2.
In the distance two huge cranes stood like insane mechanical giraffes under the clouds.
As she squeezed the over-ripe fruit it swelled and burst open, revealing stringy orange interiors. She offered it up to his mouth and he bit into the dripping flesh, taking a huge sickly mouthful. The juices and chunks of broken fruit dripped down his cheeks down his clothes and he chewed and they laughed.
They were to be married. These two.
His first wife.
The ferry hummed and whirred. They sat at a plastic table and looked out over the water and the gray sky and the cranes and the universe. She thought the cranes resembled lobsters.
" i like your crooked nose"
she said, eyes wet, scanning his face.
" i like you boots"
The heels of her boots were worn down unevenly. She tripped on them often.
She was an extrovert, his first wife, a talented exhibitionist, a good dancer, a mischievous arch-prankster with mercurial eyes. She smelled like sweets and her body was lithe and nimble. They had been friends for a long time. The love locked in the eyes like invisible smoke passing between them. It was white fire held in the mouth of a crocus flower.
3.
The window creaks and I look out at the North Sea. It is foamy and cold and salty. It is too big to comprehend, surrounding us. We'll never understand it, so I take another swig of scotch from the bottle and think about something else. It's still dark. It's slate-blue, 6.38 in the morning, I still haven't slept. The blue slate sky stretches out towards Edinburgh. Scotland hovers before my eyes, scratching itself and waking up.
