Man Of Few Words

Chapter 71

I'm sitting here at my desk, staring at the screen, then staring back out of the window.

The desk is spotlessly clean and clear except for the laptop, the mouse, and a glass of thick, cloudy, brown fruit juice. And I'm using a coaster, for Julia's sake.

The juice is a cocktail of nectarine, avocado and cherry. Did you know that you can't really juice an avocado? I know that now. This concoction looks disgusting but it actually tastes pretty good. And I really don't mind the lumps. The important thing is that I made the effort to make something, and now I'm consuming it. The brief window of my life that was this morning was not pointless. It was not fruitless.

I just feel like staring out of the window, observing and reporting back. So indulge me, if you will.

A bus just went past. Some of the passengers on the top deck were staring right back at me. I was eye-to-eye with one or two of them, but just for a split second. I don't even know if they really saw me. They just seemed to be staring through the glass as if everything on the other side were a total other world. Strange and unreachable. Perhaps I was doing the same thing.

There's a woman in a dark green-brown coat pushing a pushchair. I'm not sure whether it's a problem with the pushchair or whether it's because the pavement is uneven, but she's walking with her weight shifted to one side, seemingly to prevent the chair from constantly swerving sideways into the road. She doesn't look like she's experiencing much of the joy of motherhood at this particular moment. I bet the kid is just prattling away with an endless torrent of pointless observations, and doesn't care that no one is listening. Perhaps I'm doing the same thing. We're both just trying to make sense of the situation we find ourselves in.

A shifty looking guy with his hood up is coming the other way. He has a wiry beard and the gait of someone who's up to no good. It's the kind of no good that's mostly going to be harmful to himself, I think. He's carrying a large brown paper bag. I couldn't see any logos from here, but it looked a bit like a McDonalds bag. He's a long way from the nearest McDonald's though, so I'm guessing it's either drugs, stolen goods or body parts. Maybe just a loaf of bread and a pint of milk, but I very much doubt it.

And here's a middle-aged bald guy walking his dog. He's stopped to look at the small advertising billboard on the wall of the greengrocer's. I can't see what it's an ad for, just that it's yellow and there's quite a lot of text on it. Dogs can see the colour yellow, but they can't read. This probably explains why the dog is ignoring the billboard and sniffing around the base of a nearby bin instead.

Another lone, pushchair-wielding mum. This one is on her phone and moving at a breakneck pace. I don't think there's even a child in the chair. She just wants everyone to get out of her way. Sure enough, the bald guy is getting out of her way. The dog isn't though. The dog is sniffing the pushchair. I'm telling you; drugs or body parts in there too.

I may have imagined it, but I'm pretty sure I just saw a Porsche cruise past with its roof down. I'm also pretty sure that it's raining. I'm also pretty sure that the A-Team train set makes a fantastic ornamental centrepiece to my dining room table, so maybe don't place too much trust in my judgement right now. I don't think I imagined the top-down Porsche though. I can picture the driver in my mind's eye. He wasn't wearing a coat. He was wearing sunglasses! Maybe it's not actually raining.

No time to dwell on the suspected soggy Porsche driver now because here comes a tired looking woman carrying a bag. She looks like she's either on her way to a soul-destroying office job, or else on her way home from one. It's the middle of the day though, so maybe she only has her soul destroyed on a part-time basis. Or maybe she just quit. Or maybe she gives so few fucks at this point that she's showing up late.

These and many more mysteries lie just outside my living room window, but the rest will have to pass by unnoticed. Because I just reminded myself that it's about lunchtime and so I should probably eat something.