look where you're going

"Ow! Ohohohohoh..."

"What? What did I do now?"

"Who said it was you! I just banged my toe." She bent down and nearly wept with it.

"Oh for God's sake," he said. "We're late, you know what my dad's like, it won't be worth it. Come on, LArdy." His affectionate nickname for her. It was better than "Wide Load." His mother was nice.

"Do you mind! I can't even walk, and all because of your stupid hideous ugly chair," and she whacked the chair as hard as she could.

"What, you couldn't look where you were going?"

"I did look! DUH! I just didn't SEE it!" She sounded lame and she knew it. She was lame. He left the room.

Tears lept in all directions. She gave the chair another whack and sat down on it, holding her foot. It was an ugly chair, made of some almost orange wood, and its covers were some kind of scratchy material with strange hairy bits sticking out of it. It was the colour of his mother's tights.

Its feet - which supported a little mechanism that made it like a rocker - stuck out an inch or so past where you might think, but nothing could be done. It had to stay where it was so he cold sit in it and watch the football, the cricket, the rugby, the snooker. She covered her face and bawled. She wasn't fat, and her toes had been cold all morning with the heating off and no more change for the meter, and she always looked where she was going, and his dad would have thought this was all very funny. He was always one for a joke.

"Oh, La-ardy," Gus sang in the other room, "the trouble I've seen... Oh, Lardy, the trouble I've seen!" He came in, then stopped. "Oh, Lardy," he said, and stooped down. He cupped her toe in his thin, cold hand and held it still.

***

The station was an echoey hubbub. In a cavern, in a canyon, and her shoes were number nine. Her toe throbbed in its boot and her eyes had that puddy, just-cried feeling. She knew they'd feel like it all through his father's birthday lunch.

She held Gus' hand as he pulled her towards the platform, feeling panicky and fragile. Foreign students milled around at the top of the concrete stairs. Far overheard the ancient glass ceiling arched like an idea.

"Don't trip," Gus said, and started down.

He was eight inches taller and his legs were long. She had to struggle to stay with him - a human train with a sore toe and no track. She pulled a face but he didn't see it.

At the bottom they raced past a girl and a boy, standing still as a freeze frame on the second step up. They looked like foreign students too and were clearly in the middle of something. Mascara ran down the girl's face and the boy was talking earnestly and fast in some language that could have been Spanish.

Gus tugged her hand, the train was coming, and she was straining backwards to watch them. The girl stamped her goot and spoke, loud and clear: "Mario, you are full of shit!"

Gus, pulling her, burst out laughing then. The train came. And years later, even after they had split up, they sometimes talked about the Spanish girl and Mario.