Thieves and the art of deception
Feb 10th, 2012 by apartmentblogger
It happened one evening when I was walking calmly after a few lengths in the gym swimming pool. I see why you’re grinning. Given the current diametre of my waist, you know that I haven’t been there for some time. But before, when I used to go, I went there properly. I looked good and my ripped body came out of the gym in the narcotic state that one has after a good sports session. Well, it turns out that in that drowsiness -like levitating outside me- a good looking girl approached me.
She was more or less my age and, due to the words she spoke, of a high cultural level. With a worried face she told me how, incomprehensibly, she’d left her home forgetting her mobile phone, her purse, her car keys and that she couldn’t get back into her house. She said she wasn’t from the city and she didn’t have anyone to turn to in such a circumstance. The locksmith wanted 80 bucks to come and solve the problem but she didn’t have any money to call the locksmith from a phonebox, nevermind pay for the 80 bucks.
Myself, being from god knows where, whose family I have so far away and who has inherited naivety from my mother, has brought me to get lost time and time again, I felt totally falsified. Putting myself in her place was easy and I straight away searched for something to give her. As usual, I had nothing on me but she -clever she- suggested coming with me to the closest cash point. Can you believe I didn’t smell anything?
And so we went. Me, with a stupid face and her, with a feline calmness in the darkness of the streets of Barceloneta. She even got inside the cashpoint with me. I was joking and she kept thanking me for what I was doing, even trying to give me her phone number so that I could call her tomorrow and give her back what she’d borrowed. I agreed and told her not to worry. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
After two kisses on the cheek and a hug, the clever girl took 100 of the 200 bucks that i had in my account. Quite proud of myself, I went back home satisfied that I’d done a good deed and with the security of having made a new friend.
What a fiasco! Since the coffee break at work -11am- I started to call her. Although with some hope at first, my eyes lost their shine after each failed attempt. At 10pm I was so angry that I left a strong worded message on her answerphone, which also cost me money every time it came up.
Angry like a rabid dog, I told her to spend her money on medicines. She’d won that money but lost something more valuable: the trust in her of another human being.
ManuManué
There’s not much trust but there are plenty of apartments in Barcelona Careful in the swimming pools and the parks with the thieves and their art of deception.
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