The smell of cigarette smoke brought him back to himself. A teenager with undercut hair and a camouflage coat was smoking something he very much doubted was tobacco, the dense brownish cloud permeating the bus stop. James edged away, conscious the smell would be seeping into his suit.
«Excuse me.» James made eye contact. «Do you mind not?»
As the guy glared at him, James felt his hands shaking. Everyone at the bus stop, including James was shocked he'd said anything. The whole crowd was staring at them, the tension palpable. He knew they were all wondering why the hell he'd spoken out. It was the same question he was asking himself.
«Whatever mate," the teenager said, flicking the remnants of the spliff into the traffic. It sat there, still smoking, right in the middle of the lane where the passing cars wouldn't extinguish it by driving over the butt.
«Thanks," James muttered weakly, avoiding further eye–contact, grateful he hadn't been stabbed for his trouble.
The bus journey took an age, leaving James staring blankly out of the window at the endless sea of brake lights and unmoving scenery. Something wasn't right, and deep down he knew what was troubling him; she'd tried to snatch the phone.
If Pink had been trying to stop the woman walking off the platform, why hadn't she simply taken her elbow. That was what any normal person would have done. The lightest of physical contact would have been enough to get her attention, and then she could have warned the woman of the danger. But that wasn't what had happened.
The fear he'd seen on Pink's face was still etched in his memory. Of course, he'd yelled out and everyone had seen the scuffle. That was the simple explanation. He'd exposed a thief in the station, and she'd panicked. He rubbed a finger across his chin. It still didn't sit right in his gut. Pink wasn't like that. He didn't want to believe she was like that. Thinking back, Pink had looked terrified before he shouted at her. Her expression had changed the instant she'd seen the woman in the crowd, even before she was near the edge of the platform. And there was no mistaking that expression.
He'd only seen fear like that once before. It was one of those childhood memories that stuck. The room in the corner of the attic was technically a spare room, but it had slowly been taken over by clutter: The oriental fans from their trip to china, the old vacuum cleaner his father had promised to take to the charity shop, the surfboard that had been rashly purchased for his elder brother before he discovered he didn't like the sport, a heap of books his mother insisted didn't quite fit on the bookshelves in the living room. Normally, no one went in the spare room.
That day there was something else in the room. Something no one had put there; a pulsating beige mound, larger than James or his sister. It occupied almost the entire guest bed. Neither of them understood what the thing was at first. It was only after he'd reached out and touched the clay–like husk and felt the vibrating swarm within it, fear turned to horror. That was the moment he realised the truth.
Wasp nest.
His sister's face had been stony with terror. A single wasp was enough to make her scream. But this time she was silent. He ushered her out of the room, always keeping himself between her and the mound.
The nightmares lasted for years. In his dreams, the wasps would build a nest around him as he slept. They'd crawl in his mouth and out through his eyes. And he'd wake screaming, cocooned in the nest where he slept, trapped in the writhing swarm.
He knew that facial expression because he'd seen it before on his sister's face. It wasn't concern he'd seen on the face of the pink haired girl. It was horror. For some reason she was absolutely terrified of that phone.
James reached into his bag and pulled out his Nokia 5110. His mobile phone must have been twenty years old. He'd had it since sixth form. It weighed about half a kilo and the screen was green and black. The thing was so old it had acquired a sort of retro cool. His friends joked he'd got there before the hipsters. He'd never really thought about it much, but he didn't like mobile phones. Of all his friends, he'd been the last to cave into the pressure to buy one. As a basic principle, when he went out, he liked to be out - as in out of reach of work, and insurance salesmen, and ex–girlfriends, and his mother complaining he never visited.
And he didn't upgrade. It certainly wasn't entirely displeasing to watch his friends suffer every time a new Apple iOS came out and took six hours to install. He struggled not to laugh when popular apps got hacked full of malware and stole people's credit card details, or their toddler fed their expensive mobile to the toilet bowl. And all the time his trusty Nokia did what he thought phones should do; make and receive calls. It certainly didn't lead people to walk in front of trains. He jokingly wondered if that was an app, or if it came pre–installed in the hardware.
Thinking about it, he realised he'd never seen a phone like that one before. It was an ugly thing, sort of rounded with a tiled skin - maybe an alligator skin carry case. Still, he wasn't likely to know what model it was. He didn't really pay much attention to the endless slew of slightly different models his friends insisted on demoing for him. Increasingly they seemed to be made somewhere in the Far East, with brand names he'd never heard of, by companies involved in endless patent disputes.
Alighting the bus near Holborn, the air felt doubly cold. The older buses vented engine heat directly around the passengers legs, adding the stench of diesel to what rapidly felt like a sauna. The shock of the change in temperature was brutal. Before he could break free of the throng and slip down the invariably empty ginnel which formed a short–cut to his office, a balding man sneezed furiously, pebble–dashing the back of James' neck with what he figured was probably SARS. Or maybe Ebola.
Cursing he rooted through his satchel and extracted the small bottle of antibacterial gel. He had to take off his wedding ring before applying some. There was a twinge of guilt as he slipped the ring into his pocket. Taking his ring off for a moment didn't mean anything. He'd only smiled at Pink. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts he didn't notice the thing as he boarded the lift. It was only when the elevator was half way between third and fourth he saw it.
He froze.
It was a smartphone in a black scaled case with small spikes. It was like the thing had followed him, sitting there like some kind of oversized slug that had oozed its way onto human skin. The finance–bro holding it was wired for sound, and James could hear the heavy bass of some trance, or techno or whatever they called that shit you had to be on drugs to enjoy.
Trying to be casual, James peeked over at the screen, trying to spot the logo of the brand, but he couldn't see anything. The cover was open, but the screen was a smooth black void. Abruptly, he realised Finance–bro was glaring at him.
«Nice phone," he coughed. Finance–bro blanked him. James wasn't sure that he could even hear with that music blaring. «I was thinking of getting one of those. What model is that?»
«Fuck off.» There was no intonation. The whole delivery was deadpan. And hostile.
«Sorry," James muttered. «I didn't mean to bother…» he didn't finish the sentence. His gaze was fixed on something strange. There was a drop of blood on the man's collar. It wasn't much. Probably just a nick from shaving. Or maybe it was splatter from the hobo he'd beaten to death. The guy had a serious Patrick Bateman vibe. The stain stood out against the immaculately starched white. «Just ignore me.»
James turned to face the doors, edging a step away. He wasn't scared of this guy, or at least, that wasn't why he turned away. He was beginning to feel queasy. The whole morning had been unsettling. The lift carried on up in silence, only the two of them in the confined space. Sticking to the dice principle – that all passengers in a lift maintain the maximum space between them by forming a pattern like the dots on a dice – he edged into the front corner. He could feel the back of his neck burning. When it finally reached the thirteenth floor, James dived out of the elevator, glancing behind him as he hurried down the corridor.