I walk around my own little “space between” and straighten everything, catching parallel lines and matching them up to other lines, like the edge of the carpet with the sideboard, the table with the edge of the carpet and the sideboard. Crouch down. Oops! That’s got to be out by two millimeters. I dust and vac just to make sure and straighten the cushions. Then I wash all the dishes. Well, they need it and you never know, do you? I dry them and put them away and wipe down the sink. Polish it? Go on, then. Wow. What a smell. The guy who makes CIF or JIF or whatever they’re calling it now is a genius. Removes even the most stubborn of dirt. That’s the truest statement I’ve heard today. I breathe in synthetic alpine drives and here I am.
Back from the dead.
Kelly Mews.
Kelly’s eye. Number one.
Ready?
As I’ll ever be.
I wash my hands and face several times so I can only smell the soap and brush my teeth again. Then I decide on a shower, where I’m tempted into an act of turpitude, but no. Come on. We all know that the devil makes work for idle hands. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Next to! Alongside!! The very next thing in line!!! I towel down and look at my lean body. Not an ounce of fat. I iron five shirts and lay out several tracksuit tops and stand before them.
Days off always did throw me into a spin.
How to blend in? Achieve total stasis?
No. Freedom. Freedom of choice. That’s the key.
I pick my clothes for the evening and after several changes of mind (real freedom) I agree on smart but casual and decide I will roam into the open before catching up on some paperwork at the office.
Into the open.
Into the space.
I double-lock the door and then unlock both locks and reenter to straighten out a couple of the cushions that seem to be slightly sagging at their corners. I then stand still. Quite still. I can’t see or hear any dust and breathe yet another sigh of relief. I double-lock the door and bounce down the stairs but the smell and the din of human life begin to take ahold of me, sending my guts into a whirl.
Here comes Manny. I know him but I don’t know him so neither of us trades any goodwill.
Best keep it that way.
In fact, I quickly decipher that he thinks I am not me! That, for all intents and purposes, I am somebody else. He gives me a You’re not who you say you are, are you? kind of a look, and since, truth be told, I am in all earnest pretending to be somebody other that who I really am, I have no argument with the man. At all.
I turn onto Harrow Road, past the “bus stop of doom.” Twenty people on mobile phones, waiting for a number 18, piled on the pavement and not moving as I approach. The signal of an oncoming bus sends everyone into a frenzy and I just get past before possibly ending up a victim of a human stampede.
I cross the corner of Woodfield Place and Harrow Road and a 4x4 speeds up to get around the one-way system; it could have all ended right there. Luckily I glanced down to where his indicators are and, seeing no light flickering and knowing that the art of indication has been lost forever, guessed he was going to turn right. I jumped back as the deafening sound of throbbing bass covered the sound of my own aorta. He missed me by an inch. I imagine his face behind the blacked-out glass panel and give him the stare. He stops the car dead in the middle of the road with a screech.
Suddenly I’m the people’s choice, Mr. Fiduciary!
I continue to stare at the blacked-out window, letting him know that if someone has to die, let it be me. The door is about to open and I raise the stakes as I spread my arms in a gesture of fearlessness.
Time stops.
The light goes on.
He pulls away with another screech and I cross the road next to an old West Indian gent, in a très chic outfit from Terry’s Menswear. He sees an old flame on the other side of the street; her stockings falling own by her ankles; her stained pinafore billowing in what he perceives to be a lucky gust.
He calls out, “Old stick a fire don’t tek long to ketch back up!”
She laughs out loud. “Tiger no fraid fe bull darg!”
He takes his time crossing.
Nobody minds. Except for a Prammie (Eighteen and born pregnant, with a hand extended to the council. Hair scraped back, causing a do-it-yourself, council-house face-lift meant to reverse the ageing process. Cigarette extending from an expensive manicure. Two kids and another on the way. Shell-shocked and suicidal seventeen-year-old boyfriend carrying a maxi pack o’ nappies), who pushes out in front of the old guy and kisses her teeth in disdain.
I hit the five corners.
Situated here, circus performer and audience participation reach their mutual understanding.
Crossing at the lights, I see seven drunken Bajans cussing and laughing outside the bookies. They pass the bottle from plastic cup to plastic cup. Close your eyes and you might think you were listening to a bunch of Dorset farmers discussing the price of beef and Mrs. Mottle’s lumbago.
I see a drunken redheaded woman and walk into the beginnings of a bad dream.
Sancta Maria, Mater Deu, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
A performer runs out into Harrow Road, just in front of where I’m positioned. He cajoles his potential crowd.
“You tink me nah got money?” Everybody turns and laughs.
Within a moment.
A lean yoot, one jeans leg rolled up to the knee but not the other, chews on a matchstick and stares into the eyes of potential protagonists.
A woman in her sixties — jeans emblazoned with the words Foxy Lady across the buttocks, swinging her hips veraciously — blows a bubble from too much gum and bursts it loudly, laughing and adjusting her bra.
A man in track pants, too short, no socks, beaten-in shoes, and unshaven forever, stands rooted to the spot and dribbling.
A guy selling scratch cards and methadone is able to pick someone’s pocket as she turns to see what the fuss is about.
Someone asks for change.
Someone asks for a cigarette.
Two crackheads: “See my fucking solicitor?”
“See my fucking selector?”
Somebody screams.
The performer stops the traffic dead.
A couple of hood rats, left hands disappearing down tracksuit bottoms as though hiding some obscene disfigurement, steel themselves.
“If yuh no ketch me a moonshine, yuh nah ketch me a dark night.”
Someone’s mobile pipes up with an unrecognizable series of beeps meant to be the popular tune of the day.
The guys outside the bookies carry on arguing about irrigation, feigning oblivion to dis stupidness.
A Fiat Punto’s tires screech as the driver just misses the performer, who is now hitting himself on the head and throwing tens and fives into the air. He then sets about grabbing an aluminum chair from outside of Jenny’s bad food restaurant and throws it at the window.