A Shorter Short

The man adjusted his tam o' shanter as he murmured his way through his To Do List. "Drop in the film, pick-up the CD order, buy socks." He'd missed something. He knew he'd missed something, but he was damned if he could remember what it was.

A sale sign proclaiming suits priced from $299.00 caught his eye. He peered at his watch, calculated the remaining time until kick-off, then decided, no, there wasn't sufficient time to try on suits. He shrugged, noting instead the name of the shop Chicago For Men - 128 Cuba Mall. He'd make a point to come back tomorrow.

A busker across the mall began strumming a guitar. Taking the indeterminate chords as a warning of worse to come, the man shuffled his plastic carrier bags and hurried off. A tuneless series of bellows and grunts chased him down the mall.

He paused opposite Whitcoulls, indecisive for a second; took another quick look at his watch and went in. At the video shelves, he tucked his shopping bags under his left arm and proceeded to examine the collection of rugby videos. He fingered the titles as if reading Braille or attempting to lift lustre from the famous names and memorable matches. 'Mourie' - now there was a thinking man's Captain for you. His finger paused tapping on the name 'Shelford'.

Beer.

That was it. He'd promised to bring the beer. He had to find a bottle store. He glanced about for a shop assistant or a friendly face, anyone he could ask for directions to the nearest bottle store. The shop assistants looked harassed, embattled behind their protective counters, and nearby customers avoided his eye. He contemplated returning up-mall to ask the busker then remembered seeing a pub or something, somewhere around Manners Street.

Without further thought he dashed out, across the diagonal towards Manners Mall, and stopped short as a small ginger haired missile barrelled backwards into his stomach. He grabbed at the child. "Watch it Sonny."

The child froze, hunched like an dog expecting to be kicked. The man set the boy back on his feet and turned him around. In response to the man's smile the boy's posture eased.  Looking up through his eyelashes, the boy said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to, honest."

He was clutching a half-eaten McDonalds hamburger oozing tomato sauce. The impact had splattered sauce across both his chin and collar. The man flicked the tail of his scarf out of harm's reach, then took from his pocket a green and white checked handkerchief and wiped up the sauce. He patted the boy's arm, "There you are, no harm done," rolled up his handkerchief into a tight ball and dropped it into the nearest plastic shopping bag.

The boy smiled, a gappy smile, then pointed past him saying, "It's a lady - isn't it?"

The man followed the finger and for the first time saw the sculpture. It was a woman, her robes and flesh plastered in white, standing motionless on a small, but sturdy cylinder, setting her about three feet above the crowd. Her wound headdress was reminiscent of pictures he'd seen years ago of Ancient Persia. She was at once magnificent, aloof, and bizarre. The man had been warned that the weirdos congregated around Wellington's Manners and Cuba Mall, but this was quite beyond anything he'd ever seen before. He scratched behind his ear, tilting back his tam o' shanter. Who on earth, he wondered, would want to stand for hours on end, bedecked in white goo while people stared at you? Bizarre. Truly bizarre. Wellington reckoned that it was the country's cultural capital - may be this was supposed to be culture - a human sculpture or something.

Aware of the boy's scrutiny, he said, "You might just be right, you know." Then with a wicked sense of elation, he grinned at the boy, then at the woman and added, "And you might be wrong." He showed the boy a place to stand against a shop front, where he could watch the immobile woman in white, well out of harm's way, then with a wave and a "See ya," hurried off.

He stopped at the corner, spotted the newsagent’s, and remembered where he'd seen the bottle shop. As he waited to cross the road he envisaged a statue of himself. He could just see it, tam o' shanter at a jaunty angle atop a Highlander's rugby jersey and scarf, one knee crooked, and a hand extended as if in preparation to speak. He chuckled as he imagined a plaque engraved with the inscription Tam o' Shanter Man.