WAITING AT RITA’S

It was cold.
Two men eating chips from bags they held up close to their mouths were to the right of where I waited outside Rita’s for daughter stood inside waiting for her veggie burger to finish cooking. We’d come from a drink with a friend’d been in town to work for the day and on our way to meet someone else we'd stopped for food.
A man I see at the flats walked past and asked, ‘you got a cigarette or a roll-up?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t smoke, sorry.’
I watched him walk down the street towards town seeing who else of the people he passed he asked. Not the woman with her head down who almost stepped into the road, or the woman wearing a tee-shirt sat in the doorway of the cafe where I often meet a friend for coffee.
Daughter came out with her burger. I phoned and told him where we were that we’d be there soon and he said, ‘ok, bye.’