Chapter Five of Diane's Penis

[the_siobhan]

Diane looked up, startled. There was somebody at the end of the bench, and she squinted at him, trying to make out if it was somebody from the fitness centre. It was well and truly dark now, and she could not make out his features at all.

“How do you know it’s my car?” she asked warily.

“I seen you goin’ back and forth with a bunch of people and I thought maybe you locked your keys in your car or somethin’. I was going to see if I could help out, but then I seen you have a big dick in your car. So I came over to tell you.”

She slowly absorbed the logic of this. There didn’t seem to be much she could add, so she simply burst into tears again.

“Aw lady, don’t cry. It’s not so bad. Lots of people have dicks all the time, and they learn to live with ‘em. Ha. Hey, no really lady, you don’t need to cry. Hey, you’re shiverin’. You ain’t wearing much, do you want my coat?”

The unexpected chivalry made her cry even harder.

She heard the stranger make his way around the back of the bench behind her, and felt the sympathetic pets that were laid on her shoulders. What shocked her into sobriety was not the brief contact, but the smell that rolled off it as soon as he touched her. It was the scent of clothes lived in and skin unwashed until they fermented and went sour and then fermented again. She rolled her eyes up towards him and recognized one of the panhandlers that she routinely spent energy avoiding – often parking at the opposite end of the a lot so that she wouldn’t have to refuse their requests for change. He was short and slight with wiry black hair that spiked out into random directions and a face so weathered and dirty that she could not identify his age or his race. He grinned at her, gap-toothed and encouraging.

“See?” he said. “Things aren’t so bad. Do you want to borrow my coat?”

He came around the bench and flopped down next to her. The sensory assault that billow3d out from his every movement made her gasp for breathe. He stuck his hand out towards her. “I’m Warren” he said.

She looked at his hand dubiously. She couldn’t think of any way not to shake it, so she took it gingerly.

“I’m Diane. No, no, don’t take your coat off, I’m fine. No, honestly. No really, it’s ok. Thank you very much though. Thank you. But no.”

He settled back into the bench.. “So did you manage to get your keys out?” he asked conversationally

Diane felt like her brain was full of molasses. “Out of what? Oh! No they weren’t trying to get my keys out. I was asking for help in getting rid of the… of that… the, the penis. And nobody wanted to help me. In fact they blamed me for bringing it here. And I had nothing to do with it! I have no idea where it came from, it just showed up in my car.!”

“Yeah, people who are supposed to help you sometimes don’t. I know all about that.” Warren scratched his head thoughtfully, a movement that made her hold her breath until he was done. “I could ask some of my friends,” he suggested. “Somebody might have seen who put it there.”

The idea made her sit up and take notice. “Really?” She said, “You think you might be able to find the person responsible?”

“It could happen somebody saw it,” he said cheerfully. “People don’t want to look at us at a lot of the time, so they forget we can still see them.” Diane struggled to control her expression of embarrassment as Warren hopped up off the bench.

“Ill go ask,” he said. He looked suddenly hopeful, “Hey you got any money?” he asked “I could really go for a hot coffee.”

She fished a small bill out of her bag. “Get me one too,” she said and he happily took the money and half-ran, half-walked away with it.

Diane leaned back on the bench and shivered. I might never see him again, she thought. But he was the nicest person I’ve met all day.