Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

George nodded. “What else?”

“Well, one of the little things I really wasn’t expecting was how intimate being in a classroom feels, like you’re all on this long trip together. Sometimes the students act like they’re invisible, like I can’t see them doodling and rolling cigarettes, yawning and staring at the clock when they’re tired or waiting for the break. The strangest thing — I guess this is where intimate and invisible meet — is that an inordinate number of them poke their fingers into their ears and noses, beneath their arms, even into the little crevice between their shoe and foot. They poke, and then they bring their fingers to their noses and sniff deeply, taking stock of their hygiene. And even though they’re sitting right in front of me, it’s as if they have no idea that I can see them.”

George smiled again, and Aaron noticed that his front tooth was chipped, that one eye crinkled up slightly more than the other when he smiled. He was handsome, Aaron thought, the type of handsome that had to do with being slightly awkward and not caring about a chipped tooth.

“Sometimes, when all the twitching and poking and sniffing becomes too much, I’ll stop what we’re doing and remind them that I can see them. ‘It’s not like at the police station,’ I’ll say. ‘There’s no one-way mirror. You can see me. I can see you.’ They always look a bit sheepish, but then they go right back to twitching and doodling and clock-checking.”

“It makes me wonder what I was like,” George said. “You know, when I was sitting in my desk feeling invisible.” He looked down. “I think your students are lucky to have you.” He did not say it like someone who went around handing out compliments, and Aaron felt at once pleased and terrified.

“Actually, I’m lucky to have them,” he said. “They’re young, and they speak about everything with such passion. They see everything as possible.” Aaron stopped, embarrassed by his own earnestness, but George nodded, so he went on. “One of the things I most like about teaching is knowing there’s a part of my day that’s solely about them. I don’t mean that in a ‘doing my part to make the world better’ way. It’s much more selfish. I like knowing that when I go into the classroom, my needs and problems get set aside, that I’ll be able to escape my own head, even if it’s just for a little while.”

“What’s going on in your head that needs escaping?” George asked softly.

Instead of answering, Aaron said, “I’m talking too much. What do you do?”

George laughed. He knew Aaron was sidestepping the question. “Do you want to guess?” he asked. “Twenty Questions, maybe?”

“I am extremely bad at Twenty Questions,” Aaron said. “I forget what I’ve already asked and ask questions that are entirely too specific or that have nothing to do with the topic at all. I can assure you that the best approach is for you to just tell me.”

George picked up their pie forks and pretended to make a drum roll, which Aaron normally would have found silly or annoying but instead found endearing because he could see how foreign the gesture was to George, that he was not someone who punctuated his conversations with drum rolls. “I’m a Muni cop,” George said. “I’m one of those guys that rides around all day asking to see your ticket.”

“Do you like it?” Aaron asked.

“I like the hours. I don’t like spending my days underground watching people get nervous the minute I get on the train.” He paused, and Aaron could tell that he was thinking about something. “Today, for example, I got on the K at West Portal, and I saw this young couple with a baby, all three of them looking like they hadn’t eaten in days. I knew right away they didn’t have tickets, that they were probably just riding around hoping the motion would lull the baby to sleep.”

“How old was the baby?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know, maybe a year. She was at that point where you could tell she was a girl. Anyway, I had to ask them for their tickets along with everyone else. I figured they were going to either hand me expired tickets they’d taken from the garbage or feign some type of ignorance, pretend to be tourists who don’t speak English or act like they were looking everywhere for their tickets, and I already knew what I was going to do: make them get off with me at the next stop for appearance’s sake, and then just send them on their way. Except the father says, ‘I’m sorry, Officer, but the baby grabbed our tickets and ate them.’ And I look at the baby, who’s hungry and clearly needs her diaper changed and didn’t ask for any of this, and I want to punch the guy. I mean, I just felt this rage inside.

“So I say, ‘Both of your tickets?’ And he nods. ‘Without either of you being able to stop her?’ And he nods again. ‘Well, then, we need to call a medical unit,’ I say, and I make a move toward my walkie-talkie, ‘because that’s a lot of paper for a little thing like her to digest. They might even need to keep her — you know, for observation or something like that.’ I was just talking, trying to get the guy to admit he’d lied. Listening to myself tell you the story now, it doesn’t make any sense — that I was so angry, that I thought it would change anything for that baby if he admitted he’d lied.”

George shook his head, and Aaron wanted to say something to let him know that it did make sense, but George continued with the story. “So then the girl jumps in. ‘Please don’t call,’ she says. ‘They’ll take her. We lied. Okay? We don’t have tickets,’ and the guy turns and yells at her to shut up and makes this move toward her with his fist. It was obvious she was used to stuff like this from him because she cowered back in her seat and got quiet.”

“What did you do?” Aaron asked.

“You mean did I add even more to the mess I’d already made?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Aaron said. “The guy’s a jerk.”

“I know,” George said. “But I also know that I lost sight of what I was supposed to be doing, which was checking tickets. Anyway, you asked what happened next, and that’s the best part. The whole time this big butch is sitting next to them, reading. Well, she stands up, sets her book on the seat, and nails the guy. Just boom . Then she sits back down and begins reading again. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, of all things. The baby starts crying, and the guy shakes his head like something’s loose, and he turns to me and says, ‘You saw it. I want that dyke arrested,’ and I say, ‘Saw what?’ ”

George laughed but his eyes were red. “Anyway, if you ask me a different day, I’d probably say that I like the job well enough. I like the pay and the fact that I can do a forty-hour week in four days and have three left over for other stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?” Aaron asked.

George looked embarrassed. “I want to make documentaries,” he said. “But that’s a discussion for another day because, unfortunately, I have somewhere I’m supposed to be. I’m already late.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” said Aaron. He jumped up, and they paid and walked out of the café and onto the street. He wanted to ask something that would indicate whether George had enjoyed their conversation as much as he had or whether this was just the way he passed his afternoons, but he knew that asking would require subtlety, and he did not know how to be subtle in a hurry. They turned in opposite directions, Aaron heading toward the Muni entrance and George hurrying off toward — Aaron imagined — a tryst or a lover at home.

Then, like two men dueling, they spun back around and looked at each other. “You might come here Sunday on a whim,” George called, and Aaron laughed and nodded, understanding that he was agreeing to a date.