I often wonder what became of the woman who gave me the egg. It's kind of a strange story, but since you asked me, well I guess it's about time I let you know.
We'd been seeing each for less than a month when Emma told me she wanted to break up. To tell you the truth, that was fine by me. I was bored, and already thinking about the next woman, and the next one after that. I'm hardly what you would call a womaniser, but I don't seem to have any problems getting women to go out with me, so the thought of sticking with just the one person makes me feel like I'm missing out. I guess I have that in common with a lot of people.
Like I say, I wasn't exactly heartbroken, so when she rang the next day and asked me to go over to her place, at first I said no. I thought she'd probably changed her mind and well, it was too late for all of that. But she insisted that I come, and in the end I could hardly say no. I'm not a bad bloke, even if I might come across that way sometimes.
I didn't see another living soul on the drive to her house, but somehow, despite being the only thing moving in the dead of the afternoon, I managed to be twenty minutes late. Knowing Emma as I did, I expected her first words to be 'you're late', possibly with the addition of '...again', for effect. I was wrong. She didn't say anything of the sort. She seemed pretty relaxed, which unnerved me.
I'd bought a bottle of wine with me, Co-op's finest. I wanted a drink and hoped it would lighten things up, but right from the start I could see that she had something else on her mind. In fact, she was so preoccupied that eventually I decided to come straight out with it, and asked her why I was there.
Her answer was to rummage around behind the sofa for a while, eventually emerging with a shiny, giftwrapped box, which she handed to me.
"Don't open it until you get home," she said. 'It's fragile, so don't shake it. You'll have to find a warm place for it."
"Warm?" I said. "What is it?"
"Something to remember me by," she answered. "I hope you'll take care of it".
Well that was it. Actually, I was touched. It was a nice gesture, and I tried to say something nice to her in return, something hopeful. Once again I'd got the woman all wrong. She told me straight up that she would never see me again. She was pretty matter of fact about it, and I wasn't about to get down on my knees and beg her, so I took my gift and walked.
OK, by now you're probably thinking, 'what's with this guy? Where does he get off being such an arrogant prick?' But like I said, I'm not a bad person when you get to know me. It's just I have this problem with women. They seem to like me, and I like them, but no matter how keen I am on a girl, once we've slept together a few times, I find I have nothing left to say to her. I've used up all my conversation trying to get her into bed in the first place, and I'm bored. I start thinking it's time to move on.
Take the girl I went out with that night. Clare. She worked in a shoe shop. First time I went to her place she opened her cupboard and showed me all her shoes. Pointy shoes, glittery shoes, painted shoes, sandals, trainers, you name it. She got a discount from work, of course, but really, it's weird, isn't it? Anyway, it was a problem for me because I didn't have the faintest interest in footwear, beyond the fact that I obviously wear shoes. I had two pairs back then, work and casual.
You see the problem. We had nothing in common. I only mention it because that night I took her to a bar in town and got her drunk. It cost me a bomb. She giggled her way through at least six cocktails, all with fantastic sounding names: Dark Side of the Moon, Maiden's Mercy, The Light Fandango, that kind of thing. When my money ran out I took her back to my place.
I told her she could keep her boots on if she liked. They were high heeled leather numbers, porno boots. She said she got them at a forty percent discount and collapsed onto the bed. Then she reeled upwards again, pulling something from underneath her. The gift. I'd left it lying there, forgotton all about it. Clare was no stick insect and the box was pretty well crushed.
"Oh shit, look what I've done," she said.
I took the box, scared now that she'd ruined something precious. Very carefully, I prised the lid off the crumpled carton, and peered inside.
It was an egg. A perfectly ordinary hen's egg. Amazingly, it was unbroken.
At length I turned to Clare and said, "It's an egg." I held it up in my palm.
"Don't give it to me," she slurred, "I'll probably smash it."
"It's just an egg." I said.
But I was intrigued. What was I supposed to do with it? Emma had said to keep it warm, so that's what I did. I made a little nest out of some cotton wool, and placed it on top of the radiator.
Clare thought I'd gone nuts.
"Put it in the fridge," she said. "Have you never heard of salmonella?"
"What if there's a little chick inside?" I said. She didn't want to know. She said there was no point in staying if I was just going to sit there all night gazing at an egg, and she left.
I just couldn't understand why Emma had given me an egg, of all things. It didn't make any kind of sense to me. Was it some kind of a joke? The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. It was like a riddle that I just couldn't work out. I spent all my time trying to decipher what she meant by it, if she meant anything at all. I even tried calling her a few times, but she never answered, and in the end it wore me out, listening to the phone ringing off pointlessly into empty space. No one knew where she'd gone. She had disappeared from the face of the planet, leaving me with just a small plain egg to remember her by.
Every morning when I went to work, I left it in it's little warm nest, and every afternoon when I returned it was still sitting there, brown, quiet, ordinary. One morning I saw a crack in it's shell. It was faint and shallow, but it had started. I rang my boss, told her I was sick. From then on, I stayed home. I didn't want to miss anything.
One way and another the days passed. I didn't see Clare. I didn't call any girls. For a while I stopped going out altogether. I didn't want to leave the egg on it's own. I suppose I became obsessed with it. I drank a lot of beer, watched a lot of TV. I thought about my egg. A lot. I didn't get it, didn't understand. Why an egg, of all things? I sat with it in my hands, rolling it carefully from palm to palm. The crack grew wider, the egg became more and more fragile and I wondered all the time what was going to happen to it next.
One Sunday afternoon I was sitting having a beer when the phone rang. It was Clare. I invited her over. I thought it would be good to see her, catch up with what was new in the world of heels and leather uppers. And it would do me good to take my mind off the egg for a while.
I had time for a shower before she got there, but in the bedroom, searching for a clean towel, I had to have a quick look at the egg. The crack had definitely got bigger, and I thought I heard some kind of sighing from inside it. I picked it up. It was moving, something in it was moving. It was getting ready to hatch, I could sense it.
When Clare finally arrived I hurried her through to the living room where I was nursing the egg. The first thing she said to me, after hello, was, "Christ, you're not still obsessed with that egg?' And she sighed loudly, as if to suggest that she just didn't know what to do.
"It's going to hatch," I said. I was a little put out by her tone of voice, but that was nothing to what she then came out with. She really let me have it.
"You're an idiot," she said. "I can't believe you want to sit there fondling that thing all day when you could be with me. You know your problem, you're obsessive. When we were going out all you could talk to me about was shoes, now it's bloody eggs. You're doing my head in."
"Thanks," I said. I have to admit I was pretty annoyed. Maybe she had a point, but I didn't need to hear it just then, what with the egg bobbing away in my lap, cracking open at last.
"Look," she said. "Don't think I'm trying to hurt your feelings. I just think you should stop acting like such a loser. And that egg..." Her sentence slipped away from her, suddenly, as if she'd dropped it on the floor.
"Yes? What about the egg?" I demanded. Then I looked at it and saw that it had broken open on my lap. Yolk dripped down my trouser leg. The egg had finally hatched into...something. I wasn't entirely sure what. It was very small, and covered in red and yellow yolk. I wiped it gently with a corner of my T-shirt, cradling it in my hands like a newborn mouse. It squealed. Gently I examined it. It had a face, with a wisp of dark hair at the top, two tiny dark eyes, a miniature button nose, and beautiful, perfect little pink cupid lips. It's minuscule arms ended in red fists the size of apple pips. It's toes were fat dots. It had a small, plump crease between it's legs. It's nipples were almost too small to see.
It wasn't a chick, anyway, that was pretty certain.
I very gently picked her up by her feet. She started to cry, and I was amazed at how loud the crying became. It was unmistakably the crying of a human infant.
"It's a girl," I said.
Well, that was it for Clare. She was out of there before I could snap my fingers. I couldn't blame her. You drop in on some loser bloke, wanting to give him a hard time, and there he is, playing with Thumbelina. That's got to make you wonder, hasn't it? This was going to be a problem, I thought.
But I'd promised to take care of it, this fragile thing. And that's how I got you.
I said it was a strange story, didn't I?
Copyright Georgina Bruce 2003
These boards will only accept one story at a time, other wise they just erase the content..in a few days, I will set up a website linked to The Dome to publish all these in one go...rather than create 5 pages..here..
