From a Night Bus 3

And keep looking, keep a watch on the parade of miscreants.
The young disenchanted-looking girl in a blue-black football strip, or the top thereof, dark blue or pale blue stripes on white.
It's been donned by this dark-haired girl in a dim bedroom dominated by her huge double bed, it's too large for her, she tugs at it disconsolately, sulking, the silky glossy material itches and scratches her.
Another girl, in theory, her counterpart, in a green-striped football top, equally sulky-mouthed and twilit.
Reminds me of once in the empty flat I was looking at my reflection in the tall window, as though measuring myself or posing for a full-length portrait, I turned to the side like in a cop photo, I took in the stubble and scars of shaving nicks, I smiled.
When it's dark outside and the bare lightbulb has been switched on inside, the window reflects like a mirror, you can catch yourself looking tense in it.
And sometimes passing latenight drinkers jeer or hoot at you, or afternoon football fans peer up and in.
The omnipresent corner neds, feeling the strength of their numbers. It's always at least six on one, sometimes for the less brave it's simply the throwing of rocks and bottles, and a bit of jeering. It has to be admitted that the worst perpetrators are the supporters of either of two teams from Glasgow.
They always bring their own special malevolence and violence. And I seem to see their faces reflected in the window, the football fans, shouting, almost intruding into the room, splintering the glass, brazen and ugly. And I imagine... What if I were to crack open the window and partially swing it open, what if I faced the threat? Would I find that the casuals were only two-dimensional cartoons or cardboard cut-outs, insistent but silent? Or they have attached themselves to the pane like amoeba, like the suckers of an octopus, or like a flat-bodied ray, and can be scraped off harmlessly like a pancake.