OOIOO

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: OOIOO/THOUSAND PALMS QUARTET AT CORSICA STUDIOS, ELEPHANT AND CASTLE – 11/4/20 - CANCELLED

“When are you going to die?” says daughter. We are having breakfast. Coco Pops. That’s what we’ve been eating for breakfast recently. Some mornings I have as many as three bowls, and then eat a bagel and biscuits afterwards. 
  “I don’t know,” I reply. “Why do you ask?”
  “Because when you die,” she says, “I’ll be all alone.”

“What day is it?” says wife.
  “Friday?” says daughter, who clearly has no idea.
  “No,” says wife.
  “Saturday?” 
  “No.”
  “Sunday?”
  “No.”
  “Tuesday?”
  “No, it’s Wednesday.”
  “Oh,” says daughter, as if it matters.

“Ugh,” I say at dinner, “how long is this going to go on for?” 
  “Eighteen months,” says wife definitively, without hesitation. Wife is in this for the long haul. She looks at me meaningfully. “Eight hundred and fifty-four today,” she says. She won’t say “deaths” in front of the kids. They are only young and we try to shield them from mortality. 
  “That’s a lot, isn’t it?” I say. I am trying to show an interest, to show some kind of human feeling, but it doesn’t come naturally. I find it hard to show human feelings about things that have nothing to do with me. “It’s a dreadful number.”
  “And it’s going to get a lot worse,” says wife.

“The days are merging into one long day,” observes wife later, as we are showering. The days are merging. Individual days are losing their essential character. It seems impossible, and unnecessary, to distinguish between them. They are combining to form a sort of day soup, or day stew, or day smoothie, whichever you prefer.
  “It’s horrible,” comments wife.
  “I quite like it,” I say.
  “I know you do. You always like things that everyone else hates. That’s your style. It’s infuriating.” 
  It’s true. Wife knows me so well. I’m a contrary sort of person. I can’t help it. I really can’t.
  “Ooh,” I say, “you’re such an angry young woman.”
  “Well,” replies wife, “you’re the most passive, flaccid prick I’ve ever met.”