Spinball

I open my eyes. Morning sunlight is streaming into the carriage, empty apart from me. There is a faint smell of cigarette smoke mixed in with freshly cut oranges. Looking out of the window I can see Keleti Station in the distance. It's rapidly getting bigger. In a few minutes I’ll be arriving in Budapest.  

I had a strange dream sometime in the early hours. Imagine this large sphere made of glass or plastic spinning around in outer space; it’s all sort of glittery and sparkly like one of those Christmas toys you shake to prompt a fake snowstorm. Inside the sphere I can see my family: there’s my wife and I sitting on a sofa and at our feet our little daughter and son are playing on the floor together. We are completely absorbed in watching our children play. It’s as if we’re stuck or captured in a single moment. I watch them – us – with intense fascination. But, despite my best efforts, the sphere gradually spins away into the darkness and out of sight towards an unknown destination. Somewhere in time.

With a sigh I grab my trilby and get ready to leave the train. I need to meet Demetrius and finally find out what that mysterious delivery is from Thailand.

Bucharest, Goodbye Cormac

I've got a four berth couchette on the Dacia 347. Destination: Vienna. But I'm getting off at Budapest where I've got to see Diogenes the dwarf about that mysterious delivery that's waiting for me.

There's only two of us in the couchette, me and the backpacker. He's sucking noisily on some kind of mint and got incredibly hairy legs that knot just under the knees. But I've got my laptop; I'm busy designing my website.

Shlooop...

As the train pulls out of Gara du Nord I decide that its impossible to work while I've got this guy sat opposite me.

"Have you ever seen a film called I was a Teenage Werewolf?" I ask him.
     "No," he says, crossing his legs. "Why?"
     "Michael Langdon starred in it - before he became famous in Little House on the Prairie."  
     "I didn't know that."
     "Not many people do."
     "Say, why are you writing our dialogue using quotation marks? I thought you were trying to write like Cormac McCarthy."
     "I've decided I'm not Cormac."
     "What about Zen City, Iso?"
     "I'm going to bring out a new edition, re-written using quotation marks. More accessible. Hopefully, more commercial."
     "And Man in a Zen Ambulance?"
     "That'll be same."
     "And this blog?"
     "Yep, quotation marks from now on in."
     Backpacker crunches up the mint or whatever it is in his mouth.    
    "Oh, I get it," he says. "You want me to go, is that it?"  
     Finally.     
     He gathers up all his belongings, including a massive bright red Fuji-Tite-Rite backpack and struggles out of the compartment.
     Suddenly I'm feeling better.
     "Definitely easier to understand the dialogue now," he shouts back from somewhere down the corridor.
     "Yeah, I guess."
          

Postcard Two-Step

As I reach Sex Shop Monica pops out of the doorway and blocks my way. Strong smell of Brut aftershave. She is holding two things: a rubber tube with a nozzle in her left hand  and a paper bag in her right.

Mister Fielding! I got something for you. 
Oh, yes?
There was a kid from the post office just ten minutes ago...
Special courier?
Yeah. He asked if there was a Brit with a silly eight-ball trilby staying here by the name of Jack F.  Said he had a special delivery for him.
What did you say?
I said you're staying here but I quite liked your hat.
Thank you. I point to the rubber tube. Please don't tell me that's it.
No, no, she says, this is...

Trembling, I take the paper bag and pluck out the contents - another postcard. I hold it up. There's a picture of what looks like a Bangkok  streetscene. Judging by the traffic and the BOAC sign I'd put it some time in the fifties. Love those guys pedalling their rickshaws (big nod to them in Zen City, actually).  I flip the postcard and scan the Hungarian's crabby writing. It's Diogenes telling me I've got to get back to Budapest again.

What's the matter, Jack? Why are biting your lip like that? Jack?
I push my hat back. Have you ever thought you'd lost something really, really important, I say. Then - just when you thought you'd finally comes to terms with the terrible loss of it - it finally shows up agan?
No, can't say I have.
Oh. Well that's what has just happened to me.
Sounds like a ghost from the past.
Exactly.
You don't sound too happy about this ghost, Jack.

But I don't answer. Instead I go into my apartment and start shoving all my things into my canvas holdall. OK, OK. I've got the message, my friend. Back to the Big B.

Got a host of ghosts to meet.