Naughty

Read Time: 2 mins

“What are you doing?” 

“WHAT?” Christine’s head snapped round with the ferocity of someone who knows they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t but have no intention of admitting it.

“What— ” I gestured in her direction “are you doing?”

“No one said I couldn’t.” She eyed me like a hawk would a mouse.

I had been at the gym all morning. Most of the time when I’m at the gym and Christine has nothing to do, she gets bored and texts me. I should have been suspicious of her silence on this particularly fine Friday morning.

I had walked through the door to find her 5 months pregnant and precariously balanced on top of one of our high bar stools. She was hammering a nail into the ceiling. 

Christine was never one for planning or preparation and thus she had only half moved a variety of hazards out of the way. The aggressively hot halogen lamp was placed dangerously below her pony tail and if she was to fall she had a collection of soft objects to do so on: a wooden crate, a computer screen and the corner of the TV cabinet.

“What are you doing?” I said again.

“I wanted to hang up some cards.”

“And this is how best you felt you could achieve that?!”

“No one said I couldn’t hang cards.”

We stared at each other for a second. She suddenly got a glint in her eye and I could tell she thought she had had a genius idea.

“I’ve only been told that I am not allowed to lift things of over 5 kilos,” she said from atop her lofty, metaphorical and literal, perch.

“That’s because you’re still supposed to use some form of common sense.”

“What’s the danger in this?” She waved the hammer around and almost knocked the fire hazard lamp to the floor.

“What if you fall off the stool?”

“Now why would I do that?”

Sometimes I think she enjoys making my life difficult. It’s hard to argue with a pregnant woman because they are humans in their strongest and most unstoppable form. They’re creating and pushing out another human from within them. Who am I to say what they can or cannot do? Nevertheless, I knew she shouldn’t be doing this.

“So?” Christine smiled her most charming smile, “are you just going to stand around gawking or are you going to pass me some cards.”

I sighed, picked up the cards and, as I approached her stool, she accidentally dropped the end of the string she was holding. She watched dejectedly as the thread floated in the direction of the sofa. This clearly wasn’t the first time this had happened. She looked at me, debating her next move.

“Can you pass me that?” She asked, “my belly keeps getting in the way of the climbing.”

“It’s almost like nature has a way of telling you what you can or cannot do.”

“What the fuck does nature know?” Christine scoffed, wobbled around on her stool, and started hammering another nail into the wall.