PLATFORM 1
Candy
Daniel Park
‘Death makes you reckless.’ I said
Glad cracked another sherbet lemon in her dentures and narrowed her eyes, ‘No. It just makes you notice the buggers more.’
Glad stands vigil with me on Platform 2, propped up by her tartan shopping cart and fortified against the elements and delays by endless bags of boiled sweets. She bought all my scotch off me, to help me pay for mum’s funeral and haggled me down to the nub, but sometimes that’s just what you need in life, a sweet little old lady who’ll ever so gently slap you round the chops and tell you there’s no free lunch, beans on toast’s your only option and you’ll most likely die farting.
Twenty minutes ago, while we were still stood there, muttering under our breath about yesterday’s overcrowding, I thought a man on Platform 1 was looking at me.
‘Glad’ I whispered ‘D’you see that fellah next to the woman with the purple handbag?’
‘Oh yes. Really ugly. Doesn’t go with her shoes or anything.’
‘No, not the handbag, the fellah. Is he looking at me?’
Glad shrugged.
‘It’s just, y’know…with your new glasses…’
Our platform conversations are mostly the same, bog-standard commuter moans, but once in the carriage we take it up a notch – questing for the meaning of life by retelling the horrors faceless corporations inflict on us. Just lately, it’s been electric companies for me, and opticians for her. After weeks of wrangling, her opticians finally admitted she’d had the wrong prescription for months, sent her for a medical assessment and then supplied glasses so powerful that superheroes would kill for them. Of course that won’t be an end to it, she’ll have her solicitor investigating, but that’s Glad for you, never give a sucker an even break. I grieve for her sherbet lemons.
Glad knows my distance vision isn’t so good. She relents and casts an x-ray beam in his general direction.
‘Oh yes, very nice. If I were younger…’
‘Never mind about that, is he looking at me?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know.’ She’s taken offence
I try looking across the platform again. I can see he’s slim, blond hair,, but his face, his face….he’s just that little bit too far away for me. He could be smiling, he could be frowning, he could have a unibrow. I shudder.
The optician told me my right eye was weaker than my left so perhaps if I put my palm over my right eye…is that clearer? Or maybe I’m wrong. Did he say my left eye was weaker than my right eye? I swap my palm over to my left eye…hmmm, now I can’t remember what it was like when my right eye was covered. I swap palms, and swap then again, and again, can I see his face now? I’m so desperate to see his face.
I feel an urgent tug on my sleeve. I look down at Glad and behind her catch the whole platform of commuters gawping at me slack-jawed. The crazy old poof playing pat-a-cake with his face to perv on eye-candy. Has he no shame? No sense of the proper conduct for a man of his age?
‘What the fuck you lookin’ at? You’re no better than ‘im, you two-faced buggers.’ shouts Glad at the top of her lungs to the whole sodding lot of them, with their phoney morals and their nine-to-fives and their 2.4 children waiting for them when they get home.
Eeee…she’s got some balls, has our Glad.
NEXT STOP: KINGS CROSS – WESTGATE
