different movement. Then it didn’t seem possible.
Not with how they were feeling. Not when out of their gloom had come that apparition riding the waves, belted along by the wind, and so both had taken hope from the sight. Even with being broke, hungry, out of smokes, you’d still taken hope. So it didn’t seem right – it was an incomprehensible wrong and yet it fitted all the same – that you should be chugging to a halt with Sonny looking at Jube staring at the gauge that was reading E for empty of petrol.
And so far from home.
Two drenched lurkers in a city park, waiting for night to fall and a chance to come by.
Sonny, shivering with cold, dreading the embarrassment, the shame of being caught in this position by some happenstance cop,or a sharp-eyed John Citizen; crouched, uncomfortably, behind shrubbery with back exposed to the rolling openness of tree-studded parkland.
Stationed opposite, Jube, across the small chasm of bank divide ; and below meandered a path, partly illuminated by spillover light from nearby lamps. Of the kind you see in spooky old English movies, with mist or rain shrouding the scene, the pending scene.
Smells of earth and flower and leaf everywhere. City hardly a few minutes away, though you wouldn’t think so with the quiet; only the thrum of rain. The path crossed every once in a while by late-evening hurriers under umbrella, or huddled into raincoat; unknowingly watched by two desperadoes gone of the warmth of their mobile home. And no money to get it going again; it’d been drunk and then pissed, urinated against just another stainless-steel urinal in just another lowdown bar with fellow flotsam. But it’ll be a piece a piss, Sonny, Jube’s words echoing in his mind as the rain ran off his face in rivers. Soon as it’s dark, I’ll pick the mark, then I give you a raised-arm signal and you only signal back if it ain’t cool. It’ll be as easy as that, bud, I promise you.
But Jube’s promise that Pete and his boys’d be in the bar was what had them now here in the first place – cos all the bread’d got spent hanging around on a hope, a notion, a criminal wank notion. (Fuck him.) A cinch he said it was gonna be. That was back then, when they were walking their dejected states into town, when their desperate destinies’d seemed twinned. Back then, it was an abstract. Just another Jube half-mad idea: I know! Find a park and mug someone. Mug someone? You kidding? The hell I’m kidding. Never been more serious. But why can’t we do a house? No getaway vehicle, remember, Sonny? No getaway vehicle with the park neither . Don’t need one. Run across the park’s what we do after the biz. And anyone following’ll have to the same, right? Don’t worry, Sonny, it’ll be a breeze.
Yeah, a breeze, a cinch, a piece of piss, an easy-meat bowl-over – fuckin crook-breezy confidence that had nothin’ – ever – to do with how things actually turned out. Story of our lives. We fuck up.
Sonny miserable in his muscle-cramping position. You leave the bizzo side to me, cuz – Oh, Jube was so sure of himself at every new turn of sudden impulsive idea he got: Just leave it to me, Sonny my main lil man. Calling a man that cos it made him feel bigger.First dude I see looks worth taking I’ll be onim like one a them big cats.
And now, Big Cat calling from across the way, Hey bro! Saves having a shower, eh? His chuckle no less hideous for the rain part muffling it.
Two lurkers in a city park.
Came the sound of whistling – whistling? Then out of the rain, down there on the eerily lit footpath, a figure striding beneath a big umbrella that exploded in bright colours even in the sheeted wet. Whistling in this? Sonny stared down at the figure, his step-out of dark-trousered leg, his whistling in sharp time to his walk. (Man, to be in his head, eh?) As Whistler marched as quickly out of view as he’d come; and Sonny betting the guy’d be going home to a real nice wife, full of
Not with how they were feeling. Not when out of their gloom had come that apparition riding the waves, belted along by the wind, and so both had taken hope from the sight. Even with being broke, hungry, out of smokes, you’d still taken hope. So it didn’t seem right – it was an incomprehensible wrong and yet it fitted all the same – that you should be chugging to a halt with Sonny looking at Jube staring at the gauge that was reading E for empty of petrol.
And so far from home.
Two drenched lurkers in a city park, waiting for night to fall and a chance to come by.
Sonny, shivering with cold, dreading the embarrassment, the shame of being caught in this position by some happenstance cop,or a sharp-eyed John Citizen; crouched, uncomfortably, behind shrubbery with back exposed to the rolling openness of tree-studded parkland.
Stationed opposite, Jube, across the small chasm of bank divide ; and below meandered a path, partly illuminated by spillover light from nearby lamps. Of the kind you see in spooky old English movies, with mist or rain shrouding the scene, the pending scene.
Smells of earth and flower and leaf everywhere. City hardly a few minutes away, though you wouldn’t think so with the quiet; only the thrum of rain. The path crossed every once in a while by late-evening hurriers under umbrella, or huddled into raincoat; unknowingly watched by two desperadoes gone of the warmth of their mobile home. And no money to get it going again; it’d been drunk and then pissed, urinated against just another stainless-steel urinal in just another lowdown bar with fellow flotsam. But it’ll be a piece a piss, Sonny, Jube’s words echoing in his mind as the rain ran off his face in rivers. Soon as it’s dark, I’ll pick the mark, then I give you a raised-arm signal and you only signal back if it ain’t cool. It’ll be as easy as that, bud, I promise you.
But Jube’s promise that Pete and his boys’d be in the bar was what had them now here in the first place – cos all the bread’d got spent hanging around on a hope, a notion, a criminal wank notion. (Fuck him.) A cinch he said it was gonna be. That was back then, when they were walking their dejected states into town, when their desperate destinies’d seemed twinned. Back then, it was an abstract. Just another Jube half-mad idea: I know! Find a park and mug someone. Mug someone? You kidding? The hell I’m kidding. Never been more serious. But why can’t we do a house? No getaway vehicle, remember, Sonny? No getaway vehicle with the park neither . Don’t need one. Run across the park’s what we do after the biz. And anyone following’ll have to the same, right? Don’t worry, Sonny, it’ll be a breeze.
Yeah, a breeze, a cinch, a piece of piss, an easy-meat bowl-over – fuckin crook-breezy confidence that had nothin’ – ever – to do with how things actually turned out. Story of our lives. We fuck up.
Sonny miserable in his muscle-cramping position. You leave the bizzo side to me, cuz – Oh, Jube was so sure of himself at every new turn of sudden impulsive idea he got: Just leave it to me, Sonny my main lil man. Calling a man that cos it made him feel bigger.First dude I see looks worth taking I’ll be onim like one a them big cats.
And now, Big Cat calling from across the way, Hey bro! Saves having a shower, eh? His chuckle no less hideous for the rain part muffling it.
Two lurkers in a city park.
Came the sound of whistling – whistling? Then out of the rain, down there on the eerily lit footpath, a figure striding beneath a big umbrella that exploded in bright colours even in the sheeted wet. Whistling in this? Sonny stared down at the figure, his step-out of dark-trousered leg, his whistling in sharp time to his walk. (Man, to be in his head, eh?) As Whistler marched as quickly out of view as he’d come; and Sonny betting the guy’d be going home to a real nice wife, full of
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