I was on the bus, middle of the day. They make them narrow in my city and the street was narrow too, because of the blizzards. All the seats had been taken, so I stood in the aisle and watched the shoals of snow go bumping past. Sitting someplace near my hip, a man played music on his phone and chortled to himself. He looked like a pile of stubble and burst capillaries, and his music traveled a way. No one else was saying much of anything. “Purple Rain,” so I figured all right—it’s Prince.
Someone nudged my elbow. Looking around, I saw a lady from India and she pointed behind me: a seat had opened up. But I told her my stop was coming pretty soon. “Purple rain, pu-u-u-u-rple rain,” said the stubbly man, following along with Prince.
I sighted out the window. We were past the park, so that meant we were getting close.
“Could you fight a kangaroo?” the man asked. The song had finished and he was holding his phone out. A photo of a kangaroo looked up at me, snout near the lens.
“Yeah,” I said. “I could do that. No problem.”
This tickled him. His face split in a smile, meaning that his eyes disappeared and a collection of ill-assorted, well-spaced teeth appeared in his mouth.
“You kidding?” he said. “A kangaroo?”
“I’ve done it,” I said. “They used to be a problem over there.”
“You took care of them?”
“Now they’re not a problem,” I said, shrugging.
“What about two kangaroos?”
“Any around here?” I asked.
His eyes vanished once again, perhaps deeper than before. His chin bounced up and down and a wheezing sound emerged. His teeth went up and down with the chin, so it was quite a sight.
“I could do two, I could do three,” I said. “Kangaroos get confused. The more kangaroos, the more confusion.” The man slapped his knee and chortled some more.
Through the window, a brick façade lurched into view. The bakery across from where my friend lives. In other words, my stop.
The man was looking at his phone again. I squared off against the door and got ready to push. But a hand touched my shoulder. It was the Indian lady, rising up in her seat a little to lean toward me. “There are no kangaroos here,” she said, enjoying her joke. Ever ready, I said, “I was counting on that,” and then I got off.
Behind the scenes. Readers of The New York Times may recognize the above item as the sort of thing that paper’s “Metropolitan Diary” likes to run. It’s a puckish little chronicle of quirky doings in the big city, emphasis on random interactions in public spaces by ordinary people. The participants display playfulness and unflappability, then move along into the urban crowd and are never seen again. But there are two differences. First, the city isn’t New York. Second, the narrator’s the one being unflappable and playful. Usually, he or she spots someone else and that person gets to shine. But no, I sang my own praises. As champion kangaroo fighter of Quebec, I guess I deserve that much.