The guest house is called The Wandering Albatross. 

She tells him that by the age of fifty, a single of these birds may have flown the equivalent of nearly 149 times around the globe. 
He tells her he has always wanted to fly in his sleep, but his brain is too hypervigilant.

The man on reception is coiled up with pussy-cat eyes, gifts them a cheshire grin with their keys. Paisley carpet climbs the stairs. The bed in the room is a gape of tartan. Lily soap white as stars. Two coloured glasses on the pristine sink to bring summer to their tap water. 

Far too late to eat, the tiger on reception informs when they emerge salmon-skinned from showering. They take in the dining room all the same as though domesticity is theirs for the taking. It has a fast-food feel with its red vinyl, gingham kitchen tablecloths.
She lusts for hot dogs and popcorn. He is after duck parfait. 
When she says she could murder something cheap he tells her how fast-food restaurants use car oil on pancakes instead of maple syrup: for viscous makes better billboards. Aesthetics are never what they seem, she says, even when it concerns gourmet.

He promises they might have a slow bath together in the morning. 
An oxymoron she cannot answer.

When he goes in mouth on mouth, he is grabby, he is rushing. 
He moves through her like a ghost in an abandoned building and she emerges less touched for all his touching.

She plays at host. Tips two sugars, four buttons of milk into his post-coital tea. 
Doll’s house cups, he says. They play at being grown-ups. He chinks enamel against hers. Salut, he says, and when she says nothing, he says, now there’s a good girl, say Salut.

Building a roll up with peaty tobacco, he thumbs out lumps, he rolls, he licks. 

He tells her she would be easy to hide because she leaves no marks anywhere and she reminds him this is a one off.

There is poetry in his plush mouth. His voice is a cathedral.

When the street outside picks up with night noise and the fuzzy vocals of the passersby start unspooling, he surrenders to sleep. The thermostat in the room starts climbing. A belly of a moon blues up the sheets with light, but he is adrift elsewhere. 

She cannot comprehend a man sleeping without pillows. One of his legs is in the eiderdown, the other one out, the muscle in his buttocks a conch. Yin and yang.
Sleep gazing always makes her soften.
She watches him for an age. Outside, people get lairy. The city is a snapdragon: opening. 

Grizzle on a man’s face makes her admiring. Time has been taken with the art of his razor. He reaches an arm out to viper across her ribs and she wonders if his unconscious knows that he is not holding the woman he married, and if he bathes with her until the water feels glacial, their fingers and toes corrugated, or if his wife has ever taken a blade, delicately, to the rainbows in his beard to mark out rustic fields, lines of agriculture.

Eyes widening, he tells her he dreamt about the albatross. How its under-parts were clean white, feather tips arctic black. That in order to gain height it turned to face the wind, rising on the updraught until it could rise no more, then it tipped downwards, accelerating quickly, ready for another turn. He tells her he has never heard wingbeats like it.

In the red room, their eggs are served sticky, four lemon suns. An army of soldiers for dipping. She wipes yellow off his chin bristles, tongues her finger. 

She tells him he couldn’t have heard wingbeats in his sleep, because the albatross glides hundreds of kilometres a day without a single thresh of its wings.  

***

Rachael Smart writes short prose and memoir. Recent work has been published at Ink, Sweat & Tears. She is bang into issues of desire and ever so fond of neologies. 

X Link: @SilkOctavia_@smartrachael.bsky.social