"Put the gun down, man." I said. "You ain't got no beef against me." He put the gun back into the holster but continued to tremble. "I'm not goin' to be trouble, dude. I'm like you - human, flawed, and in need of a smiling face."
His eyes welled up with tears - he was clearly shaken. I motioned to the kid to sit down beside me. He complied.
Through teary eyes, he asked if I had validated my pass. I told him I had a monthly. He nodded timorously - betraying a glimmer of a smile - and prepared to get off at the next stop, but I grabbed his arm before he could rise out of his seat.
"Hey, c'mon man, there's no hurry. Tell me your story and I'll lend you my ears."
He lipped - with introverted amusement - the words "Julius Caesar" and sat back down.
“You have a name?” the young man asked.
“How did you get that gun?” I asked in a rather sardonic tone.
“Standard issue.”
[In a registry office, a man holds a non-descript license application. He encounters an old friend, they chitchat. He asks his old friend a series of questions, each as banal as the last. His friend listens to each, without reply, before saying "She's in Airdrie with Broke Boy."
Another person, eavesdropping on the previous conversation, walks in and says, "Broke Boy's a myth. Broke Boy ain't real."
"How so?” the man asks.
"Because you're looking at him." ]
"Standard issue - what do you think of that?" I asked.
"Of what?"
"That they let transit cops carry guns around."
"You gotta do what you gotta do." The perfunctory tone of his colloquialism - delivered in a trained, controlled voice - took me aback. Maybe he was more comfortable with a gun than I first imagined.
"By and by, I never caught your name, dude."
"Jorge." I shook his outstretched hand.
"So how did you find yourself in the business of fascism?" I asked."Necessity," a hearty laugh accompanied his one-word answer. "I dropped out of college and this was one of the only jobs I was qualified for."
"College dropout? That's a title that comes with a lot of weight," I started. "It takes a lot to get into college and be smart enough to bail before being buried nose deep in loans."
"Amen to that." Although I nodded in agreement to his sentiment, his high-five went unreciprocated.
"So tell me your story...no, no, wait, I'll tell you mine first." He grew attentive and nodded along.
"I spent my best years wallowing in self-pity over a girl who was never mine. I got two degrees in areas relating to politics - which apparently is no use to anyone. And now, I sit here on this train jobless, homeless, and with the last hundred dollars I'll ever need in my pocket." I hesitated during the last part, cautious about disclosing my financial situation since he had a gun in tow. It's an instinctive distrust, I suppose - one that applies to situations involving cash and strangers toting firearms. He continued to nod, telling to me continue.
"I'm back in town - this wretched bourgeois town populated by vain parochial philistines - to do one thing: to kill a man." He nodded once again, unaffected by my supposed revelation.
"And if you want to know, it's that dude." I said, pointing to another one of those accursed billboards. He stared at it rather distinterestedly for a long while; although I assume it wasn't a novel sight for him.
"I agree," he broke the silence. "He does deserve to die. But what is your reason for wanting him dead?"
"I have my reason - which is no reason at all."
He smiled. My obtuse response amused him.
"So how are you planning on getting to him?"
"Haven't thought that far ahead yet."
"I understand." His cadence infused an otherwise prefunctory reply with an incisive signficance. It affirmed our unspoken solidarity. But there was something else to it.
"So, since you seem to be handy with a pistol - have you ever thought of killing a man?" My question failed to register initially. His eyes remained fixed on a faded C-Train advertisement.
He turned to me after a lengthy silence and with cold hard eyes gave me his reply, "We've all thought about it."
His eyes returned to the yellowing advertisment. "Broke Boy Realty - The Best Doggone Brokers in the West," it read. The ad featured an airbrushed image of a smiling, rather handsome, young man wearing a white two-gallon - who, from the looks of things, was not much older than Jorge.
The morning horizon illuminated.
“So are you getting off your shift soon?” I asked.
“Yeah, in about twenty minutes,” he said with a prescient brow. “You wanna crash at my place?”
“That’s mighty neighbourly of you neighbour.” There was laughter and then a prolonged silence. He stared at his advertisement. I gazed fixedly at the piece secured in its holster.
