Grayling Junction - Chapter Eleven and whatever

The Birthday Chapter

"SURPRISE!"
The word bursts like a firework as Freyja enters the unlit room.
A chorus of voices swells accompanied by a stamping of feet, before erupting into a laughably tuneless performance of ‘Happy Birthday To You’, the words glued into the air with the sticky sweet vapour of early morning rum. Lalo flicks a switch. Eyes blink. A thin bang and streamers flutter through the air like a paper rainbow.
Lalo is stood behind the counter managing to be both part of, and not part of the celebrations.

Taking up most of the counter is Davina Crosby’s homemade cake: pitted lemon sponge, icing flavoured with lemon and between the layers of sponge a passion fruit cream filling. A puffy faced Davina squints through bloodshot eyes as she levels up a meat cleaver.
A series of chops reduces the cake to fist-sized chunks and a wedge of cake passes from person to person until it arrives in Freyja's hand. Compelled by the weight of the cake she settles back into one of the settees.

Tam lumbers over to her booming birthday greetings before proudly presenting her with a box of soil. Freyja is touched by the time and attention that has gone into arranging 29 layers one upon the other. She sees something beautiful in the simplicity and thanks Tam, who retreats politely as No-Shoes approaches.
"For you my dear...liquid sunshine!"
He bows to plant a gentlemanly kiss on her forehead and hands her a large glass bottle. Freyja – by no means a stranger to this local delicacy – unscrews the top and raises the bottle.
"To fine friends!" She says before taking back a heavy swig.
Filling the space left by No-Shoes Ron sidles in close to Freyja. On is knees is a parcel. Delving into the thin tissue paper she is awed by her discovery of a smooth oval of polished malachite, the lavish green the colour of a spring forest. She will place it in her window at home and ask the light of day to linger, as it becomes emerald fire.
She thanks Ron with a quick kiss that gives him an excited tremor.
Minutes later, seeing that Freyja is alone, Lalo sits down and hands her a black gift bag. He feels time slow to a gradual stop and his surroundings pause as delicate hands unwrap each gift.
Freyja studies the book carefully and reads in silence until the seventh page before thanking him. Next, as her CD slips from the paper her face opens with a smile. "Great choice...I love this album!"
Her lips flutter toward Lalo briefly grazing his cheek.
A fragrance of washed birthday hair will now remain with him.
It is like fresh strawberries from a long time ago.

Now the silver bracelet is on her wrist as Freyja admires it in silence. As it catches the light it immediately becomes the older, more respectable sibling to the frayed fabric bands. Happiness lights her eyes and Lalo knows he was right to have sent his intuition out to buy gifts. She leans over and gives him a hug. The gesture quickly becomes clumsy and they peel apart like old chewing gum. For a second Lalo can see right inside of her.
Freyja feels the beat of his heart through the springs of the settee.

Later and cake and rum have been consumed in equal measure and the room is hot and noisy and as the celebration erupts, music whirling from the speakers, wild singing endangers the glass in the windows as liquid sunshine floods the house of Morrow.

The front door has been locked tight against the nudge of morning.
Pinned to the outside is a handwritten sign that reads:
Closed until at least lunchtime

Despite this sign a line of customers stretches along the pavement like a wound. A mutinous grumbling twitches mouths as the bodies shuffle closer to one another, as though an absence of gaps will make the waiting shorter.
A man in a light grey pin-stripe suit and salmon tie glances rapidly at his bare wrist.
Impatience blinds him to the fact that there is no watch on his wrist.
His habitual timepiece is missing and will not be found by his wife on their bedside table at home.
Like a ticking medal of guilt the watch has been left in a hotel room north of Randall City. It is currently on the wrist of a slender young man who wonders whether the previous night was an unfortunate, yet financially rewarding, one-off or an act he might be persuaded to repeat.
The man in the suit breaks from his place in the line and approaches one of the windows.
"I can't see anything...there's something in the way!"
His words are cast vaguely toward the person at the head of the queue who does nothing. A few minutes pass and others join the man at the window. On flat feet, a round, sweating woman marches toward the door. She rattles the handle with her considerable might before hammering against the door; her balled hand like a meat pasty. The din of the customers goes unnoticed and their annoyed sounds and puzzled faces do nothing to dent the enormity of the festivities.

In the street, over the wooden slats of the empty bench, low over the stilted water of the estuary, the heat is relentless.
It beats down on tin rooftops pushing the metal closer to buckling.
It burns the skin of hands and faces.
The black tar surface of the road sighs exhausted.
The rains of spring have still got some falling to do and this rising heat is a glimpse, an impudent promise, of the threat of summer.
It pokes too proud, too early, for there will be a weeklong downpour before spring packs up her stall.
The anger of the waiting customers however, is the boldest, indicator that the season of spring is waning, inevitably stepping aside as summer comes riding in.