Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour

on the prowl. Anyway she didn’t look twice at me (girls don’t usually, I’ve got to talk to them a bit first, otherwise I’m the Invisible Man), and after awhile she went away and I was left alone there, staring up at that high, high ceiling, listening to the names of tiny little towns come floating over the speaker system. Grimsby … Fergus… Port Dalhousie …
    I went over and asked the guy for about the ninth time when the train was coming and he finally sent me down to Track Number Two and I climbed aboard. I wanted to be there first, get a good seat. I’m very fussy about where I sit; doesn’t matter ifit’s a movie or a plane ride, I’ve got to be in just the right place. So I got a seat right next to the aisle so I could get up and take a pee without pissing everybody off. You know, like whenever I wanted to. Of course, once you can, you never have to.
    But there was hardly anybody on board, except for an old woman down the aisle eating a sandwich very carefully, eating with these little careful bites like she thought her teeth might break if she chomped down too hard.
    A minute later a drunk came wandering through. He had red eyes and a fur hat on and he caught my eye coming into the compartment. I don’t know why but I’m an awful magnet for crazy people, they just seem drawn to me. So I’ve formed a scientific theory to instantly weed them out. I look at their shoes. Crazy people have always got fucked-up shoes. The tongues are hanging out or they’re way too big or they’re absolutely the wrong colour for the guy who’s wearing them, like bright yellow on a bum in a long coat; or they’ve got elevated heels on them, there’s a ton of things to look for. So when I walk down the street, for example, and I see some guy looking through the crowd at me, when I see him make that decision that I’m the guy and start to make a beeline for me, first thing I do is look down and check his shoes.
    Which is what I did with the guy on the train. Sure enough, they were fucked-up. No laces.
    I could smell him too.
    “Hello there, young fellow.”
    I looked over.
    “Oh hello,” I said in this real shitty formal voice.
    “Can I join you?”
    “I’m sorry, you can’t. I’m waiting for my mother. She’s with the police force.”
    Well, that last part may have been a bit unnecessary but I threw it in anyway. I knew if I let the guy sit down, he’d be yapping all the way to kingdom come and while normally I don’t care who I talk to, tonight was sort of special. Tonight I just wanted to sit in the train and think about all the stuff that happened with Scarlet.
    Anyway he split. He was very nice though, which made me feel a bit shitty. He wandered off down the train where no doubt somebody else was going to tell him to fuck off. I wondered if he had any kids. Like could he phone them up and say, “I’m tired of being a drunk. Can I come over?” I sat there daydreaming about this guy going home to his kids, everybody being nice to him, giving him a bath and fluffy towels, the mirror all steamed up; and then him sitting in the living room in a brown dressing gown, having a cup of tea. Little old grizzled face all happy.
    Finally we started up, the train lurching out of the station, ugly stuff on both sides, brick and barbed wire. But after awhile we cleared the city limits and picked up speed. It was sort of cool rattling through the countryside, everything all black outside, those little towns going by, thinking about Scarlet, about how yummy her face smelt when it was all wet. Or how she smelt when she was a little bit sweaty and leaned over to grab something. Wow. There was one time when she reached up to bat a spider web off the chandelier and her shirt came out of her jeans and I could see her tummy. I had this overwhelming desire to lean over and lick it like an ice cream cone. She probably would have called the cops on me, thought I was a big pervert, but that’s what I wanted to do. It’s an