character sketch

[joegoda]

The juke was playing Born to Run by Springsteen. The toast on the BLT was getting pretty damn soggy from the tomatoes and mayonnaise... probably Miracle Whip, if I was to guess. I sat on the red topped stool at the counter and tried not to spin around on it while the guy, the lummox that had been sent to 'educate' me sat next to me, eating his ham and egg sandwich. Bits of egg clung to his heavy bottom lip, as though clinging to a life raft.

He was a rhino. He was a small mountain. He was an armor tanked up blimp of a man, and I couldn't begin to guess his poundage, because I know, I KNOW I would miss the target by several decades of pounds.

The black porkpie hat he wore did nothing to make him appear less dangerous. Imagine a boar, like you see in those nature videos, all bristles and tusky and red mean eyes. Take that image and shove it into a brown pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit. Add a sky blue shirt and a dull brick red tie. Put high gloss patent leather shoes on apparently tiny hooves and tie the shoestrings into a double knot.

Subtract the idea that this might be an accountant, and subtract it fast.

On each pinky finger, he wore a simple ruby ring. One on each hand. On his left wrist, he had a watch from four decades ago. Thick golden band, large glassed face, it was the type that wound as you walked. The edges of his blue cuffs peaked out of his jacket, just enough to show that they were not frayed. They wouldn't dare.

So I, with my white tshirt needing washed, my blue jeans with the holes in the knees, my sneakers that had long ago seen better days, sat on my stool and listened to his man. Really. I didn't have much of a choice.

"Kid." He said, holding his ham and egg in his left hand like a baton, or a blackboard erasure. "Here's the deal." His voice was gravelly, it was sinusey, it was deep and it was scary. Almost whisper deep, as though his voice climbed out of the grave of his lungs, clawed it's way across vocal cords like razor wire, to joyfully spill out of his mouth into the outside world.

"And keep in mind, there's only one deal." He took a huge bit of his sandwich, then placed it on the plate in front of him. "You are either part of us, or you are part of them. If you are part of us, fine and good. If you are a part of them, well..." He wiped his hands on the towel nearby. "If you are a part of them, there may come a time when you wish you were a part of us." He squinted at me, red, dangerous, piggy eyes. "I'm not saying that anything bad would happen to you. Nothing like that. I'm just saying that there may come a time."

He levered himself off his stool and the earth didn't quite shake as he stood one more on solid ground. He made his way toward the front door, into the square of light and back out to the real world. The rest of the patrons naturally made way for him, like waves before a bow of a tug. The very air seemed to bend around him, and shimmer, as if it too, moved out of the way to avoid being crushed.

When he got to the door and opened it, the frame bent away from him, just a bit, almost unnoticably, and the door jumped away from him and opened on it's own accord. He turned, then, and looked at me, catching me in the deer freezing headlights of his eyes.

"I will tell you this. You got moxie. You got spunk. And you got guts. There may be a third option, but you gotta figure it out. If you want something bad enough, you gotta work for it. Nothing worth anything ever came easy."

The sky blotted out and darkness fell briefly as he moved through the doorway. He was gone, and the doorframe waggled back into place, the air seemed easier to breath and the earth quit shaking. Or was that just me?