It is not until we are done talking and he has gone away into the pinball and the claw machines with the little toys and out into the sunshine like an ordinary little kid that I realize what was bugging me. Whenever I got close enough to notice it, Evil Hansel smelled weird. Volodya always smelled like shoe boxes and bear grease and generic log cabin stinky and it was disturbing at a mammal level because I have read where bad diet like also possibly human ham will make you smell bad and this was not that. Evil Hansel smelled like walking through the hardware department and all the auto air fresheners are open in rows for your motoring cleanliness but that is not it because it is like—like a really bad chocolate box like rose water where there should be caramels and that really amazing praline thing and instead you get rose and orange creams and that disgusting purple one—

—he smelled—

—awful—

—but also familiar—

—and why am I thinking of sea urchins and the sound of a squeegee? Who washes sea urchins they are what they are—

And then I get it and I just stare at the air hockey for the longest time and watch the puck go back and forth and back and forth zip zap clack.

—

Quite a long time ago now in another country when I was young and foolish I did a good thing. I mean it was not a heroic thing but it was basically nice and I will tell you about it now and then we will not talk about it anymore.

I was getting a train from the city to my mama’s house up along the coast where things were not good economically speaking and little by little the old farms were turning into derelicts and from time to time I guess some guy would buy an old place and make it into a lodge where he could snort coke off his secretaries and make 8 mm pornos and then project them onto his secretaries yes Mr. Farnham I SEE YOU—

Never mind that now.

I was getting the train and there was a guy with a backpack he went for the door just as another guy pulled it closed and there was somehow one of those perfect bad moments and the latch was very sharp and it cut off his finger like BLOOP.

I swear BLOOP or maybe SCHWIPP it is hard to say but there was a tonal quality.

And then there was the guy screaming and I could not get past him to get on the train and the train was leaving with a great long smear of red across the door panel.