petite anglaise

I reach into my bag and give my Ipod a little stroke to turn up the volume a notch.

I’m still not completely over my paranoia about taking a gadget which is worth as much as my PC on the metro with me every day. Even if I didn’t actually pay for it. I should probably purchase some different coloured headphones, for my own piece of mind. Right now the only people I trust are fellow Ipod wearers. They get a covert nod; it’s like VW Beetle owners honking their horns at their peers.

“Your favorite innocence,
Your favorite prize,”

CLIP!

“Your favorite smile,
Your favorite slave.”

CLIP!

“I’m hanging on your words,
Living on your breath,”

CLIP! CLIP!
Did something small just fly past, missing the end of my nose by mere milimetres?

“Feeling with your skin.
Will I always be here?”

CLIP!!

I ease the volume down and take a look around.

There is a man, approximately my age, attractive in a scruffy, academic sort of way (brown corduroy jacket, one of those narrow, stripey, many-coloured scarves that men are wearing this season coiled around his neck, tufty brown hair), sitting across the aisle to my right on a strapontin. In fact, on closer inspection I decide that this person makes the grade and shall be added to the “Top Ten Foxes I Have Spied In The Metro” list. An honour which he remains blissfully unaware of, as he seems to be inspecting his hands. He has rather nice hands, I note.

The unkind neon lighting, which gives all metro travellers a sickbed complexion, regardless of whether they are wearing expensive MAC foundation or not, glints off something metallic in his right hand which I can’t quite identify without craning my neck a little…

CLIP!!!

Nail clippers.

That man is clipping his fingernails on the metro! Tiny, jagged pieces of him are flying in all directions! I suppose I should be thankful that he doesn’t remove his shoes and socks and start on his toenails. I wonder whether this is the sort of thing which you are allowed to sound the emergency alarm for, but dismiss the idea, as there is a fine for misuse.

Mr Métro Manicure is ejected unceremoniously from the list he never knew he was on as I caress the volume up again and close my eyes.

As a precaution however, I keep my mouth tightly shut.