The House

Chapter 21 - Day 3: The Cuckoo

For a second, I consider having my coffee black and bitter as well, just to see how the other side lives and all that, but I like my dirty dishwater sweet and milky.

The kettle boils with an ear-splitting shriek just when David steps forward and reaches up to take the clock from the wall. He grunts a startled expletive, almost smashing the clock in his fright, and I hurry to shut the kettle up. It scared me too the first few times it boiled, but I'm used to it now. David has apparently never met this kettle before. It does look rather new.

When I heard it the first time, I grabbed a weapon to defend myself and wondered why the hell it was necessary for an automatic kettle to kick up such a fuss when it's boiling since it switches itself off. Then I realised that it's actually pretty cool. It caters for people like me who always forget that they boiled the kettle for coffee and end up boiling it again and again because every time they remember that they were making coffee, it has already cooled down too much.

This kettle keeps me nicely on track while making coffee.

"Sorry," I whisper, peeking at David, but he is in the process of delicately freeing the clock from the wall. He lays it on its back on an open section of the kitchen island and resumes watching it, bent over it, braced by his arms, the palms of his hands pushed down on either side of the clock.

So much concentration.

I suddenly have a vivid image in my mind of looking up into his face from the perspective of the clock lying between his hands. My heart skips enough beats to render me temporarily unconscious, and with a gasp, I splash some boiling water around the mugs, barely managing to fill both.

That will teach me to try to multitask man-admiring and coffee-making.

David doesn't seem to notice my distress and incompetence; he is too enthralled by the beauty of the clock face. I'm feeling a little insulted now. I'm alive; I'm a woman; why can't he look at me like that? When he was looking at me just now, he didn't look enthralled at all; he just looked slightly amused.

I am completely insane!

Why should he look at me at all? He can gaze lovingly into the face of inanimate wooden objects all he wants. Is this jealousy I'm feeling? Can't be! I literally just met the guy, and that is a cuckoo clock! It's ticking, so it might have a heart, but still... it goes 'coo-coo' at random intervals!

"The hands aren't moving at all," David finally says, straightening and turning away from the clock to look at me instead. He frowns again, his lips quirking as if he wants to laugh when he sees me wrestling with a dishcloth, desperately trying to staunch the flow of the small waterfall I've managed to create on the edge of the counter.

He turns and disappears into the pantry, returning a few seconds later carrying the mop. It is still a little damp from my previous cleaning efforts, but he doesn't seem to notice. I should put it outside to dry out or it is going to smell bad.

I step aside when he lowers the shaggy head to the floor and soaks up my latest disaster.

"Thanks," I whisper, giving him a careless smile. No, I am not feeling embarrassed at all by the fact that a strange man is cleaning up after me.

"Thanks," he echoes me, taking the mug I hold out to him when he's done with the mop. He sits down on one of the bar chairs lined along two sides of the kitchen island when I do so. We're sitting on either side of a corner, the clock on the surface between us.

"You definitely heard it chime?"

He takes a sip of the coffee and doesn't pull a face or spit it out. Perhaps my coffee is just plain dishwater when I don't add milk and sugar to make it dirty.

"Yes," I answer, jumping to my feet to grab the tin of biscuits I keep with the coffee and sugar on the shelf in front of the windows. "I didn't actually see it chime," I explain, opening the tin and placing it within his reach before I take my seat again. "I just heard it going coo-coo among all the other dings and dongs and bongs," I clarify, but I don't think it's very clear because David is frowning again.

Frowning while he's grinning seems to be his default setting... at least while he's dealing with me.

"Makes no sense," he mutters and flashes me a reassuring smile when I'm about to feel offended. "It is clearly ticking... loudly," he adds, "but the hands aren't moving, and neither is the chain. By rights, it shouldn't be ticking at all."

As if on cue, the clock shivers, belching a warbled coo-coo and promptly spits its bird from the little window. It lands on the worktop with a soft thud and lies there wobbling while David and I stare at it.

In his fright, David crumbled the biscuit he was taking towards his lips. Tearing my eyes from the clock to look at him, I watch, mesmerized, as pieces of the cookie fall from his frozen fingers, landing near the clock's bird.

I half expect the expelled bird to jump up, shake its feathers and peck at David's kind offerings, but really looking at it now; I realise that it is not a bird at all.

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