by Cherry Potts
The coffee smell permeates the entire small shopping centre, connecting all who will meet this morning through this perfumed medium. Hardly perfume. It is a strong, leaning-forward of the air against his mind, coaxing an expectation.
There is a distant clink of cups and clatter of spoons from the counter as another tray is laid out. He turns to see who the customer is, but it is not her.
He looks at his watch. He has read somewhere that those who come early to a meeting are generally those that have something important to say, and that those who come late generally do not want to hear it.
He checks himself from being unduly paranoid about her absence. There is no guarantee that his apology the other night would have got through.
He takes a long time drinking the coffee, but at last his cup is empty. With a sigh of resignation, he picks up his heavy bag from the chair opposite him, the place that he had been saving. He walks over to the escalator. As he ascends, he surveys the whole centre. There is some quick movement in the crowd down the entrance slope below. A woman is rushing towards the coffee bar. It is her.
He wants to run down the escalator to her, but it has carried him too far up. By the time he reaches the top, he can no longer see her. He rushes through the crowds along the upper mall, dodging the pushchairs, and takes the escalator back down. He is stuck behind a couple standing side by side blocking a step, but he leaps past them at the bottom to hurry across to the café. He catches up with her breathlessly as she reaches the counter.
‘You’re late – as usual,’ she says.
EAVESDROPPING
Rosamund Davies
A QUARTER GLASS OF WINE
Jayne Buxton
Normally I’d have preferred to sit outside where you can watch the people go by and try to feel a part of the city. But it was so stinking hot that I was glad to be inside. (You’ll never feel a part of that city, my father had said when I’d told him I was moving. It’s a filthy, noisy madhouse, he said, full of ill-mannered people.)
The place was empty except for the barman and a waitress. I ordered a glass of wine. A woman shuffled in, skinny and frail. She had to be ninety years old.
‘Hey!’ said the waitress.
‘Hey there,’ said the barman. ‘I got your table waiting.’
‘Is it hot enough for you?’ the woman asked, as she made her way to the table next to mine.
‘So what’ll it be today?’ the waitress asked her.
‘That chicken dish, is it made with cream?’
‘A little cream, I believe.’
‘I thought so. I can’t have cream because I need to lose a couple of pounds.’
‘You trying to disappear?’ the barman called out.
‘I put on two pounds.’
‘That’s good,’ the waitress said.
‘No, it’s not good. I need to lose them. What do you eat?’
‘This one, she eats sweets all day,’ said the barman, gesturing to the waitress.
‘It’s true, I eat sweets all day.’
‘Well if I moved around like you, I’d eat sweets all day too. But I don’t move. I sit in my apartment. They say don’t go out in this heat, so I don’t. And I gained two pounds.’
‘You look great though,’ said the barman.
‘No, I have to lose them. What else have you got besides the chicken?’
‘The lentil salad is nice. It’s new,’ the waitress said.
‘Lentils?’
‘It’s nice,’ said the barman.
‘Okay, bring me the lentil salad.’
‘You want a glass of wine with that?’
‘Just a quarter glass. If you give me a whole one, I’ll drink it.’
‘Oh, I know you will.’
The waitress brought the quarter glass of wine.
‘Another one?’ she said to me.
‘I’m not sure I have time. I’m waiting for a call about an appointment.’
‘Good excuse for another glass of wine,’ she said.
‘Okay then. One more.’
She brought me another glass. Minutes later, my phone beeped.
‘I have to go,’ I said.
‘Oh no, you can’t finish your wine?’ the waitress said, making a sad face.
She brought me the bill and I paid with cash.
‘Come back and see us,’ the barman called out as I stood to leave.
Out on the street the heat hit me with the force of a freight train. I walked towards my appointment, wondering if the woman at the table next to mine would be persuaded to have another quarter glass of wine. Then I thought about my father, drinking his wine alone in that chair of his, no one trying to persuade him of anything.
THE PROMISE
Reshma Ruia
‘The cappuccino is piping hot, just the way I like it.’
‘Yes, and my orange juice tastes of sunshine,’ my wife agrees, as we compliment the waiter who stands by our table, holding a silver tray. He is a young boy, barely out of his teens, slim of build, with fingers long and lean.
We resume our conversation, switching from English to our own language, but the waiter is lingering. He is fiddling with the bill, unsure whether to place it on our table or wait for us to finish our drinks. I glance at him again. It is obvious that looking at us, he feels a kinship of colour and language.
‘He must be homesick,’ I whisper to my wife. She nods and turns to him.
‘Have you been here long?’ She speaks to him in our language, her voice gentle and enquiring.
His shoulders relax and his mouth creases into a u-shaped smile.
‘I came here six months back and found this job. This is peak season and they needed an extra pair of hands.’ He glances around to check whether the manager has spotted him chatting with us, but he is busy at another table, fawning over a group who have ordered bottles of champagne.
‘Are you from…?’ I mention the name of our city. He shakes his head and says he is from another small city close to the border.
I remember his city. I used to go there as a child. It was by the sea and in the summer was crowded with people strolling under the palm trees, sipping coconut water or eating watermelon slices, the juice painting their lips red. This was before the war. Now most of it lies shrouded under gunfire mist with houses half-fallen, their roofs ripped apart, open to the sky.
‘You were lucky to escape,’ I lower my voice. Most young men in that city have disappeared, buried in nameless graveyards.
‘My mother told me I had to get out. She didn’t want me to join the army.’ He grins, but his eyes cloud over as he says this.
My wife leans over and pats his arm. I know she is remembering our own kids, busy pursuing their university degrees and dreams. This boy, standing here in his shiny black trousers with frayed hems, and polished but worn out black shoes, could be them.
‘Well you’ve chosen a beautiful city to start afresh,’ I say.
The café is on the main square. Immediately on our right stands the cathedral, proudly majestic and the fountain nearby is gurgling happily. Tired and hot tourists perch on its ledge, dipping their bare toes into the cool water.
‘Good luck,’ I say and pay the bill, slipping in a more than generous tip.
He presses his right hand to his heart and thanks us.
‘Don’t do this forever,’ my wife says as we leave. ‘Become a doctor or an engineer and rebuild your city.’
‘I promise,’ he says.
MAIN STREETS
SWITCHING ON
Kam Rehal
WALKING BACK TO THE FUTURE
Máire Malone
The photographer clicks a snapshot of a daughter linking arms with her father, as they cross the three-arch bridge with its sandstone balustrades and ornate lampstands. Their cheeks bulge with barley sugar sweets as they make their way to catch a train to the sea, north of the city.
They pass memorials to politicians and martyrs and a building pock-marked with bullets. They hear echoes of a poet reading a proclamat
ion of independence. The smell of gunfire lingers. The legacy of dead men was freedom.
They crane their necks to see the famous clock and the column where a statue stands: a navy officer who was wounded in combat.
In the same year the statue is blown up, a garden in the shape of a sunken cruciform water-feature is created to remember the Vision.
The father will not see the high, stainless-steel, pin-like monument of light – but the daughter will.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
Cathy Lennon
‘Wherever there is people there is dirt. Wherever there is dirt there is money. Wherever there is money there is people.’
The street sweeper likes to repeat the mantra to himself. It keeps him in a Zen state of mind, even as the crowds start to build. In the morning, early, the streets belong to him and he sometimes hums.
He ignores the bodies lying in the doorways and they ignore him. He does not touch their paper cups, their plastic bags. There are plenty more.
Food cartons waft in the gutters, cigarette butts eddy beneath the exhaust fumes. It’s like an ocean, he thinks. A tide that shifts and swells and washes something up each day.
Sometimes he breaks into a song. Just a few notes, a few words from back home. He hoists his cart and broom and trundles on, cresting the waves.
YOU STAND IN THE SECRET PLACE
Steven Wingate
Every city has its secret places and you are standing in one and all you have to do is believe this and stay completely still and feel the rush of passers-by like the wind or take pictures of things that are incomprehensible to you or of mundane things your eye makes miraculous or walk at exactly the right speed to make the secret place open up and swallow you.
None of these secret places will reveal themselves if you are looking for them and yes this is the most unbearable thing in life and yes the secret places know this and they do not care if you are frustrated and yes your frustration can transport you into a rapture that sufficiently appeases the secret places and coaxes them into opening themselves to you on a whim and yes this is what people fail to understand when they claim that cities are temples of utilitarianism without magic.
When you are swallowed up by a city’s secret place you will know exactly what to do because you have earned the right to be subsumed by it and be made one with it and you know that each secret place has its own unique appropriate supplicating action and you will perform it perfectly whether that action is to whirl in a circle with your arms at your sides or to open your mouth and receive the hidden word or to fall ever backwards with no need to be caught.
And then the city will be yours, and you will be the city’s.
HOW TO GO WITH THE FLOW:
A SURVIVAL GUIDE
Arna Radovich
The key to survival is walking fast. Has anyone ever told you that, specifically, explicitly? Since its humble beginnings, I’ve seen my city grow into what you see before you, in all its glittery glory. I see people circulating through the arteries, veins and capillaries of my streets and roads, my boulevards and twisting lanes of tar and concrete, cobblestone and granite. I see them neatly side-step those who huddle on footpaths, avoiding the disturbed drifters, the backpacker charity-collectors and the trouble-makers who try to stop them in their tracks with alternative narratives that do not fit with how this great city of mine likes to see itself. Fencing and feinting my people parry, in constant motion, for they have learnt the lesson that it can be dangerous to stop – the current can pull you under and, more likely than not, there will be no handsome bronzed life-saver to charge into the surf and administer the kiss of life. The city is no place for immobility. No pausing to chat about the weather, or offer a few moments of warm communication to one of the isolated souls who squat, backs against the wall. Not on my streets, no siree! Go back to your village if you want that, your small parochial town, your dying rural backwater where there is plenty of time but not much else. I know I’m biased, but still, you came here for excitement, remember? For the intoxication of speed and collective energy, the high-tension buzz of too many people in one place at one time, scurrying, dare I say, a bit like rats.
A certain behaviour develops, whether you like it or not, I see it all the time – it’s a kind of survivor syndrome – a pulling up of the drawbridge, a hardening of the outer shell of self. If every sad story, every person curled in a ragged sleeping bag on a freezing street pierces your heart, you’ll never make it. Take your life in your hands along with your double strength almond latte and move along now, fast as you can. It’s best not to divert your attention to those at the edges, washed up by the tide. If you pause and ponder for too long, your brain could explode, because, if it’s true what evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar says, humans can only maintain relationships with a limited amount of people – five in the innermost circle, a hundred and fifty at the outer limit – and therefore, it is pure folly to gift your time or care to the multitude of random people you pass each day, because there is no way they can be realistically accommodated within your circle. You must know this – it’s city living 101. So, post an inspirational Instagram or, better still, a quick tweet to remind yourself to keep your thinking within the lines, look straight ahead, go with the flow and don’t stop, whatever you do – that’s how you navigate to survive in my city. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
BETWEEN SKYSCRAPERS
Wes Lee
The vortex around you dissolving
like the last drops of something.
When rain is easing.
When snow is stopping.
When all the icicles have fallen.
When all the fish have slapped from the
clouds onto the roofs of station wagons.
DAWN OF THE CITY
Nicholas McGaughey
The sun is out with the sweepers,
there’s been no frost.
8am on a November Sunday,
with the seagulls strutting on the bridge
and nobody much about,
bar a smudged zombie and a werewolf quaking
in a doorway.
By the brown tiled tap-room
there are no buses,
the pavement greased
with slid kebabs
and a flower of sick
by the all-night caff
where breakfast is served.
The ticket dispensers… don’t,
as last night’s stragglers,
with eyes like currants,
exaggerate their evenings,
and wend their way back
to whatever welcomes await them,
where fried eggs are stared at behind broadsheets,
before stairs, and the flimsy parapet of a glaring bed.
SEEING IN THE DARK
Roland Denning
There is nowhere to hide down these streets, no back alleys, no shadowy corners, now the cameras can see in the dark. There are cameras in my living room. I know they’re in yours too.
A reasonable man would accept we need them gazing down on us, keeping our streets safe. But you know I’m not a reasonable man.
‘There’s nothing to fear if you do nothing wrong,’ they used to say.
‘But if I’m doing nothing wrong, why are you watching me all the time?’ I’d shout back.
And shouting back at machines never improves your public standing. Particularly now the machines can hear.
You must have noticed how the rise in ‘reality’ TV accompanied the spread of security cameras. Every place of work is a studio, every home a set. Everyone can be a TV star. Funny we never get to meet the director, or have a say in the cut.
You must agree the judge’s summing up recognised my low-tech ingenuity; the myriad ways I found to blind the cameras, from wire snips and air rifles to spray guns on poles and clusters of floating, glue-soaked balloons (the hydrogen ones were the best – they exploded so sweetly). Her revenge was to allow me to be confined at home, monitored and surveilled by
the latest technology. The state is acquiring a taste for irony.
I remember when people were glad when the cameras went up; they were afraid of the belligerent youths hanging around on street corners. Then as time went on it became clear that they weren’t all youths, and as jobs got scarcer, the ‘them’ became ‘us’. The strange thing is, I’ve always been a loner but, lately, I’ve found myself on the side of the mob.
Unreasonable, ingenious and quaintly old-style, that’s me. The way I see it, planting a small amount of explosive in the right place is healthier than sitting at home writing viruses. Gets you out and about. The technocrats would like you to believe that everything that matters now takes place in the virtual world, but really it all begins with a box of tangled wires and a camera waiting to be smashed. Good old-fashioned violence gets the job done.
At night I have this dream. Down the street the blank walls give nothing away, but I look up to the roofs and chimneys, jet black against a dark mauve sky, and, higher still, the posts on which the cameras peer and listen. Now I see them burning as orange flames lick their lenses. The cameras crackle and spit, then break apart; from their guts a thick, dark residue oozes to the ground. I cannot see into the other houses, but I know you are there, waiting.
Soon we will break through the walls, you and I, we will drive beyond these dim streets, across hills and rivers, never to be seen again.
I LEFT THE CITY THAT NIGHT
Pedro Basso Neves
I left home that night
thinking that I was going to die.
My heart was pounding.
(I’ve got a weak heart)
I’ve got a weak heart
like my grandfather who died young.
My oldest memory is of the day he died.
I remember my mother crying
and my father taking me outside.