"I can't imagine living in Oxford for all my life" she said, "but I can't think it's worse than the military. I think than anyone thinks that they're living in a machine."
But he could think of staying in Oxford. He could think of it being entirely possible to spend the rest of his life. Partly because in a small part, he was still the same person he used to be. Or whatever, because whatever he was now, it hadn't been since high school that he had given a fuck about anything.
It was something in the blue out his window though, and the accent of his dealer, that told him in England that anyone could make it if they tried. On his feet, the hard heeled suede loafers gripped his feet like hot hands. "This is" he said, and paused: "our gilded birdcage.
"Do you think I can borrow some socks?" she said. He rummaged in his dresser and pulled out a ball of navy blue.
"What are they dirty?" she gasped. "AAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaah!"
"Well I think I might have worn them once or twice" he replied, after giving the socks a good sniff."
""You really don't have any socks?" she moaned. "aren't there any in there", pointing to the laundry basket. "Oh no, you don't want to look in there. "Why? is it dirty?" she asked. "It's my everything basket. It's for laundry but also for just throwing things in." He ruffled through it though, and came up with a pair of navy blue cashmere socks.
"I don't want to lend you these." he said, standing up: "they're too sentimental."
"Ill give you some weed next week when I buy more" she said. And giving in he gave her the socks. "They're still a little damp from the laundry" he said. What he didn't say was that it had been three days since he had done laundry.
"How do you like my get up?" The cashmere socks - blue - over her tights from the Coop(tm) all under a Black shoe Sylvia Plath would have gotten excited about, looked, in fact - like shit. She looked like a greek peasant in her black dress, that had somehow gotten lost in Oxford by way of the mid-nineties. And one could have gotten the impression that she may have been through secretarial school from her jacket.
And of course, she was offended when he told her so.
"Do you realize you're worrying about how people will think of you when you want down the High Street? It's kebab hour - everything is ugly now" he said.
She proceded to bitch, but then he reproached her:
"I'm here, and you're towering over me like a Canadian librarian. And you know, you really ARE a bitch, if you can come here, and CRITICIZE the way someone does their laundry and where the fuck they keep their toothbrush. Get thee fucking gone, you gaping axewound. Fuck you."
But when they stepped into the night blue - more green and blue though, there was something that turned the green more vivid or the tulips at least, a little less excitable.
