The Chauffeur

The chauffeur arrived first. A melon of a man in a penguin of a suit, that one. All teeth at the face except a mammoth brow. Coat him in bronze and you’d have one shiny pile of metal under a false-bottomed top hat he likes to pull his rabbits from. Given the best weather, he never leaves a dry spot when he sits. In Cleveland, he bit an ex-con’s arm in a fight over a parking space. Fabric tore. Blood was spilled. He left the man two dollars “for the entertainment.” The day his mother broke her hip, he put her in a shopping cart he wrestled from a homeless man and wheeled her to the emergency room, not stopping for the curbs. He was the champion of anything violent, but always burned the letters he wrote for his causes in effigy before anyone ever read them. He had money once, but he ate it with ranch dressing.