All of a sudden, the man next to me looked up from his newspaper, and I sensed him glaring at me, which didn't exactly stop me going on to my next item but inhibited me somewhat, especially when he snapped "Finished?" at me. "May I turn the page now?"

"Well," I said, "I'm just reading my stars." I wasn't, but I started to. It was the usual old stuff. "I've finished," I told him. "Thank you."

With what he supposed was a last glare at me, he turned the page with a fussy movement meant to show anger, and settled into his reading, his eyes half on me.

"My lucky day." I gave him the hint of a nudge. "Today. That's what my stars said."

He grunted, and read on, but only for half a minute. "Your lucky day?" He turned back and began to read his own stars under a nose that made his face both mistrustful and distrustful. I was going to tell him that, and to keep away from identity parades and murder enquiries, and things like that, but thought I'd better not. "You believe all this stuff then?" he asked me. "All this stars business? Horoscopes and that?" For the first time, he turned and looked at me properly.

"When it suits me," I lied.

"And it does? Today?"

"I haven't decided yet."

He put his nose back in his paper. It wasn't my fault he read through the television listings so quickly, but he was just about to turn the page again when I asked him, "Anything good on the box tonight?"

"Here." He shut the paper with another elaborate gesture, and handed it to me. "Have a look for yourself."

"No thank you," I said. "I haven't got a telly. '

He stared dangerously. His nose didn't only look mistrustful by then, but was also severely out of joint. He went to say something, but it came out only as a long breath, and I nodded him through a count to ten.

"But I would like to do the crossword," I put in around where eleven would have been.

"Buy your own paper, then." He showed teeth. "What's the matter? Too expensive for you? In fact, they're not expensive at all, given the cost of newsprint these days, and labour."

"And ink," I reminded him. "Not to mention the costs of premises, and overheads like electricity, and water."

"Listen," he said, but I already was. We were in the road, had got off the bus together almost without noticing. "Look here, I'll give you the money for a paper." He began to fumble in his pocket, and held out some coins. "Then you can buy one."

"No thanks." I put a hand on his arm. "Very kind of you, but..."

"But what?"

"No thanks."

"All things being equal." I pondered the phrase, which didn't seem to mean a thing. "You'd rather read mine?" His eyes blinked and his nose went into doubting overdrive as I considered that. It wasn't exactly true, but I didn't know what the answer was. "Here." He sounded desperate. "Take the money, take it, and then you can buy a paper and take it home and read if at your leisure in your own time, your very own paper. I'm giving you the chance to break free from... the tyranny-yes, the tyranny-of my page-reading whims, to own a paper of your very own. Come on, now, and take the money."

We'd stopped at on anonymous door in a terrace of houses, and in his hand he clutched keys. "If came in with you," I suggested, "and I mentioned that I didn't have a home of my own, would you offer to buy me one?"

There were a number of things he could have done then....




[to read the end of this story, buy em two.]

Nick Sweeney

"I’ve lived and worked in Paris, Istanbul, Ankara and Warsaw, and feel at home in big cities. Despite their coldness and impersonality, the possibilities of communication are endless. I am now resettled in London, where I can’t get away from casual encounters on its packed buses and tubes, and probably wouldn’t want to. All Things Equal looks at one such encounter, put into focus with one of those meaningless little sayings that top and tail conversations, as it were, so to speak, if you will...I am at present close to raising interest in three finished novels, and am pushing on with various works in progress."