José had been hesitant to take this seat on the bus, as there was a woman with a screaming baby in the seat on the other side of the gap from the man who'd just spoken. The thing was, though, that José's feet were killing him. He'd chased a murderer into a lightbulb factory two weeks ago as he'd wrapped up The Case of the Blah Blah Blah Something. (José had come up snake-eyes on titles as he'd sat down with his case files.)
As a result of the lightbulb factory chase, José had spent a good three hours in the E.R., having a squeaky-voiced intern pick shards out of his soles with a pair of tweezers. A pint of bourbon a day had, it turned out, not been the prescription he should have used and, two weeks later, his feet still hurt as bad as his heart had the time Mary Jane Kresky had turned down his request for a handie outside the junior prom.
Because of his pedal discomfort, José had decided that grabbing a bus was the best way to cover the four blocks between him and the spot where he was supposed to be meeting a guy with some information about Cheating Husband #3,795, who José was being paid to photograph with the 21-year-old phlebotomist his client believed he was presently banging.
Standing on the bus was torturous at the best of times. Invariably, you got stepped on, shoved and bashed in the crotch by whatever back-pack-wearing cretin decided that it was utterly crucial to the survival of the species that he/she needed to get past you immediately, your inability to move and the Laws of Physics notwithstanding. But standing on the bus when you were lugging a camera around and your feet felt like two exposed nerves slapping up against a dental drill was a whole other level of impossible.
So José sat. He saw the open seat and he took it, a mere pico-second ahead of some aged nun who smelt of lentils. He'd taken the seat despite the screaming baby, because he felt a little ear-drum rupturing was maybe preferable to having his feet explode below the ankle, which would take a good three inches off of his height.
He hadn't figured on any further misery-inducing factors. But here was Captain Chatty, offering his thoughts on the lyrical arts.
José gave an affirmative grunt, laden with enough terseness to clue in even the most determined gabster that he didn't wish to converse. The old man was undeterred.
"I keep a slice of baloney in my back pocket for emergencies," he informed the universe.
And that's when José experienced the moment that every urbanite dreads. That instant when you realize that you've sat down next to someone crazy.
There are signs, you see, that can mean multiple things. Perhaps the person is arguing with the passenger seated on their other side and not with the ghost of Charles Nelson Reilly. Perhaps they're moving in that strange way because they've got some odd, atonal orchestral piece on their headphones and not because that particular rhythmic pattern keeps the demons at bay. And you sit there, hoping against hope that the behavior that's set your hackles on edge rests on the non-crazy side of the Venn diagram. But then there's that one little extra thing that sends the whole thing cascading down the Hill of Lunacy. Maybe the person starts directing his rant at more than just one person. Maybe the person's movement shifts from "possible interpretive dance" to "bull getting ready to charge." When that happens, you need to make a determination: Is this person so batshit that I need to move the hell away from them? Or are they just kind of cooky and I can safely occupy this bonkers-adjacent space until my stop?
José's instinct told him to move. Then his feet told instinct to shut the hell up and that they would move only when there was absolutely no choice.
So he gritted his inner teeth and settled in for the long haul.
The old man looked right at José. "I once snatched a duck out of mid-air and ate him while he was still flapping," the old man boasted.
José looked harder at the racing form in his hand.
"The President has been replaced by a gay Plutonian and I have proof. Wanna see?"
José pretended to search out the window for street signs.
The old man leaned closer. His next words wafted moistly directly into José's ear canal: "Alpacas are gentle, considerate lovers."
This finally proved too much for José. He pulled the "stop" cord, deftly elbowed the old man in the throat and hopped off the bus. As his feet began to dully throb, he thought, not for the first time, "Man, it would be so nice if I could just photograph people cheating on their spouses from my office."
Happy Birthday, Beigey!
