He is in actual fact quite sure the whole things irrational but he cant get the idea out of his head. He knows something about poultry-farming methods; hes been looking into it, and he knows that the chances of a fertilised and developed egg making its way into the retail chain are just about impossible. For starters if it was an egg from a battery-cage site then it stands to reason it wouldnt be fertilised. Due to the cages, that would be. And even on the organic or free-range sites they do have these incredibly strict inspection regimes. It would be a failure of what hes been reliably informed are very robust systems. Millions and millions of eggs are produced every single day.
It would only take one.
It started when he overheard a man in a café describing it actually happening to him. The man was the owner of the café. He was talking to a woman at the counter who was ordering breakfast. He told her that some years previously, when he was working in the kitchen, hed broken an egg and found a baby chicken inside. He described it in quite some detail, was the thing: how perfectly formed the foetus had been, with feathers and everything, how there was mostly blood and membrane where the yolk should have been. He told the woman it had quite shaken him up and hed been unable to cook with eggs from then on. The woman changed her mind about what she was ordering. Its a conversation he can remember very clearly. There were certain shapes the man made with his hands while he was describing it all.
But when he knew it had got really bad was this one time when he was staying with his wife at a B&B. It was out in the country somewhere and the landlady kept chickens in the garden. His wife had liked that. Shed thought it was very authentic. Only hed noticed that there was a rooster in with the hens, and then at breakfast hed found these dark-red specks in the yolks of their fried eggs. Tiny specks, to be fair, about the size of a pencil mark made with a very sharp pencil. But hed understood what they were. And the trouble was, he hadnt wanted to say anything to his wife, and he hadnt wanted to offend the landlady, and so hed gone ahead and eaten the bloody things. And then what was awful was that they were absolutely delicious: they were literally the freshest eggs hed ever eaten and they really were very good. Creamy and soft. Light. But at the same time he hadnt been able to stop thinking about the tiny dark-red specks. It was as if his imagination was a microscope, was the way he thought of it. And after that the whole trouble with eggs got serious, was what happened, was how he recalls it happening.
Its the anticipation which gets him. Even just thinking about it. Even nowhere near a cooking situation or an eating situation, just thinking about it at some other moment. The anticipation is what really does the damage. If he does happen to find himself in an unavoidable egg-breaking scenario, the tension is almost literally palpable. His stomach clenches, and his face more or less prepares to express disgust. Hell stand there with the egg held out at arms length, like what it might do is explode. Hell close his eyes, and brace himself, and crack it into the bowl or the pan, and then once his eyes are shut what he has to do is brace himself all over again to open his eyes and look.
If it could just happen, is what hes started to think. If he could get it over and done with. Then he wouldnt be all worked up with the anticipation. The reality of it might not even be all that bad, considering. Considering all the things hes imagined.
Sometimes hes imagined it happening with a hard-boiled egg. Picking off the shell, getting the salt and pepper ready, and then cutting through the firm white of the egg and making the discovery. On a picnic. On a train. At a business meeting. Or even worse, having served the hard-boiled eggs to a guest. In a salad, such as perhaps a salad of cos lettuce and rocket, with a dusting of paprika across the eggs, some quarters of very ripe tomato, parmesan shavings, an olive-oil dressing. The eggs still just warm enough to release the fragrance of the olive oil. The guest being the first to cut into the egg.
Or also hes imagined it happening whilst preparing a fried-egg sandwich. The oil heating in the cast-iron pan. The thick slices of white bread lightly toasted, buttered, and dressed with tomato ketchup. The tea brewing in the pot. Breaking the egg into the pan, looking away for one moment to grab the salt and pepper and then turning back to find it there just as the white begins crackling at the edges. And what would happen then would be the heat having the effect of making the foetal chicken turn over in the pan, or just twitch slightly. It would create an illusion, is what he thinks.
Or also hes imagined it happening whilst preparing a fried-egg sandwich. The oil heating in the cast-iron pan. The thick slices of white bread lightly toasted, buttered, and dressed with tomato ketchup. The tea brewing in the pot. Breaking the egg into the pan, looking away for one moment to grab the salt and pepper and then turning back to find it there just as the white begins crackling at the edges. And what would happen then would be the heat having the effect of making the foetal chicken turn over in the pan, or just twitch slightly. It would create an illusion, is what he thinks.
And, yes, he understands there are effective treatments available for phobias. He has made some discreet enquiries, is how he knows this, and how he knows these treatments to be mostly based around a programme of gradually increasing exposure and reassurance. But then what it comes down to is he cant imagine how this would be any help at all. In his particular situation. Which isnt something he likes to discuss, to be fair. He has cracked open plenty of eggs in the course of his life, so whatever it is he needs to do its not increasing his exposure, gradually or otherwise. Reassurance would be another thing. All these eggs hes cracked over the years and if anything the phobia is only getting worse. What he thinks is this is only logical. If the odds of it actually happening are one-in-a-million or one-in-a-billion or however high they are, then what follows is that with every egg he safely cracks open the probability actually increases. Hes not sure if the statistical reasoning of this is entirely sound. But he still cant help feeling that every egg brings him closer to the thing he dreads.
So he did tell his wife about all this, eventually. He had to tell someone, was the conclusion he came to. It didnt help matters, as it turned out. She was what he would call notably unsympathetic. It could be said to have brought things to a head between them. There was some mockery. There was a poorly executed hoax involving a childs toy. Also, a man with whom he was vaguely acquainted at work, a man who was later identified as a co-respondent in the subsequent divorce proceedings, made a barely audible clucking noise as they stood together in the canteen line.
He hasnt actually discussed it with anyone else since then, to be fair. Hes not at all sure it would help.
New York
New York
Okay. So there are these guys, these two guys, and theyre standing by the side of the road, waiting for something. What are they waiting for? We dont know what theyre waiting for. Not yet. Thats part of the suspense, okay? Okay. So theyre standing there, theyre looking kinda tired, kinda downbeat, yknow? Yeah. Regular-looking, I guess. The one guy, hes older, hes sorta late-forties, early-fifties, getting a little thin on top. Big mustache. No, forget the mustache. But he hasnt had, like, a shave, not in a while. Okay. And the other guy, hes a bit younger, hes in his twenties, hes kinda good-looking but rough around the edges with it, yknow? Also, theyve both got this kinda old European look about them, nothing obvious, not the mustache or anything but just enough that when they start talking we aint surprised to hear they got these sorta like thick Polish accents, yknow? You with me? Right. Only they cant both have the Polish accents, otherwise how come theyd be talking in English at all, right? So lets say the younger guy its more of a Slovak accent or something. I dont know. They got to have different enough accents that we accept them talking English when its obvious they dont talk all that much English, yknow what Im saying?
I told you already, New York. Its set in New York. Right.
So these two guys, theyre standing by the side of the road and theyre waiting for something. We dont know what theyre waiting for but theyre waiting. Thats the fucken suspense right there. They both got bags with them, these little plastic dime-store bags, with like a lunch-sack and a flask of coffee and maybe some work-clothes in them. So they look like working men, okay? They look like theyve been working all day. So we think maybe theyve finished work and theyre waiting for a ride home. And the camera pulls back a bit and we see a bunch of people waiting with them, same type of people, same clothes, bags, whatever, so we get a little context. But its clear that these two guys are, yknow, the guys. And its clear theyve been waiting a while, because as the camera pulls back a bit more and we see the fields and farmhouses in the background we can see its getting near that kinda summertime dusk that comes real late in the evening, like nine or ten in the evening. Five to ten, whatever. Fucken magic hour.
Fields and farmhouses, right. Yeah, like I said already: New York, Lincolnshire. Right. Lincolnshire, England. They got the original New York right there. Little two-bit place. Coupla houses and a shop and a long straight road that goes all the way through to Boston. Right, Boston, Lincolnshire. I told you this already. Flat fields. Bitter wind. Crows and shit in the trees. The works.
So. Anyway. We got these establishing shots: our two guys, the wider group, the empty fields, the skies and all that, right? So then we give it some of that testing-the-audiences-patience European-style time-passing, yknow what I mean, all that with the first he scratches his eyebrow, then he sniffs, then a tractor goes past real slow. All that. To establish the mood! To make sure the audience knows these guys are tired as all shit, and get them wondering whats with the waiting. Okay? And then were into the dialogue. This piece is all about the dialogue, you with me? So first up the one guy goes, Its cold. Right? And we just had a location caption saying, New York, so were kinda making the connection ourselves and hearing it as New York, its cold. Right. You with me? That ring any bells for you? Okay, so then they talk about the weather a little bit, and what time it is, and then they start bitching about how the supervisor or whoever is taking so long coming back with the mini-van to pick them all up and take them back to their place of residence. And the one guy says something about him never being early. And the other guy says how hes always late. You getting this yet? No? Theyre waiting for their van, right? Van, man, whatever. We get right into the dialogue and theyre all talking about how hard the days been, like picking whatever it is theyve been picking in the field all day long, like cabbages or something, I dont know, onions and celery and all that, some real back-breaking dawn-till-dusk shit and now the supervisor has left them stranded while hes all off down in the village or whatever. The village. Right. Exactly. Youre with me now. So theyre talking about how theyre sick of it, the working conditions, the money, all that. And the audience get to wondering about the dialogue, like how come it sounds so awkward and disjointed, and like, all right already so these guys are foreign but that dont really explain it, theres something else going on, something kinda funny, and some of these lines sound kinda familiar. All right. So the younger guys doing most of the bitching, but the older guy, hes the wise one, hes giving it all that you-do-what-you-gotta-do, and the younger guys not having it so he gets to saying thats it, thats enough already, hes out of there, hes leaving today. And then the audience are like, right, now we get it. Okay? You with me? They dont got no words of their own, theyre just saying all this second-hand shit they heard on the radio, and theyre making us think of the new New York, the one we all know about, the one which is, like, built on immigration and exploitation and the hard fucken labour of the huddled masses like our two friends right here.