Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 7.4

The next morning we woke up to Fred bawling his eyes out. I think I'd rolled over on him in the night.

"You could've killed him!" Sophie shrieked at me.

"What?" I wasn't really awake yet.

Fred's screams rose a notch.

"Maybe he's just hungry," I mumbled.

"You rolled on him!"

"Well it's not my fault. I was asleep. Can't you shut him up? Jesus."

"You shouldn't've done it then," she said, picking up Fred and holding him to her chest and glaring at me over the top of his head.

I rolled out of bed and left the room. I couldn't concentrate with that noise.

Later on, after Sophie and Fred had settled down, Sophie said, "You gotta make Fred a cot."

"Why?"

"He needs one."

"Why?"

"He can't sleep with us. It'll warp him."

"Says who?"

"Everyone."

I wasn't sure what she meant by warping him. I guess if I rolled over on him in the night I could squeeze him out of shape perhaps. Sophie told me later that you could do that to babies – that they were basically like putty. She'd found out about it from her magazines of course. But I don't know how she knew about warping when we first moved in, because she didn't have her magazines back then.

"He'll be okay," I said.

"What about when he grows up?"

I hadn't thought about that. Actually, it was the first time I realised Fred would grow up. I'd figured he'd just stay a baby forever. "He'll have his own bed then," I said.

Sophie crossed her arms.

"What?" I said.

"He needs a cot now. All babies have cots, everyone knows that."

"Alright, I'll make him a stupid cot then. Jesus."

She rushed over and gave me a hug and a kiss. "I knew you would," she said.

Bloody Sophie.

So I went out to the shed to make a cot for Fred. It ended up taking me a week. I didn't mind really, because I like building stuff, and I liked the shed with all the old tools and everything. I found a book on a shelf in the shed that was about making things. It was called 300 Projects for the Modern Handyman. By modern they meant the 1950s, because that was how old the book was. It smelled a bit damp. The pictures inside were all of people with crewcuts and thick-rimmed glasses. You could imagine that when they got excited they'd say gee-whizz! Anyway, there was a whole chapter on cot-making. I was very careful to follow the instructions, but I think I fucked up somewhere, because I had to add extra bits of wood, then I had to bash down all the nails that were sticking out so Fred wouldn't poke his eyes out. But after I'd painted it (green), it looked okay. Sophie even came down and wrote Fred on it in white. It smelled very strongly of paint, and I knew if we put Fred in it he'd probably pass out, so we left it out under the eaves for a couple of days until the smell went away. Finally, we dragged it upstairs and put some blankets and stuff in, and from then on Fred slept in his cot. It got Sophie off my back for a while at least.

After the cot argument we went into the lounge room and switched the TV on. I flicked through a few channels that showed empty rooms.

"Stop!" Sophie said.