roger smith
Martha lived for the moment, but in a desperate way. Like so many at this godless point in history, her only religion was to enjoy what time she had, and for this she clung desperately to every passing second with a pre-meditated recklessness, a fixed smile and a grim determination to squeeze everything possible from the moment, just everything she could hope to take, knowing all the time that it could never be enough.
She came from an uncertain background, her parents weren't wealthy, but then they weren't coal miners or whippet-breeders either, and she had never felt truly comfortable with either middle class or working class people - she hated having to make the distinction even, but it seemed somehow unavoidable. She was never sure where someone like her was supposed to fit in in the world and, since her parents had been dead these few years past, she had been rudderless, drifting from one dead-end to another, living her life day to day and managing to avoid thinking about the future. One of these days it would creep up on her, but not yet.
Not yet. Twenty-one years of age, she was still young enough and idealistic enough to believe that if she just did what she thought was right, followed what she believed in, then everything would somehow work out Ok. If you just believe in the moment then everything will be Ok. Things weren't really Ok though. Staggering up the stairway, bags in each hand, after a day of cleaning tables, washing up, and taking shit from people so much crueler and uglier than her, she was tired, she was depressed, but she wasn't selfish enough to believe she deserved better. For the moment, this was just fine.
Bob lived not for the moment, but for history. He just wanted to be in a history book somewhere, he didn't really care why, and in any situation he acted thinking not of the immediate consequences, but of how posterity would see it. He felt the weight of history pressing down on him like so many leagues of water on an already sunken ship. He would walk up and down busy streets and see a million people just like him, millions of clones all desperately clutching for individuality with no possible way of differentiating himself. It depressed him more than words. Since leaving school, he'd taken a succession of low pay jobs in bars, shops and restaurants and waited to see how long it would take him to get fired. In this respect, his last job, working in a small vintage clothing store, had proved more difficult than most. For a week he had turned up variously drunk, stoned, hours late and not altogether clean and the owner hadn't batted an eyelid. The next week he hadn't turned up at all and still he couldn't get the sack, so he'd decided that maybe the job was meant to be and from then on he had made a point of being punctual, polite and even - hold your head in your hands and gasp - smart, or at least not looking like he'd just crawled out of a skip.
But just when he was getting used to the routine of getting out of bed in the morning, the shop had gone out of business, the owner finding there was less money in flares, old baseball tops and Hawaiian shirts than he had previously suspected. This had finally given Bob the excuse he needed to claim unemployment benefit, but he had found unemployment just wasn't the same when it was through necessity instead of choice. The taste was different.
Bob had decided some time ago that his teachers were right when they said he'd never amount to anything and that the only way his worthless life would ever stand out amongst the unceasing advancement of worthless names and faces, without luck, talent or wealth, was if he were to kill somebody famous. The Queen perhaps. Or the Prime Minister. Or the Pope, though he wasn't particularly religious. He'd spent some considerable period of time mulling this over and for both political and logistical reasons had decided that the Queen was best. For the past week he had thought of nothing else and had been studiously plotting his motives, justifications and defences. He'd even gone as far as writing to Buckingham Palace asking when would be the best time to carry out the assassination, and was eagerly awaiting the reply. If there was one thing was for certain though, it was that he would pretty soon tire of the idea and decide instead to do something equally unlikely, like becoming a rock star or writing the great Scottish novel or maybe just going for the Pope instead.
So, anyway, Martha lived for the moment and Bob lived for history, but in day to day terms the way they lived their lives was the same. The only difference was Martha did the shopping, Martha always did the shopping.
