Use as Wallpaper

Excerpt

Use as Wallpaper
Glenn Quigley © 2022
All Rights Reserved

Stuart stood outside the doors of the arrivals terminal, staring at the cheery app icons on his phone. Well, behind the icons, really, to the wallpaper—a photo of him and his ex-boyfriend on a ski slope in Switzerland. Two smiling men, both bearded, and dressed in bright, gaudy outfits. Him in a neon-pink number with yellow stripes, Ed in a heather-and-teal combo that looked less like a jacket and more like a deliberate provocation. Stuart had been meaning to change the photo for a while.

He was forty-one years old, six-foot tall, if anyone asked, and his hair would be receding and curly if he let it grow, but he found it too much hassle to maintain, so he just shaved it off once a week. He liked to wear suits but as he didn’t know the first thing about cuts or styles he went instead by colour and price. Well, price and then colour, truth be told. Someone once told him to dress for the job he wanted, and all his favourite television presenters wore suits, so who was he to argue?

He slipped off his baby-blue jacket and draped it over one of his arms. He’d always thought his arms were slightly too long for his boxy frame. He could never find sleeves that reached all the way to his hands, and so his wrists were perennially going commando, so to speak. He checked his reflection in the window of the arrivals terminal. He tried to put on a smile, but it didn’t quite take, and he ended up with a forced grimace that had something of the serial killer about it. A friend at a party recently described him as looking like the last puppy at the pound, and he’d been too embarrassed to ask her what it meant.

Behind him, a dark-haired woman in her twenties wearing sunglasses paced up and down, talking to herself. “Yes. Yes, I know. I will. If you would just stop… Because you keep telling me you need to practise your English, that’s why. I know he’s late, I…wait, I think I see him. Stuart Bird?” She ended her call and approached him with a practised smile and an outstretched hand.

“You’re my guide?” he asked.

“Ana,” she said. “I’m to accompany you to the village.”

“Is it far?”