The Nocturne

   I had just returned back to Bloomfield House at midnight after my shift at the Italian restaurant. This is the menial but functional job I had taken in desperation and in which I now worked as a  'commis-débarrasseur,' or 'garzone' as the head chef calls me when he is in a good mood. And when he is in a bad mood, (which is his most common disposition) he calls me the 'ratto della cucina' or the 'capro espiatorio,' the whipping boy.  I spend most of my evenings there now, at La fetta di Verita acting like a dishwashing robot. This evening was nothing particularly different to any other shift that I had spent,  half-comatose, and figuratively sleepwalking my way through, while everyone else is animated around me. The mechanics and the mind-numbing mundanity of the work were nothing new to me or especially special that night. I routinely washed the dishes in the restaurant kitchen, like a little clockwork toy, on my own, feeling and I expect looking like the numb, dumb, emotionless, and empty husk that I have become. No one really bothers me here. No one really speaks or notices me that much either.  I seem to haunt the place, acting like an automaton, a simple cog in the machine. and in truth, I like it better that way. That is not to say that my fellow worker bees aren't nice people.  They are, most of them are very pleasant and friendly (except for the head chef anyway) It is just, that this way I do not have to talk about how I got to this point in my life, the past, and why I am still living this way, and that suits me just fine. I often wonder what my old sociable popular self would make of this hollow hermit I have become? I suspect they would not get along very well. 

     Only occasionally does the head chef speak to me here, or more usually to shout at me to say "Hurry up you ragazzo assonnato." Or call me a "stupido ragazzo" for  being too slow at my work.  The only unique thing about this slow Monday night at the restaurant was that the manager had let me go  one hour earlier than I would normally finish, due to it being a quiet night on this graveyard shift. The manager had remarked that tonight I was acting especially sullen and downcast at my work saying he thought I was being about  "As lively as his grandmother."  He added, quipping, "And she's been dead for twenty years."  He also said that he thought I was being unusually quiet and about as communitive as  "A monk in a mausoleum."  But the truth was I did not feel like speaking much and I was too busy mulling over the events of my first day at Bloomfield House in my head to really speak to anyone that night. Besides I  could not wash dishes that did not need washing. The restaurant had been so dead that evening,  so empty, that there was nothing to clear away or clean. As it had been such a slow night the manager with some trepidation had let me go early. Also I was not a very productive addition to the workforce at the moment anyway as I had to clean up onehanded in order to try to keep the dressing on my hurt  hand dry. The manager eyed me curiously, faintly bemused by my struggling to wash a pot without getting my other hand wet. He had taken to calling me 'The one-armed bandit' recently in his feeble attempt at 'humour.'  So I began making may way back to Bloomfield House at this unsociable hour, through the dank and dreary streets of this part of London. 

    Bloomfield House is situated in quite a run down area and I did not cherish having to make my way through those streets alone. Even as a man it was harrowing and even though I pulled the red hood of my red top up over my head and no one seemed to bother me, it was still an uneasy experience. Occasionally a homeless person did approach me to ask me if I could "spare some change." But I had no change. I had no real money at all, not that I could spare and that was the truth. Occasionally I gave theses homeless people a few pennies, but as I too had faced eviction only  recently, I too was dire straits, with all of the money I earnt from my job going to Madeline for rent.   And I was damned if I was going to ask my father for help.

     Paige refers to this hour of night as  "The witching hour." And as I made my way across town it seemed oddly ominous that on my first night of staying in this new dwelling it had started to rain.