‘SWITCH’ – by Michael Fitzalan
My third Novel – A Dark Kafkaesque novel ‘SWITCH’ – by Michael Fitzalan – the most controversial with graphic details of every nature.
On a hot spring day, I sat behind the wheel of a three year old Lincoln, Town Car, the lunchtime traffic was heavy and I was wishing that I was anywhere but stuck in this black box wearing a chauffeur’s hat, which was damp around the crown despite the air conditioning.
Wearing hats is not my thing either, not even a baseball cap, my head gets hot and my hair gets sweaty.
I don’t even wear a hat in the winter. Ties aren’t my favorite either and I longed to undo the restricting top button of my white shirt and pull the damn thing off from around my neck.
The Limousine company that I worked for were a cheap operation. You had to wear a standard issue company white shirt, polyester and cotton with their logo. That made me hot too. Over fifty per cent and the pores can’t breathe.
My body was suffocating. Not that I’m one to get all-technical.
My suit was a polyester wool mix, mainly man made fiber, so I was boiling under all those synthetics. I could have set the air conditioning to arctic and I still would have simmered away in my clothes. The passenger would have taken exception to my turning up the cold flow too high and I didn’t want to upset her.
She was cute, a young girl of about twenty-five, dark hair in ringlets, parted down the center. Big wide, brown eyes stared out from underneath heavy, dark eyebrows.
A small little nose and generous lips to her large mouth, that gave her a sexy pout, finished off her heart shaped face.
She looked a bit like ‘Sade’, the singer, if you know the girl I mean. If you don’t, then, imagine one of those cute Cuban or Columbian girls, all strong features and Latin and Afro-Caribbean good looks mixed together in a melting pot, labeled beautiful and sexy.
I often look at my customers, it helps pass the time, driving can be very boring. Mostly I try to figure out what type of person they are, whether they’re married, whether they’re nice people, that sort of thing.
People
I can weave a whole story around them just by looking at their bitten nails, their mismatched socks or the book they are reading. Sometimes people want to project a certain image, others just do not give a damn.
Some of my clients have saved years for a few hours being driven around London, I supply part of a birthday treat, some of my clients have never paid directly for a car in their lives, It depended on the impression you were trying to make, or how you wanted to arrive.
We were in demand
First impressions are important no matter what business you are in and how business is doing. Kids love limos, it chimes with their materialistic view of the world. Celebs always arrived at parties in a limo and who is more important than a celebrity to a teenager?
It’s unusual for them to talk to me and if they do, they keep it brief, generally directions or small talk about the weather. I don’t mind, I have my thoughts to keep me busy, thinking of home. This girl was different, she was beautiful, and I had picked her up from an unusual advertising agency.
It was not the usual big arrogant operators that I used to work with but a small independent with a charming, smiling receptionist and what seemed like really genuine people. I led her down to the car actually wishing that I could stay longer. Normally, I cannot wait to get out of those fake places with their fake people and their patronizing attitude. They all suck.
Pay and Display
I had parked at the ‘Pay and Display’ bay on Bentinck Street outside Bentinck Mansions, a typical West End address; I was lucky to get a space within a block of the ‘Der Krieg’ agency.
She followed me willingly and I noticed that she was a tall leggy model; almost up to my shoulder and I consider myself tall at over six foot tall. Opening the door for her, I noticed not only her sweet smile but also a great body under a classic cut, black dress.
Her ankles were well turned, I always notice ankles first, her legs were shapely, womanly, just like her wide hips; her butt was soft and rounded; she had a slim waist and spectacular breast, not small but not large, heavy looking, rounded, sexy.
The Limo
They looked terrific. It’s amazing what you can notice while opening a door for someone. There was no reason for a Limo to pick her up, but for the fact that our vehicle had been used for some stills that day. As a reward for hard work, the order had been given that I should take her home.
The car had been booked for day, as it often was; people love to use a limo as a backdrop. I had driven it to a disused car lot off the M40. The photographer and the photographer’s assistant were there setting up the lights and unloading a Jeep SUV, we could have been in New York or Chicago or any other US city.
Then, we were joined by a black cab, which pulled up with a squeak, and some agency guys jumped out of it. In the second taxi were the model and her stylist. I waited by the car, admired both the stylist and the model and then moved the car.
London
The shoot necessitated several moves and so I hung around waiting to pull the car closer to a concrete support of a flyover smothered in graffiti or to move it next to a wire fence where the traffic heading to London rushed past us on the A40 dual carriageway.
As usual, I did not get near anyone. They were decent, the producer’s assistant got me a pack of cigarettes and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi during a break but otherwise no one spoke to me.
The model was showing off some brightly colored shirts; which the wardrobe department teemed with hot pants, mini skirts and, sometimes, just hold-ups.
I was surprised when I got a phone call saying I should pick up the model from the agency that evening at six, particularly as the phone call came just as she and her stylist and wardrobe woman hopped into a taxi. I was told to take a break for a couple of hours. It was only four o’clock.
I could not go to the movies; that was for sure, there was not enough time, I could hang around in a café though, not very imaginative but it was better than hanging around a car lot; smoking too much and drinking Diet Pepsi until it came out of my ears, watching seven people buzz around the car taking photographs.
I liked the photographer, Justin Pumfrey, a typically English name but a good guy who knew his job. He got the best out of the model and everyone around him.
The camera was built like an anti-aircraft missile.
Still, at least I could take off my jacket and loosen the top button once the model had left the car.
It had been a boring day, parking the car under a ramp of a freeway and waiting. I was glad to be back behind the wheel. The traffic was practically grid locked, so I looked at her in the rear view mirror, as she gazed out of the window.
She had a great profile; the activity out on the streets seemed to interest her. I had picked up models before, for work and they were skinny and aloof, only a few were attractive, most of them never talked, you were merely the driver.
You were the hired help, part of the backdrop to their movie, if you know what I mean.
They would hand over a slip of paper with the address, tell you that they were late and ease back to read a magazine or gaze out of the window while I drove in silence.
I’m sure there are some nice models out there, but I never met them. I couldn’t blame them for being quiet, being in the limo was, most probably, the only time they had to themselves throughout a hectic day.
This girl told me her name, it was Kate and we talked.
“So where are you from Kate?” I asked.
“I was born in England but grew up in Monterey.”
“Steinbeck country, Cannery Row; I’ve never been to the west coast.”
“You’d love it there, the weather’s great, everyone lives outdoors, and there are beach parties all the time. I really miss it but this is where the work is and I like London.”
“That’s great.”
“What about you Tom?”
“I’m a Mid-west boy, Columbus Ohio, you ever been there?”
“Never, and I have no immediate plans.”
“Keep it that way. I wouldn’t bother; the busiest place is the departure gate at the airport.”
“Sounds gnarly!”
“Have you got any brothers and sisters?”
“Two sisters, Louise and Clare, and a younger brother James.”
“That’s a big family, it must be great.”
“Yes and no, I wish they were all in London. What about you?”
“Just one brother, he’s ten years older than me. I was a bit of an afterthought, conceived, as the story goes, on Thanksgiving Day; I think my arrival was more a shock, not much reason for thanks giving. “
“Are you trying to be funny or what?”
“My parents were just getting on top of the house payments and saving for my older brother’s college education. They were relieved when I went to study in Washington and they got their house to themselves. How about you; what’s your story?”
“My parents moved back to England and I did a bit of modeling for amateur photographers.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, it sounds it but I got fed up with being photographed practically naked on a village green or in a public park with guys calling out: ‘Hey Sade, can I be your smooth operator. I joined an agency and then I got a book together with ‘The Strike’.”
“Who are they?”
“The organization who booked you, Der Krieg, we translate it into English!”
With me constantly glancing in the rear view mirror at her, when it was safe, we practically told each other our life stories.
The traffic allowed us to spend time together, the more I looked at her the more I liked her.
The more she spoke the more hooked on her I was becoming, her voice sounded like a soft caress, I’m not kidding. She was enthusiastic about stuff as well, her job, life. Just when I was on a high, our conversation stopped, ran out of steam, we’d reached the outskirts of town and the traffic was moving faster, I had to concentrate more.
I asked her if she wanted to listen to some music, she said she would, so I slotted in a CD and turned the volume up.
It was one of my latest ‘I-tune’ downloads, which I had burnt onto disc on Sunday.
It was a selection of songs by ‘M-People’; Kate had mentioned she had seen them live once. Easing a highly polished black shoe on the brake, I swung into Fifth Avenue, the one in London north of Notting Hill.
Fifth Avenue is a broad street with small cottages, built for the railway workers at the end of the nineteenth century, maybe the 1870s or 1880s; it must be one of the widest side streets in London but it has some of the smallest houses in it.
We passed the first turn and then she asked me to pull up outside number 64. I put on the park brake and ran around the front to open the door for her. She was already out and I took in her body again.
“Thanks for the ride,” she drawled in a syrupy voice.
“The pleasure was mine,” I replied with a sigh.
The goodbye
I watched her walk to the house wondering if she was wearing stockings under that dress; she waved at the door. I smiled back, shut the car door and walked back to the driver’s seat.
My thoughts were focused on my girl friend that lived in Chelsea, not the one in New York, she worked in a flower store on a corner of New King’s Road, it was a temporary job, not that I’m one to explain.
I was just about to put my seat belt on, thinking of lowering the windows and having a cigarette when I heard both back doors open. Two guys had got in, they were teenagers, both had short hair, a black guy and a white guy, the black guy behind me wore a brown leather jacket and jeans.
The white guy next to him wore jeans and a white cotton shirt.
I could see them both clearly in the rear view mirror; they were laughing for some reason. Watching as they slammed the doors, I wondered what to do.
Before I could reach the mobile phone next to me, the white guy leaned forward, pulled it off the rest and ripped the wire from the socket. He threw the telephone onto the back seat, between them. Noticing he had something in his other hand and hearing them both giggle.
That was the moment I decided not to ask them to leave the car.
The next second there was a click and I saw the blade of a flick knife glinting brightly.
“Okay guys where do you want to go?” I sighed as if I was always being kidnapped or held up. Spaced out kids taking the car for a joy ride was all part of the routine, I was trying to convey to them.
I didn’t need a degree in pathology to know that these guys were wired on something, the blood shot stare of the white guy told me as much. They looked at each other, laughing, like this was the funniest thing anyone had said.
The white guy was the first one to speak.
“Nowhere, Yank,” he said seriously. This set off the other guy giggling like a schoolboy. The next thing I knew was the knife was at my throat.
On a hot spring day, I sat behind the wheel of a three year old Lincoln, Town Car, the lunchtime traffic was heavy and I was wishing that I was anywhere but stuck in this black box wearing a chauffeur’s hat, which was damp around the crown despite the air conditioning.
I don’t even wear a hat in the winter.
Wearing hats is not my thing either, not even a baseball cap, my head gets hot and my hair gets sweaty. I don’t even wear a hat in the winter. Ties aren’t my favorite either and I longed to undo the restricting top button of my white shirt and pull the damn thing off from around my neck.
The Limousine company that I worked for were a cheap operation. You had to wear a standard issue company white shirt, polyester and cotton with their logo. That made me hot too. Over fifty per cent and the pores can’t breathe. My shirt was sixty five per cent man made fiber. My body was suffocating. Not that I’m one to get all-technical.
I was boiling
My suit was a polyester wool mix, mainly man made fiber, so I was boiling under all those synthetics. I could have set the air conditioning to arctic and I still would have simmered away in my clothes. The passenger would have taken exception to my turning up the cold flow too high and I didn’t want to upset her.
She was cute, a young girl of about twenty-five, dark hair in ringlets, parted down the center. Big wide, brown eyes stared out from underneath heavy, dark eyebrows. A small little nose and generous lips to her large mouth, that gave her a sexy pout, finished off her heart shaped face.
Cuban or Columbian girls
She looked a bit like ‘Sade’, the singer, if you know the girl I mean. If you don’t, then, imagine one of those cute Cuban or Columbian girls, all strong features and Latin and Afro-Caribbean good looks mixed together in a melting pot, labeled beautiful and sexy.
I often look at my customers, it helps pass the time, driving can be very boring. Mostly I try to figure out what type of person they are, whether they’re married, whether they’re nice people, that sort of thing.
I can weave a whole story around them just by looking at their bitten nails, their mismatched socks or the book they are reading. Sometimes people want to project a certain image, others just do not give a damn.
Birthday treat
Some of my clients have saved years for a few hours being driven around London, I supply part of a birthday treat, some of my clients have never paid directly for a car in their lives, It depended on the impression you were trying to make, or how you wanted to arrive.
We were in demand, first impressions are important no matter what business you are in and how business is doing. Kids love limos, it chimes with their materialistic view of the world. Celebs always arrived at parties in a limo and who is more important than a celebrity to a teenager?
It’s unusual for them to talk to me and if they do, they keep it brief, generally directions or small talk about the weather. I don’t mind, I have my thoughts to keep me busy, thinking of home.
This girl was different.
It was not the usual big arrogant operators that I used to work with but a small independent with a charming, smiling receptionist and what seemed like really genuine people. I led her down to the car actually wishing that I could stay longer. Normally, I cannot wait to get out of those fake places with their fake people and their patronizing attitude. They all suck.
I had parked at the ‘Pay and Display’ bay on Bentinck Street outside Bentinck Mansions, a typical West End address; I was lucky to get a space within a block of the ‘Der Krieg’ agency.
She followed me willingly and I noticed that she was a tall leggy model.
Almost up to my shoulder and I consider myself tall at over six foot tall. Opening the door for her, I noticed not only her sweet smile but also a great body under a classic cut, black dress.
Her ankles were well turned, I always notice ankles first, her legs were shapely, womanly, just like her wide hips, her butt was soft and rounded, she had a slim waist and spectacular breast, not small but not large, heavy looking, rounded, sexy.
They looked terrific.
It’s amazing what you can notice while opening a door for someone. There was no reason for a Limo to pick her up, but for the fact that our vehicle had been used for some stills that day. As a reward for hard work, the order had been given that I should take her home.
The car had been booked for day, as it often was; people love to use a limo as a backdrop. I had driven it to a disused car lot off the M40. The photographer and the photographer’s assistant were there setting up the lights and unloading a Jeep SUV, we could have been in New York or Chicago or any other US city.
Then, we were joined by a black cab, which pulled up with a squeak, and some agency guys jumped out of it. In the second taxi were the model and her stylist.
I waited by the car, admired both the stylist and the model and then moved the car.
The shoot necessitated several moves and so I hung around waiting to pull the car closer to a concrete support of a flyover smothered in graffiti or to move it next to a wire fence where the traffic heading to London rushed past us on the A40 dual carriageway.
As usual, I did not get near anyone.
They were decent, the producer’s assistant got me a pack of cigarettes and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi during a break but otherwise no one spoke to me.
The model was showing off some brightly colored shirts, which the wardrobe department teemed with hot pants, mini skirts and, sometimes, just hold-ups.
I was surprised when I got a phone call saying I should pick up the model from the agency that evening at six; particularly as the phone call came just as she and her stylist and wardrobe woman hopped into a taxi. I was told to take a break for a couple of hours. It was only four o’clock.
I could not go to the movies
I could hang around in a café though, not very imaginative; still it was better than hanging around a car lot, smoking too much and drinking Diet Pepsi until it came out of my ears, watching seven people buzz around the car taking photographs.
I liked the photographer, Justin Pumfrey, a typically English name but a good guy who knew his job. He got the best out of the model and everyone around him. It was his idea that I should be allowed to take off.
The traffic
The camera was built like an anti-aircraft missile, but at least I could take off my jacket and loosen the top button once the model had left the car. It had been a boring day, parking the car under a ramp of a freeway and waiting. I was glad to be back behind the wheel.
She had a great profile; the activity out on the streets seemed to interest her. I had picked up models before, for work and they were skinny and aloof, only a few were attractive, most of them never talked, you were merely the driver.
You were the hired help, part of the backdrop to their movie, if you know what I mean.
They would hand over a slip of paper with the address, tell you that they were late and ease back to read a magazine or gaze out of the window while I drove in silence.
I’m sure there are some nice models out there, but I never met them. I couldn’t blame them for being quiet, being in the limo was, most probably, the only time they had to themselves throughout a hectic day.
This girl told me her name, it was Kate and we talked.
“So where are you from Kate?” I asked.
“I was born in England but grew up in Monterey.”
“Steinbeck country, Cannery Row; I’ve never been to the west coast.”
“You’d love it there, the weather’s great, everyone lives outdoors, and there are beach parties all the time. I really miss it but this is where the work is and I like London.”
“That’s great.”
“What about you Tom?”
“I’m a Mid-west boy, Columbus Ohio, you ever been there?”
“Never, and I have no immediate plans.”
“Keep it that way. I wouldn’t bother; the busiest place is the departure gate at the airport.”
“Sounds gnarly!”
“Have you got any brothers and sisters?”
“Two sisters, Louise and Clare, and a younger brother James.”
“That’s a big family, it must be great.”
“Yes and no, I wish they were all in London. What about you?”
“Just one brother, he’s ten years older than me. I was a bit of an afterthought, conceived, as the story goes, on Thanksgiving Day; I think my arrival was more a shock, not much reason for thanks giving.“
“Are you trying to be funny or what?”
“My parents were just getting on top of the house payments and saving for my older brother’s college education. They were relieved when I went to study in Washington and they got their house to themselves. How about you; what’s your story?”
“My parents moved back to England and I did a bit of modeling for amateur photographers.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, it sounds it but I got fed up with being photographed practically naked on a village green or in a public park with guys calling out: ‘Hey Sade, can I be your smooth operator. I joined an agency and then I got a book together with ‘The Strike’.”
“Who are they?”
“The organization who booked you, Der Krieg, we translate it into English!”
With me constantly glancing in the rear view mirror at her, when it was safe, we practically told each other our life stories. The traffic allowed us to spend time together, the more I looked at her the more I liked her.
The more she spoke the more hooked on her I was becoming.
Her voice sounded like a soft caress, I’m not kidding. She was enthusiastic about stuff as well, her job, life. Just when I was on a high, our conversation stopped, ran out of steam, we’d reached the outskirts of town and the traffic was moving faster, I had to concentrate more.
I asked her if she wanted to listen to some music, she said she would, so I slotted in a CD and turned the volume up.
It was one of my latest ‘I-tune’ downloads, which I had burnt onto disc on Sunday. It was a selection of songs by ‘M-People’; Kate had mentioned she had seen them live once. Easing a highly polished black shoe on the brake, I swung into Fifth Avenue, the one in London north of Notting Hill.
The Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a broad street with small cottages, built for the railway workers at the end of the nineteenth century, maybe the 1870s or 1880s; it must be one of the widest side streets in London but it has some of the smallest houses in it.
We passed the first turn and then she asked me to pull up outside number 64. I put on the park brake and ran around the front to open the door for her. She was already out and I took in her body again.
“Thanks for the ride,” she drawled in a syrupy voice.
“The pleasure was mine,” I replied with a sigh.
I watched her walk to the house wondering if she was wearing stockings under that dress, she waved at the door. I smiled back, shut the car door and walked back to the driver’s seat.
The thoughts were focused on my girl friend that lived in Chelsea, not the one in New York. She was working in a flower store on a corner of New King’s Road.
I was just about to put my seat belt on, thinking of lowering the windows and having a cigarette when I heard both back doors open. Two guys had got in, they were teenagers, both had short hair, a black guy and a white guy, the black guy behind me wore a brown leather jacket and jeans.
The guy
The white guy next to him wore jeans and a white cotton shirt, I could see them both clearly in the rear view mirror; they were laughing for some reason. Watching as they slammed the doors, I wondered what to do.
Before I could reach the mobile phone next to me, the white guy leaned forward, pulled it off the rest and ripped the wire from the socket. He threw the telephone onto the back seat, between them.
Noticing he had something in his other hand and hearing them both giggle, I decided not to ask them to leave the car. The next second there was a click and I saw the blade of a flick knife glinting brightly.
“Okay guys where do you want to go?”
I sighed as if I was always being kidnapped or held up. Spaced out kids taking the car for a joy ride was all part of the routine, I was trying to convey to them.
They looked at each other, laughing, like this was the funniest thing anyone had said. The white guy was the first one to speak.
“Nowhere, Yank,” he said seriously. This set off the other guy giggling like a schoolboy. The next thing I knew was the knife was at my throat.
My third Novel – A Dark Kafkaesque novel ‘SWITCH‘ – by Michael Fitzalan – the most controversial with graphic details of every nature.
ABOUT ME
A well respected author
Michael Fitzalan was born in Clapham, South London; where his mother had established a doctor’s surgery in a house which she filled with children.
With three sisters, two brothers and a library full of books; a love of literature was imbued in him from an early age.
Michael Fitzalan comes from Irish parents were doctors; and they settled on the West Side of Clapham Common and had six children in quick succession.
A story by Michael Fitzalan
