© 2023 Richard Taylor
There is an empty wine bottle standing next to the kettle. A nice one. Côte du Rhône Villages 2019 from M&S. But, never the less, empty...
"Bollocks" he thought.
The empty bottle was a reminder. Mark's party invite. "Bring a bottle". Which, he was fairly sure, implied a strong preference for bottles which contained intoxicating liquids. Not air. As this one by the kettle was stubbornly doing.
Miles sighed. He had two options. Buy one on the way, or turn up empty handed. No, three. Three options. Buy one on the way, don't buy one, don't go to the party.
Where would he buy a bottle at this time of night? Supermarkets were shut. The ones with decent wine for reasonable prices anyway. So it would be a "convenience" shop. Which was a lottery. Even an expensive wine there might be shit. And the cheap wine would deffo be shit.
Mark would know instantly. And if it was a shit wine he wouldn't ask what I wanted to drink... he'd just say "Thanks! Let me open this for you!" and I wouldn't be allowed to pollute anyone else with my poor choice: just in case they thought it was Mark's choice. Bloody Mark the wine "connoisseur" brackets self-taught.
Miles picked up the empty bottle and lay it on the floor. He gave it a strong twist and set it spinning. At first he didn't care if it stopped pointing toward him, which would mean "stay at home", or pointing away, which would mean "go to the party". But as the bottle started to slow Miles began hoping quite strongly it would select the home option.
On the hard wooden floor the bottle seemed to spin for a very long time. But eventually, it did stop, pointing more towards him than away... just.
"Fate has made her decision" he announced to himself.
Which was lucky, since he knew if it had gone the other way he would have probably gone with a best of three. Or just over-ruled. He didn't even like Mark very much anyway. Pretentious idiot.
A couple of hours and 1.5 beers later Miles found himself reflecting on his choice. It wasn't the spinning bottle that chose, it was the bottle being empty in the first place. He'd put it by the kettle days ago as a reminder and had ample opportunity to buy a full one but hadn't. Why?
The obvious answer was that he'd never wanted to go to the damn party in the first place. Except that wasn't true. Normally he did hate Mark's parties, yes. But this time he was making an exception because he knew that Mary would be there. So, was he afraid that Mary might reject him? If he'd drummed up enough courage to ask her out, as he'd planned.
Of course, asking someone out at a party was a bad idea anyway. They were already out. And so were you. With them. So it was like asking for a second date on a date. But not really, since you didn't invite them on the first. So it was more of a zeroth date. Or a pre-date. Or... Mark's party that you both just happened to get invited to, even though you both didn't like Mark.
A third beer beckoned. Maybe that would help clarify his options.
Instead of worrying he decided to watch some TV. There was a movie that kept getting recommended on the Netflix. He'd avoided it because it didn't look like his thing. Far too lacking in shooting and chasing things. So when it came up again he artfully dodged it and went to the section devoted to movies on shooting and chasing things.
By the time he got to the end of the row and wrapped round to the beginning again, Miles had finished beer 3. He stomped off to the fridge to recover the fourth and final member of the quartet that he'd deposited just in case the party didn't happen. For some reason.
"OK" he thought. Let's give this a go. It was called "A Girl and an Astronaut". If the nice people at Netflix thought he might like it, then he might like it. Right. It's not a movie, it's a series. Hmmm. Only 6 parts and they are quite short. And it's in Polish.
"Subtitles are OK" announced Miles to the world.
There was a further hitch when the bottle opener went missing for nearly 20 seconds but, disaster averted, Miles sat down to watch the video extravaganza: which he was now convinced had virtually been commissioned by Netflix exclusively for him.
He fell asleep somewhere near the middle of episode 2.
Saturday morning was his alone. A mild hangover tried to butt into his internal monologue, but the repeated shouts of regret at not seeing Mary drowned it out. Would he have a whole weekend of this, again?
Mary was lovely. Yes, he knew that. Urgh. Miles did not want another weekend, not even another day, of agonising over the pros and cons of asking her out. He made a firm decision to ask her out on Monday as soon as he saw her at work: or sometime in the morning at least; the afternoon at the latest; definitely before the end of the day.
He started to visualise the meeting and what he would say. Before he knew it most of the morning was gone. Damn it.
As usual his plans were to go out on Friday and then see where that took the weekend. So now he had no plans. The remaining 36 hours of the weekend loomed large ahead of him. Maybe Murray was up for doing something?
His phone was lying face-down on the bedside table. It's response to being handled was complete darkness, the battery was empty. Since the charger was in the living room Miles had no choice but to get up. "OK world, you win" he muttered out loud as he swung his legs out of bed. Then "Ow" much more loudly as he stepped on the belt buckle attached to his trousers discarded there the night before.
On a diversion to the kitchen to find a plaster for the very small but awkwardly placed cut on his foot, Miles found his phone charger by the kettle and plugged it in. Lucky that he'd come in here, otherwise he'd have been looking all over the living room for it.
The switch made a strong "click" as he pressed it. Miles stared at the socket. For quite some time. He had made that happen, hadn't he. But. But what? What was bothering him so much about this bloody switch?
Miles walked slowly to the bathroom. The cut on his foot made him limp a tiny bit, which he didn't notice in the slightest. There was a large plain mirror above the sink. The reflection was clearly him but he felt a need to inspect every detail carefully. He started mentally describing himself.
Was that a beard? Miles didn't think of himself as a bearded man. Some men chose to grow a beard whilst others, like him, just let the gap between shaves get a bit too long. Right now he chose to shave it off. Where was the gel?
He froze. It was happening again. Every time he made a choice the state of the world around him decided if he acted or not. Suddenly he felt cold and hot at the same time and his heart was beating too fast for a man who isn't running away from a lion. Miles had an immediate and crushing sense of being very, very, very small.
Miles looked himself in the eye. "It's all clockwork" he whispered quietly. Tears formed and paused stubbornly before rolling down his cheeks dramatically.