Member-only story
Vignettes — #1
Henry & Imran
[I will be publishing a series of intertwined vignettes — 25 in all — over twenty-five weeks of Sundays.]
Henry shambles along the busy city footpath, a bulging plastic shopping bag hanging from each hand. Although he is moving against the busy pedestrian traffic on its way to after-work trains, he collides with no-one. It’s as if he carries a force field with him. The well-dressed office workers give him a wide berth, assuming Henry is smelly or infested with vermin. He is neither of these.
Henry’s clothes are ragged and don’t fit him well, but they are freshly washed, as he is. Each of his two sets of clothes goes through the laundromat on alternate weeks. Henry himself showers every other day at the city baths.
Henry turns into a laneway, leaving the noise behind. Halfway along he lowers his shopping onto the platform of a deep alcove. He greets his ‘co-resident’, Imran, a homeless refugee.
Imran helps store the shopping, except for the hot take-away meals, in an old, broken-down, doorless wardrobe standing against the huge doors of the old warehouse, which have not been used since the days of horse-drawn carts.
Before dusk disappears the two men pull bed rolls out of the wardrobe and spread them on the wooden flooring of the alcove. Over their chicken and chips…
