“Yeah, yeah. G’night, you swine,” I say with a laugh as I head down the decrepit stairwell and the apartment door clicks shut and locks behind me. Down the stairs past naked pipes and obsolescent wall switches, thinking about the past day or so; a blessed waste, of corn dogs and pizza and beer, of Get Carter and discussing Baudrillard and smoking Japanese cigarettes outside in the rain. Of everything and nothing in particular, another blessed waste of a day.
Tick-tock, tick-tock though. Not many days on the calendar yet, and no word about any of the applications I’ve sent out. Money dwindling, ulcers germinating, headaches beginning. As I push through the double lobby doors and step out onto the dark and moistened pavement I’m wondering what the future may yet hold. An uncertain thing at best most any of the time, one might say. Ever the thing to be feared, trod towards with a mindful step and all.
Like the bus stop. It’s a couple blocks’ walk through an admittedly chancy sort of neighborhood, parade grounds for the lost and the homeless. Walking along mostly darkened streets, the occasional abstract car speeding along to home or to another bar someplace. Odd man perched against a doorframe, smoking a cigarette. I’m walking with a sobered step and a wary set of eyes now, absorbed less in the thoughts of the day than the shadows of the present.
It reminds me of any other number of lonesome nighttime streets I’ve sauntered. Solwezi back-alleys and Whitehorse thoroughfares, the Old Town nocturnal markets and that Kapiri motto: never, ever be in Kapiri after dark. Drifting along in the shadows, thinking of one’s fellow man; sizing up and discounting and ever moving forward towards one’s destination. Then the empty victory at the night’s end, arriving safe and realizing with weary relief you’ve expected nothing but shit from the great human parcel. And yet.
Yet as I jay across an empty red-lit street corner to avoid the potbellied shadow coming up the way, as I cut across the parking lot and scrutinize the cars for signs of life; I wonder why not sacrifice a bit of good will for a tisch bit of safety? One never knows, come night. Besides, it’s not like I’m packing, ready to fire off shots at the first shadow or anything. I just like to know when I’m best into a run.
Which is partly why (reaching my stop, checking the schedule and seeing I’ve got ten minutes yet) I don’t really ‘fun-run’ for exercise. I’ll walk miles, certainly. But running… save for sport, there’s no real reason for it short of life-and-limb. Besides which, I dislike wearing shorts in public. It propels me back into grade school, short pants and crispy boogers and utter helplessness.
Ten minutes to wait, if the bus is on schedule. That it usually is makes me wonder about the city government, of latter-day fascism and bloated Rotarians swinging upside-down from unfinished gas stations. More crucially, I’m standing about in the darkest center of the block on the outskirts of a parking lot for the next tiddly ten minutes. There’s a bit of foot traffic about, and I’m wondering about each and every that heads by, off, and across. Occasional couples, the odd group of young people, the single men and double chums and nuclear families.
A woman in a rather fetching brown wool topcoat crosses at the corner, walking on in a visibly hurried fashion. Do I walk like that? Or do I walk like the hooded sweatshirt scuttling across the opposite side of the street as he approaches, hands buried in oversized front pocket and head down? A city of people afraid of the dark, of each other. Even young-black-male, inadvertently sending chills up my spine as he approaches with his textbooks in hand. Walking that same quick gait as everybody, probably more wary of me perched in the darkened center of the block than I should be of he.
And then when he approaches the fear is less a one of defense than of standing about all rigid and churlish, of the body language being overtly stand-offish. I try and stand a bit easier and hope I’m not coming across the wrong way, but it’s a no-win in a game nobody’s even keeping score at; everyone’s on the way home. He passes and I breathe easy, all overactive amygdala and empty phantasms. I check my phone: I’ve five minutes yet to wait.
But I suppose the best mugging duo would be a father-son combination, or mother-son; parent-child, if one’s to be truly fair about it. Something sort of Lock Stock, Big-Chris-and-son kind of like. Nobody expects (or at least, I don’t) trouble from a person with their kid in tow, save the occasional ticket handler, cashier, local ombudsperson; I suppose anybody who doesn’t care for youthful antics and doting parentage might bristle a bit. Never mind.
But really (I ask myself as the bus appears at the end of the street) who mugs people these days? It seems almost fictional, a cliché from 70s and 80s films more than real life. Like carjackings. Or terrorist plots. Arson and electric fires, cancer, bankruptcy, and death. Bad things never happen to anybody I’m thinking as I rummage through my pockets, hoping I’ve got the exact change. The bus pulls up and hisses to a halt, doors pishing open brightly against the drizzled darkness. Once we get to where we’re headed, bad things never happen to anybody. Ourselves especially.
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