The sun began its slow descent to the Pacific. I wandered the few blocks to the #28 stop on the Trolley hoping to make it back to Joel’s before dark. At twilight, downtown sweats unsavories in beads, the others who cook, clean, run errands. Walking by you tense a little. I put my cell phone in my pocket.
6:36 P.M. and the tail end of rush hour pedestrians were grouped in stations at the ends of the trolley platform on both sides of the street. A man in a blue, pinstripe, shortsleeve button-up looked at someone not there, talking, angry. I crossed the street to the other platform, the one that would take me North to Joel’s. His voice followed me.
“Feel sorry for you …. cellulite …. Maniacs…”
He paced the platform, tired humans made show to not notice, buried in books, trolley maps. A black man watched, bemused.
Usually, ravers have an arm on their hip, a Bible held close to their kidney (purified by osmosis). He grasped a baseball cap.
“Thank you very much …. FUCK OFF! …. bastard sharp …. if you don’t believe it …. sun rises and sets …. son rises back again …. FUCKERS …. I don’t …. no kind …. including you…”
I scribbled madly, trying to write it all down, every word, prophecy-tainted, yelling at the world, at me.
“…. STEALING MY THOUGHTS. STOP IT …. you think I don’t know exactly what you do …. keep them …. hide more…” He yelled across the tracks towards me. “FUCKING FORGET IT YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH … shoot me … FUCKING WORLD…”
I put my notebook up and buried myself in a book. He paced back towards the other end of the platform.
On the trolley, I glanced from face to face, guilt drawn like shrouds across commuter countenances, everyone complicit in a collective sin of omission. The trolley rocked gently. Staring out the window across the aisle, the sea bled gold where the sun sliced downward. Tomorrow, I’d leave at dawn, hop a plane for home: the son rises back again.