Recalibrating
Steve Dearden
When she says Wakefield my heart sinks. She says, ’Meet me at the station, Westgate.’ ‘I know it.’ ‘If it’s raining inside, Costas, if it’s sunny, out the front.’ ‘I know it.’ I don’t say, In fact I designed it, not the station, the bit out front too. Instead I ask, ‘How do I recognise you?’ ‘My stick,’ she says, ‘I have a stick.’ In the silence I can sense her smiling. I know she knows I am thinking, She sounds too young
for a stick. Blind? Disabled? Injury? Recalibrating. Thinking, maybe if she is blind she won’t see my mistake, if it’s sunny. If she is blind. She doesn’t know I am sitting here now. Shirt sleeves, cold can of diet coke, phone. Perched on the wall of a raised flower bed. All around me people perching on the edge of flower beds, students, lawyers from out of town, office girls and their sunburnt arms, another suit on his phone. The benches are all inside. Not outside in the sun. ‘Hello?’ She asks, ’You there still?’ ‘Yes.’ She asks, ‘Why did you choose me?’ ‘I …, I …,’ ‘Do you make good decisions?’ I look at the flower beds, people in the warmth, all the benches inside, the sun sinking behind the station, the yellow toy Wakefield on its sticks, my station approach. Recalibrating. I should have come and spent a day here. All day. Just sitting in the weather. ’Not always.’ I say. She laughs. Her breath in my ear. ‘Not always, but this time, I hope this time.’ ‘Good.’ she says, ‘Good. Westgate, not Kirkgate, right.’ ‘Right.’ I say, ‘Westgate. Good.’