Tales from the tub - Abigail (Abi)

Abigail (Abi)

Running her hands through the back of her hair, wrapping her fingers intricately and determinantly around the blond strands she gripped and she pulled,

"AAhhh," shrieking distress, even this was not enough to vent her frustrations.

Getting up she paced backwards and forwards through her flat. Abi was successful, successful by everyone's standards but her own. At 32, she had a successful legal practice, small but her own, sufficient to buy her own apartment. She had travelled the world to acquire trinkets and laboriously furnished her space to her liking. She had everything. She wanted for nothing.

Ani Defranco, over her speakers as she paced,

"I have everything I want, still I want more," sang the siren. Abi pulled harder on her hair, as if she was trying to pull subconscious thoughts out through her follicles.

"AAhhh." That one hurt. A clump of hair in her hand and it hadn't worked, she had gotten no closer to the answer she was trying to retrieve. The answer to a question that many of us ask ourselves and rarely answer honestly. "What is it I really want, how can I have everything and still want for something...?"

A baby, she thought, I'm 32, I must want a baby. no, no ,no. A new car, is that it? My old Mazda is a bit ordinary, and I can afford it. no, no, no. A holiday, I've never been to Tahiti, perhaps the answer is a holiday? no, damn it, no. A new lover, she cut herself off there, god no!

"Libiamo, libiamo ne'lieti calici
che la belleza infiora.
E la fuggevol ora s'inebrii
a volutt"

In perfect tenor through her window, through the monotony of her thoughts. Standing stock still, her body, led by her left ear, elongated towards the sound like a petal to the sun.

Rag clad, head to toe, there was this man. 'La Traviata', at the top of his lungs, passionatly, making a concert hall of an inner urban street.

Passion, she realised, that's what I need. This man has nothing but a passion, I have everything but no love for any of it.

That night Abi went to bed with a greater sense of purpose. When she woke. Nothing changed. Let's face it, this wouldn't be a realistic tale if it had. But ever after when Abi felt trapped and lost in her perfect world, she would hear 'La Traviata', drawing strength from the potential embodied in one vagrant man's passion.