crop circle

twenty.

Qamari's POV
Woodlands Estate
1:51 PM

I like to stand on the steps in the spring noons. When the sun is tucked away just behind the clouds but the swell of it can still be felt casting dew over the estate.

Tuesdays, I take the whip for a wash. Except this morning I open the door to Dami and Temi clad with rubber gloves and a bucket each, shining teeth as if to me sell me a carpet.

"Aye chill chill chill." Dami sirens from one side of the car at his brother fully armed with the ice cold hose. Temi only lets out the most villainous snicker and douses him. I'm busy standing there with a bowl of chocolate shreddies, sort of impressed at how spick they got the windows. As for everything else, terrible job. And I only felt deep trepidation for the rims.

"In fact..." I begin patting pocket to pocket. "You man just leave the rims."

The twins stop and turn.

"Oh that's calm." Temi squints and pulls at the collar of his shirt now see through and matted to his skin.

"Forty pound please." Dami stops in front of me, fully serious and his hand out.

"Forty? For a window buff?" I stop to chew some more. "And a water fight?"

"Twenty pound each." Dami drops his bony arms at both sides and cocks his head to his fat brother. "We're saving."

"For what?"

"Football boots."

So I pull the one 50 sheet I had burrowed in my back pocket and gave it to them. And for the first time in ages, I think I feel a sort of delight. When I was 11 and washed a neighbours car for footie boots, a random huge white man, red in the face came and pinned me to the bike shed about "what you doing mate? You nicking  it?" That trauma would go on to enrage my entire plight of manhood. Cause after that, I only started nicking cars for real.

"Safe Qamari." Dami irons the note flat in his hand with a grin. With this one, unalike to his brother, I see the way his eyes twinkle up at Lizzys. He'll be driving by 15.

The boys gather up both buckets and sponges, then ball their fist into a spud.

"Say hi to Mum for me yeah?"

"Yeah."

I spud them, and watch as they clamber across the grass to their own residential block. The quiet begins to pool in my ears again, besides Tati occasionally laughing out loud from upstairs at whatever she was laughing at and the blaring of Mums TV.

I set the bowl down and retrieve my ringing phone from my front pocket.

"Yo." I press the phone to one ear, reaching up to double check the spliff is still wedged behind the other. The line crackles a few seconds.

"Yo...I'm here fam." Ramone says. I wait a few seconds before the rumble of his loud aux bleeds gradually in to the air. Eventually the 08 Bimmer 3 series comes coasting from the top of my street.

Just then Tati mindlessly comes stomping down from her room and out on the porch, pyjamas on and half way through her head with twists.