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Liar

Bill Tope

I greeted a new face at the bus stop
today, a big puffy fellow who rather
resembled a pink marshmallow. He
introduced himself as “John,” and said
he usually rides the 12 bus. I never
heard of the 12 bus, I told John, who
seemed immediately scandalized but
soon took pity on me, seeing as how
I sported a cane.

“I’ve got two kids, little boys,” he
offered. When I asked their names,
he seemed not to hear me. I
could almost see the gears turning
round inside his head. “Felix and
Grover,” he said at last, a bit
uncertainly.

Pointing to my cane, he made a face.
“What happened to you?” he wanted to
know at once. I explained my situation; he
nodded impatiently and asked me, “What
drugs do you take?” But, when I told him,
he seemed rather disappointed. Soon, our
bus arrived and he gallantly stood aside to
let me precede him.

When we got aboard and found our seats,
John, who now introduced himself as
“Josh,” began a spirited conversation with
Julie, a regular patron on the bus line. “Are
you disabled too?” he asked immediately.
When she admitted she was, he renewed
his interrogation respecting drugs; he
seemed much more impressed by Julie’s
regimen that he had by mine.

Josh sidled up to the front of the bus, where
he engaged in the driver in a prolonged
converation. Fatigued by the discussion,
the driver eventually instructed Josh to take
a seat. He did.

As we were whisked rapidly through the
streets of the city, “Josh” turned to me
and Julie, who was seated next to me,
and boasted that he was going to buy a
$60,000 SUV just as soon as he got his
income tax return.

Julie and I took in his paint-spattered
jeans and his tattered sneakers and his
threadbare coat, exchanged a glance and
shrugged. Who knew? Detecting a
mild skepticism on our part, he added
that he made $60 per hour at a local
warehouse that I happened to know
paid just $18.

“What do you do there?” Julie asked. He
shook his head wearily. “All kinds ’a stuff,”
he said, but didn’t go into detail. “I’m in
charge,” he added. Julie then turned to me
and asked, “Do you have your bus pass yet?”
An on-going conversation between us. I
admitted that I did not. The protocol for
obtaining a free bus pass for the disabled
was rather a complex, drawn-out affair.
Josh popped out of his seat and flashed his
own pass. “Got mine,” he said smugly. He
had told me at the busstop that he had been
riding the buses for only three days, “....after
my Cadillac broke down.”

At length, growing tired of our company,
Josh effected a friendship with an elderly
woman who asked him what he did for a
living. He replied with a sunny smile that
he was an architect but was taking a year-
long sabbatical so he could take his wife
and three daughters on an extended
sojourn to Europe.

He told her his name was Jeb. She
remarked that it was admirable, the
manner in which he cared for his family.
He beamed modestly. She said no, really,
it was too bad he was married, as she
would like to introduce her granddaughter
to such a fine young man. “Jeb” told her
not to fret, that he was Mormon and maybe
there was something he could do. Do you
know Mitt Romney? she asked. He replied
that he did.

At last Jeb’s stop was reached: Walmart.
No longer having time for either Julie or
me, Jeb exited the bus without a word and
we watched through the window as he soon
befriended a pretty young Hispanic woman in
a Walmart uniform. When he had gotten up,
he left behind a small liquor bottle. Taking it
up I read the label: “Felix & Grover Gin.” It
was empty.

The bus window was up and so we
listened, with a morbid curiousity. John/Josh/
Jeb asserted that he held some 100,000 shares
in the company and was in fact an heir to the
vast Walton holdings. The woman seemed duly
impressed. He introduced himself to her as Juan.

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