Penguins and Princesses

I wrote this one this morning, and has a damn sight lighter tone than 3x3. I was inspired to write this purely by the song Copa Cobana by Barry Manilow and I particularly like the two characters Rico and Danielle.

This nightclub was a far cry from your denim and chequered shirts, and also mused distaste at you supermarket shelf beers. Look left and right and you saw penguins and princesses. Lola the showgirl in angelic sparkle sang so beautifully that Frank Sinatra himself could be seen dancing around the dance-floor as if the music had set him free from his eternal rest. The walls of the club were a snazzy 70’s wallpaper, a black and white floral design that seemed to move upon sufficient inebriation. The large mirrors had seen everything and everyone this rich man’s haven had to offer. The disco ball rotated and shone like a planet, with fat cats and belles in a perpetual orbit.  One man, Rico, sat at the bar with a bulbous cigar in one hand. His jet-black hair was slicked back and his bow-tie was spirit-level horizontal. Rico sipped at his Jack Daniels and tapped his fingers to the beat of Copacabana. This penguin was without his princess, until two red heels tapped their way over to the stool next to him and took a seat. The occasional white lights advertising her long, sleek legs. Her blonde hair was smartly up, held together by a silvery hairpiece. Her mascara showed not a single imperfection of appliance, and her lipstick was as scarlet as her shoes. The barman walked over, his red waistcoat without a single crease. “Glass of red” she said, somewhat impolitely, but manners were not the virtue here. Rico reached inside his inside pocket and took out a twenty.

Rico: I got this

Daniella: Gentleman

The barman put a black napkin down on the table and placed the glass on top of it.

Daniella: So, this your Saturday night? Buying whoever you can a drink?

She said this without a smirk or a sarcastic grin, but with a New York accent that was confident, and suggested that between the hours of nine till five she used it with great authority. “

Rico: Oh no Miss, I like the company, and why should I let company pay?

He smiled and raised his glass. She smirked and raised her glass

Daniella: Because it’s the company that pays for it? Who do you work for?

He laughs and clinks glasses with her. “

Rico: I’m a director at The Mellon Corporation, yourself?

He took a sip of his glass and rotated on his stool.

Daniella: Marilyn Model, I design all their clothes, everything. Oh, and how rude for you not to introduce yourself

She looks the other way with a grin on her face. Rico holds a hand out.

Rico: My name is Rico, and I own a pawn shop down 33^rd. What’s your name?

He has one eyebrow raised. The woman turns around and shakes his hand.

Daniella: My name is Daniella; I’m a waitress at the Ritz.

They both laugh and rest their elbows on the bar.

Daniella: “So, how does a pawn shop owner like you manage to afford a tux like that in a place like this?

She asked with genuine inquisition.

Rico: Well, this Tux is my Daddy’s, and this drink?

He takes a glance around and shows her a metal hip-flask in his inside pocket.

Daniella: You sneak. I could get you thrown out for that

She threatens flirtatiously. He sniggers and looks her up and down.

Rico: Says the waitress. I know you all to well. You get dressed up in the same dress every night you go out; size too small, cleavage showing. Walk in with Daddy’s money or your daily tip, go stand at the side to look lonely as a cloud and wait for as long as it takes for an innocent sucker to walk over and buy you a drink. And boom, free night out. Am I right?

He smiled and supped.

Daniella: I guess I’m not the only one with the mask on Mr. Rico

She smiled, although her cover was definitely blown.

Rico: So, what made you make the first move tonight Daniella? My shoes have that million dollar shine?

He took out a small comb and mended his hair.

Daniella: Don’t flatter yourself. I was behind you in the queue. You were the only one in a hundred grand tux that wasn’t cruising straight through with the VIP crowd. Definitely something wrong with that. I guess you aren’t as blended in as you thought. You stuck out like a sore thumb. I had to laugh.

He looked at her with bright eyes and a defeated scowl.

Rico: Well. At least I’m not the only person here who doesn’t belong

He tilted his head and moved his feet as a fat, snorting banker with two stunning women slammed a hundred on the bar and walked away with a bottle of champagne so big it looked like an inflatable toy.

Daniella: So, Daniella, you fancy going somewhere a bit more our scene?

He got off his stool and held his hand out. She frowned her eyebrows and leaped off the stool; she looked at the barman and smiled.

Daniella: Hey!! You!! Two of your cheapest beers!!

The barman took a step back and foraged around a fridge and took out two bottles of Budweiser that looked like they had been there for months.

Barman: 6 Dollars

Daniella scowled and took a crumpled five dollar note out of her purse and threw it at him. She laughed and grabbed Rico’s hand and pulled him towards the dance floor. They barged past the penguins and princesses, and she took off his jacket and bowtie, throwing it to the side.

Daniella: You want some real music Rico?? Give me a twenty

She shouted. He shrugged his shoulders, but beamed a smile at her, before handing her the money.  Daniella walked over and whispered something into the singer’s ear, before slipping her the twenty.

Daniella: You know it?

She asked, and the singer nodded. The singer started singing Poker Face by Lady Gaga, and the dance floor swiftly emptied. Daniella walked back over to Rico planted a kiss on his cheek.

Daniella: This a little better Rico?

She asked whilst laughing.

Rico: Sure, I get a little sick of Copacabana after a while

The two of them danced manically right in the centre of the dance floor to looks of pure distain and disgust from the clientele. Daniella took her hair piece out and her long blonde hair flowed out in all directions, she then kicked her heels off, which knocked glasses off tables and ruined million dollar poker games. After the song had finished, security guards dragged them out the building and pushed them outside into the street. Rico and Daniella were laughing so hard they sat on the floor to avoid suffocating.

Daniella: Oh my god that was fun

Smiled Daniella. Rico nodded and helped her to her feet.

Rico: So, Daniella, how about we go somewhere where two crap wage waiters belong huh?

He winked at her.

Daniella: Ha, so you ain’t got no pawn shop huh?

She laughed at his ploy.

Rico: Nah, I’m as poor and pathetic as you are

She spat on her hands and ruffled his hair up, before clutching his hand and dragging him down the street.  The two of them laughed into the night under the New York City stars and just for tonight, 2 waiters in a bubble of greedy bankers, reveled like millionaires. 

3x3

I wrote this piece on a creative writing website, I listened to An Ending - Ascent by Brian Eno whilst writing and thought it was a very moving stimulus to the piece. The character of David, lives on his own with his Father, who has entered an extreme depression after his wife and other son left them.

Rain can only hit a window for so long before it loses its therapeutic touch on a dark and depressed mind. Those drops that you recreationally race with lack of anything else better to do merge together with other more static drops like all those brain hammering worries in your head that you swear will one day give you some kind of brain cancer. Sometimes helps if the room you are bored to tears in is lit up, but your family, or what’s left of it hasn’t paid the electricity bill this month. So everything in the room seems to form the same colour, a blurred, horrible grey through eyes as watery as the soaking mist. There’s no life out there. There’s no life in here. Everything…is lifeless…David’s cheek was pressed firmly against the window and most definitely his ribs were also. Those bones tapped the glass as he moved to seek even the smallest amount of comfort. He would pray for some form of blubber in between his flesh and bone, even if there was no love between the flesh and bone sat behind him. His father wore jeans that were days, no weeks old. Stained. He wore a bib made out of vomit as nutritious as paper and clutched a bottle of something as fresh as a rotting crow. Only David would prefer the pot pourre of the crow above the sweaty, fecal odour that filled the room. His own Dad, a magic tree that grabbed every sense of your body and made them eat shit. He sang with almost choir boy clarity and innocence...

David: Ave Maria….

Christianity was a device created out of faith of something higher that would offer salvation in times of great desperation. Those who decided to forsake this system were said to be confined in a fiery, burning hell of eternal pain. Fire burns the skin, perhaps 3rd degree burns, maybe creates blisters. They heal though, you might go pale with the pain and your eyes water. The burn may scar the skin, but it always stops hurting. Always stops hurting. David always stops hurting. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, yeah right, what doesn’t make you stronger certainly doesn’t bring you to life either. This house, buried alive in a weather front predicted by scientists, but how can one see in so much moisture? How can one get any bearings in visibility so poor? The space around you is what? 3 feet by 3 feet? Then it’s just a void. Everything you have in your life seems to just be in that small space. Everything that matters anyway. Your heart, your brain, your thoughts and your memories. You can’t fit casino’s and big sports cars in that amount of space. A billionaire is as poor as the tramp in the fog. David let out a small smile. What you can’t see can’t harm you. He backed away from the window and sat on his Father’s knee. He grabbed the bottle and took a swig of the liquid. He choked and shot straight up, spitting the spirit on the floor as if it was a possessive demon. Only the demon, even if it was Satan himself, would have walked into that room and would have felt immediately redundant. David flushed his nose out and prodded his Dad. 

David: Wake up Daddy…

No? Never mind. It hadn’t worked yesterday, or the day before that…or the day before that. He traversed the mess on the ground and picked up the receiver on a black phone. No dial tone.

David: Doctor please. My Daddy hasn’t eaten his dinner yet. He likes to look at it though.

His dinner, he did eat it, but then decided to wear it

David: He’s still asleep. I thought if I have some of the juice he has in his hand I might fall asleep with him. It tasted yukky though. Bye Doctor.

The Doctor was busy. He’s always too busy. David put the phone down and sat by the window again, clutching his knees.

David: Daddy, I thought we could go visit Drake tomorrow? I haven’t seen him in so long and I would love to see him. Can we Daddy?

David smiled and felt ever so drowsy. His Father rose up from the seat and shook his clothes down. The vomit ran down his top like the crumbs did when he had his festive mince pie on Christmas Day. He sat beside David, the warm glow of the fire became the perfect 0 to the falling, white Christmas snow’s 1. The tree in the corner housed baubles as proud and bulbous as the breast of many a passing robin that day. David cuddled up his Father, his face nestled so comfortably into Daddy’s new jumper. He had been gifted a new book, one of his many Christmas presents. The book, “Stig of the Dump” sat in his Father’s hands like the Bible; he could read aloud like the greatest storytellers in history. The cover turned like winter into spring, the “new, fresh book” smell made David close his eyes, welcoming the sudden entrance into a fictional world.. It was just David and his Father, sat with legs stretched out in a space 3 feet by 3 feet, and it was only in that small, small space, where everything they held dear in the world at that time, was there. His Father read, stressing the right stresses, acting every line of the characters out with the delivery of the finest players that would take the stage at the Globe Theatre in London to a standing ovation by the richest in the land. David dozed off to sleep, his eyes just glimpsing the frolicking reindeers on his knitwear as he drifted off…

Rain can only hit a window for so long…

My name is Graham Thirkill and have been interested in creative writing since my school days. Over the years I have written numerous things such as stories and scripts. I have a degree in Performance: Theatre from York St John University and have undertaken scriptwriting classes at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. I will compile my work onto this blog as a method of letting others read and perhaps give feedback, and as a tool for myself to reflect on. So have a read :)