They had squandered the last two days. One of them spent it riding a bicycle all over the island. The other had mostly slept, having been up late the nights before. But they had come to Ibiza to get some work done during the break, and this was their first attempt.
One sat looking out of the French doors, hoping that something would spark creative inspiration. A gull with a body part in its beak. A downed power line. The sun exploding, only funny. All that met him was the promise of a warm, relaxing day that he could not enjoy.
The other man enjoyed everything. He had his pipe, a silk robe over his cut off jeans, and slippers. He gazed at the wall with an idle concentration, making small pf pf sounds with his mouth around the pipe lip as he reclined on a pool lounge he had dragged to his apartment.
Apart from the occasional pf pf, nobody had said a word for the last 47 minutes.
The man with the pipe removed it from his mouth. "Plummet," he said with proper Cambridge diction.
"Beg your pardon?" the other man replied, wiping the back of his neck. He spoke with a high-pitched, almost helpless softness, as one afraid to offend, or be noticed-- a side-effect of his height.
"It's a good word, that. 'Plummet'. He said it again, slower, musing. "Plummet."
They both nodded, governed by the same inner rhythms. Silence took over again as the man without the pipe looked out the beckoning French doors. Anything? But the word echoed in his brain.
"Yes... yes, I suppose it is... It says it all, really. Encapsulates the fall itself, and suggests the messy landing."
"Exactly. The messy landing. The best part."
The man looking out the French doors laughed silently, smudging a nascent tear from an eye. "Puhhh-lummet. Plummet."
"They say it's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop."
"Well, yes, they would, wouldn't they? They're not wrong."
"They never are."
Sensing that they were getting off track, the man by the French doors unfolded himself from the stiff-backed chair. God, he was tall! Thin, lanky, yet he moved with an adept grace as he grabbed an empty glass and crossed the room in three strides, careful to avoid the other man's outstretched legs and slippered feet. The other man was tall, as well.
"Right, then--" he said, filling his glass with water from the fridge. "What plummets?"
"My socks," replied the slippered man. "My virtue."
"Your virtue hit rock bottom years ago. It's plummeting days are long past."
"I can always find new depths in Ibitha," he said, pronouncing it with a lisp like the locals.
"It's television-- let's think more visually. What plummets, which can be seen plummeting?"
"Members of the Exchange, having a bad day?"
"Yes," replied the man with the water as he returned to his stiff-backed chair. "There'd be a lot of them. A deluge of derbies." He regarded his glass. "Would water plummet?"
"Oh, no!" said the man past his pipe. "Dribble, maybe. Plop. Yeah, plop is as close you'd come to plummet, and it's really no contest."
"Frogs?"
"Oh, we're getting biblical. Frogs are well-known to plummet if there are Egyptians about. Sheep?"
The man laughed so abruptly that he had to put down his water. A loud "Haw!" of a laugh. The man with the pipe chuckled himself, pleased to have cracked his friend up.
"Yes..." the man by the French doors said as he recovered. "Sheep... and they're so fluffy, you'd think they'd bounce."
"Do you suppose, as they plummet, they give one long bleat? 'Mehhhhhhhhhhhhh!' Or lots of tiny little ones? "Meh! Meh! Meh! Meh! Meh!"
The man by the French doors had doubled over, heaving with laughter. He righted himself, wiped both eyes. and gasped with satisfaction. "The poor sheep," he said, breathlessly. "Just grazing in the field, and we have them plummeting."
"Don't cry for them. The unshorn bastards."
"We're doing them a favor" the man agreed, sipping his water. "Just standing around waiting to be eaten. Not a very bright future for the more clever sheep."
Now the man with the pipe laughed, a barking laugh. "Clever sheep."
"But why? Why are the suddenly plummeting? I mean, what's their motivation?"
"Because the mother sheep pushed them out of the nests."
The man by the French doors doubled over again. The man with slippers stretched out, laughing deeply.
"So," the man by the French doors wheezed as the laughter ebbed, "the sheep are laboring under the misapprehension that they are birds."
"Yeah."
"Where did they get that idea?"
"The clever one. Harold."
The man by the French doors laughed again, shifting his chair away from the beckoning day, his longing replaced by sheer joy. "I think we have something here, but I don't know what."
"Type it up, old cock. I've got plans tonight."
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