Page 74 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

Words (continued from preceding page)
know your type so well. I just spent seventeen years
of my life working with people like you.”
The young man didn’t respond. Seymour continued. “It’s sure plain all over your face. You’re none too happy about things, are you?”
The young man turned away from him, towards the purple flagged cars passing in front of them.
Seymour persisted. “Am I right? You just lost a case, didn’t you?” He took his hands out of his pockets and clasped them in front of him, rocking in his hiking boots heel to toe, heel to toe. “I’m right, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” The young man was expressionless, not annoyed or startled, or angry.
“Bah!” Seymour shook his head. He extended his hand to the young man as if he was inviting him to dance. “Your posture, your face! One would have thought your best friend’s in there.” He pointed to the hearse, which was way up the street by now.
The young man stared at him evenly. Seymour took it as confirmation that the problem wasn’t the person in the hearse.
“Then why do you look so glum? On such a beautiful day? Such a beautiful time of year?” He extended his arms as wide as they would go, as if beckoning for the world to come and hug him. He tilted his face to the sun and showed it his large tea-stained teeth. Then he looked back at the young man and waited, with raised eyebrows, for a response.
The young man didn’t respond.
“Hey, come on.” Seymour let out a laugh that came from deep in his chest and he turned his face back up to the sky. “It can’t be all that bad. I’m serious. Tell me about that case of yours. I want to hear all about it.”
But the young man turned away from him. The last purple flagged car had passed. The procession was over. The man stepped off the curb.
“What then, you don’t want to speak?” Seymour sneered. He followed him off the curb. “I know you’re not deaf.”
But the young man was already across the street and walking rapidly.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” said Seymour, and he quick- ened his pace. But the young man’s legs were longer than his and soon he was into the next block.
Seymour began to shout. “Then go on, be like that. Go jump off a fucking bridge for all I care, you scum lawyer!”
Two women ahead of Seymour, strolling together, sipping iced coffees turned around and frowned at him. He didn’t realize he had been so loud. His voice seemed to reverberate off the buildings and hang in the air. He closed his mouth and placed his hands
in his pockets. At the next intersection, a fuel truck rounded the corner. Seymour stopped to let it pass. When he was able to cross the street, the young man was gone.
His focus turned back to walking. The rhythm of his pace—one foot, then the other—created an even tempo in his mind and he found himself humming to it, even though he didn’t usually sing. It felt appropri- ate now. He didn’t have anywhere particular to be, and it was so much better than being inside that oppres- sive ungrateful office with people telling him what to do, ordering him around, looking down on him just because he was outspoken. They were all so threat- ened by him, but it was past. He reminded himself that this was the first of many happy days to come.
As he approached Commercial Street, the salty ocean air enveloped his nostrils. Seagulls squawked overhead. Something was on the cobblestones ahead, a small piece of dark plastic or wood. He
got closer. No. It was a dead bug. A giant water bug or June bug, something oversized and brown with many legs that was flipped over onto its back. Just this morning, before he left for work, when he was making tea in his kitchen, a large brown bug had crawled along his white metal stovetop. He knew the bug came from downstairs. The neighbors had moved out and the landlord was refurbishing the apartment. Cleaning, painting, new flooring, even. He had seen jagged pieces of linoleum and ripped up carpeting outside in the parking lot, and the door to the apartment open with workmen inside. The bugs had to go somewhere. They resided in the walls of every apartment building, some buildings worse than others, and his wasn’t bad. He rarely saw them, if ever. He would have to notify the land- lord though, so the exterminator could be called.
He grabbed the newspaper from his kitchen table, folded it up into a roll, and gave the bug one firm thwack.
The force of the impact caused the insect to flip on its back. Its legs extended upwards and flailed for a sec- ond or two, and then stopped. Seymour removed the remains with the tip of his newspaper, taking great
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