plain clothes police

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 10 years ago

This cafe installed in a loading bay has floor-length open windows, I am sitting with my back to the sun reading an ambitious local free paper. It has a row of Brisbaneites each standing holding their sign, the sign of what they’d love best to see, the signs of the kind of world they want. Invariably, or infinitely variably, it is a form of ‘everyone accepted for themselves’ or ‘a world without prejudice’ or ‘an end to war’. However underneath the idealism are pragmatic and tousled lists of self-love, love in the most measly sense: what I’m wearing? Label X jacket, shoes by Label Y. Even the youngest, even the oldest, are able to parse their outfits breezily, ‘a loafer,’ ‘a pant.’ Where I like to eat? Groovy Bar Z.

Last week we read an earlier issue of this publication in the same two seats in the loading bay, then as now a cold breeze running through the crooked, open space like large, stately passages of cool sea water. A fly tried to drown in my eggcup of honey, I fished him out with a teaspoon. Flung him out into the sunny breeze and he flew free, a kite trail of honey sprinkling the grass. Moments later my companion nudged me: Butterfly! Indeed, as if out of thin blue sky, her brown wings velvety light and tremoring she supped the round drops of honey. She laid her wings open in an ecstasy. I scooped a little more out and flung it wide, see if I could make her dance. She did.

A police car pulled up under the tree. A man in casual clothes got out. He was unshaven and looked rumpled and sweaty. He slammed the door then thought better of it, reached back in to retrieve something, a folder, locked up behind himself and came past the long draughty doorway. I began to laugh and pointed past him at the police car, accusingly. “Did you steal that?” “No,” he said, surprised, good-humoured. “I know,” I said, “just it would be so funny.” I cracked myself up. My tablemate reported the off-duty officer was still laughing when he crossed past the open passageway which is their galley kitchen and which ends in a slice of street. Two men came in and sat across from each other at our next table. The table was white-legged with a polished wooden top; of a series of mismatched chairs the guy in neon pink singlet drew out the one painted egg-yolk orange. I went over to them and crouched by their table. They looked startled. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I have this friend who’s obsessed with orange. Would you mind if I took a photo of your shirt and the back of that chair?” He waved his hand and the other guy barely smiled. “Sure, knock yourself out.” But twenty minutes later when they had finished talking and I had filled three more pages of my notebook they got up to leave and stopped off with us. “Did you get it?”