Alan Reed
Coach House Books
Toronto
copyright © Alan Reed, 2010
first edition
This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 263 9.
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Alberta
Foundation for the Arts.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Reed, Alan, 1978-
Isobel and Emile / Alan Reed.
ISBN 978-1-55245-227-1
I. Title.
PS8635.E35I86 2010 C813'.6 C2010-901663-7
‘How much less than dreams
are the things we actually do!’
– Paul Poissel
CONTENTS
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Acknowledgements
About the Author
They are sitting.
There are two of them. They are sitting beside each other. They are in a room.
There is a bed in the room. There is a sink. There is a window. There is a door. There are things scattered on the floor and there is an empty bottle under the bed.
They are sitting on the bed. It is a small bed. It has plain white sheets on it. Before they sat on the bed they slept in the bed. They lay together with their arms around each other and their legs together. It was quiet in the room.
They slept.
When they woke up they did not get out of the bed. They stayed the way they had been lying when they were asleep.
They were not wearing clothes. They were naked. They had been naked when they went to bed the night before. It had not troubled them then. It had been dark.
There was light coming in through the window when they woke up. It was early in the morning.
There were specks of dust floating in the light.
They got out of the bed. They did not look at each other. They got out of the bed and they looked for their clothes on the floor.
They had to look for their clothes because they did not know where their clothes were. They knew that they were on the floor. The night before they had taken off their clothes and they had thrown them onto the floor. They did not look where they had thrown them.
They did not care what happened to them then. They wanted them off their bodies. Now they had to look for them.
They found their clothes. They put their clothes on. They looked at each other with their clothes on. They still looked naked. It was their eyes. They were too tender.
They looked at each other and then they looked at themselves standing in the room.
There was nothing else in the room. There were things in the room but they did not matter anymore. They were nothing.
There was nothing else in the room and there was nothing left to do.
They were standing beside the bed. They were wearing their clothes. They did not say anything. There was nothing to say so they did not say anything.
They sat on the bed. There was nothing else to do. They sat beside each other on the small bed with plain white sheets.
It is still quiet in the room. They are sitting beside each other on the bed. It is early in the morning.
They are not sitting on the bed anymore. It is still early in the morning. There is still light coming in through the window.
One of them is standing beside the bed. He says: ‘We should go.’
The other one of them is not standing. She is still sitting on the bed. She does not say anything.
She pulls her hands through her hair. She is trying to make her hair lie the way that it is supposed to. Her hair is not lying the way that it is supposed to.
She pulls on it.
If her hair would lie like it is supposed to then something would be different.
She is sure that something would be different. She makes her hands into fists. She pulls on her hair. Tears come to her eyes. It does not matter. Her hair will not lie like it is supposed to. Her hair does not lie like it is supposed to when she has slept on it.
He says: ‘We should go.’ She closes her eyes.
She nods her head.
There is a suitcase by the door. On top of the suitcase there is a knapsack.
He goes over to where the knapsack is on top of the suitcase. He picks the knapsack up. He puts it on his back. She is sitting on the bed. He bends over to pick the suitcase up.
She looks at him standing by the
