Here Comes The Sun

The nighttime darkness was dripping off the surrounding grey stone buildings like runny tar. The steady rain tried its best to drown the life out of everything. But it is Piccadilly, and at this time on a Friday evening nothing can stop the bees from stirring in their hive. The November night was doing its best to dampen me down, putting all its efforts into stamping me under its thick frigid heel.
I was walking on thin soled shoes towards the Ritz hotel to meet with an old acquaintance. Water was draining off my hat and I was getting sick of dodging this way and that to avoid the fistfuls of arrogant grey and black suited zombies, so I decided to walk a strait line from then on in. I only had a couple more traffic lights to go before I reached my destination, and anyway, it was a method I had employed before. Everyone, no matter how self absorbed in boasted conversations on smart phones, or how engaged in exchanging hurried wit with their fellow walker they may be, always has to keep at least half an eye on the path ahead. For three blocks I walked in the straightest line that any man may have trodden on the streets of London. And as I kept my course, the zombies took notice, breaking off my bow like thin ice against a liner.
I got to the doors of the Ritz and paused. Early. I let my eyes do a little walking of their own and they bumped into a homeless man clutching a handful of magazines. He was watching me. He had been watching me almost the whole way I had walked up Piccadilly. He nodded. I nodded. He spoke.
“You walk like you mean it,” he said with his dry words.
“You don’t look too bad yourself,” I said back.
“Big Issue?” he asked.
“I’ll take two,” said I.
The acquaintance I was meeting was a she. And it wasn’t inside the Ritz I was supposed to be meeting her but outside of it. I’m not too sure why she chose this as a rendezvous; I think it was close to her work. Her name was Amy. I hadn’t seen her in so long, and I had moved house and changed telephone numbers so many times since then I was surprised she even managed to track me down. She refused to talk on the phone but only wanted to meet. I chuckled to myself later, thinking about how quickly I had agreed to comply.
I had myself to myself for a few moments more, tightening my grip on the pair of magazines in my hands, when I finally saw her from afar.
The rain, it pushed. I could see its hands force her down as she walked, her back buckling, her shoulders sharpened against it. The whole street was like the bottom of a painters water pot, cloudy and darkened, once bright colours mixed into a dull monotone shade. Her jacket was more for style than protection. Her pale neck was getting wet. The tips of her shortish hair were like the soaked tales of dishevelled creatures, trying their best to curl and huddle away, but bravely taking whatever pain there was to be served.
She knocked them all dead. Every person in that crammed city street was trumped by her. Every last one of them. And they didn’t even know it.
Amy saw me only when we were about a car length apart. Her face folded across the cityscape like clean white cloth, silken and pure. The ground seemed to move from under me like crumbling stones, and I could have been anywhere. Her clothes were dark, as was all else, a sticky blackness clutching to the surrounds.
“Hey,” said I.
“Hey,” said she.
“So … what's up?” I enquired, my words edging carefully over my lips.
“Come over here, sweetheart,” Amy said, not to me, but turning and calling behind her.
Amy took the hand of a small girl of about five years of age. She appeared in the intercity gloom like a brilliant firework, buttoned up in a long and bright yellow raincoat, the only colour now painted on my eyes. The little one’s hair looked so familiar. Amy hoisted the girl into her arms so that she now sat eye to eye with me.
“Ruby,” Amy said to the little girl “meet your daddy.”