A Gentle Perambulation and a Minor Confrontation

Oskar Kokoschka
At four-thirty, in the hot and sultry afternoon, I wandered into the nearly deserted village square. A young man walked ahead of me with his girlfriend on his arm. In the middle-distance another young couple lurched towards us.  They were in their late-twenties. He was a shirtless, tightly-sprung, wiry, monkey-faced lad with close-cropped hair over his knobbly skull; she was a big-boned girl with lank, straw-coloured hair and a dark swelling below her left eye; brown rabbit-teeth crowded out of her mouth.  She bore a striking resemblance to end-of-career-Oskar Kokoschka. Both were affected by alcohol or drugs or both and were having difficulty walking. Monkey-face was wobbling ahead, dragging Oskar by the flabby arm; both were reeling, and yelling.
   "I don' wanna go down 'ere!"
   "Well, you fuckin' are!"
As they drew close to the young man walking ahead of me, Monkey-face gathered his addled thoughts and swerved his hard little body, bashing his right shoulder into the chest of the other boy. He then continuing his wobbling way, dragging the now screeching Oskar. The young man turned and quietly said something which I didn't catch, his girlfriend told him to "Cool it, Dave!" Monkey-face turned, snarling, fists clenched, and yelped,
  "You fuckin' want some more?!... Do ya, cunt?!" Monkey's now wailing girlfriend began to cringe within her floral-print cotton dress. The nice young man, urged by his own girlfriend, turned and continued to walk up the street away from the troglodytes, who blearily staggered down the road, he yapping, she gurgling.

As they faded into the distance the only sound was the songs of the blackbirds and starlings who were getting ready to settle down in their nests for the long night ahead.

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