the court jester of the U8

He sat down next to me in the ubahn, too tall to unfold into the fold out seats. He in the bright red jeans, flouro yellow trainers, sweatshirt of lime green.

His head is shaved, and clamped around it, are ginormous headphones. They are purple. This I think, is a lot of colour to be wearing, for a grey January afternoon.

He grins at the girls sat across from us. He raises his eyebrows coyly, turns and smirks at me.

As he lowers his eyes to his hand, I follow them and see what he holds, a rubix cube.The toy looks battered, definitely well used. The stickers have been peeled and reapplied many many times. He begins rotating it in his hands, makes fleeting glances at the girls and me again. Its important to him I suppose, that we are watching. His hands are flying over the thing, twisting, turning, locking.

1,2,3, red squares in a row.

Swwwwwwoooop

1,2,3,4 squares of yellow

his head is bobbing to the music only he can hear, I wonder if he is solving the thing to a beat.

Meanwhile the cube is twisting and turning. Every which way turning.

And in no less than two stops, he’s close to completion. Only two rows of mismatched colours left. With one swift thwwwwack the cube…snaps

A lone piece, blue, yellow and green, flies in the air,

lands just left of the two girls across from us.

The one closest to us smirks, picks the piece up. As she hands it back to him, it looks like he might be blushing. He takes it back, mock graciously bows his head, says

“thank you”

and as soon as he’s snapped it back into place, he’s off. The girls across are absorbed in his action. By the next stop, its all flush. Every side monochrome. In three stops. I think

well done.

He looks at the girls, he looks at me. The train pulls into kottbusser tor.

And as we all rise to exit, He throws the cube in the air and catches it, before strolling out ahead of us, adjusting his headphones and running up the stairs.