The Difference

If it had been him, it would have gone differently.

Two attractive young women on the bus needed help figuring out the local train system on their way to a convention centre.  That system consists of only one train, but the pair of gap-toothed old drunks who were trying to give them directions made it sound more confusing than the London Underground with all the signs rewritten in Cyrillic.  It wasn't that they were giving bad directions - they were just in that stage of drunkenness where you're still coherent but think you're not, so they kept giving the same directions, over and over, slightly rephrased.  Each repetition made the out-of-town ladies look a little more lost.

You can't interrupt them, either, because that will only make it worse, so you have to wait for the ladies to get off the bus to tell them you're going the same way they are.  The girls are dressed very nicely, but not for business - not the skirts or suits I'd expect going to Rexall Place, more like slightly-more-respectable clubbing outfits (but no less revealing), stylish makeup and hair, and the very definition of fierce heels.  They're friendly and bubbly and very grateful for simple directions they can understand.

I can hear in my head the story he'd tell me next week, if it had been him.  They would have been high-priced call girls on their way to a convention of small arms dealers.  They would have been working for a corporate espionage firm as part of a complicated scheme to blackmail a middle manager into stealing some files.  He would have scored them some blow and in exchange, received a black business card with red printing - no name, just a picture of a spider and a phone number in Amsterdam.

But it was me, so they were just two nice girls in a strange town who needed directions.  I told them to get off at Coliseum, and follow the signs; I wasn't going that far.

Post Script, 3:00AM: I relayed all this to him, and he laughed, and then he pointed out that Rexall Place isn't a convention center, and the girls were obviously here to see Lady Gaga.  Kind of ruined it for me a little, not least because, dammit...  I could totally have scored with the brunette if I was thinking about what I was doing instead of what he would have done.  There's a lesson here, I'm sure.