THE PIGEON

          The bruiser pulled me from my own apartment and into the foul-smelling hallway while the smaller cops looked on.  I could feel the odd confusion in my face as I was frisked.  That non-threatening face I’d make whenever I didn’t want trouble or felt like I was being misrepresented.  The face of diffusion.  A face of pity in the lost hope that maybe the one doing me wrong would feel sorry for this sad sack, this stupefied manchild.

            It’s surprising how things get compressed in your mind, even when it’s happening.  It happened so fast.  The first thought was back taxes I hadn’t paid.  But the neurons fired across my brain and synapses fired.  “They don’t send cops when you’ve evaded the IRS.”  The one thing that didn’t occur to me when it happened was that I could be the pigeon in all of this.  Without explanation, proof or motive, I was being fingered.  A patsy.  These things were going through my girl’s mind as she stood in our doorway, watching it all unfold, aghast.

            I don’t know which nimwit in this building thought they heard me beating her.  I could understand if we were watching something that might’ve flooded out into the hall other than ‘Spellbound.’

            The one thing I do know is that the lesbian sociopath below us in 202 is getting a golf club up her ass.

-SLL