“What?” I say. I take my headphones off.
“Looks like barbed wire,” he says to me. I don’t know his name. I don’t know anyone’s name on the SL5 bus to Downtown Crossing. Especially not on a Tuesday morning.
He’s pointing at my ring. “Oh,” I say. “I can see that.” My ring is an oxidized ring of silver made by Elise Moran, inspired by the branch of the weeping cherry tree. “It looks like…” says the man. “It looks like…”
He tries to say a word beginning in the letter V, but isn’t sure it’s the right one.
“Vine,” I say for him. He’s grateful. We share our minor victory. I tell him I’m going to start telling people it’s barbed wire instead, because I think that’s what he wants to hear.
“I’m nervous,” he divulges. The bus rattles over a plate in the street, and all the commuters sway and keep their eyes down. Everyone around us is especially determined to keep their eyes down, because the man talking to me seems to be talking to everyone and anyone who will listen. I thought he was very good friends with the other person he was talking to before, but now I am realizing that the other person might have just been politely listening, just like I am politely listening. I did not keep my eyes down when he addressed me, and I think that the people around me are united in private sympathy for me. But I’m not put off by the impromptu conversation with the man. I’m sort of thrilled. In my mind, I am awarding myself with a big pin that says “APPROACHABLE.”
“Why are you nervous?” I ask. I can feel the crowd groan. You’re not supposed to ask the crazy people questions. However I am curious, and I want to know, and in my life my needs come first. Always.
“I’m meeting with the judge today,” he says. “I got jumped. Got attacked. Two men, last week. They just attacked me. But I showed them. One of them, at least.” He thrusts out his chin and looks at me smugly, conspiratorially, like I might’ve helped. “I got him good.” He chuckles, and it implies a world of horrors. “You shouldn’t just attack people, man,” he tells me, and I am teeming with a morbid urge to point the irony of this out to him. I don’t, because I am now imagining him attacking me, and then bragging about it to someone else on another bus, possibly on the bus ride home from wherever I’ve been murdered, possibly while I am sinking to the bottom of the Charles River, chained to a cinder block (and the chain is probably a cheap metal, and I can’t wear cheap metal because my mother tells me I’m allergic, and so all my earrings have to be gold or gold-plated, which is a hassle at craft fairs, which I attend very regularly).
He keeps talking: “They just came at me, one had a big knife. Tried to get me but I got away from the knife. He still got my head but it woulda been worse. He still got me though.” He points to a cut on the tippy-top of his forehead and I make an obligatory OUCH! face. Truthfully, I think it doesn’t look like such a bad cut, and I am seriously doubting the size of the attack weapon. This makes me ashamed of myself, so I instead reason that the man has incredible reflexes. Just like the movies.
“One of ’em was already in jail when I got them back,” he says. “Got arrested later that day.” He tells me why but it’s hard to understand through his laughter. “The other–well–like I told you–I got him good.”
We share another conspiratorial laugh. I’m now wondering if I should be nervous for the judge too.
“God don’t like ugly,” the man says to me. I nod in agreement, because I sincerely believe this is the truth. Then the man begins to dab at his head (his story has strained him). “It’s hot in here,” he informs me. “I’m freaking out. I’ve got to get off this bus.”
And just like that our rapport is gone. Poof. Evaporated. He’s distracted by the temperature. He notices the crowd for the first time. Everyone is watching him, but no one is looking at him. “It’s too HOT!” he tells the SL5 Bus, and his voice rings with blame.
When the doors open, he doesn’t even say goodbye.