Do you remember that time you rode the city bus a little later than you’d planned when you’d went out? The sickly blue lights of the bus’s interior contrasted uneasily with the sulphur lamps that lined the street.
And several stops before yours, a group of young men clambered aboard and plopped themselves in the front of the bus. They were loud, but not obnoxious, their jokes more goofy memories than rude observations, and one of them, the stout one with too much product in his spiky hair, sat smiling, arms crossed, observing his chums like a benevolent king who went slumming for a night. He wore glasses with thick white frames and a blue and ivory striped sweater. His jeans were faded in the knees; his shoes, shiny and black. And for a few minutes you thought, “Here’s a man with nerdy style—maybe gifted with a quick wit; someone who isn’t scared to give his opinion. Given the opportunity, I bet we could be friends.”
(Did you think that because he looked a little like your friend’s friend who, years ago, over pizza and brandy old fashioneds, announced to the group that he disliked the Harry Potter books. And—although you yourself were indifferent on J. K. Rowling, being more of a Robert E. Howard kind of fantasy reader—you admired his brazenness at a table of otherwise Potterheads? Pity, you only ever saw him that one time.)
But then, at your stop, the Cool Nerd King and his buddies exited the bus before you in a rush, and you thought you might catch a bon mot to polish your minutes of perhaps unearned admiration, but while his buddies hooted and hollered down the street, he stood against the stone wall outside your building and, groaning with relief, urinated.
Yeah, Proailurus was that kind of guy.
