It’s the next morning and I’m sitting at the bus stop in my smoke-soaked suit. My tie hangs loose around my neck as I rub my eyes. The number seventy-six bus rolls up, the doors open and I am greeted by the sound of the Jamaican driver singing the blues. I’ve heard of him before. He has his own little fan club around town. Some people get on his bus just to hear his voice. They don’t mind where he takes them as long as he's singing. He makes all the usual turns and visits all the usual stops and sings Muddy Waters the whole way. I’m on the bench daydreaming as the doors of the moving red blues bar close. The seventy-six isn’t headed my way.
A man on crutches screams his way towards the bus as it pulls away from the curb and up the street. He swears and fusses with the pockets of his crushed blazer as the seventy-six fades into the distance.
“Did you see that?” he asks me. “That bastard’s meant to wait five minutes! I can’t go any faster. I’m bloody disabled aren’t I? If there was an inspector here and he saw that, he’d have been fired on the spot!”
The guy in the pinstripe blazer and torn trousers stands about fidgeting with the paper bag under his arm. I go back to slowly blinking while waiting for my bus.
After muttering under his breath for a while he sidles up next to me, “Hey guv you see this here bag I got?”
I slowly lift my head.
“Here, look inside.”
He’s holding a Prada shopping bag. The walls of the bag are lined with aluminium foil.
“It’s for shoplifting. You see the scanners don’t work if you got foil in your bag like this. You can nab anything that fits inside. But if there’s a gap in the foil the scanners will go.” He winks at me, “The key is layering. If the foil breaks you’re nicked.”
I nod at the guy, unsure of what I’ve done to earn the trade secrets of this shoplifting mastermind. He spits on the sidewalk next to me.
It is now officially me and him at one end of the bus shelter and the rest of the people waiting for buses way on the other side. They’ve left me high and dry. Bailed out. I can understand.
He leans towards me on one of his crutches, “I only take what I need. I’m not greedy. I don’t go to where people know me ‘cause they’ll charge me with being equipped.” He winks at me again, “That’s the thing you see. You don’t just get charged for shoplifting. You also get charged for going into a shop equipped to lift.”
I swear I learn something new every day.
He suddenly turns on his crutches and yells out to a couple walking on the other side of the street. “Hey! Hey who’s that fella there you're with? I’m gonna tell your man!”
The couple starts walking in the way you do when some guy on crutches wearing tramp clothes loudly accuses you of infidelities in public.
Pinstripe man leans in close again and says, “See that bird walking over there, with her arms around that fella. That’s not her geezer. Her geezer is much younger.” He stands still for a moment, “I tell you if a woman did that to me...I’d hit her in the face.” He spits on the sidewalk again.
I don’t really have much to add so I just continue sitting on the bench waiting for the slowest bus in south west London. Sweet silence follows for a while as he fidgets with his pockets first, then his bag and then his pockets again.
He looks up and down the street, “Aw bugger this.” And with that he swings off up the street. I don’t get as much as a wave goodbye.
In a while another seventy-six bus arrives. The doors open but there is no blues being sung. There is also no sight of the old guy with the scuffed shoes, torn trousers, creased pinstripe jacket, and Prada shopping bag. It's just me drowning in the smell of last night's smoke.