Fool's Paradise

He took three steps forward, being careful not to soil his shoes in the dust of the alley. Lighting a cigarette with a flame that struggled to burn in the cold autumn air, he gazed at the opposite brick wall. It was with great finesse that he carried himself, and he smoked like an elegant 40's star of film noir. His tie and collar were tucked neatly beneath his black trench coat, his thoughts tucked away neatly, and his secrets tucked away neatest of all, behind a calm expression. Between drags, he clicked a polished toe upon the bare pavement. Charles was counting out the rhythm to an imaginary song.

Another man, lanky and wearing office clothes, sauntered down the alleyway. Charles observed the man's stiff, hurried walk, bony knees and bony arms like a foal trying to learn a more graceful gait. Milky blue eyes brightened to see Charles' cigarette, crisp and red in the dull air.

"Hey, could I have a light?" he asked, bearing a distinctive Brooklyn accent. The man dug through his friendly khaki pocket and withdrew a friendly pack of Camel, all with a friendly smile on his pale face. Charles felt a twinge of revulsion, but capitulated to the request.

As the office man lit up, he sagged against the wall beside the man in the black trench coat. Instantly uncomfortable, Charles' eyes darted over to him and asked silent questions. A filthy newspaper from last month scuttled by on a gust of wind.

"Thanks," the office man finally said after enjoying the tobacco for about two minutes. Charles nodded swiftly in response, and then took to ignoring the other. It was easy to assume that he was a cookie cut-out of today's common man; shallow, obedient, and yet plagued by woe after earthly woe. Why bother with such foolish products of a corrupt society? Ignorant, that's what they were - Charles thought. Ignorant sheep, befriending the shepherd to be spared from the cane –

"You saved my life, stranger," gushed the office man, whom Charles then called the Sheep. He was grinning ear to ear, teeth perfectly straight but stained by coffee, like the pages of a scholar's library. He probably wore braces as a kid to get those fangs so straight.

"Seriously. I haven't smoked all day. My wife is forcing me to quit and she stole my lighter before I left for work. Control freak. My co-workers are squeaky-clean and have no idea, so I couldn't get help from them."

He tilted his head back and chuckled through smoke, Adam's-apple running laps. "Now, look at me - resorting to peddling with strangers for a light. No offense to you or anything."

Charles shrugged his padded shoulders. "It's incredible; the lengths people will go to just to feed their addiction."

Sheep became quiet, unable to process this cryptic response, or perhaps intimidated by Charles' clear, ominous voice. A siren wailed half a mile away, faint, then blaring, then faint again; like the crescendo and diminuendo of an orchestra. Charles tapped his toe again, and holding his cigarette between his teeth, swept non-existent dust from his shoulders. What a tiring day it had been (and would yet to be) for him.

"The weather is horrible, isn't it?" bleated the Sheep. Complaint and water cooler talk were the only languages he spoke fluently.

"Not particularly," replied Charles. He lifted his eyes to the veil of gray cloud over their heads. "I can't find anything unpleasant about a cloudy September afternoon."

As the crude jaw of a ventriloquist's puppet hinges open and shut, even so did the Sheep fumble for a response. His dictionary mind could find nothing, and he stared meekly at his feet. Charles' amber eyes traveled over the fatigued lines on the Sheep's face, the dark circles discoloring eye sockets, and the subtly receding hairline.

"I'm Leonard," said the Sheep brightly, a youthful glint in him. "What's your name?"

What are we, children at the playground?

"Chris," Charles said. They shook hands, and he noted how weak Leonard's fingers were in his grasp.

"Things have all gone downhill since the stocks crashed," the Sheep moaned. "I used to have a good job and my wife didn't care what I did or what cash I spent. But now that I have to waste away seven hours in a cubicle every day, she's buckling down on me. I used to afford my three packs daily, but our 401K won't let me anymore." He sneered, "According to her, that is."

Complaint, complaint, complaint. They battered Charles' ears. He was wordless for awhile, examining immaculate fingernails. "I don't have a wife," was his quiet soliloquy.

"Consider yourself lucky, then," Leonard replied with animated features. "I know that there's supposed to be some kind of 'true love' thing happening, but at this point she's the bane of my existence.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Charles said, and the Sheep didn't detect his mocking grin.

Presently a silhouette appeared at the opposite end of the narrow alley. It was a homeless woman, clad in rags, bent over and shuffling along as though she were elderly. Behind a scruffy scarf that was at least a year old, the woman's weather-worn face peered out at them briefly as she passed. Charles was struck by her eyes – how distrusting and fearful they were. She was a rogue, an outcast, who had learned to scrape up a half-life through her own means, and had become wary of others in that solitude. But as quickly as it occurred, the look was gone, and she shuffled away like the rat she had become.

Leonard had paid no heed to this entirely normal sight. His cell phone rang, and he talked with someone for a few minutes, dodging questions as to where he was.  When he clicked the Motorola shut, Charles was terribly bored and asked, "So, if you are no longer on good terms with your wife, then why not file for divorce?"

"I wish," the Sheep replied excitedly, and coughed on smoke. "You see, she's a waitress at some fancy French place downtown. Her crappy job plus my crappy job means that we can just barely get by. She always gets what she wants, and she'd agree to a divorce in an instant because she knows she could easily get the court on her side. She knows tons of legal crap that I don't. Frankly, I want to keep whatever money I've got, even if it means sticking with that wretch." His lip curled up, disgusted by his own pitiful situation.

"How unfortunate." Charles truly didn't care about Leonard's problems. In fact, he didn't care about Leonard's thoughts, or Leonard's feelings, or Leonard's life. However, he was in a distracted frame of mind, and was trying to pass time through whatever uninteresting snatches of conversation he could manage. He continued, "Have you tried to search for a better job, perhaps?"

"Duh," said Leonard, and Charles was stung by how overly casual the man was around a complete stranger. "I've searched high and low, and gone to every job interview I can squeeze myself into. Nobody is hiring except the minimum wage jobs. Garbage pick-up, cashiers, janitors, all the clean-up people who wade through crap for a few dollars an hour. An accountant was the best I could find without a shiny college degree. I'm stuck where I am, whether I like it or not." He sighed heavily, those dark circles becoming a shade darker almost before Charles' eyes.

"What a shame."

Leonard glanced speculatively at the black coated man beside him, questioning the situation for perhaps the first time since they had met. "So, who are you? What's your problem?"

"Like you, I am struggling through this economic mess," Charles said, but his $100 shoes did not back him up very well. Even Leonard, the blind Sheep, could detect this.

"Not in that outfit," he chuckled. By now his cigarette was perched between his ring and pinky finger, smoke wafting uselessly into the stagnant sky. "What's your job, then? I can't afford stuff like that."

Charles' lip, for the first time, unwound into a blatant smile that was devilishly attractive. He looked Leonard straight in the eye and said, "I am an assassin."

There was a moment where the Sheep was turned to stone, petrified in shock. Then, as do all icicles when the brightness of spring draws near, he unfroze and broke into unrestrained laughter. He slapped his hand against the wall, the startling sound resonating through the alleyway. He wiped a tear from his eye and managed to say, "Wow, that's hilarious, Chris, I didn't take you for a comedian. I'm going to use that joke with my friends at the water cooler tomorrow."

Charles looked away, blinking up at the clouds, but without happiness in his face. Again, Leonard's pesky cell screamed at him, and he growled at the person on the other line, reluctantly agreeing to meet them in a few minutes. He tossed his dying smoke into the nearest rancid trash bin, an action that would be discouraged by most fire marshals. "I have to go," he said regretfully after escaping from the perpetrator on the other side of his phone. "It was nice meeting you, Chris, and thanks for the light."

"No problem," Charles said humbly, taking one last deep drag from his cigarette. Despite the conversation he had had, he remained no more interested in this man than he had been when they first laid eyes upon each other. His mind was elsewhere, in a realm that no ordinary office man could comprehend.

Remembering the supposed joke, Leonard laughed as he walked away with those stiff legs, and he called over his shoulder, "Maybe we should all become assassins, eh? If the pay is good, then why not?" Grinning, and briefly forgetting the worry that followed him as a shadow, he vanished.

"I often ask the same question," Charles said to himself after the Sheep had departed. "I find it a very fulfilling career." He smashed the cigarette beneath his foot with unnecessary force, quickly checked that his hair was slicked back perfectly, and strode out of the alley. Smiling, he withdrew a shining dagger from his pocket and made his way to his destination.

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