Walking wounded

I saw the blood on his white t-shirt before I saw the blood on his face -- it took me a moment to connect the two. Holding a hand in front of his nose and the other out-stretched, he lunged from person to person, thickly asking, "Can you help me?" The suited workers, returning home, evaded his grasp and his glance. Then, he started to lunge at me; I found myself eluding him as gracefully as everyone else.

I thought, "Well, I can't very well help him. I'm a foreigner." Then: how did he make it this far without getting help already? There's got to be a reason. And, he's talking like a drunk.

Only afterwards did I think, perhaps a broken nose makes one talk like a drunk. But, then, how does one get a broken nose without being drunk?

That was two days ago. Today, after accidentally biking into the canal, I went to the Queens for a drink, and I mentioned the bloody young man.

"Oh, him. He's out here every day. Can't believe you haven't seen him before. He used to bleed from his scalp. He's just recently switched to his nose."

The guy said this in much the same tone my friend had said, "Women are wearing skinny jeans tucked inside their boots now."

Another local added, "He was at the betting room 15 minutes ago. He knocked over three chairs, trying to get Williams to hit him. Yeah, you just missed him." He looked at me sympathetically, as if the bleeder had stood me up.

Afternoon walk

I walked to Highgate Cemetery, passing through Hampstead Heath. On Parliament Hill, the white-haired, broad-shouldered man in front of me made as if to kick his female companion. But, just as his foot neared her rear (he didn't have to aim that carefully), he started toppling over and instead did an impromptu, one-legged dance as if he were on hot coals. A few moments later, an old lady passed me. Misinterpreting the cause of my smile, she smiled back. And suddenly I felt as if I were indeed smiling because I was kind-hearted and not because the man looked foolish.

I then passed an Indian guy, in his twenties, who was loudly talking on his mobile. He shouted, "What the f-ck! He gets a mortgage!" He pronounced mortgage, mort-gage. When foreigners swear in a language other than their own, it always sounds self-consciously deliberate; it's the verbal equivalent to someone wearing hiking boots with evening wear. He exacerbated this effect by immediately glancing around, smiling shyly, the phone still to his ear. It seemed like he was looking for approbation...whether for his cursing or his knowledge of mortgages, I don't know.