Thursday 4 February 2010

So you are leaving me?!

I stayed till late that night. I had a very long ride by the end of it and I was just getting back to the base hoping to find some donuts in the fridge. Around Holborn station I saw that guy standing on a pavement. Staggering he flaged me down. "Typical..." I said to myself and I regarded him quizzicaly. These new, expensive, fashionable clothes, a lot of gold and a thick cloud of good eau de Cologne around him - one could easily tell that this plump, Indian gentleman was wealthy. He tried to tell me something, he couldn`t speak though... I spotted some dried blood in the corner of his mouth. He was trying to articulate something desperately. Instead he was making strange soft sounds. I watched him with grim fascination. "207" - he announced finally as he handed to me his oyster card. "I`m not a bus driver, you know?" I said with his oyster card in my hand. "Can you take me to Ealing?" I just laughed and wanted to go away. "So you are leaving me, yeah?" - he reproached and made a face like a five years old boy who is about to burst in tears. "This is for you"- he passed me a bunch of keys and a mobile phone with a pic of a nice Indian girl set up as screen`s background. "Let`s go somewhere." He produced a handsome wad from his pocket: "Count with me..." I ignored him and handed back the keys and the mobile. "I can`t take you to Ealing." "So you are leaving me?" he repeated. A police car went by. He gave it a hostile look. "Fuck`em! What can they do?" - he exclaimed. Then he adressed me speaking with great difficulty: "People think... I`m fucked in my mind... but it`s just... too much cocaine..." Dawn was breaking. "Look" said I "I can take you to Holborne tube station, I`m sure you get a train to Ealing from there." "For how much?" "For free! It`s just around the corner!" He laboriously scrambled on my trike. I got him to the station, it was still shut. He got off and gibbered: "I want to go to Ealing..." "You can either wait for the first train or catch your bus from there." I showed him a bus stop near by, next to Sainsbury`s. " Thank you soooo much! Give us a hug!" He gave me a hug and passed to me those keys and the mobile phone again. As he took out his hand from his pocket a fifty pence coin fell on the floor. I picked it up. He held his hand out, quickly, clearly demanding the fallen coin back. I put the keys and the phone in it, pocketed the coin and moved away. When I turned around I saw him heading somewhere, not at all towards the bus stop...

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