Cherry Bomb

After the abrupt departure of my girl Rosalie, I wasn’t going to let a good night go to waste and seeing as I was already in a bloody Karaoke bar, and the toughest one I’d seen at that, I thought fuck it, and went back inside.

Of course I should have known that that would result in several rounds of Jagerbombs, tequila shots and a hazy memory of a bathroom stall, a woman with a purple Mohawk...and her tongue piercing.

Thank Christ I’d remembered to bring Bambi who always kept a clear mind when we went out, even if she wore stupid shoes. I knew there was a reason I dragged her along everywhere and it wasn’t just because she had a nice pair of legs when she actually dressed up a little.

I had no-one to blame but myself this morning when I woke face down in a pile of my own drool, a parched mouth and a thumping headache. The alarm clock sounding off went through my head like a bullet and I moaned out loud, feeling sorry for myself that I didn’t have a girlfriend or even a mother around to make me a nice fry to soak up my hangover. Is that sexist? Fuck it.

Speaking of which, I would have to remind myself to thank Bambi for setting my alarm and making sure I didn’t get a bollocking off the bossman when I showed up for work late (again). I managed to roll myself out of bed and thumped onto the floor, cursing as I hit my already sore head off the corner of my bedside locker.

Within ten minutes, I was walking out of my apartment, clean jeans on and a fresh loose black shirt. I scratched my chin which bore a little more than a 5 o’ clock shadow but catching my reflection in a parked car by the sidewalk, I grinned. Even when I’m hung-over, and bearing what I would call stubble Hugh Jackman would be proud of, I’m still good looking enough to get any girl I want. I winked at two air hostesses getting out of a taxi and their answering smiles and giggles confirmed my thoughts.

I switched the straps of my satchel to my other shoulder as I thought of Rosalie, wondering where she had gotten to when she run off. My mind flashed to the scrap of tissue paper, her hastily written message telling me to wait a little longer. I had left it scrunched up by the toilet bowl last night, when I had puked my guts up after arriving home. A wave of fresh pain raced through my head and my stomach rolled and I groaned to myself. Never. Drinking. Again! Of course I’ve already arranged to meet up with Noel tomorrow...so after that...

I silently cursed Rosalie as I walked to work with every fresh rolling pain coursing through my head. If she hadn’t been such a tease and let me bring her home last night, I wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Of course I certainly wouldn’t be walking to work; I’d be taking advantage of that body in my head and already be on round four. I chuckled to myself and grinned at the thought of Rosalie’s naked body sighing into my sheets, her hands grasping onto them as I made delicious moans escape from that luscious mouth of hers.

“Lukas, where are you going?”

Bambi’s annoying little voice burst my daydream and I realised I’d walked past the entrance doors, so engrossed was I in that appealing image of my Rosalie.

“Oh hey Bambi,” I muttered and walked past her into the lobby. I snuck a look at her as we walked into the elevator together and it annoyed me to see she looked fresh faced and full of energy. She was dressed in one of those sexy little pencil skirts and I looked away as she tried to catch my eye so she wouldn’t see I’d been checking out her ass.

“Thanks Bambi for rescuing me from the arms of Mohawk lady last night. Oh and thanks again for bringing me home, wiping the vomit from my face, tucking me into bed and even setting my alarm for me so I wouldn’t be late,” Bambi sing-songed as several colleagues sniggered into their blackberries. I glared at Bambi but she continued, those wide innocent eyes boring into mine playfully, “Oh no probably Lukas, anything for a friend. But remember, you owe me one.”

I tugged at her pony tail that was so high it actually did remind me of the back of a horse’s ass, and she shrieked, smoothing down the flyaway hairs I’d just created. I grinned and we both stepped out at level three. Bambi didn’t hear the floating conversation of two crime correspondents as the elevator doors closed but I did.
“He owes her one? He’s probably giving her one, lucky bastard...”
The elevator doors closed and I stared at them as the conversation was cut off from me. Did people really think I was shagging Bambi? I looked at her, scrutinising her up and down...I mean she was pretty...but she was Bambi, my friend. Too weird.

And then I grinned, if they thought I was lucky enough to be doing Bambi, I’d love them to catch a glimpse of Rosalie. Now that was one lucky bastard.

~

Rosalie was actually far from my mind, lost behind several due dates coming up on assignments I had left on my desk and now stuffed in my satchel when I actually saw her. I stopped dead in the street and then wandered to lean against the near bus shelter. She was sitting by a wall around the nearest corner but still in my sight. She looked different somehow, her normally smiling mouth pursed in concentration as she tuned a black acoustic guitar that was resting over her knees. Her head was slightly cocked to one side, her left ear near the strings and her curtain of red hair was tied back scruffily in a black bandana. But she still looked beautiful.

I wandered closer, silently digging my camera from my satchel and assessing the lens. I looked up, this time through the camera. She still hadn’t seen me as she made herself more comfortable on the ground and plucked out a tune on the guitar that floated over to me as if on a stream of water. I continuously took photographs, loving the real person I was capturing and it was as she looked across to a man lying next to her, that I stopped to not only look at her but the person beside her.

It was an old man, obviously homeless; his patched up jacket and fingerless gloves protecting him from an evening breeze that was setting in. He was lying, resting, on newspaper strewn on the ground. This was his bedroom, and Rosalie was beside him, caring for him. Her guitar case was open in front of her and it was then as the music continued that she began to sing and my heart stopped at the loveliest of voices.

“Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
with his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news”

I swallowed, trying to moisten my dry mouth. I recognised the song as Ralph McTell’s ‘Streets of London’. My mother used to sing it to me. She was English herself and it always made it better, hearing it come from her accented mouth. But now I focused on Rosalie, as her crimson lips formed the words and I began to mouth it along with her...I knew the words by heart.

“So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind”

And I watched with a wonder at what she was doing. People who were arguing with each other stopped guiltily and looked at this young girl, and noticed for the first time the homeless man. Busy business men rooted in their pockets for five dollars, mothers handed over their change, one elderly lady wiped a tear from her eye as she noticed what she had been blind to almost all her life and recognised the effort she had never made to better other people’s lives.

As Rosalie came to the end of her song, I approached her, softly placing twenty dollars into the guitar case. As she came to the last chorus, her eyes watched me as she sang and I started to walk away. I looked back as she finished, watching as she roused the old man, and tipped the money she had made for him into his hands. His eyes widened in wonder, and the dirty fingers sticking out of his gloves touched her cheek for a moment, as if he believed she was an apparition.

Rosalie smiled her smile for him. Her smile that could make the sun seem dull. The one that made my heart skip a beat everytime it was directed at me. I smiled at the sight of her, my journalistic skills kicking in and screaming that I should make it an interview. Talk to her, talk to the man...have in the life section by tomorrow. But no. The real beauty of the moment couldn’t be interrupted. The moment of two strangers, one helping another...the moment was theirs. It was hers. And even I couldn’t interrupt it.

Instead I satisfied myself with taking another picture of my Rosalie and I turned away, continuing on my way home.