WANKER

I came out the offy and he said, ‘You got twenty pence?’
I looked at his hand out towards me and then up at his face.
‘What for?’ I said, ‘A drink?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I said and took out the change I had in my pocket, two tens either side of a pound coin and a copper.
Then, my hand in line with his closed fist out the end of which I could see the corner of a five pound note.
‘You’ve got a note,’ I said, incredulous, without excess, his brown eyes, beautiful, I wanted to touch them, be closer, maybe tell them things...
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m doing something...’
‘No,’ I said and walked off, a backward glance not until I’d crossed to the other side of the road...
...the newsagent, end of Jamaica Street, didn’t have the “Nobbly, Oaty Biscuits” I wanted but as I stepped out, after buying what I usually buy there, a man passing said, ‘I’m schizophrenic.’
‘Says who?’ I said.
Earlier as she and I drank coffee in Kuvuka where we’d met after she’d phoned, ‘You want to meet?’ and I’d said, ‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I was on my way here and I heard this man’s voice, “So I’ve walked to the top and the bottom now I’m back at the top like you said, how much energy do you think I’ve got?” and I turned round,’ she said, ‘and he was on his own, talking to himself, well to whatever inner voice was talking to him, it’s like mad row round here,’ and I said, ‘Well, what do you expect? It’s where the mad people always go,’ I said, ‘The centre of town.’
‘Says who?’ I said.
‘The psychiatrist.’
‘Do you know what schizophrenic means?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘Who?’
‘The psychiatrist?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘He just said I’m a wanker.’