Sunday 10 May 2009

 

Cell Phone

It's ten in the morning in the tramway and you know how birds sometimes explode into song? On public transport, they explode into phone. In several different languages. There's a woman arguing her mother, a man explaining he is going to be late for work, a Croatian girl in a disco get up talking about who knows what and right opposite me are the two Russians. The thin, slumped one has a Greensleaves ringtone and I know the melody is going to eat up my ears for the rest of the day. Short fragments of Greensleaves pour out of his speakers, then stop while he stares at his display in desperation. He makes no effort to move.

His friend, equally scruffy but bulkier, with a baseball cap and a chin that says "it's a beard when I stop shaving for five days" is taking a series of phone calls. With each call his irritation mounts. Soon, he is yelling angry Russian syllables into his handheld, face glowering upwards to the roof, hands gesticulating expressively. It sounds like a business matter, and it sounds like they are under pressure. Beardface clicks the call away, slams the phone down on his thigh.

Seamlessly, of course, the other phone begins to ring. Greensleaves fragments spill into the air. Thinslump, thinner still and slumping even more, stares at the display in his lap, hopelessness in his eyes. The complaints of his friend, in fat Slavic syllables, drift towards the ceiling and mingle there with the ragged ringtone residues.

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