Sitting with Diego

The morning’s got its claws in me, a hangover squatting on my brain like a fat whore who won’t leave. There’s still a little whiskey jazz humming in the veins, warm and evil, sloshing around in the empty tank of my gut, burning sweet.

We talk the usual shit—love, life, the happiness that fucked off years ago and never sent a postcard.

He’s a gentle Spaniard out of Madrid, skin the colour of old leather, black half-moons under his nails, and a smile bright enough to make Hollywood puke with envy. Family man, he says—six kids, all in school except the baby, and one more cooking in the oven. Christ.

Yeah, my pal Diego, down on his knees for five quid a pop, rag popping like a whip, customers lined up like sinners waiting for absolution. They want the shine, the gleam, that cheap little lie that says everything’s new again.

He works the sides, arms pumping, sweat blooming under the armpits of a shirt washed too many times. Horsehair brush chewing the toe cap, that waxy turd of polish melting into the leather like sin into a priest. Then the big finish—snap, snap—shoes coming out virgin clean, prettier than they ever deserved.

Yes, Diego Ramírez, the best shoe-shine man in this rotten London rain, polishing the boots of drunks and bankers and broken-down poets like me, five pounds at a time, smiling the whole damn while.