zg_shadows | (no subject)

Don’t you just love this city?

Seriously - you’re walking along, meandering along the pavement, and the sun is streaming down through the buildings with this stubborn we-shall-not-we-shall-not-be-moved attitude, and all around you the people are absolutely bustling. People are going every-which-way, getting in each others’ way, rushing to where they’re going, shouting to be heard down mobile phones, pushing their way into traffic without a care for their limbs… How can you not love it?

On days like these, I love being down here, on the street, putting one foot in front of another. Yeah, it’s slow, yeah, it’s not the most efficient way of doing things, but my god, can’t you just smell the secret? It’s everywhere! That person, hiding in a doorway and talking fast into his phone; that couple, trying to find a table away from the café window whilst holding hands and glancing over their shoulders; even that policeman, trying to direct traffic and look at his watch at the same time. It’s like a buffet banquet of secrets, and I’m starving.

Of course, I wouldn’t be the person I am if I hadn’t already snuck into the dining room and sampled the food before they lifted the covers, so to speak. That couple? The man happens to be a handler for a relatively nasty if currently small time group of dealers, and that woman he’s handling so carefully is, if I guess correctly (and I do, because I’m not guessing), a mule. The policeman? Not so much on traffic duty, at least not after a few phone calls to the right anonymous numbers.

I don’t mean to imply that it’s all so earth-shattering, because it’s really not; the man with the phone is just on a call to his girlfriend, despite the cloak-and-dagger routine. Of course, it’s always important to them, and that’s something I was taught to always remember; it may seem like small fry, but it always makes the world turn for someone. That man – his name is Paul Haldon, if my eyes and his ID badge don’t deceive me – would have his life turned pretty much upside down if someone had tipped his wife off about his extra-marital activities. And maybe it might be for the better, maybe it might be for the worse. But that sort of moralising… it gets to be quite pointless. At the end of the day, for better or worse, there are no secrets. That’s just the bottom line.