The Disillusionists. cont'd...

Inside the house I was lookin' at an enormous stuffed polar bear holding two over-sized spider plants. Muted electronic music emerged from somewhere in the basement. The bear had a limp noise-maker in it's mouth and the rug under our feet squidged with water. There was a moldy dope smell in the air and a dim blue light coming from the kitchen. "This guy really likes to set the 'tude, don't he?" I said to May with a smirk on my face. She got all serious on me and glared,
"Mike." She hissed, "His name is Mike."
I followed her through the overstuffed living room which apparently had not been used in years. We went into the kitchen past a huge stack of dirty dishes and stopped at an industrial sized fridge where May unearthed a couple of shit Heineken and half a bottle of white wine. The kitchen rivaled one of say, a small hotel. It had an island with pots hanging over top, a genuine butcher's block stood at one end with half a loaf of bread upended on it ringed with a years worth of crumbs and probably mouse turds. The blue light came from a big Triumph clock ringed with neon above the counter. We followed the music down a set of stairs to the basement.

There, in a long, low-ceilinged room sat three people in front of a huge plasma screen television. They failed to acknowledge or even look at us. They were watching some nature progamming about birds while listening to the stereo. The only lights on were spotted on a pair of ornately framed prints on the far wall depicting two men dressed in curtains. They looked old, the paintings that is. They seemed alive as the light from the television flashed across them.

There was a pool table beside us and I rolled the cue-ball across it to see if that would gather their attention. May didn't seem to want to disturb them and we kind of stood there like a couple of idiots for a second or two.

"Was pre-historic man colour blind?" said a voice and then I realized it was the sound of the television turned up over the stereo. "What other animal sees things in colour? They may be more attuned to movement, to pick prey out of the savannah - but a lot of what goes on in people isn't so obvious and we are given colour to compensate, to read or surroundings and to help determine or interpret the thoughts of others..."

I looked back at the paintings. They glowed. The sleeves of the dude on the left were three dimensional. Their depth and blood red colour stood out as opposed to the guy on the right, who was reserved and drab. It was not a painting that would stand on it's own, or if it did, it would certainly appear to have more merit than it did now - next to a masterwork - where the hell did that thought come from? The effect was gone and I took a deep breath, back among the living.

May made little waving motions with her arms until the guy in the middle relized we were there.

"Oh hey, entre vous..." he said like a fag. The two others, a chick and some guy swung their heads for a moment and then turned back to the screen.

"You must be Gunther." He climbed out of the couch and walked over with a long arm stretched in front of him.

"Yeah hey, my friend's call me Grunter." The dick on the couch let out a little smirk.

"Good." Mike looked me up and down. "Very good."

May came in for a hug and kissed the dude on the cheek, she turned back to me, "G, this is Mike. Mike, G."

"Grunter."

"Sit down Grunter," motioned Mike towards the couch, "this is Jay..." Jay stared straight ahead, "and this is Alexis."

"Hey Alexis." I waved at her like a schoolboy.

"Hello," she said, not meaning it.