It is late on a Saturday afternoon, and I am walking back to my car, after work. I am only about fifty metres away from the cut-price, multi-level car park when I hear a voice.
“Hey, mate.”
I turn around and there are two people behind me. He is a dwarf, which you don’t see every day, and she is full-sized. I am probably saying that wrong. I am not trying to make a statement about human difference; I just want to go home after a day on my feet being polite to people. As I said, he’s a dwarf and she’s a slightly scruffy, nondescript blonde.
“Excuse me,” he continues. “but me and me girlfriend are from Frankston and I’ve lost me wallet. Can you help us out?”
Before I can ask, he tells me, “We need twenty-two dollars to get home.”
“Twenty-two dollars!” I repeat, sounding slightly stunned by the figure. I have seven dollars on me, my last cash for the weekend, and the car park will cost me five of these. I hold out the gold coin in my hand, “You can have the two dollars that I don’t need to get my car out of the car park.”
“Well, that’s not going to get us back to Frankston, is it?” he responds sharply and quickly takes the coin from my hand.
My tone hardens, “That’s not really my problem now, is it?”
And with that, he turns on his heels and they head into the middle distance. As I collect my dusty Datsun from the roof of the carpark, I wonder if I have just been had. Perhaps I have, I think. But it’s only a couple of dollars; there was not a lot I could have spent it on anyway. I put it from my mind.
- 0 -
It is a week later; I know this because I only park on Saturdays. It’s just too expensive during the week so I normally catch the tram. I am walking down the same stretch of footpath, past the ruins of the Queen Victoria Hospital. I might even be standing on the very same square of concrete when I hear a voice.
“Excuse me, mate. Me and me girlfriend are in town from Frankston…”
I turn on my heel and there he is, again. But this time the girlfriend, although explicitly mentioned and no-doubt budgeted for in the request, was no-where to be seen. In this moment of recognition, I simply laugh, loudly and a little sharply. He turns, just as sharply, and strides away. I knew it! I’d been conned out of two dollars by a dwarf.
- 0 -
It’s years later now, probably five or six of them. I am working in Collingwood, not far from the old silos on Victoria Parade. It is winter and, as I walk home to my flat in Richmond, I am dressed for this miserable weather: long, dark coat and a grey fedora or keep my bald head dry and warm. I know I look somewhere between odd and ridiculous, but I am warm and that’s what matters to me.
So I am walking through East Melbourne, alone as far as I know, when I hear a voice from behind me.
“Excuse me, mate. Me and me girlfriend are in town from Frankston and I’ve lost me wallet…”
My memories come flooding back, like the tune of a half-remembered some from childhood, like hearing Puff the Magic Dragon unexpectedly in a department store on day. This time, I don’t laugh. I keep my voice steady as I say, “You’ve spoken to me before.”
Without a single word, he turns on his heels and walks away. Oddly, he is walking towards the city rather than Frankston.
- 0 -
It’s about a week later, give or take a day or two. It’s still bloody cold and I am still wearing my long, dark coat and my hat again. I am, by my own reckoning, pretty recognisable dressed like this. This time I have made it all the way to Bridge Road, where it crosses Punt Road just near the MCG. I am standing at the pedestrian lights next to this woman. We’re not together, just both waiting to cross, and I am pressing the button again and again. Intellectually, I know this makes no difference, but I do it anyway.
As I am standing there, pressing away, I hear a voice from behind me.
“Excuse me, mate”
I know this voice. I turn sharply and bark, “What!”
The woman gives me a hard look. She doesn’t say a word, but her expression says it all, “You just yelled at a dwarf!”
The Frankston Dwarf looks and me, and finally the penny drops (I know it’s not charitable to say this, but it didn’t have far to fall).
“Do…do, ” he stammers, unconvincingly, “do you have the time?”
“No!” I reply. “I don’t have a watch.”
And so he turned and all-but-runs down the path away from me, as fast as his little legs can carry him. And I never see him again.