This part is fiction, any resemblance to true characters is accidental .
Alpha
The evening was approaching, it was dusk. She just greeted her taxi driver friend, when someone from behind called her name. »Who else knows me now?« went through her head. She had been there for only a week. She turned around and saw a black Mercedes, one of the many of various conditions and ages on Freetown streets, stop in the middle of the road. This one was mud stricken, but new. It must had been driven on one of the many mud roads which in the rainy season substitute fun you get in Disney amusement parks, as the one to Lakka she had been to earlier in the day.
Its driver was half hanging out of his car and then climbed out of his seat and stood next to it. It was Alpha. She met him last year. They met a couple of times. But then he went back to Europe, and so did she. He stood there, and looked at her, like she was new. She walked over to his car and stopped in front of him, suddenly aware of her heavy backpack, hanging down one of her shoulders, of the plastic bags in her hands, of what she was wearing. His eyes glinted, it was just a flicker of a moment. His dreads were hidden under a cap, he had earrings, more than one, a heavy silver necklace with a silver dragon, a thick silver bracelet, a big silver ring. She recognized most of his jewelery from last year. He was trendy and youthful, but not young. He was not someone she would pick out from a group of men, not by style, not by appearance.
»What are you doing in town, I didn't know you were here,« his voice was loud, energetic. He sounded offended.
Suddenly she felt guilty, for no apparent reason. It was the way he said it. They only exchanged a couple of very brief mails, asking about how they were doing. No big explanations, not many words, never with him.
»We were not really in touch, were we?« she rhetorically asked.
He smiled to himself, somehow inwardly. It seemed as an agreement to what she said.
»Why have you come back?« he suddenly asked.
»I am working here,« she replied. Her short answer was followed by a moment of silence.
»Where are you staying?«
»Down there,« She waved vaguely towards the street at the bottom of which was her temporary home.
»Where, there?« and looked at a youth centre on the corner. His expression was saying, oh God not something so down the budget. »Are you alone?« he asked.
»What is this? An interrogation?« she felt it was getting a bit far.
There was more silence, and another inward smile.
»Can we meet?« he asked.
She thought. »I am quite busy.« She said it in a very formal tone. Her manner became strict, she somewhere found the authority she uses with children, when she knows they have to take her seriously. She was under control.
»Yes,« he said, in a small timid voice.
»Let me take your phone number,« She said, deciding not to give him hers. She pulled out her cell phone from the top pocket of her backpack. She held it in her hands, a nice fancy European Ericsson, with a video and camera and many lovely functions, which some time later got stolen. He looked at it, they were standing close.
»So, give me the number,« she said, holding it in her hand, ready to store it into her phone.
»Which have you got, Comium?« he asked.
»Celtel, just give me whichever.«
»033,« and then stopped. His right arm was resting on the top of the open car door. He looked up towards the sky, he seemed to be in deep thought.
»So, what, have you forgotten it?« she asked. She was a bit rude, and aware of that.
He continued, and stopped again. All of a sudden her phone turned into a live flapping fish fighting for life. It slipped from her hand, she fumbled after it, while it slid down against her body, and managed to recatch it at her bosom the last moment before it fell and crushed, crouching, her plastic bags swaying, her backpack slipped down to the elbow. She recomposed herself, as if nothing happened.
»Are your hands sweaty?« he asked. Now he was rude, his voice was loud. His car was full of silent immobile men, was it his friends, work mates or relatives? She looked at them, tried to find eye contact with either of them, to say we are all human, with our weaknesess. She wanted to dissolve her embarrasment. But they pretended they were not there, they had a blank expression, it was none of their business. They were mere passengers.
»Yeah, it's hot,« she said, and uncomfortably readjusted the backpack, swayed her body, and brought it back to initial position.
»So, are you going to tell it or not?« She regained at least part of her control. She was getting impatient, now she wanted this scene to end.
He told her the rest of the numbers, she pressed the digits on her Ericsson, and even before she saved it she was off, passed him, going around the car. »Enjoy the rest of your day,« she said not smiling, not nicely, very formally, turning around, just before she went down the street.
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