Untitled

The telephone on the stand rings. My attention snaps back and forth between its incessant jangling and the television I am watching.
Stupid ads.
I pick up the phone.
“Hello”
I half listen, half concentrate on the tv. Something said intimately next to my ear makes me finally attend to the conversation. “Yes? What? Oh my… I’ll be there.” I hang up. I stand in front of the tv a split second longer then snap into action. Half an hour later – I can tell, I’ve checked my watch – I am waiting in front of the bank. The sun is glaring and the traffic before me is thick. I am particularly taken up with looking at a passing car full of children eating ice cream when she touches my shoulder. I jump.
“Hey, didn’t mean to scare you. I hope I’m not too late. Traffic” “It’s ok.” I say, looking at her very long hair. It is perfectly cut and styled for her lovely face – she could be in an ad for hair food. For a moment I let the image of that run through my mind then I crash back to reality. She isn’t that great.
“Well… shall we?”
Our reflections melt and ripple against the glass of the bank windows as we pass, becoming anonymous among the slowly teeming crowd similarly reflected there. As we maze through the masses, she chats on.
“I thought maybe a watch -”
“Too conventional,” I cut in.
“Or a plaque,” she suggests after a pause.
“Too boring…”
There was a squeal of brakes in the streets next to us – an old woman has narrowly missed being tomorrow’s headline: OLD WOMAN KILLED BY CAR. She is standing in the middle of the road, about 80 years old and incredibly tiny. Around her feet lie her scattered bags. A blond doll has escaped from one of them only to be crushed by the death car.

Lisa Allen-Agostini