Walking with Ghosts

collected the bags and stepped inside.
    Marie reached for her tape recorder.
     
    JD got to the Pancho Villa Sundance sandwich bar and joined the queue. He was awake now, and less grumpy than been with Marie that morning. It was nothing to do with Marie. He was like that in the morning. That’s how the day started, grumpily, and then as it wore on it got better. By the evening there was not a trace of grump left.
    In normal life, where there was no relationship to worry about, he wouldn’t let himself be seen in the morning. He would work. He would stay in his room in front of his computer and write. Two thousand words, minimum, before he’d inflict himself on the world.
    He glanced up at the menu board and decided what to order if he ever got to the front of the queue. One chicken and paprika, one giant turkeyburger with trimmings, and an apple pie with cream. Oh, yes, and Marie’s tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo, though God knows how anyone could exist on that for the whole day.
    One of the guys behind the counter kept sizing him up. It’s like, you know you’ve seen him before somewhere, but you don’t know where that was. There’s something familiar about him, he could be a relation. But it might be he’s just someone you pass in the street, you’ve never actually been introduced. If it was a woman you’d smile at her, take a chance. But as it’s a guy, sexual orientation unknown, you content yourself with sneaking the odd glance, hoping you’ll remember where you met.
    It doesn’t come, though. J.D. was second in the queue now, hoping the little guy wasn’t planning to inject salmonella into his turkey burger.
    The woman at the head of the queue finished paying for a shipping order, packed into seven, yes, J.D. counted them twice, seven Pancho Villa Sundance thermal carrier bags, collected them together and struggled out of the shop. He looked down at the little guy with the raised eyebrows and said, ‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’
    The little guy blinked twice.
    ‘Please?’ J.D. said. Hoping he’d got it right.
    ‘It’s the beard,’ the little guy said. ‘Without the beard, you’d be J.D. Pears.’ Then he smiled.
    ‘Wimp?’ J.D. said. And he knew who the guy was. They’d been to school together back in the time of Ted Heath. J.D. looked at Wimp and was swamped by a host of images that had not entered his consciousness for a quarter of a century. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’, men on the moon, Lee Marvin’s ‘Wanderin’ Star’, Decimal day, and Jimi Hendrix. ‘Voodoo Chile,' he said. ‘Remember that?’
    Wimp did an imitation of Hendrix, picking with his teeth at the strings of an imaginary guitar, and the thin man behind J.D. in the queue sighed heavily and shuffled his feet.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Wimp. ‘And Ned Kelly. Jagger playing dressing-up games.’
    ‘I knew your face,’ J.D. told him. ‘I was in the queue here, getting closer and closer, saying who is this guy? But I couldn’t put the face in the right place. I’d’ve got home tonight, maybe even in bed just dropping off and I’d’ve remembered it then. Jumping out of bed, man, screaming round the bedroom in me jimjams, “Wimp, hell it was Wimp sold me a fucking turkey burger and I didn’t recognize him.” ’
    ‘Took me about ten seconds,’ said Wimp. ‘I saw you looking through the window, and it was like a face I knew, couldn‘t quite place it, but when you came through the door I‘d already clocked you.
    The thin man behind J.D. coughed and looked round at the people behind him for support. ‘Christ,’ he said, glancing upward at a ceiling in the advanced stages of flaking.
    ‘So, what’re you up to?’ J.D. asked.
    Wimp turned round in a complete circle. He held his hands out. ‘Sandwiches,’ he said. ‘Temporarily.’ He looked over J.D.’s shoulder at the queue. ‘Look, I’ll get your order, then I’d like to talk. You got time?’
    ‘What? Now?’
    ‘Yeah. Just a few minutes. I’ve got a break coming.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Outside, there’s a bench over by the green. It won’t take long.’
    ‘OK,’ J.D. told him.
    ‘What was it you wanted? Lemon chicken.’
    ‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’
    ‘You been rehearsing