Passing it Off

Sunset over Prague Castle: Image borrowed from http://www.picturecorner.org.ukThis story was inspired by a pair of old worn out shoes standing against the wall of a building near my dorm one morning, when I happened to be up surprisingly early to get on a bus. I jotted it down in my notebook and this is what came out. Prague, I have found, is a city especially conducive to writing. The way I describe it is a comparison. New York is a place of frenetic energy, kinetic energy. If you never wanted to, you would never have to stop and reflect. Coming here has made me realize that it is also a new city, a place of completely open possibilities, not weighed down by the passage of time the way that this city is. This city is subject to its own age, to its thousand-year-old churches and cobbled streets and malls with house foundations dating from the 12th Century in its basement. It gives everything and everyone a sense of melancholy weight that I have never felt, but have found is perfectly suited to my mood when I am possessed by the impulse to write a story or letter or academic reflection. Here is the result of my musings:

He stood, a dark shadow against the grey dawn, unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips. His worn black shoes tapped the sidewalk as he waited, impatient. His dark skin was crusted with the dust of the streets and sweat, paling him into old age. His once sharp tux cuffs were curling in at the ends, and his cufflinks glinted with the dull golden gleam of brass that had been in the salt sea air. When she appeared at the end of the block, he hurriedly arranged the collar of moth-eaten pea coat, lifting his left leg and propping his foot against the wall while leaning his head back to keep the collar up properly.
She came, flaming away the fog in her pink dress, stomping down the grey in her orange pumps, blond hair surrounding her face in a cloud that blasted away the viewer,
He was glad his head was already against the wall. As she approached, he lifted his hand to his cap in a mock salute. When she didn’t even slow down a beat, he called out, “Hey darlin’. Can you spare an old man a ‘Good mornin’’? It’s been a long night.”
She saw him then. Stopping short, she gave him the once over and said,
“It’s always a long night with you.”
But she did it with the faint upturning of her lips that he knew meant she wasn’t mad at him.
“Can you give me a kiss?” he asked, “I could use it right about now.”
She smiled then, laughed maybe, he couldn’t tell, cause the world went blind and deaf and dumb with white. And when next he could see, she had kissed him and moved on down the street, red scarf trailing her steps.
He sighed, and the cigarette dropped between now empty shoes, smoke curling up into the new day.

She stood, a pale beam of light against the purple of dusk, tamping the pack of her pipe. Her thick clogs were planted firmly on either side of her bicycle seat as she waited, patient. Her tanned skinned was lined, the dust of the roads filling the seams and darkening them into marks of the elderly. Her dress, once beautifully bright and tight against her body had been patched and mended and used for many tasks, and her gray hair streamed out behind her in frizzy waves in the twilight breeze. When he appeared on the horizon, she straightened, puffed on her pipe, and hauled her shawl about her hair, tucking its ends into her armpits so that she waited with proper matronly sternness.
He came, slicing through the dust of the country road on his black motorcycle, blanketing the countryside with his fierce black leather jacket. His long black hair whipped around him as he rode, leading to a face that brought the viewer out among the stars.
She felt the bicycle slide backwards an inch or two and was glad she was firmly planted. As he approached, she tilted her chin upwards at him in greeting. The motorcycle sputtered out and he coasted, head yet to turn. She began the ritual,
“Hello stranger. Fancy a trade?”