Yeah! I didn't write anything on my blog for all of 2008! That's a pretty good effort.
Anyway, here's a thing I thought of on the tram. I suppose really it's my fantasy, but it felt like my friend Bugsy's fantasy as I was having it (plus I'm married, so am not allowed to have fantasies). It's possibly rude to claim I'm privy to Bugsy's fantasies, then to publish them to my blog without even changing his name, but hey, if I'm forced to experience his thoughts then I should get some sort of compensation. Plus he doesn't have a computer and so is unlikely to see this.
*****
“Will you play me something off your iPod?”
Bugsy looked away from the people dealing with the rain beyond the window to find a girl suddenly sitting opposite him.
“Will you?” she repeated with a slight challenge in her tone. Or uncertainty? It occurred to him that she may not have realised he had heard her question.
“Yeah.”
He fished the headphones from under his hood and extricated the cord from where it made a cold line next to his chest. Obeying some impulse he could not find a basis to he reached forward and put the white buds into her ears. She dropped her eyes as he touched her, her ears quite cool, pale, with wisps of hair slightly obscuring them, and with a few drops of rain from outside nestled on the lobe of one.
“What is it?”
She was very cute, he decided. Small, elfin face with her hair cut fairly close, framing it. A grey, shapeless dress. Black tights and white shoes. Those ones that looked like shoes that a ballerina would wear. Mary Janes? She looked French.
“Home By Saturday, by a guy called Hayden,” he said.
“Oh good,” she said, though he didn’t know if that meant she knew it.
He found the song while she fidgeted and smiled at him, then pressed play. Watching her listen to the song he remembered it and tried to watch where she was up to. The strongly melodic opening guitar line, then Hayden’s voice coming in and following the melody, his tone resigned and aching. He hoped she liked it.