Office Hours 12-1pm
I sat in my office above the shoe shine joint in Little Portland, waiting for a coffee to cool. A dame walked in,
“What do you want toots?” I asked
“Don’t call me toots.” Commanded Judi Dench. She was seething but I played it cool.
“That’s what you get when you’re calling on an archetypal 1920s private eye in his office.” I replied, cooly playing.
“This isn’t the watch repairers?” She asked, confused.
“As it happens,” I brazened it out “between 12 and 1pm it’s not, I sublet.”
“Well can I leave the watch?” She demanded. I paused, suspensefully, and aimed for ice-cold cool.
“You can leave your hat on.”
It seems that on the dartboard of my conversation, the treble twenty of ice-cold cool is separated by fine, fine wires from wide beige fields representing the dullness of 5 and the idiocy of 1.
She took off her hat, contrarily I assume, slammed down the watch and stalked out. I altered the time five minutes slow and sniggered childishly, discharging snot into my Americano. “Beggars can’t be choosers” I thought, and drank deeply.
