AHMM, April 2010 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dell Magazines

Fiction: JANGO SAYS by Mark Patrick Lynch

"I'm Jango,” he says. “Remember?"

It's clear that I don't.

"Oh, come on. The other week. Right? Down the street, by the city walls. Petergate. You bought one off me."

"I'm sorry,” I say. “It doesn't ring any—"

"But you must remember. It's me. Jango." When he sees that isn't enough and that I don't recognise him, he brings to his face an appealing smile and spreads his hands to jog me along, so that I will make connections in recollection and my synapses will fire and trigger memories of him. “Jango!” he says again.

Perhaps it's his belief that if he starts to tap dance the memory will come back, and the sun gliding across the yellow medieval walls of the old city will shine on his presence there, illuminating him, and I will remember and say, “Oh, yes. Sorry. How could I forget? Take a seat, please."

But it's not going to happen, despite the boundless capacity he finds to summon jig into his movements, make merry his quick steps in dull-ended boots.

I lift a hand and he brings his body to a halt. Somewhere in that indefinable space between us—he standing, dance abandoned, me sitting, waiting for him to leave—we both understand this is over, though it has not yet been said aloud.

A nervous and edgy need for recognition issues from him like a plea; I try to ensure I radiate a relaxed calm. A gulf separates us.

"No,” I say across it, shaking my head. “Really, no."

I'm seated at a round table of slatted wood with scrollwork legs painted black. There are three unoccupied chairs. Before me is my notebook. I'm enjoying my freedom, waiting to be served an English breakfast, though a pot of tea and a white cup and saucer are already here, a small jug of milk and twin sachets of brown sugar, with a steel spoon for stirring. The table is outside the café entrance, nestled with others on a small square of cobbles. An awning flaps like one hand clapping.

It's a quiet courtyard at this time of day, with only shop and office workers passing by. I'm alone, except for Jango, who is neither kind of worker, and if I'm correct in my suppositions, no kind of worker at all. I choose to sit here and not inside so that after my meal I can smoke a cigarette and go undisturbed. I am not a natural people person, though I'm slowly learning. On the table, as well as my notebook and click-top pen, is a secondhand paperback novel with a broken spine. A breeze chilled by the river lifts the pages every so often in time to the applause of the awning. I will not lose my place because I have not yet begun the book in earnest. It's often the case that I have to reread the opening passages of a novel to find my sympathies coming into line with the author's. Since I was inducted in the rehabilitation programme, I have learned the capacity within myself for empathy has grown.

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