“The whole truth and nothing but the truth”
“I do”
He stares at me the whole time. His pupils are as black as gun barrels. I know I’m dead.
My bags are already in the trunk. Freshly minted ID. All ready. I just have to do my part, speak my piece and it’s over.
In fact, that was the exact phrase they had used. “It would be over before I knew it.” You know, that has an ominous ring to it.
“Yeah, I was walking from my office to the train as I usually do, but I decide to take a different route through the city that night. I’m just passing one of those huge steel girders … er … pillars … whatever you call them, you know, that hold up the railroad tracks. I had just noticed that someone had stuck a Starbucks cup in the spaces between the crisscrossed iron bars, held together with those big round-head rivets and I see two guys against the concrete wall opposite me. Real close, you know, facing each other. I wonder whether they’re sharing a real good joke or they’re a couple of drunks sharing a bottle in a paper bag, or, you know, maybe gay or something. Then I see the one against the wall kinda crumple forward onto the other guy. The other guy just sorta casually steps outa the way and lets him drop to the pavement. As he falls I saw the blood.”
Read more in I. Return to Egypt