It was a humid Thursday Afternoon that I first saw him.
I was already sitting on the top deck of the number 43 bus when his balding head first appeared coming up the stairs.
He halted for a moment and scanned left and right aisles of the bus before proceeding – holding onto rails behind the seats like an ape swinging through the jungle.
He exuded a quiet but audible sigh as he flopped down on the window-side seat two sets ahead and one to the left of where I regarded him from.
Once he was sat he pulled phone nor paper nor book from a bag or pocket, but instead stared out of the window with his chin propped on hand propped on the thin window ledge.
Something must have caught his attention, as he tried looking further back as the bus sped past something. I too looked round – but neither of us must have managed to catch a second (or in my case, first) glance at whatever it was as we both returned our gaze to their original positions – his to the immediate outside of the window and mine to him.
Stops came and went, and short of some small jostling within his seat, the man remained mostly still and unabashed from his observation through the window. Without looking his right hand reached up and felt the pole behind his set of seats and pressed the red button to ring the bell for the bus to stop at the next. There must have been something in the habit of this gesture – the unsighted grope and the fact the red ‘Stopping’ button having already been on.
The man rose and a moment later so did I.
We emerged just South of Old Street, near a small graveyard.
He turned right off the bus, and a moment later, so did I.
He walked a little slower than my natural pace, so I found myself having to consciously slow my own walk. I observed his own cadence and mine, and surmised he must either have shorter legs and a shorter stride, as it wasn’t long before I had synchronised our steps and still I found myself having to avoid catching up to him.
A left and a right followed by one more left eventually took him into a large glass-atriumed building. As he strode forwards and tapped his way through a set of glass-and-metal barriers, I strode onwards to a small cafe accessorised with MDF-looking tables and chairs, caged metal light fittings and a tattooed and pierced barista behind a chipboard counter.
I ordered a double espresso and was rung up with employee discount. I tapped my VISA debit card and took my cup away without saying anything beyond the initial request for my coffee.
I sat down and began turning the pages of the design-industry magazine that was laid out on the cafe table – it was an edition from 6 months ago and made reference to the Marketing for an event that had taken place 9 months ago in Gothenburg.
I made sure to position myself facing the glass-and-metal barriers.
At one point as I reached the middle of the magazine I felt the need to pretend to receive a phone call – so I held my phone up to my ear and paced circles near the cafe for around 5 minutes – holding up a single-sided phone call with the same gusto I would normally reserve for a business call during the day.
Once a full 90 minutes had passed, I decided my time in the cafe was probably up, and so instead took up residence on a nearby bench – dedicated “to the loving memory of Siobhan Reynolds 1948 – 2018”.
I placed my headphones into my ears, but left my phone untouched in my pockets, instead just taking in the muffled tones of the street life passing me by.
Twice I glanced up to the 12 stories above the reception to see if I could catch a glimpse of him at any of the windows. And another 90 minutes passed.
People began leaving – other people. Women, men with longer hair, men wearing coats, men with their phones out or already reading books as they walked along.
And then he appeared. Still wearing the same clothes as before, but now with the creeping edges of a sweat stain emerging from his right armpit.
He turned right, left and right and we were back on the road with the graveyard.
The bus stop for the 43 was right outside a small cafe, whose jaunty, stylised sat awkwardly next to the stone-carved headstones. I wonder if that man had thought this a strange combination.
He stood next to the bus shelter, glancing twice at the countdown timer for the buses before standing expectantly as the 43 gradually materialised from a long way down the street.
I managed to jump the ‘queue’ for the bus, reaching the top deck before him and sitting in the same seat as I had been sat in earlier when I first saw him.
As it had done before, his bald head emerged first, and then the rest of him followed.
The same seat he had sat in before was free, but the man sat in one directly the other side of the aisle instead, so he was exactly two sets ahead of me.
I copied his position from earlier – propping my chin on my hand and rested on the small edge next to the window.
Soon he took up the same pose, and we both passed the journey like this.
He rang the bell just after he arrived on Muswell Hill Broadway, and immediately rose from his seat – swaying as the bus bumped through a pothole.
As the bus hissed to a halt, I rose myself, and squeezing past two people that stood in the bus doorway, emerged onto the street seeing him striding down a small road leading off the Broadway.
His pace now was much closer to mine, his legs pumping more quickly as he strode along the uneven pavement that was bumped and rippled by tree roots snaking their way underground beneath us.
As he turned into the path that lead up to a black door with white numbers, a very fat man emerged from between two cars to the right of us.
He was wearing a t-shirt with the catchphrase ‘Bazinga’ from the Big Bang Theory emblazoned across it. It was maybe a size too small, so each latter was distorted from its usual font, as if it were appearing through a mildly effective house of mirrors glass.
I bent down to tie my shoe. Undoing and redoing a knot, I straightened myself upwards, crossed the street and started a slow pace, keeping a watchful eye ahead of me on Bazinga’s progress.
He turned the corner onto Muswell Hill Broadway, and about 5 seconds later so did I.