SHORT STORIES: ‘Ground’

He shifted from foot to foot, pushing the blood through him. The carriage doors pulled open as a fresh gust of cold melancholy swept in. Bodies pressed onto the tube, cold winds rushing between legs. He looked out at the glimpse of dark blue-bottle sky. Mind the closing doors. He shifted his weight again. He held the pulse red pole as the carriage trundled to movement, a gaping wheeze of old London blood. Every body swaying with the initial junt of the carriage, as the years had taught them too. He looked around, face to face. Earphones playing nothing.

Gloves, coats, pale skin, wash-out eyes. Monday morning early rise. He cupped his hands and blew cold into them as the greater city bled by the windows. Another stop. More bodies. More breathing as quiet as sin. Straight legs and slack backs. He saw a girl he thought he knew. Someone stood on his foot, no jolt. He thought of warm times. Beaches half the world away. He blew on the fog of memory and wiped it clean, pushing away the fragments of imperfection across their surface. Tension. He needed a smoke. Each body around him a story but none he cared for, discarded metro and half-drunk bottle rolling.

He thought about how he had read that the tube was the most expensive and least efficient public transport in the world. He thought of kids in Ghana walking a mile for water. He didn’t live in Ghana. He turned from the window before the carriage clacked itself underground. Darkness mixed with dim of overhead lights. No air-con in winter. Too cold mixed with too hot mixed with stale in the morning sweat. He rubbed his eyes. Knee ache.

Fresh hell of another body skimming itself into space. Stamping feet before stamping hands. More hours in than out. Enough to pay to keep doing so he could pay. He scraped at his stubble, more ways he owed body debt. He needed a coffee, bought. Ground with teenage daydreams. Leaving he stopped below arch of the concrete station and dropped a cigarette between his lips, flicking it alight in one smooth motion. His lungs creaked in acceptance of their grey daily, soaking it in and holding some for later. He pulled his collar up and braced for rain, smattering itself across the grey pavements and into his grey pores.

***

Coffee pour, hot bleach, down his throat. Look at these unconscious, he thought. Cusping his straw hands around the chipped mug, his glance tracing across the bodies around him – some shifting weight still, others ringing their hair, girls in dresses and women in skirts. Some clasped their partner’s hand – cling on, he thought – for all the good it’ll do you. The rain continued to smack itself across the glass front. He looked out over the brooding traffic, scraping itself beside the pavements as more empty shell people pushed by, into the dark of the forgetful city. But how long could it remember, really? This placed had burned to the ground not so long ago. 1666 and still swinging, he knew. Give him another 40 and he’d be croaking. She came in. The one he thought he knew. She got herself a big hot mug of fuck knows and glanced around, her neck fissuring from left to right, like a hawk looking mice. She saw he. He looked at she, porcelain smile. She came over and sat opposite him, throwing her fake big brand bag on the straining table between they. His coffee shook, righted itself from years of practice. She clicked shut her fake big brand purse and swung it in, pursing her lips to look busy. He picked up and siphoned.

She glanced him in the eye and thought better of it. She faltered forwards.
“It’s been, what, _ years?”
His lips scratched at the coffee. He wanted to speak to her how a shark spake seal. He let the final gasp of hot rest apool his tongue. She clenched her hair back her neck.
“_ years.” He said.
“Oh.”
“How is _?”
“…_? Oh, _! He’s great, great..” Her eyes soaked in the flooring. “He’s overseas, Dubai.” Her neck snapped, she looked at him and back away, gracing a thin smile between them. He could tell things were unsaid about _ which danced her conscious. He liked that. He stood, grappling his coat from back of the chair.
“Back to work.” He croaked. She stood and eyed him with a twitch.
“Let me just..” – she scribbled -”…here’s my number, if you wanted to, whatever..”
He took it more gladly than let show, and left.

***

8:09pm he called her. She had been asleep, the ghosts of dreaming betraying her voice as she answered.
“Hello?”
“It’s _”
“_! How are you?”
“Swell. Drinks? Our old haunt, the _?”
Silence. She was as stunned by this outreach as he was by his bravery. She agreed. She needed time to get there from her home. He was 10 minutes from there. Hang up. He’d rolled a smoke during the call and popped it between his grin. Light up, light up, landlord be damned. The smoke swirled itself between circuits of a long-dead alarm. He thought to wear a clean shirt, reaching amid the heap to find something he cared for. Deep blue, torn collar. Same as always, _, same as always.

He walked through puddle and splash, shoulders splaying his as they passed, shoes flecked with dirt and grit and grime and earth. Scattered hems of jeans riding the pavement below him. He looked as he passed a construction site, rain hammering nails. Workers huddled under a tarp, shivering between puffs. He offered a royal wave of contempt, which they returned. He stopped by on his way, waves of smoke darting free of the doorway as he entered. Pats on the back, calls of his name. Just 20 today? Just 20, he nodded. One for the road? He puffed, puffed, passed, was gone again and amid the wet.

He heard the tsunami of language around him as he walked – Polish, Turkish, no Londonese. Guttural snarls and torn syllables. He drew his coat closer, the ones you really had to look out for were white. He slammed into the _ and lay a fist on the scorched bar. He ordered two pints of the strongest shit they had, found a table at the back, and crumpled in. He cracked the window slightly as he lit another smoke, not that anyone cared. Not that he cared. The smoke was punched to oblivion as it left the stifle heat into the downpour. He necked a mouthful, swallow before taste. The mists of induction settled around his vision. Look at this swine, he thought. All this swine and me. Another throatful. His ears guised stories, war tales and street fights with pebble fists and plastic medals.

They spoke of nothing, all of them. Someone fought someone else and someone thought someone was fucking someone and someone fought the other about that. The endless tirade of inconsequence continued. And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Another mouthful, rings of bitter skewed across his stubble. His smoke was burning his finger. His eyes were bloodshot. He stood and threw jacket across chair – best hopes that the drinks would stay as well – and headed for the toilet. In his back pocket a zipped bag. He slammed into a cubicle and tore it out, white powder grasping his finger as he traced it, like sugar lollipop. He skimmed a line across the seat and took it home. He splashed his face in the mirror, grinned at himself. Hello _, good old _.

She came in and spotted him. He had another smoke going and two more pre-rolled. He was drunk and sloppy. The jukebox sung of 70s industry while the men pounded and wrung about it, clamouring to stroke their choice. Women threw their shapes as shards against the dim light, drinks passing hands, fake nails and skin tones. She went to the bar and ordered as she would have then. A pint of piss for him and a glass of white. Her glass shone a crack along one side, not enough to shatter, enough to fret. She spilled some of his as she set down at the table. He smiled. She smiled. Her handbag slammed to the floor as she kicked it under the table, turning the long way round to sit opposite him – his eyes glancing as she went. The mood sat between their stares, stirring the atoms, heating the gravity.

***

“_!_!_!” She screamed as the final throw of feeling left him. He rolled off her, pressing himself against the headboard and lighting up. The rain had stopped, he noticed. The silence wouldn’t last long, he knew. She wiped her brow and took the smoke from him, the exhaust flitting through the gaps in her grin. He smiled back. Maybe the silence could stay, at least for a while. Her skirt and shirt clung to the deep-stained carpet. Some of these posters were the same last time, she thought. Her hand ran along the familiar contours of him. They were. He coughed, small blood into hand. They pressed lips. She’d stay, she said. He agreed. The tight flat slowly simmered with smoke, the 20 long gone up in flames. They didn’t dress, swapping tall tales and brash claims. He cooked some scrap and they ate, returning to the bed for repeats. It was the 90s. It was light out. It was warm. It was they, he thought he saw he knew he wanted. She was her but not with age and creases and scar from the baby. He was sharp and thin and not grey and burned, the ashtray pre-evening. But light did come, cracking its way into their vision, and he saw her scar. He saw her tears and patches and the marking of time had gone. It was the 10s again, he was not here. She kissed him as she left.
“We should do this again sometime.”
“Haha,” – he didn’t recognise the sound, some long-forgotten muscle – “we should.”

The door shut and he was alone again. The rain was spitting. Slight pats would soon be thunderous rapture again. He shocked the radio to life, some spit of traffic and weather and war and poor and dying. She was gone, he was gone. He found the box, deep and worn, there they were. Pictures of he and she once young and clean. He smiled as a tear slid down his face, dropping to obscure the long-gone time. He put the photo in his pocket, dressing for work and the carriage and the bodies and the rain. He wouldn’t see her again, she wouldn’t see him. The rain grew louder, hungry for him. He lit a smoke and shivered.