Free Ice Diaries by Lexi Revellian

crap, too.”
    He didn’t lower his voice. Nina,
passing with bowls of soup, overheard him and bristled, though I’ve
heard her cast aspersions on Charlie’s poetry more than once.
Morgan drained the beer in one go, put the bottle on the floor beside
him and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He got a band out
and scragged his hair into a short pony tail. Gemma joined us and sat
on his other side, barely coming up to his shoulder, feet not
touching the floor, big brown eyes fixed on him. Eventually,
compelled by the force of her stare, he swivelled to look at her. She
fished in her pocket and held up her milk tooth.
    “This is my tooth, it came out
today.”
    Morgan eyed her warily. “It
happens.”
    Gemma waited, not realizing that was
the sum total of his reaction.
    “Some people just don’t
appreciate teeth, Gems,” I said. She got up and went to find a
more receptive audience. The Ink Spots finished on a falsetto wail,
the needle crackling repeatedly until Paul lifted it off the record.
I was pleased he didn’t turn it over – a little of the
Ink Spots goes a long way, in my opinion. I was about to suggest
Morgan fetched himself some food before something else started, when
Paul moved to the centre of the floor, unfolded a spindly music stand
and got out sheet music. He looked around the room, screwing his
flute together, and the chatter faded.
    “If you’ll bear with me,
I’m going to try your patience with a few extracts I’ve
been working on from Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G Major. It’s
a bit of a work in progress, but at least it’s brief, you’ll
be pleased to hear.”
    I couldn’t help darting a look at
Charlie to see if she took this personally as a comment on her
interminable poem, but she was smiling and opening a can of beer,
chatting to Sam and Gemma. I like the flute (Paul has a Bach Partita
in his repertoire I love) but Mozart is not a favourite of mine; I
find him twiddly and repetitive. Paul’s rendition was
surprisingly piercing, and a bit breathy. No wrong notes though, as
far as I could tell. Towards the end, little Toby woke and started
yelling, drowning the last bars and ensuing scattered applause.
Perhaps he doesn’t like Mozart either. Claire took him into a
corner to feed him.
    As Paul folded the stand, Morgan
muttered, “Are we done now?”
    “Sam sometimes sings … karaoke
was one of her favourite things, apparently.”
    “Jesus.” Morgan shifted his
weight and picked up the book he’d been inadvertently sitting
on, Giles Brandreth’s Great Party Games: Over Two Hundred
Games for Adults of All Ages . He shook his head. “You’re
all a bunch of weirdos, you know that?”
    Greg approached holding a pack of
cards. He’s been teaching himself conjuring tricks from a book.
Some of them are quite impressive when he gets them right.
    “I’ve got a new trick.”
    “Go on then. Show us.”
    He fanned the cards and riffled through
them, frowning with concentration. “Tori, can you pick a card
from anywhere in the pack, anywhere you like. Tell me when to stop.”
    I said, “Stop,” and took
one. The card was the four of diamonds.
    “Now Morgan, you do it.”
    Morgan said stop and took a card.
    “Look at your cards, but don’t
say what it is and don’t show each other, then put it back in
the middle of the pack.” We did this. He shuffled the cards and
fanned them, carefully. “Tori, you pick a card and show it.”
I did. “Now, that’s not the one you chose before?”
    “No.” It was the Jack of
Clubs.
    Greg turned to Morgan. “But is it
the one you picked?”
    “No.”
    Greg paused, disconcerted. “Are
you sure?” Morgan nodded, gravely. “Oh. Then in that case
something’s gone wrong …” Greg took back our cards,
walked across the room and sat on an out-of-the-way chair to work out
what had happened.
    I was suddenly suspicious. “ Was it the one you picked?” Morgan’s expression was
non-committal, but his blue eyes glinted at mine. He was