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Great Writing - Home > Short S. > GRIEFF ENCOUNTER
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| GRIEFF ENCOUNTER | |
| By russ11 | ||||||||||||
| 03 April 2007 | ||||||||||||
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I can't help but listen when people use their mobiles.....saddo me. Exxcuse the language. Would appreciate any feedback please. Thanks for reading. ‘Land of hope and glory…’, the ring tone blared waking Geoff. He was older than I knew. Right now his face matched his hair - grey, thin, drawn. He was tired and in love. The first I could see, the second he had told me as we boarded the train. He answered the call. The screen and his face lit up. I stared out of the window with my eyes, still and fixed, like I wasn’t eavesdropping or concentrating. He listened as the station and his smile slipped away. “Well, I’m pretty tired…”, he said into the phone fingering the collar on his shirt looser. “No, of course, I want to it’s just…”, his face looked dreamily away, his eyes flicking away from mine as if I could see through them. She was early twenties and gorgeous, he’d told us, but he’d had been shyly reticent about the rest. We’d guessed from his haggard early office appearances that there was a ‘rest’. But, from what I could hear, rest was not what Twenties Gorgeous had in mind for Geoff today. “It’s been a long day, maybe if I get finished early I could pop round for…”he broke off mid word. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong…” “I can’t, not here…”, his eyes bumped against mine hating me for being there, for knowing and not hiding it. “I can’t…you know I do…maybe later..”. He was ageing now, his greyness flamed russet by the sliding sun. “Oh alright then..Mr Wobbly still loves you..” That seemed to let him off the hook. I was wrong. “Well, naturally, I think you’re attractive…I like every part of you…”, his whole hand was in his collar now and it still looked too tight. “Every bit is the best bit…”, he looked out of the window, out of his depth and out of his comfort zone. He peered down the track. “I’m gonna lose you in a moment, there’s the tunnel just ahead”. I was a good friend to him so I said loudly enough to carry “No, it’s not, we’re still 10 minutes away”. I knew what friends are for. His teeth glared at me. “Well, it looked like a tunnel to me”. He paused to listen. “Yes, I know that’s what I said…it’s just that I’m not as young as I used to be…”. God, he wanted that tunnel, any tunnel – no one in the history of mankind, not even the Great Escapers, had wanted a tunnel more than he did at that moment. “Your best bit…?” he repeated questioningly, “well, a best bit implies that the rest of your body is not as perfect so I think…”. He stopped. It was difficult for him to go on whilst holding the phone away from his ear. Some banshee-like sound of rending metal and screeching cats ballooned out of the earpiece. She didn’t want some ontological wordy bif-bat double talk about her body parts. She was not happy. Not so the carriage where we were sitting. The guy on the other side of Geoff and his friend were getting interested and appeared to be laying anatomical odds much to Geoff’s discomfort. Drifting my way was “2-1 on tits”, I didn’t catch the rest precisely but Geoff must have as his hand hurriedly covered the microphone. Most of the carriage nearby looked like they knew that there was a crucifixion going on. So did Geoff. “Why, why”, he repeated struggling to find a reason why, “ I can’t because, because, because…I have to go shopping”. He listened. So we all did. “Sure, if you tell me what it is, I’ll put it on the list and pop it round sometime”, for the first time he relaxed back in the seat. On safer ground here, he thought. Then his face stopped still. “I…I…I…”, he was stuttering sotto voche. “I…I…”, he was beginning to sound like a convention of sailors,”I don’t think they do Baby Oil”, he rasped, his voice seeping out from somewhere in his throat as the tunnel overwhelmed the carriage and the phone cut out. “F**k me”, exhaled Geoff exasperatedly. “Well “, I said, “I rather think that’s what she wanted to hear but don’t worry in 20 seconds the signal will be back”. Geoff didn’t reply, he was too busy turning his phone off.
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