pool room 11 55

Michael is crawling on the floor.
It might still be in my eye, but I think its fallen out.
Michael speaks with precision. His words are robotic and formal, perhaps he stutters at times. His voice holds a rasp frequently heard in elderly men. His left leg is shorter than right by twelve centimetres and his vision is poor necessitating the wearing of contact lenses and glasses.
Right - well lets have a look.
Wayne is a veteran from Vietnam given to wearing denim jeans and plain white t shirts with his rolling tobacco in a nylon bumbag that he wears like a holster loosely around his hips. He shares a room with Michael.
Amanda sits in the corner of the room next to the coke machine. She pats her hair and watches her exhalation of grey smoke hang above the pool table then disintegrate. She is slumped in the plastic chair and appears to examine the ends of her her glassy black hair with the same disinterest as she regards the crawling men on the floor. Michael believes he heard her scoff when he entered the room.
it's blue, Michael says, a blue tint to help me see it, not a really strong blue just a bit bluer than-
I know what you mean mate. I think. I mean I was gunnasay your eyes are nearly black. That's what I thought when I first saw you. They're close to bein' black those eyes of Michaels.
They're like my fathers. Michael repeats what he has heard other people say about his eyes. It seems a worthwhile comment to make, though Michael has no real recollection of the colour of his fathers' eyes.
The lino floor is a dark blue and a light blue speckle pattern. Michaels hands search across the pattern to the indented floor where the pool table used to be. The vptsdu group (with their t shirts made in the craft room in the stle of the rolling stone t-shirt with the tongue carrying the lettering) move the pool table about once a week to account for the apparent land slip of the building and the impossibility o a fair game. They lament the tilting pool table and create various handicaps for those who have become accustomed to the table or create teams and knock out systems with various levels. Sometimes no one wants to play and the sticks splay across the tables, the sound of the balls hitting each other or banging into the felt is gone. Michael does not attempt to play although Wayne has offered to teach him. Michael folded his arms at the point where his twice turned up cuff was and announced he was not a gambling man, even when Wayne declared that this was a sport that all people could play.
Michael has heard jokes his father would call 'a bit off colour' about women playing pool and the various advantages and disadvantages of the table in a way that made his skin hot and fear that he had not checked all the fastenings on his clothing.
A girl in slippers walks around the couple and sits cross legged on the table next to Amanda. She takes a zippo lighter from her dressing gown and puts a cigarette in her mouth.
Wayne jumps up from the floor and lights the cigarette. The girl says thanks on her inhalation and he returns to the floor in a new commando style position.
I love your hair Amanda.
I look like Morticia. It's hideous. They let you out without a nurse? That is so unfair. You've been here - what, a week?
It's been a month. Did you dye it?
She touches she own short fluffy hair.
Mine belongs to a duckling. Does the fur ever go.
Er. I've never had that thank god. it's disgusting. She pulls at her ear. There was this girl in here last time and I swear, she showed me her stomach, god knows why, I mean I did not ask to see it, and it was foul and swirling from, like her belly down, front and back.
Her voice has deepened and softened and she nulls at her navel ring. I mean I wanted to say, ever heard of ah, depilatory products, lasers, razors!
The girls laugh. Amanda laughs herself into breathlessness.
The blonde girls voice is too deep for her body and seems to belong to another.
I did that thing with the water, like you said and stood rightr at the back of the scale and then they let me come down here. What are they doing?
No idea. Don't want to know. Did you see that newgirl? stink bitch nurse is on today. more carbs amanda