Absolute Zero Cool Read Online Free Page B

could hell be?’
    ‘Point taken.’
    I met Cassie through a lonely hearts column. What I liked about her advertisement was that she required asoh. Most people specify a good sense of humour, but Cassie wasn’t fussed. Laughs are laughs, she said.
    Most people say they’re first attracted by a sense of humour, the implication being that physical appearance is of secondary importance because beauty is ephemeral. The assumption here is that a sense of humour cannot age, that humour is immune to wrinkles, withering or contracting a tumour. People presume the things they cannot see – hope, oxygen, God – do not change, grow old or die.
    A sense of humour is like everything else: it serves a particular purpose and then converts into a new form of energy. The trick is to be fluid enough to go with the flow and deal with each new manifestation on its own merits.
     
    •
     
    ‘You might want to scrap the next bit,’ I say. ‘It’s an excerpt from that novel Karlsson was writing.’
    ‘Any good?’
    ‘Not really. Mostly they’re just doodles, scraps of ideas.’
    ‘Can we salvage any of it?’
    ‘Not really. To be honest, they were meant to be rubbish, to point up Karlsson’s delusions of grandeur. And as far as I know, they were the bits that put Jonathan off. With the pervy sex, like.’
    ‘Colour me intrigued. Have on, Macduff.’
     
    •
     
Sermo Vulgus : A Novel (Excerpt)
 
Cassie, my elbows skate in ungainly loops across the cheap varnish of this plywood desk as I write to unremember. The flat white sponge soaks up the words. Cassie, bury me in a cheaply varnished plywood coffin. Then look beyond the past. Train your eyes to see beyond the horizon of what we used to know, all the way back to where our future ends.
Cassie, we should have danced together, once at least, but you stumbled over words like ‘imaginings’.
Did I hate you really? Did I choose you for the exaggeration of your form, for the overflow that allowed me to wallow in the cosy warmth of incestuous oblivion? Were you really the mother I never had? Withdrawal was always the sweetest relief as I slid out and away to limply drift back to the world.
Cassie, why did I want you only when you were lost?
     
    •
     
    ‘Dump it,’ he says.
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘All that incest stuff, Jesus . . .’
    ‘I already said, it’s gone.’
    ‘What’s next?’
    ‘You get your first official warning.’
     
    •
     
    The old new orders were, no smoking inside the hospital. The new new orders are, no smoking on hospital grounds. So the cancer counsellor makes an official complaint. If he had made a verbal complaint, I’d have received a verbal warning. An official written complaint results in an official written warning. My supervisor tells me this as he hands over the written warning.
    ‘What about the rain forests?’ I say. ‘Don’t cut down trees for the sake of an official complaint. If you have to make an official complaint, send me an email, or text it. Or recycle. Just send out the written warning on the back of the last one.’
    ‘There’s procedures,’ he says. He wears a buttoned-up stripy shirt under a v-necked sweater, his hair greasy where it straggles over his collar.
    ‘Get a haircut,’ I say, ‘you look like a sleazy monk. Smarten up, unbutton that top button. Being married is no excuse.’
    I do not say this. What I say is, ‘How about the far end of the overflow car park, the one the cheap bastards use when they don’t want to pay for parking in town?’
    ‘Karlsson, there’s no smoking anywhere on hospital grounds.’
    ‘You can’t even see the hospital from down there.’
    ‘It’s the rule.’
    ‘Look, I can run with the logic of no smoking in the hospital, but––’
    ‘Karlsson, if I catch you smoking anywhere on hospital grounds, you’re fired.’
    ‘Okay. So when do we stop the consultants drinking anywhere on hospital grounds? Like, when do we start testing the surgeons’ coffee-flasks when they drive up in