molar

Another chill Christmasy evening. My friend’s five minutes late. I buy a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She’s waiting outside St Paul’s. Every brick a shadow of another brick. The site of Greyfriars Monastery, demolished in the twelth century. Replaced by another and another and another. Stumps rising from the soil. Torn out, re-sown. A plot of land that might never again be left in peace. I bite on a crisp. Something’s wrong. It doesn’t feel like it used to. The place where the tooth has always been is empty. The gap feels like a loss. In the pub we talk about Uruguay. She tells me stories of friends whose parents were killed or imprisoned. Rosencof’s daughter doesn’t get on with her father. Only now, after four governments (We count them: Sanguinetti, Lacalle, Sanguinetti again, Battle) does her country have a government which is prepared to dig up the bodies. She knows the man who’s leading the excavations. Until these things are done, nothing will ever change. We talk about Polonio. She says it’s the only place in the world where she could take someone and say there is no running water, no toilets, no electricity, no comforts, and promise them they will have an experience they’ll treasure forever. I hand her my play to read. I remember the play has a line about multi-coloured plastic teeth. Solomon promises they are the shape of the future.