Chapter 20
Kate rounded on her guest as soon as they were both inside her flat with the door closed and Kate could be reasonably certain that Neil wasn’t going to sneak back out of his flat and lurk disapprovingly half way up the stairs. The continuing thumping of his bass was at least her guarantee of privacy. “All right,” she said fiercely, “so what is the deal with the eagle then? What is the deal with all the street lights? Huh?” The Norse God of Thunder looked at her awkwardly. He had to remove his great horned helmet because it was banging against the ceiling and leaving scratch marks in the plaster. He tucked it under his arm. “What is the deal,” continued Kate, “with the Coca-Cola machine? What is the deal with the hammer? What, in short, is the big deal? Huh?” Thor said nothing. He frowned for a second in arrogant irritation, then frowned in something that looked somewhat like embarrassment, and then simply stood there and bled at her. For a few seconds she resisted the impending internal collapse of her attitude, and then realised it was just going to go to hell anyway so she might as well go with it. “OK,” she muttered, “let’s get all that cleaned up. I’ll find some antiseptic.” She went to rummage in the kitchen cupboard and returned with a bottle to find Thor saying “No” at her. “No what?” she said crossly, putting the bottle down on the table with a bit of a bang. “That,” said Thor, and pushed the bottle back at her. “No.” “What’s the matter with it?” Thor just shrugged and stared moodily at a corner of the room. There was nothing that could be considered remotely interesting in that comer of the room, so he was clearly looking at it out of sheer bloody-mindedness. “Look, buster,” said Kate, “if I can call you buster, what – ” “Thor,” said Thor, “God of – ” “Yes,” said Kate, “you’ve told me all the things you’re God of. I’m trying to clean up your arm.” “Sedra,” said Thor, holding his bleeding arm out, but away from her. He peered at it anxiously. “What?” “Crushed leaves of sedra. Oil of the kernel of the apricot. Infusion of bitter orange blossom. Oil of almonds. Sage and comfrey. Not this.” He pushed the bottle of antiseptic off the table and sank into a mood. “Right!” said Kate, picked up the bottle and hurled it at him. It rebounded off his cheekbone leaving an instant red mark. Thor lunged forward in a rage, but Kate simply stood her ground with a finger pointed at him. “You stay right there, buster!” she said, and he stopped. “Anything special you need for that?” Thor looked puzzled for a moment. “That!” said Kate, pointing at the blossoming bruise on his cheek. “Vengeance,” said Thor. “I’ll have to see what I can do,” said Kate. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. Aher about two minutes of unseen activity Kate returned to the room, trailed by wisps of steam. “All right,” she said, “come with me.” She led him into her bathroom. He followed her with a great show of reluctance, but he followed her. Kate had been trailed by wisps of steam because the bathroom was full of it. The bath itself was overflowing with bubbles and gunk. There were some bottles and pots, mostly empty, lined up along a small shelf above the bath. Kate picked them up one by one and displayed them at him. “Apricot kernel oil,” she said, and turned it upside down to emphasise its emptiness. “All in there,” she added, pointing at the foaming bath. “Neroli oil,” she said, picking up the next one, “distilled from the blossom of bitter oranges. All in there.” She picked up the next one. “Orange cream bath oil. Contains almond oil. All in there.” She picked up the pots. “Sage and comfrey,” she said of one, “and sedra oil. One of them’s a hand cream and the other’s hair conditioner, but they’re all in there, along with a tube of Aloe Lip Preserver, some Cucumber Cleansing Milk, Honeyed Beeswax and Jojoba Oil Cleanser, Rhassoul Mud, Seaweed and Birch Shampoo, Rich Night Cream with Vitamin E, and a very great deal of cod liver oil. I’m afraid I haven’t got anything called `Vengeance’, but here’s some Calvin Klein `Obsession’.” She took the stopper from a bottle of perfume and threw the bottle in the bath: “I’ll be in the next room when you’re done.”Х With that she marched out, and slammed the door on him. She waited in the other room, firmly reading a book.