Busy, for an audience of nobody
Supermarket car park, ten to six on a Tuesday. I had eight minutes before I had to go in. Engine off. Hands in my lap.
A woman came out with a trolley, and I picked up my phone and held it to my ear.
Nobody was on the line. I hadn't rung anyone. I said "yeah" a few times and once "no, that's fine", and nodded at the windscreen. I was sorting something out.
She loaded her bags and drove off. She never looked over. She had her own eight minutes to get through.
Nobody was watching. I was doing busy for an empty car park.
I am an adult. I faked a phone call for a row of parked cars.
It isn't just the car park. At home I wipe the counter while the kettle boils, and the counter is already clean. In the lift I check my email, which is empty, because I checked it in the corridor.
The phone wasn't a phone. It was a costume. It tells the world I'm somebody with things on, passing through these few minutes on my way to the next thing, and the cloth on the counter is the same costume in a different size.
I put it on because sitting still felt like something I'd have to explain. As if someone would knock on the window and ask what this was for, and I'd need a good answer. Nobody knocks. There is no manager of the car park.
Rest doesn't need a reason. Not even eight minutes of it.
I went back the next week. Same space, same eight minutes. I left the phone in the cup holder and looked at the trolleys. For the first two minutes it felt like getting caught. Then it felt like sitting in a car. A man walked past, and I let him think whatever he thought. He was thinking about his tea.
That's all it is. No routine, no app. One gap. The next one you get, the kettle, the queue, the lift, leave it empty. Don't fill it with the phone or the cloth. Don't explain it, not even to yourself.
Nothing will come of it. No big idea, no calm you can show anyone.
The kettle boils at the same speed either way.
The lift takes forty seconds. Stand in it.