‘Come on, man, wake up! What are you doing lying here like this, dressed like this?’ He was a young black man, confident, street-wise, and he sounded let-down, disappointed. I think it was the suit and tie. He didn’t like to see good clothes treated like that. The tie meant I was a conservative type with a comfortable home to go to, and I had no business making an exhibition of myself like this.
I sat up. His minicab was right over there, he said. He could take me home. Or, better still, there was a cheap hotel just around the corner. He could walk me to the end of the street and point it out. It wasn’t good for me to be laying there on the pavement like this, man. I could get robbed or anything.
Perhaps I should have told him that he had formed the wrong impression.
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