Excerpt: Limwood's Torn Trousers

Lelio plopped himself on one of the orange plastic bus seats, the McPigMuff feeling unsettled in his stomach. 'Isabel’s a bitch.' That had been the first time he had hear Pierrot say anything of the sort. Perhaps Jequirity had been right. He hadn’t been sure of what to make of what it said as it left, but when he saw Pierrot sitting there in that booth, looking like some kind of crazy albino murderer, he knew. Well, he didn’t know. He felt. He felt that Jequirity knew something about Pierrot that he himself did not. Something potentially important.
It was all very frustrating. Lelio was sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair, he had eaten something he probably shouldn’t have, and he was feeling like a snail in a salt mine. Some impending doom was coming closer and closer to him, something horrifying, something like out of a Saw movie. He imagined Pierrot locking him and Isabel in a room, and the only way they were able to get out was by sawing their own feet off. That hairless son of a firecracker.
Lelio felt something brush up against his arm and he started. Turning to the seat next to him, he saw. . . a nose. After the nose, all the other features came into place. Beside him was a man with stringy hair, squinty eyes, and one colossal nose. He looked like an big, ugly, hobo toucan.
“Sorry,” the man said, shifting over slightly.
“That’s okay,” Lelio mumbled, turning away to the window. The man’s nose was reflected in it so instead he looked straight in front of him.
Neither spoke as the bus pulled out of the stop. The man that put Pete Townshed to shame looked out the window, squinting at a person with a sign that said TRAVELLING BROKE HUNGRY as they walked up and down the sidewalk.
“Huh,” Mr. Beaky huffed, looking away from the window. “Awful, just awful.”
Lelio took out his iPod.
“It’s absolutely horrific the way people can do that, deceiving civilians, tricking them into thinking they’re penniless just so that they don’t have to go out and get a real job.”
Lelio turned on his iPod.
“That’s all anyone wants these days: money for nothing. I tell you, that’s just not good.”
Lelio’s iPod informed him that its batteries were dead and promptly shut off. With a quiet sigh, he put it back in his pocket and looked at the man’s nose with his peripherals. It was truly enormous, like a fleshy axe jutting forth from above his mouth. “He’s just broke,” he said. “The guy was probably hitchhiking or something, then spent all his money on bus tickets.”
The man shook his head. “No, no, that’s not it at all. I come on this bus at this time frequently, and he’s always there, sign out and bags piled against the streetlight. He just doesn’t want to work. You know how much money he makes?”
Lelio shook his head.
“Nearly thirty dollars an hour. If he just does this on the weekend, keeps a part time job at A&W or something like that, he’s even better off than I am.”
“Woah.” Lelio had always thought that particular sidewalk was a popular place for broke, hungry hitchhikers to ask for money and muffins. If that was just one person all the time, collecting that much money for just pacing. . . Well, it was a pretty smart way of getting easy money. Lelio admired whoever it was that was out there.
“Money, money, money,” the man continued. “That’s all anybody wants nowadays. Money to buy things with. A full wallet and big bank account for a huge house and a bunch of nice things.”
“What’s wrong with buying stuff?” Lelio inquired.
“Nothing wrong with buying stuff,” the man told him. “It’s when you get obsessed with buying. You want more and more and more, so you buy more and more and more, which makes you want to work to earn more and more and more money. There are people out there who make a hundred thousand dollars a year who are always broke because they’re always spending their money on stuff. Excess, excess, excess.”
This guy sure did like to repeat himself three times.
“Everybody’s into the excess. Have you ever seen those eating contests on TV?”
“Yeah,” Lelio said. He loved watching those shows. It was hilarious to see how sick some people were, eating, like, twenty raw onions.
“Horrible. People think that’s entertainment, watching a row of gluttons stuff their faces with food that could be given to people without. It’s not entertaining, it’s sick.”
“Why do you watch it, then?” Lelio asked haughtily.
“I watched a portion once a few years ago. I was wondering what they were doing.” The man scratched the back of his hand. “Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. Have you ever heard the story of Buddha?”
Lelio rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No. No, I have not.”
“Well, you know how there are different statues of Buddha? Sometimes he’s really fat and sometimes he’s really skinny. He was raised by his family so that he would never know suffering. When he left the palace one day, he witnessed several forms of suffering and wondered how people could live like that. So, he thought that if he starved himself, he would be closer to the state of nirvana, or enlightenment. That’s when you see him skinny. After collapsing in a river and nearly drowning, he realised that suffering himself was not the way to go. He then became gluttonous and rich, taking everything to excess to see if that would help him achieve enlightenment. That’s when you see him fat. When this didn’t work, he went and meditated, and achieved enlightenment through the Middle Way.”
Lelio raised an eyebrow. What did that have to do with anything? Hobo toucan was really starting to creep him out. “What are you saying?” he asked.
“I’m saying that taking everything to the excess is extremely stupid.”
Lelio tried not to laugh. This guy’s nose was certainly excessive.
“Everybody’s trying to get more. More money, more sex, more drugs, more everything. Even more education. Being smart isn’t a bad thing, but wanting to be the smartest person in the world isn’t really. . . you know, healthy. People can never make do with being in the median.
“O-kay then.” Lelio forced a smile and clasped his hands.
“This city is a pretty average city.”
Woah, way to change the subject. “This city sucks,” Lelio countered. “No one’s ever heard of it outside of Ontario. ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Oh, I live in Limwood.’ ‘Is that in Europe?’” He tutted and fell silent.
“Limwood is like many other cities. It does suck. That’s average. But, do you know why everything sucks?”
“Because everything’s excessive?” Lelio guessed.
“Sort of. Think of Limwood as a big pair of pants.”
Lelio looked down at his drainpipes and tried to imagine the buildings of downtown Limwood printed on them.
“The people are little holes in this pair of pants. They more into excess they are, the bigger holes they make. When a bunch of these excessive people come together, they make a tear in the pants. Then the pants are ruined. You can’t bend over to tie your shoe or walk around in public ‘cause your pants are ripped.”
“Neato,” Lelio said sarcastically. “That makes a whole lot of sense.” The bus pulled into the stop at Prosper Road and Lelio stood up. “Nice talking to you, man,” he said, then shuffled past the hobo toucan and exited the bus.
He had purposely gotten off one stop early. That man was too irritating to listen to any longer, and there was no way in hell he’d get into a conversation with a loony talking about Buddha and pants. He was probably drunk. And holy hannah, what a nose! Lelio was surprised he had even been able to pay attention to what he had been saying, what with that huge beak hanging off his face. If that guy thought eating competitions were disgusting, he should have taken a look in the mirror.
Despite these thoughts, Lelio was feeling a little guilty. Maybe that guy had just been lonely. Maybe he needed someone to talk to. Maybe he was trying to convert people to Buddhism, like the Mormons and Jahova’s Witnesses that were always out there trying to get people to be religious. Lelio had always ignored them. But this guy, there was something about him that didn’t have anything to do with his physical features, something that made Lelio feel bad about thinking ill things about him.
There was a jewellery store off to the right, down on Nolan Street. If he couldn’t make himself feel any better, maybe making someone else happy would do the trick.