crooked guy

I saw him at the corner of 5 and Elm's, the crooked guy. Typical crooked guy attire. His trench coat, brown and full of pockets, wrapped around him, the khaki mummy. My dashboard reads 94 degrees but no sweat marks on this fella, no sir, just standing around for this crooked guy, peering around from under his brown rimmed hat. Or maybe no peering, maybe just staring straight ahead. I couldn't really tell. You see, the sun was beating down on this guy's hat, so for about a couple inches, from hat to around midway down the nose, just shadows. But he was looking around. I know this because his head turned every once in a while. I couldn't really see his neck that well because he had his collar turned up and all, but I could tell he was moving his head about because his hat kept rotating, sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter.

He looked really awkward, honestly, it being summer and bright and sunny all, and him just standing there in his big old trench coat and big old hat. I suppose that hat was OK, a little too 50s mob attire for my taste, but the sun was out, and you can't blame a guy for wearing a hat. But all the standing and looking around, and in that goddamn trench coat. Free country we live in, I know, but it was just damn weird, to tell you the truth.

I wondered how long he'd just stand there, at the corner of 5 and Elm's, with traffic coming and going all around -- it's a busy intersection, you see (there's a lot of malls and such all around). He didn't really look much like the criminal type, just loitering about in broad daylight the way he was, but maybe he was just a lousy criminal. Should have spent more time reading the manual I suppose. Or maybe he was undercover, like a cop or some special unit or something. Most likely not, though. I don't know how they do things over at the academy, but I'm pretty sure they know trench coat guy in 94 degree midday heat is kind of bound to stand out.

So I was thinking maybe he's just some crazy person, one of the eccentrics. Or a protester. Maybe he's protesting global warming. Or stores having sales on hot and heavy clothes like trench coats during the summer, when nobody wants to wear them. I sort of felt a bond right then, at that moment. I don't like waiting a whole season to buy something I'm not going to be able to wear for another couple months either. I began nodding and thinking about all the other kinds of other stuff I'd like to protest, but then the guy behind me honked his horn and leaned out his window and said something about my mom, which I didn't appreciate, but it was 94 degrees and I didn't feel like sticking my head out the window because that would let all my air conditioning out, and it took 15 minutes for me to get the exact temperature I wanted. So I honked at the guy and when he looked up, I gave him a thumbs up. I wasn't sure if he was American or not, whether he could speak English or whether he spoke Russian or something, but I'm pretty sure the thumbs up sign means "good for you!" in both English and Russian. As I mused for a bit over how other things translate from one culture to another, trench coat guy gave me the finger.

The guy behind me honked again.