A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

'Was I rude to him?' I said.
We were sat on the sofa in the silent disco just above North Road about half eleven the night of the first Stokes Croft street festival. This was before the incident had occurred I was to ask her about later. We made up the dialogue to the silent film showing: a love scene, might have been, it was the way we told it.
She walked into the man wheeling the bike as we left and headed to get chips before going back to the flat for a coffee.
On Jamaica Street he was standing in the doorway of the shop next to the studios opposite the back entrance to the massage parlour. Three other men were there and he was talking to one of them as we passed.
'Hello,' he said, 'you having a good evening?'
'Hello,' I said, 'yes. How about you?'
'Yes,' he said.
We walked just a little further stopping to look in the window of the shop at the small screen showing a gig from the inside.
'Where's that?' she said.
'The Canteen, I think.'
'Is it live?'
'I don't know,' I said.
We turned round together to see if what was on the screen was what was happening in the Canteen we could see from where we stood.
'No,' I said, 'it isn't.'
'Look, fire jugglers,' she said.
'Are they inside or out?'
'Out,' she said, 'It's a reflection.'
we watched a few minutes then walked on stepping round a group of young drinkers and up by the Bell people sat on the pavement to the entrance to the alleyway.
As I lay in bed the early hours of the morning I thought how I hadn't had a conversation about the evening with him and how it might not have been rude but that it was a missed opportunity.