worry, Heath is good at parking lorries. The hydraulic handbrake hisses. Heath climbs out of the cab and stands up on the vicarage wall. I open the window.
    “Come in, number 9,” I call.
    He climbs from the vicarage wall on to a fixed ladder, then up on to the roof of the lorry’s blue container. He’s got something to show me. He does a handstand on the edge. A one-hand handstand.