‘Happy Birthday Liz,’ Jane and Amanda chorused.
‘Thirty five, it doesn’t seem that long ago we were all in Uni.’
‘I’m really glad we’ve stayed in touch,’ Amanda confided.
‘The Three Amigos’ Jane toasted, ‘may we stick together forever.’
‘Liz, are you still seeing that guy, John or something, the librarian?’
‘No, another one that didn’t quite work out.’
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A little cafe in the centre of a large park was popular with the locals for its friendly staff and cakes you could die for. Amongst the regulars was an elderly gentleman, always smartly dressed in shirt and tie, trousers with a crease you could slice bread with, his shoes shining, not a smudge on them. He would arrive promptly at 10am and leave at 2pm and was always popular with the more mature ladies. The staff would watch amused as he charmed them, the ladies simpering at his flattery.
It was assumed that he was just lonely, enjoying the company. Over time the staff learned his name was Gerald and his wife had passed away some time ago. He had recently moved into a retirement complex. During the summer months he would sit on the bench outside talking to an old drunk, buying him a sandwich and drink. They would sit and chat for a while till the drunk disappeared off into the park. Wondering why he took the time, Gerald replied to his questioner that it could easily have been him .
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After long years of working on tedious and inconsequential office tasks, Bob was still rather puzzled about the end purpose of his job. He realized that he was a cog, but it was much harder to grasp which wheels he was helping to turn. So when the all-staff email asking for volunteers for redundancy slid into his inbox, Bob was uncharacteristically jubilant. He was first to volunteer.
‘What am I waiting for?’ he mused, ‘even if the deal leaves me a bit shorter than usual, it’s a relief not to do another 200 years on the same treadmill with no prospects’
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I can’t finish the game on my tablet. Usually I rattle through Patience, but tonight I’m flustered and keep putting the cards in the wrong place.
My mind is at the pier where two fifteen-year-olds scan the stars. ‘Way things are progressing that might be you and me one day up there in a spacecraft, Jade,’ he says. I feel again my shuddering at the thought of darkness, of being eternally lost in the void.
There’s a clicking noise. The monitor’s coming on.
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We wait, biding our time.
Such patience tests us, but this interlude is worth it, especially considering the prize on offer.
You barely even acknowledge us; we are the passing glance in the morning, the image used to check that makeup is applied correctly, or your necktie is straight, before you head out of the door to your dreary, coffee-fuelled, miserable, worthless lives.
We are your reflection in more than just the shallow sense of the word; we mark the passing of your years, day by day, second by second. Yet it is only in moments of occasional lucidity that you see us, shake your head critically and wonder where the twenty-eight-year-old that still lives in your head has disappeared to.
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It was a tragic sight, comical yet tragic.
As Harry waited by the bus stop, he gazed across the road at the crowd of hunchbacked goblins slumped in battered chairs, looking lost and bewildered.
Men in white coats walked amongst this sea of dithering heads, when one wrinkled nonagenarian cried out for her mummy. That soon set off the rest of those ancients, as they all wailed in incoherent distress.
God, it was a sin to keep them alive.
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Him
The waiting is the worst thing.
Worse than police officers knocking on your door while you’re having dinner with your wife, informing you as the steak in your stomach liquefies, that you’ve been accused of rape. Worse, even, than the look in your wife’s eyes when you admit that, yes, you slept with someone, but it meant nothing.
Worse than protesting your innocence to a bunch of strangers, like that stuck up old woman with the pearls. Her lips curled into a sneer when I called that bitch out for what she is. When I said she’d been pestering me all night in a slutty outfit, then jumped into my taxi uninvited and took me back to her place. When I described her saying she loved me afterwards, and going hysterical when I said I’m married.
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The day that Sergei became a soldier, Ivan felt the same fierce foreboding that he’d felt the year before when he watched his brother hurtling towards what looked like certain death.
Ivan remembered a snowstorm so heavy and ferocious that all that could be seen was a blinding sheet of white. During the whiteout the two boys spent time in the basement of their building cobbling together a few pieces of old wood to make a rickety toboggan. When they could finally go out, they’d carried it along a path flanked by piles of gleaming snow to a slope nearby. Ivan rode first, screaming with laughter at the freezing air slapping his cheeks as he careered downwards. Sergei did the second run, but the flimsy cart shattered halfway. Ivan watched as his brother was tossed in the air and catapulted to the bottom. Fear driving him, he ploughed frantically through waist high drifts to get to Sergei. By the time he got there Sergei was already standing up and brushing snow from his clothing. He shrugged away Ivan’s concern. ‘Nothing has happened. Wait before fearing the worst.’
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Dirty needles, paper cups and cigarette buts lie strewn across the cold concrete floor. The pungent stench of urine hangs heavy in the air. Nausea rises and I quickly move away. Tramping the streets in search of a place to rest my weary body, I settle inside a doorway for an hour or so on the edge of a seedy street with many empty buildings. I sit alone inside my well-used grubby sleeping bag and wait, waiting for a kind stranger to spare me a little change for a hot cuppa. I stare vacantly into space with nothing to occupy my mind. A few people scurry by occasionally throwing the odd penny or two onto the surface of the bag and I thank them for their kindness in a gruff voice. Strong feelings of loneliness combined with tiredness and fatigue weigh heavy. I am hoping that tomorrow might be different. Tired of the daily fight for survival, I begin to wonder if there’s any hope. I soon get moved on by the police. “You can’t stay here. You’ll have to move on”. I’ve become desensitised to this sort of treatment.
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I’m standing on the corner of East 125th and Lexington, just as I did all those years ago. It’s still a shithole. There are too many people, streaming ant-like from the Metro, where the 4, 5 and 6 lines rumble in from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. There’s no glamour here, just the press of humanity in its pointless pursuit of gratification. Each lump of flesh dotted on the broken pavements scurrying to unknown nirvanas, what’s left of their minds calculating, planning, seeking – all hidden behind frozen masks of hate. They don’t like what they are. They don’t like what they do, or say, or the music they listen to, or the food they eat, or the beer they drink. It’s all senseless.
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