‘Violations’ by Jill Crawford
At a bus stop on a long road, south of the city, a man smiled as I stooped to the bench. It was snowing, sparse flakes. A boy lolloped to the end of the queue, raised his hand and said: high five! A girl lifted her hand to his. He moved to the next, waited: high five! And so on, until he came to me: high five! Then to the man, who was holding a pair of ice skates, upside-down, by their blades: high five! The man shrugged. The beaming boy faltered. He lolloped away, pigeon-toed.
*
Aboard, I sat across from the man: natterer. He’d attended to the electrics in a student house he owned. Now he was heading into town to ice skate.
Where d’you live? he asked.
Near Unthank Arms.
Nice.
I love the artisan bakery – sausage rolls.
You know about the brothel? His face was conspiratorial.
Sorry?
The house opposite the bus stop has a brothel in it, with foreign women, owned by a minted bloke who made his dough off betting shops.
*
Next morning, it snowed again. At the bus stop, I looked. The likeliest candidate had no number: tall gate; door a dishevelled blue; hedge clawing at second-floor windows; makeshift, part-drawn curtains.
A woman’s dog pooed. She scooped. A guy passed, in a shiny bomber jacket, carrying a wheel-less bike.
The gate remained closed. Nobody moved within the windows.
A snow flake sighed into my disposable coffee cup. I got on the bus. The driver snapped: That’s not allowed.
From issue #8: spring/summer 2019
About the Author
Jill Crawford is from south Derry. Her work has featured in The Stinging Fly, n+1, Winter Papers and Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber). She is a graduate of the creative writing masters at UEA.
