Stories of the Street - Twenty four

Jack walks out to get himself a bacon sandwich. Despite the high quality and low prices of the food in what they all quaintly call “the canteen”, Jack liked to nip out sometimes and buy food from the local shops and café’s. In particular, he liked the bacon sandwiches served in the local café. They are his comfort food and the coffee, ‘though not as modern as the canteen’s (no lattes and frappes in the café) was actually surprisingly good.

Rather than take it back to his office, Jack decides to sit down for five minutes and take stock while eating a bacon butty and drinking a double espresso.

The radio is on and it’s bland mixture of empty banter and manufactured pop helps him to switch down a gear.

“What’s happening to me?” he asks for the n’th time that morning.

“Just go with the flow for a couple of days. Just let it happen and if I feel that I am suffering from déjà vu, just let it happen. Look at your notes, for Christ’s sake! Look at the script – if you want to go back into journalism, just go and do it! But if you want to keep going down this route, zip it up!”

A small man walks through the café and, despite his diminutive scale, manages to bump into every table, chair and molecule he passes. His stumbles into Jack’s table is the most dramatic bump of all and dark, sweet coffee seems to eject itself from the cup and splatter itself all over Jack’s white shirt and pale trousers.

“How could such a small cup produce such a large stain? I’d drunk at least half the damn coffee before this idiot knocked it all over me!” He thinks.

Jack stands up in shock and the little stocky man swears at him saying,
“Get out of my way, you bastard and stop trying to push me around. Think you’re so big, huh? Well take a look at this you fucker!” and before the stunned and surprised population of the café, and right in front of Jack, the little man pulls his penis out of his grubby trousers and proceeds to wave it around like some ugly pink hose. It is long and disgustingly mis-shapen and, as everyone stares, it gets bigger and harder until the café’s owner reaches the little man and grabs him by the scuff of the neck to catapult him to the end of the café shouting behind him to the woman at the till to call the police. He then crashes the man against the door of the little toilet in the corridor leading to the back yard, opens the loo door and casts him in shouting at him, “If you mess up my toilet, I’ll make you pay, you little bastard!”

Coming over to Jack he apologises profusely, offering to pay any dry cleaning bills. “No need to pay for your coffee and sandwich,” he tells, Jack, “just leave your details with us before you leave and we will sort something out.” He turns to the rest of the customers and apologises again before heading back to patrol the space outside the toilet.

“Well that’s something I never expected!” thinks Jack as he leaves the café. Strangely, his whole outlook has improved and he feels better than he has felt for days.