Once Luciana had completed a few sets, she’d flaunt past the jewellery sellers, sipping from a chilled bottle of white wine crudely disguised in a brown paper bag – a habit from her underage drinking days in the USA.
She teased for a living. She teased not only the customers who threw money at her but she also teased the buskers, jugglers and street sellers – the men who ‘worked’ Leicester Square. Although obviously more than a handful – I’d found myself particularly vulnerable. Friends had cautioned me, yet resistance had proven temporary and futile. In fact, the warnings only added to the attraction of this wild Latin creature. Plucking up the courage, I asked her out. On several occasions in fact. She accepted every time, and with each date stood me up, leaving me alone on a park bench holding another chilled bottle hidden in a brown paper bag. White wine which I didn’t even like. I wondered if this was some kind of test. Maybe she simply had a magic number thinking, ‘If he asks me out three times, then he’s worth it’? Forced to presume she needed me to ask her five times, I tried. Then six. Then seven. Perhaps something was wrong with a meeting in the park? Maybe something was not right with the cold bottle of wine? I tried upping the stakes and meeting her in a pub. Then a posh wine-bar. Only to get the same result. Slowly and reluctantly, I started to realise, I was being led on a song and dance.
As the summer wore on, Luciana vanished, apparently having gone home to Puerto Rico. Now at peace, my focus changed, and I became aware of the other beauties around me.
Leicester Square – full of the talent of the buskers, the skill of the street performers and the roguish charm of the fly-pitchers – seemed to be a magnet for the girls of Europe, sent to au pair in London. Some would buy our jewellery and instead of parting ways, would stay and help us sell. Others would help us look out for the police, who if spotted, would cause us to seemingly vanish into thin air. They called us fly-pitchers because like flies, we never rested in one place for long. Some street-sellers would hide in the back entrances of the West-End theatres. Others leant on public phones and pretended to make calls. Some of us slid our selling-boards into secret hiding places, then lit cigarettes as we dissolved into the throngs of tourists – patiently awaiting the all-clear.
Some of the girls would accompany us to our hideaway, the Imperial Pub, the fly-pitchers’ zone of safety where we retreated in confidence. The landlord had forbidden the constabulary from entering his private property and many a mini-police chase ended on the pub doorstep.
The jewellery-selling riff-raff of Leicester Square made great customers worth protecting. His only clientele who apparently drank more were the Triad gang from the neighbouring China Town. It was also here in the Imperial Pub, that we could be found, once our pockets filled with enough earnings for us to call the daily game of cat and mouse quits, park our jewellery boards in the pub’s entrance, and like the other revellers of Leicester Square, enjoy the evening.
During those summer months, two lovely ladies discovered that although we were all single, things had overlapped. On this night they had me pinned to the bar – one to my left, the other to my right. However hard I tried to explain, they were not grasping my logic and lost for words, I was being out-reasoned. It was at this moment that Luciana, having returned to London, entered the bar and took in the situation. Our eyes met. A small black cloud appeared over her head. She stormed over, glared at both the girls, and yanked me away.
“He’s mine,” she growled.
I’d found a way to her fiery Latin heart – jealousy.
From that day on, she rarely let me out of her sight and I was forbidden from talking to non-vetted women. It was tough. The other sellers joked that I’d met my karma. Luciana had the most amazing smile and the most fearful frown. Even though I was like a wild bird with my feathers clipped – each time she laughed or danced, I was reminded that the suffering was worth it. In awe of her talent, fascinated by her culture, I’d fallen under her spell – and it soon became known that we were together. Exotic Latin Luciana became my Lucy.
A great friend and fellow fly-pitcher Jinxy, who had earned his nickname by his incredible luck in impossible situations, came up to me with a worried look on his face.
“You do realise. That when this new bird of yours dances. Everyone. I mean all the blokes. They can see her knickers?”
All I could do was nod and smile meekly.
And here I was, two years later.
In a notoriously dangerous city.
Late at night.
Down a deserted back street.
In the front seat of a taxi.
With Lucy in the rear.
The driver had his window wound down.
A knife being held to his throat.
We were surrounded by zombie-like men.
The butchers of Bogotá.
Coming for us.
My dream had become our nightmare.
I hope you enjoyed the
first three chapters of
3 Seconds in Bogotá
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Text & cover copyright
© 2019
Mark Playne – Paper Pen Screen
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