Street Fight

“I’ll kill you, motherfucker.” There was an altercation on the street. He was walking to the bus stop when he stopped, at a safe distance, to see how things were going to turn out. Street fights held a certain fascination for him. It wasn’t something he proudly admitted, but they gave him an adrenaline rush. 

The combatants were two Caucasian men in their mid-to-late twenties. I’m thinking like a cop, he thought. One was wielding a broken beer bottle. The other was giving the bottle guy the finger. He always thought of it as “giving the finger,” never “flipping the bird.” He wondered what had brought the two men to the point of violence. Were they friends? Strangers? Was it over money? A woman? Something too insignificant to be fighting about?

“You’re not killing anyone, you pussy,” the second one said. 

He wondered if this was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the first one just said, “Next time, buddy,” and walked away.

That was his favorite kind of street fight: the threat of violence, but no actual harm to either party. The best of both worlds.

Back on his way to the bus, he wondered if there would be a next time, and if they were indeed buddies.

The Laughing Woman

He’d had a rocky night. He didn’t know why he kept tossing and turning. Now, on his way to the office, on the bus, it was starting to take its toll. Was he hallucinating, or was the woman across the aisle staring at him? He tried to ignore her. He nodded out briefly. When he woke up the woman was laughing. 

His wife always sleeps like a log. His long night of tosses and turns hadn’t disturbed her one bit. 

“You’re up early,” his wife said as she came upon him making coffee in the kitchen.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Worries?”

He didn’t have any worries besides the usual ones, the ones everybody has, do we have enough money, is my job in jeopardy, might I have prostate cancer, or colon cancer, is she cheating on me, will anybody really care when I die, and when will I die?

Suddenly the laughing woman spoke to him from across the aisle. “You made a funny,” she said.

“What?”

“When you fell asleep. You talked.”

“What did I say?”

The laugh turned into an insane cackle. “My stop. Gotta go,” she said.