As people dwindled away, I decided to pack up for the day. It was only three in the afternoon but I wanted my shower badly. Plus, those clouds looked ready to break any minute. It was nearly an hour’s walk to the swimming center from here and as I pocketed my cash, I wondered if it would be foolish to use some of it on bus fare. If I got soaked I might get sick and then what the hell would I do?
I glanced back up at the clouds and saw one looking ready to give birth to a whole shower of raindrops.
Yeah, I was going to get the bus.
Feeling a familiar prickle on my skin, I looked up and saw the guy was still standing there, his arms crossed as he studied me. I scowled at his assessing attitude.
He’d started showing up to watch me play about four weeks ago. Since then he’d appeared every Saturday, watching from a distance. I knew it wasn’t about physical attraction because I wasn’t really looking my best these days. It had to be about my voice and it freaked me out. Busking was a risk because all it would take was that one person to guess who I was from my voice.
Hence the fake accent.
Had this guy figured it out?
Fuck off, I tried to send him the telepathic order.
He began walking toward me. I tensed as I put my guitar in the case. This was new.
He stopped a couple feet from my case and I straightened to full height. I wasn’t diminutive at five foot six but I wasn’t tall either. Still, it was better than being crouched down while this stranger towered over me.
My expression was challenging.
His was blank.
Which was why I was surprised when he offered without preamble, “You can sing. You can write.”
I frowned, tilting my head slightly as I studied his face. Finally, I replied, “I know.”
His lips flattened and I wondered if that was his version of a smile. “Let me buy you a coffee.”
Suspicion flooded me.
Despite my best efforts to stay as clean as possible, I couldn’t rid myself of the aura of someone who slept rough. I had a large rucksack I carried everywhere and inside was my one-man tent. Once a week I had a shower and on the days that I couldn’t, I sprayed my hair with a can of cheap dry shampoo that I used sparingly. I was careful with the few shirts and two pairs of jeans I had, attempting to keep them as clean as possible. But there was dirt under my fingernails I couldn’t seem to get rid of and most importantly hard flecks of cold reality that I couldn’t wash out of my eyes.
I was homeless and most people seemed to sense it intuitively. That meant I was familiar with strange men approaching me to proposition me as if I were a common prostitute.
“Why?” I bit out, hating him as I hated all the men who thought they could take advantage of me.
He responded with a look of derision. “I’m not looking for sex. I just want to talk. About your music.”
“Why?”
“Let me take you for a coffee and I’ll explain.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
He scowled, dragging his eyes down my body again. It was reassuringly nonsexual and insultingly disdainful. When we locked gazes, he said, “Then save your cash and let me buy you a hot meal.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
I pondered this, severely tempted. It was broad daylight, we were on Buchanan Street. If his plans for me were nefarious, there wasn’t a lot he could do to me. I glanced to my left, up the street. The red-and-white, candy-striped sign of TGI Fridays beckoned like a seasoned seductress.
However, the concern over what his interest in me was, and whether he’d discovered my secret gave me more than pause. I bowed my head, hiding my face behind my hat. “Find another form of amusement. No thanks.” I strode past without looking at him.
He didn’t call out after me, and the more distance I put between us, the more I felt the tension in my neck muscles loosen, my hunched shoulders lowering to their normal position.
The north end of Buchanan Street started on a hill at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. It sloped downward at a gradient, leveling out at around the halfway point. I’d been busking on the level, so it took me less than five minutes to get to the bus stop to the left on busy Argyle Street. Less than five minutes to put the guy to the back of my mind. There was no time for worrying about trivial things in my new life. That was the whole point of it. I only had time to worry about the basics. It was liberating in a way I couldn’t have ever imagined.
“Busker Girl!” I heard as I approached the bus stop.
My attention was drawn to the two homeless people sitting in sleeping bags outside the Argyle Street Arcade entrance. Old shopping arcade, not an amusement arcade.
Since my bus hadn’t arrived yet, I walked over to Ham and Mandy. I met them not long after I’d arrived in Glasgow and found myself without enough cash to stay in a hostel. I think I’d been sleeping in the cheap tent I’d bought for about a week when they approached me one day while I was busking.
“Hi,” I said as I walked over, staring down at them with sympathy twinging in my chest. It was odd, but I didn’t feel like I had anything in common with them other than that we were all homeless. I just couldn’t picture myself looking as uncared for as these two.
“How ye doin’, Busker Girl?” Mandy grinned up at me. Her teeth were thick with grime and decay that I no longer flinched at the sight of. I bought a new toothbrush every six weeks. It wasn’t electric but it was better than nothing and I used little disposable dental floss harps too. I was vigilant about keeping my teeth and gums healthy.
“She has a name, ye know.” Ham rolled his eyes at his woman.
I’d given them the false name of Sarah.
“Busker Girl is closer to the truth,” Mandy said, giving me a knowing smile.
She saw through me. I didn’t think she recognized me, but she knew I wasn’t called Sarah and she made me squirm with the way she seemed to be able to peer into me. Still, I liked her because she never pushed me for real information.
“Ach, leave the lass alone,” Ham said. Ham, short for his surname of Hamilton, wasn’t the first heroin addict I’d ever met. He was the most tragic. Tall, all lean muscle and tattoos, he had beautiful green eyes and a face that would’ve been incredibly handsome if it weren’t for the physical effects of the heroin. It was thin, drawn, his skin a grayish color, and his teeth were even worse than Mandy’s. Not only yellow and diseased, but his left canine tooth was broken and his right incisor was missing entirely. They had told me their stories the first time we met.
Mandy ran away from an abusive home life. Her mom’s boyfriend sexually assaulted her on a regular basis and her jealous mother liked to slap her around in punishment, as if it were her fault. I’d felt sick to my stomach listening to the casual way Mandy told her story. As if she’d grown numb to it. I understood the numb part.
Living on the streets led Mandy to prostituting herself to survive. She developed severe anxiety and depression and was one more awful sexual experience away from committing suicide when she met Ham. Where Mandy wasn’t originally from the city, Ham was from a place called Ibrox that was less than fifteen minutes outside the city center. He got hooked on heroin at fifteen and his addiction cost him his family, most of his friends, and the ability to hold down a job.
Ham’s addiction didn’t bother Mandy. At least that’s what she told me. I felt sad for them both, not only because of what they’d been through or because they were sleeping on the streets. I felt sad because I could tell Ham loved Mandy. But when Ham had wandered off that day to speak to another homeless guy they knew, Mandy told me she was only with him because he protected her from other men and he didn’t mind the bad days she had with her untreated anxiety. Don’t you love him? I’d asked. As a friend, she replied. But it was clear she was offering him more than mere friendship for his protection, and I wanted to cry for her, because she was still prostituting herself . . . just in a different way.
“What’s up?” I asked, not really wanting to spend much time around them because they were too much of a dose of harsh, cold reality for my liking.
Before either could answer, the first fat raindrop fell from the sky.
“Fuck,” Ham glared upwards. “Knew it.”