The Magic Novel

I left straight from work, catching the train into town for a night out with the long lost Sergei. After navigating the sweltering heat of the Skywalk I just managed to catch the next train (Interesting digression: I often think, while walking between terminals on the dreaded Skywalk that it would be the worst place to get caught if a bomb went off on one of the terminals. The tubes would concentrate the explosion, frying everyone who was on those pathetic conveyor belts very rapidly. This is how my mind works).
On the train I didn't know where to sit. It was that time, when all the seats facing each other are fully occupied and the only place you can sit is facing the wrong way, and very cramped. I also had to avoid stinking spilt beer from some students who were having some kind of Train Spotter's Party. Eventually I took my place and opened my book (a book about greed on Wall Street in the Eighties. I like it because it makes me feel like a voyeuristic pervert). As I was reading the American voices in the novel became more real that I was comfortable with. I sweated with this for a few minutes until I looked up and saw two men chatting loudly. They were both wearing houndstooth sports-jackets and sitting with their legs wide apart, as if to accommodate herculean testicles. My magic book had beamed two characters directly onto the train. I stopped reading and listened to the conversation.
"David is so flavour of the month right now," said Sports-Jacket #1
"Yeah," Sports-Jacket #2 agreed. "He was at HP, then he went to Business Edge, now he's here. He really knows what he's doing."
"But having someone like that takes the focus off us, man."
"Yeah, what do we have to do to get noticed now?"
The two men were locked into a complaint which I found fascinating. They began talking about how David probably spent his evenings watching pay-per-view porn on the hotel television. What I enjoyed about this rant was, even though these men were in a different business to me, they were a different nationality, and they had a different sense of aesthetics (the sports-jackets were paired with slip-on loafers and chinos), their basic complaints were in a very familiar language. I too have complained with colleagues that the management are unfair, I too have commiserated with a comrade over the conditions of work, and the certain people being "flavour of the month". I wanted to let them know I was on their side, that they should fight this David fucker. After all it is us working stiffs that have to deal with all the rubbish. But then they went and ruined it all by talking about Powerpoint and how their presentation was going to be the best thing for the company, that their ideas were going to make more money and they were going to get pay-rises. Suddenly they were back to being characters in the novel, materialistic and driven to expand a company that probably views them as expendable empty suits.
We eventually reached Piccadilly and I met Sergei, who had a story of his own. He had seen a young man trying to breakdance on a cardboard map. His limp moves were being watched by people squatting and nodding. Maybe my magic book had made it the Eighties too...