the coat

Inside pocket. Put it there. (He puts it there.) Make sure it stays. (He makes sure.) Push it all the way in - we've a long way to go. (He's doing this now, but with some difficulty. The coat is someone else's and old.) Now walk with me, here, she says.

He's walking now and thinking about what's happening. About what he's involved in. About wearing the stranger's coat that's old, carrying something hidden she thinks important, about which he knows nothing, while walking with this woman who keeps on walking and whose name she won't tell.

You don't need to know it. That's what I tell him. He doesn't need it anyway. This isn't personal. Anyway, the way he asks it makes me feel odd. He doesn't look when he asks: he stares into distance, right out there - like this: - and then mumbles it. I don't know his name either, and that's fine.

They walk for 3 days. They keep getting lost. Keep taking wrong roads. As he keeps mumbling, and she keeps her name. But they don't stop. Only to eat or sleep. You'll cop it if you stop she says. Just as he wonders how she'll take it when she finds out it's gone. Through the hole in the coat I found this morning. Not my fault he says to no-one. It's getting colder now he thinks.

It's your fault, she says. You're wearing the coat. It's your pocket. You're here to carry it and now it's gone. All this time: and now it's cold: and I don't know where we are or how we got here.

He takes off the stranger's coat and folds it. Dusts it clean and places it slowly in her hand. Asks What's your name? And she speaks. And he walks away. And he returns with what she needs and takes his coat.