Is This Yours?

“Is this yours?” the waiter asked, more Shirley than surly.
“Beg, pardon?” Jim responded still heavily immersed in his bitter daydream.
“It was on the chair next to you” He was holding a small black object, a blur to Jim’s sticky eyes which remained entrenched - focusing inward.
“What was…what is?” he stuttered edging back painfully into the waiter’s world.
“Look I’m very busy. If it’s not yours hand it in when you pay your bill” and slung the object onto the table. It slid about six inches, its velocity quashed by the cheap impoverished candle holder set slightly off centre to accommodate the plastic tomato ketchup bottle. Then Jason, his waiter, rounded sweetly on his two delicate ankles and slinked off, shimmying expertly between busy tables, his light metal tray balanced with equilibrium atop five slender, but rigid, digits placed with precision to ensure against breakages and the subsequent analogous loss of wages.
He had been particularly petulant today, more so than customary. Jim gathered that his better half had “buggered off”, as he put it, but whether he’d overheard this today or last week was beyond his capacity for recall.
Jim’s throat was dry and he instinctively reached toward the coffee cup in front of him, forgetting, momentarily, about the dark alien object rocking gently by the sauce. Jim swallowed what was left, surprised at the coolness of the liquid and how much better it tasted that way. “I must’ve been out a while” he pondered and sought out the sad café clock. Twenty past eight it frowned. He’d ordered just before the hour: “One small cappuccino please. No, no croissant, thank you; nor toast, muffin or pancake, the coffee’s just fine” That pissed Jason off regardless his domestic situation, or lack of it. Having Jim sitting here for nearly half an hour with no more than three mouthfuls of poorly constituted caffeine, and preventing more capitally endowed clients from indulging in a builder’s breakfast.
“It’s all about tips - that’s the bottom line” he muttered aloud and that familiar surf of gloom engulfed me like a splash of water from the last early morning wash of a condemned man. The purchase of the coffee had left him thirty two pence – Jason could have that.
Despite the overwhelming melancholia Jim could recollect nothing at all from my brief flit into Daydreamland. It was as if he were a television on standby. That irked Jim. He was broke and that irked him too. Life had become very irksome recently.
Losing his job didn’t bother him. Yester day he’d been sitting on a superstore checkout passing comestibles across a bar code reader for eight hours. Around midday he placed an individual cauliflower on the weighing scale and waited for the machine to inform him what to charge the customer and wondered which vegetable would actually see the day out. The cauli won.
“We think your heart’s not in it” the store manager spoke sympathetically, the banality of the cliché encapsulating Jim’s brief career with the company. He hadn’t told her yet. They let him see the day out so she suspected nothing when Jim arrived home at the regular hour. He couldn’t stand the pity - that stupid dopey look of a doting mistress when her puppy does something naughty on the carpet.
“It doesn’t matter love” she’d patronise limply “It never suited you anyway, did it? Something better is just round the corner. Besides I earn enough for both of us”
She did too. Head teacher in the local comprehensive in her mid-thirties, she was combined those two elements that normally mixed about as well as oil and water - career minded and caring. She didn’t mind the failure: “As long as you keep trying love, that’s what counts” It was more irritating than the guy at school who was always great at sports but couldn’t just leave it at that. He had to denigrate those who couldn’t tell a bat from a racquet, by telling them it’s how you play the game.
That was never Jim’s game. Sport which consisted of him having to move within it was an anathema. That’s why he learned to love the horses. After all even bloody Usain Bolt couldn’t match the grace of a thousand pounds of beautifully bred horse-flesh striding across the winning post at Ascot or Goodwood. Mind you Jim could do with a couple of dead certs like him instead of the sort of soon-to-be dog meat he’d been used to backing.
No bets anymore. She’d put Jim straight but as he was either borrowing or stealing it off her anyway he succumbed to the cure for his addiction There was no thrill without putting up your own ante. When Jim won he liked it to be his, totally guilt-free. She’d know besides. She always knows. She never mentions it but its there in her eyes. And besides he hardly ever won.
“Gotta get a job” Jim said aloud, forgetting where he was.
“You can wait here” Jason was hovering again.
“Wait?”
“At the weekends; we’re always short and I’m run off my feet most of the time”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Not exactly, I don’t own the place. I could put in a good word though”
“You’re fucking kidding me. Yesterday I was the missing link between multi-national profiteers and insatiable consumers, now I’m being courted as a fast-food pimp”
“You lazy bastard; the only thing you spend in here is time. You could at least earn a bit instead of taking up valuable table space”
“Oh so it’s a tip you’re after?”
“Off you dear - don’t worry I’ve got my bus fare home”
“Anyway just because I said I have to get a job doesn’t mean I need a job”
“I forgot you’re married to Lady Muck”
“Well, at least she’ll be there when I get home”
“Oh he’ll be back. He knows where his bread gets buttered”
“Can’t you forget just once that you work in a café?”
“You’ve got a nerve, questioning my choice of euphemism and being blasphemous with a verb that’s quite obviously alien to your way of life!”
“Garrulous crap. That fucking degree didn’t do you any good in the long run”
“It’s not my qualifications, it’s my age. Over 30 and people look at you like you have a disability. I’m writing now. Just wait till I get published”
“Assassination in print? Be careful Jason there are libel laws”
“I’ll bind their horrid hearts in literary subterfuge. They’ll never be able to prove it”
“They might not want to”
“Physicality? Let them, I’ll pay to have the bruises smoothed away with a personal masseur”
“And Ralph?”
“Fuck Ralph. If he leaves again I hope it’s just before my publisher tells me they’ve printing my book…or I’ve won the lottery” He exhaled the latter part of the sentence like an extended sigh
“You won’t be fucking Ralph tonight”, Jim thought. “Neither will I – the wife that is. She’ll be tired; paperwork and staff problems”.
“ ‘Not me’, she’ll chide. Then sympathetically she’ll lean over and un-stiffen it for him. It’s like giving a dog a bone, or in my case taking one away. One of these days I’ll hold out as long as I possibly can. That’ll teach her. I’ll make it so difficult for her she’ll beg me to screw her just so she can get to sleep faster. All I need is the most abhorrent vision” But who was he kidding he’d tried that. HeI always came. It eradicated the pity more quickly.
“Anyway” Jason clipped, “Is it yours?”
“It just might work” He cried, suddenly being visited by a vision of Jason and Ralph grappling.
“By the sound of it, it does” said Jason as a vibrating noise rattled the cheap tableware. “You got a text message, by the look of it” He picked up the black phone and began to investigate.
“You nosey bugger” Jim snapped, snatching the phone from him and realising immediately it wasn’t his. He tapped his jacket pocket to check his own phone was still there. It was. Its weight belied its efficacy. Only one person would ever call him and if he turned the phone off only one person would text him.
“It’s a nice phone isn’t it?” Jim answered “But it’s not…”
The content of the text stopped him in my tracks.
“Shit, sorry Jason, of course it is mine. Cassie bought me it because I lost my other one. I just didn’t recognize it for a moment”
“At this rate she’ll be buying you another next week”
“Well thanks for that. I’m late for…er”
“A job interview?”
“Right…yes. See you tomorrow maybe”
“That’s confidence for you”
“Sorry? Oh…no…actually…yes, yes I think I shall do rather well today.” He smiled unnerving Jason’s sarcasm. It was enough to dismiss him.
Jim dropped the last bit of change he had onto the table and placed the saucer over it. He saw Jason’s ear cock at the rattle. Jim popped the phone into his trouser pocket. A tight fit –He didn’t want to lose it.
As he left the café Jason leant back on the counter and shouted “Good luck”, a mixture of derision and hyperbole, but it failed to move the rest of the clientele who either sat chewing or staring or both, at the bleak backcloth of the miserable urban sprawl that extended beyond their banal temporary oasis.
Jim waited to cross the busy road, his destination the small newsagents about a hundred yards nearer town than the café. As he did so I heard a cry from inside:
“The cheap bastard”
Jason must’ve looked under the saucer. Jim had really meant to give him his last thirty two pence, but realised he’d need a paper, so noiselessly lifted the porcelain and swiped the change back into his hand.
Jim ran over the road as soon as a gap appeared and continued to jog down toward the shop. He bought the cheapest daily available and then sat down on the seat at the nearest bus shelter, just as the sky began to seep drizzle onto the populous.
He turned to the racing pages and scoured the meeting being held at Sandown today. He was looking for the 3.50 race.
“There it is” He exclaimed, frightening a young female student who had hurtled inside out of the mizzle as if it were a monsoon.
And there it was. Jim leant back on the seat and pulled at his trouser pocket eager to extract the phone. It felt as if it were jammed so he pulled harder and harder at it, issuing a string of profanities which propelled the student back into the rain.
Finally it came out and he held it next to the open page, not quite believing his luck. The text read:
Snake Charmer 3:50 Sandown
And true enough, number 8 on the card in the 3:50 at Sandown, carrying 9 stone, in a two year old maiden race over a mile, was Snake Charmer.
One

“Is this yours?” the waiter asked, more Shirley than surly.
“Beg, pardon?” Jim responded still heavily immersed in his bitter daydream.
“It was on the chair next to you” He was holding a small black object, a blur to my sticky eyes which remained entrenched - focusing inward.
“What was…what is?” Jim stuttered edging back painfully into the waiter’s world.
“Look I’m very busy. If it’s not yours hand it in when you pay your bill” and slung the object onto my table. It slid about six inches, its velocity quashed by the cheap impoverished candle holder set slightly off centre to accommodate the plastic tomato ketchup bottle. Then Jason, his waiter, rounded sweetly on his two delicate ankles and slinked off, shimmying expertly between busy tables, his light metal tray balanced with equilibrium atop five slender, but rigid, digits placed with precision to ensure against breakages and the subsequent analogous loss of wages.
He had been particularly petulant today, more so than customary. Jim gathered that his better half had “buggered off”, as he put it, but whether he'd had overheard this today or last week was beyond his capacity for recall.
Jim's throat was dry and he instinctively reached toward the coffee cup in front of him, forgetting, momentarily, about the dark alien object rocking gently by the sauce. He swallowed what was left, surprised at the coolness of the liquid and how much better it tasted that way. “I must’ve been out a while” he pondered and sought out the sad café clock. Twenty past eight it frowned. He’d ordered just before the hour: “One small cappuccino please. No, no croissant, thank you; nor toast, muffin or pancake, the coffee’s just fine” That pissed Jason off regardless his domestic situation, or lack of it. Having Jim sitting here for nearly half an hour with no more than three mouthfuls of poorly constituted caffeine, and preventing more capitally endowed clients from indulging in a builder’s breakfast.
“It’s all about tips - that’s the bottom line” Jim muttered aloud and that familiar surf of gloom engulfed him e a plash of water from the last early morning wash of a condemned man. The purchase of the coffee had left me thirty two pence – Jason could have that.
Despite the overwhelming melancholia I could recollect nothing at all from my brief flit into Daydreamland. It was as if I were a television on standby. That irked me. I was broke and that irked me too. Life had become very irksome recently.
Losing my job didn’t bother me. Yester day I was sitting on a superstore checkout passing comestibles across a bar code reader for eight hours. Around midday I placed an individual cauliflower on the weighing scale and waited for the machine to inform me what to charge the customer and wondered which vegetable would actually see the day out. The cauli won.
“We think your heart’s not in it” the store manager spoke sympathetically, the banality of the cliché encapsulating my brief career with the company. I hadn’t told her yet. They let me see the day out so she suspected nothing when I arrived home at the regular hour. I couldn’t stand the pity - that stupid dopey look of a doting mistress when her puppy does something naughty on the carpet.
“It doesn’t matter love” she’d patronise limply “It never suited you anyway, did it? Something better is just round the corner. Besides I earn enough for both of us”
She did too. Head teacher in the local comprehensive in her mid-thirties, she was combined those two elements that normally mixed about as well as oil and water - career minded and caring. She didn’t mind the failure: “As long as you keep trying love, that’s what counts” It was more irritating than the guy at school who was always great at sports but couldn’t just leave it at that. He had to patronise those who couldn’t tell a bat from a racquet, by telling them it’s how you play the game.
That was never my game. Sport which consisted of me having to move within it was an anathema. That’s why I learned to love the horses. After all even bloody Usain Bolt couldn’t match the grace of a thousand pounds of beautifully bred horse-flesh striding across the winning post at Ascot or Goodwood. Mind you I could do with a couple of dead certs like him instead of the sort of soon-to-be dog meat I’ve been backing lately.
No bet today though. I could borrow it off her, but there’s no thrill without putting up your own ante. When I win I like it to be mine, totally guilt-free. She’d know besides. She always knows. She never mentions it but its there in her eyes.
“Gotta get a job” I said aloud, forgetting where I was.
“You can wait here” Jason was hovering again.
“Wait?”
“At the weekends; we’re always short and I’m run off my feet most of the time”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Not exactly, I don’t own the place. I could put in a good word though”
“You’re fucking kidding me. Yesterday I was the missing link between multi-national profiteers and insatiable consumers, now I’m being courted as a fast-food pimp”
“You lazy bastard; the only thing you spend in here is time. You could at least earn a bit instead of taking up valuable table space”
“Oh so it’s a tip you’re after?”
“Off you dear - don’t worry I’ve got my bus fare home”
“Anyway just because I said I have to get a job doesn’t mean I need a job”
“I forgot you’re married to Lady Muck”
“Well, at least she’ll be there when I get home”
“Oh he’ll be back. He knows where his bread gets buttered”
“Can’t you forget just once that you work in a café?”
“You’ve got a nerve, questioning my choice of euphemism and being blasphemous with a verb that’s quite obviously alien to your way of life!”
“Garrulous crap. That fucking degree didn’t do you any good in the long run”
“It’s not my qualifications, it’s my age. Over 30 and people look at you like you have a disability. I’m writing now. Just wait till I get published”
“Assassination in print? Be careful Jason there are libel laws”
“I’ll bind their horrid hearts in literary subterfuge. They’ll never be able to prove it”
“They might not want to”
“Physicality? Let them, I’ll pay to have the bruises smoothed away with a personal masseur”
“And Ralph?”
“Fuck Ralph. If he leaves again I hope it’s just before my publisher tells me they’ve printing my book…or I’ve won the lottery” He exhaled the latter part of the sentence like an extended sigh
You won’t be fucking Ralph tonight, I thought. Neither will I – the wife that is. She’ll be tired; noisy kids, paperwork and staff problems. “Not me she’ll” she’ll chide. Then sympathetically she’ll lean over and un-stiffen it for me. It’s like giving a dog a bone, or in my case taking one away. One of these days I’ll hold out as long as I possibly can. That’ll teach her. I’ll make it so difficult for her she’ll beg me to screw her just so she can get to sleep faster. All I need is the most abhorrent vision. But who was I kidding I’d tried that. I always came. It eradicated the pity more quickly.
“Anyway” Jason clipped, “Is it yours?”
“It just might work” I cried, suddenly being visited by a vision of Jason and Ralph grappling.
“By the sound of it, it does” said Jason as a vibrating noise rattled the cheap tableware. “You got a text message, by the look of it” He picked up the black phone and began to investigate.
“You nosey bugger” I snapped, snatching the phone from him and realising immediately it wasn’t mine. I tapped my jacket pocket to check my own phone was still there. It was. Its weight belied its efficacy. Only one person would ever call me and if I turned the phone off only one person would text me.
“It’s a nice phone isn’t it?” I answered “But it’s not…”
The content of the text stopped me in my tracks.
“Shit, sorry Jason, of course it is mine. Sally bought me it because I lost my other one. I just didn’t recognize it for a moment”
“At this rate she’ll be buying you another next week”
“Well thanks for that. I’m late for…er”
“A job interview?”
“Right…yes. See you tomorrow maybe”
“That’s confidence for you”
“Sorry? Oh…no…actually…yes, yes I think I shall do rather well today.” I smiled unnerving Jason’s sarcasm. It was enough to dismiss him.
I dropped the last bit of change I had onto the table and placed the saucer over it. I saw Jason’s ear cock at the rattle. I popped the phone into my trouser pocket. A tight fit –I didn’t want to lose it.
As I left the café Jason leant back on the counter and shouted “Good luck”, a mixture of derision and hyperbole, but it failed to move the rest of the clientele who either sat chewing or staring or both, at the bleak backcloth of the miserable urban sprawl that extended beyond their banal temporary oasis.
I waited to cross the busy road, my destination the small newsagents about a hundred yards nearer town than the café. As I did so I heard a cry from inside:
“The cheap bastard”
Jason must’ve looked under the saucer. I really did mean to give him my last thirty two pence, but at the last moment I realised I’d need a paper, so I noiselessly lifted the porcelain and swiped the change back into my hand.
I ran over the road as soon as a gap appeared and continued to jog down toward the shop. I bought the cheapest daily available and then sat down on the seat at the nearest bus shelter, just as the sky began to seep drizzle onto the populous.
I turned to the racing pages and scoured the meeting being held at Sandown today. I was looking for the 3.50 race.
“There it is” I exclaimed, frightening a young female student who had hurtled inside out of the mizzle as if it were a monsoon.
And there it was. I leant back on the seat and pulled at my trouser pocket eager to extract the phone. It felt as if it were jammed so I pulled harder and harder at it, issuing a string of profanities which propelled the student back into the rain.
Finally it came out and I held it next to the open page, not quite believing my luck. The text read:
Snake Charmer 3:50 Sandown
And true enough, number 8 on the card in the 3:50 at Sandown, carrying 9 stone, in a low level handicap over a mile, was Snake Charmer.