Good Day
It’s early evening on what has been a warm and balmy summer’s day, and Ms Mukta has popped out of her nearby flat for a quick cigarette and for her hot sneakers to be lickshined. As I start licking, she delights in telling me all about what a wonderful day she’s had with her husband Simon, and, in particular, how they had been round to a friend’s house for a delicious barbeque. She then asks me how my day has been, and I respectfully and politely reply that I too have had a good day lickshining the dirty shoes and sandals of my betters, thanking her kindly for her kind question.
She then notices the purple bruise on my left cheek and asks me how I got it? I explain that a disgruntled customer-mistress had kicked me in the face after I had failed to remove the street mud and dirt off her shoes to her feminine satisfaction. Ms Mukta laughs and says in that case I deserved it, and she orders me to ‘stop moaning’ and get a move on with lickshining her dirty sneakers – unless I want another bruise on the other side of my face to go with it?
I beg Ms Mukta not to kick me in the face and hastily set about tonguing the toe-end of her outstretched sneaker. She laughs and asks me what is more important – her sneaker or my face? I humbly reply that, of course, her sneaker is more important, and add that her socks are likewise more important than me. She just takes another drag on her cigarette as she is clearly bored by now with her conversation with an underling!
Eventually, she turns and walks away without offering any first aid for my sore and throbbing face – not even to soothe it with the softness of her white cotton anklesock.