Billy Joel is playing on my ipod, the night and miles are slipping away to the Piano Man. There is a certain appeal to travelling at night it’s almost like a night flight from a Tolkien or spy novel. Slipping away at night without attracting any attention. Man! Does you mind wander on long bus journeys. Looking around the dimly lit bus cabin seeing the different characters. There’s an old man sitting next to me admiring the pretty girl in the row ahead of us. The old man has a rather stately distinguished look, his hair and beard both neatly trimmed half moon spectacles sitting on the bridge of his nose. To finish off he has a pipe clenched between his teeth.
The woman looked like she had just fallen out of the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Elegance personified with hair that shimmered in the over head lights, and draped in diamonds that sparkled like a thousand constellations, in the rays from the street lights. Observing these two and how out of place they seem on the night bus bound west. My mind wanders again this time to the sound of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. It wanders in a new direction, inspired by these two strangers as to what chain of events led them to this time and place. My tired mind weaves their stories together and moves backwards through a series of events that may or may not have happened all to the tune of Bob Dylan.
My mind wanders into the past first back to a time when men carried hip flasks and cigarette tins. To what seemed like a much more sophisticated and timeless era. Back through events that have shaped the world we live in today, back past the first gulf war, past Vietnam even back past world war II. It wanders to a time shortly after the great depression. It’s 1931 in a Chicago Jazz Club, the room is thick with cigarette smoke and everyone is sharply dressed in suits and dresses. The man at the bar ordering his drink seems familiar something about him, an aura of familiarity that I’ve seen him before. The moment passes and he moves away from the bar and takes his seat near the dance floor. The men that he has sat with do not stand out on first glance. On a second glance however one notices the fine cut of their jackets and unmistakable bulge, that signals that they are armed.
Crouched low over the table that wards off any would be eavesdroppers. The business they discuss must be important. Watching them from afar imagination runs wild each possible topic much more improbable than the last. By the time I stop day dreaming about what their conversation it has ended and the familiar man is dancing with some stunning red head. The band plays out and the club starts to empty. Something compels me to follow the man. I don’t know why but I do, back to his hotel where I rent the nearest room I can. All these things I do out of instinct for no reason that I can fathom. With a stroke of luck my room is next to his. (Almost like someone was writing this. What happens next who knows?)
Sleep comes and it’s several hours later when I wake and begin to recongise the familiarity of the hotel room. Automatically I place my ear to the wall that I share with the man from the club. The rhythmic rumble of his snores let me know that he is still there and sleeping. With my curiosity about this man peaked, it’s time to for some pondering and piecing together of what has happened in the last 24 hours. Tracking back through the ether of memories events shape themselves into a scenario, the situation builds itself like a movie. The charismatic bank robber who’s stolen the countries heart and the relentless dedicated law man trying to catch him. The only question left to answer is which part do I play?
Still pondering my role in the unfolding story I leave for breakfast. The diner down the road gets recommended by the hotelier. Wandering down the street wrapped up in my own thoughts I fail to notice the gentleman that has appeared beside me. He walks lockstep with me to the diner and sits beside me in the diner, drinks his coffee then leaves. He left his cheque book behind him. On the back is my name, a place and a time…………..
