Temper and Temptation

He had on a slick suit jacket, black cowboy hat, and a navy-blue button-up shirt. His top three buttons were undone, revealing a gold medallion cushioned by a mattress of curly chest hair. Heavily starched Wrangler denim wrapped around his long legs and rested atop a pair of freshly polished snakeskin boots.

What a prick, I thought.

Who does this old man think he is dressing up like that?

After all, we were just sitting in the lobby of some janky apartment complex in a small Texas town of fewer than twelve thousand people. I figured his life there couldn’t be all that exciting, so much as to dress up as a drug lord on a random Tuesday afternoon.

I was in one of those moods, you know? Irritable. I wished someone would try me, and he only amplified my agitation.

The medallion-wearing old man insisted on giving me this godawful look the entire time I sat across from him. He had a scar that started at the outside end of his left eyebrow and disappeared into his cowboy hat. His long, droopy cheeks coupled with the mean mug he had painted on, made him look like an ancient, constipated bulldog. Slightly labored breaths left his mouth as if his body had permanently shifted into a higher gear to sustain itself.

The lobby was cold and subdued, matching the man’s aura. Rosewood dominated the decor, and a faint bronze light, provided by a sole, dangling bulb, barely illuminated the space. The only other soul in the room was a bald, old receptionist snoring at his desk. A small wooden table with a stack of outdated magazines and a cracked vase at the center served as a partition between the cowboy and myself. The lobby was a relic, trying feebly to cling to its function — an extension of the old man, I thought.

We stayed fixated on each other for an uncomfortable length of time. His eyes were empty, sterile, and devoid of any conscience. There came a time during our little staring contest, where he had me convinced he had turned to stone. He did not blink, and seemed to be staring, not at me, but through me.

Everything about him started to infuriate me. His crappy hat, his ridiculous shirt, the silly game we were playing. I wanted to grab his gizzard and rip it from his neck. My attention, again, drew to the medallion. The pendant was a thin gold coin containing an engraving of a bucking bull with stars surrounding it.

Taurus, that explains a lot, I thought.

As a proud Sagittarius, at that moment, I realized: we were born at odds.

“Hey, old man, what’s your problem?” I said, finally.

“I ain’t got no problem, punk,” he responded immediately, almost before the words left my mouth. His deep voice cut through the room in a tone that matched my distaste for him.

“Well, you keep looking at me like you wanna fuck or something,” I said.

He belly laughed as if he just heard Andy Kaufman hit a zinger on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.

Oh, he thinks this is funny, huh? I thought to myself, agitated.

His laugh wound down to a light chuckle as he held his side with a three-quarter smile, one-quarter grimace.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to sit around and stare like a fucking creep?” I asked.

“You’ve been staring at me just the same, kid.”

He was right.

“If you don’t like it, do something about it, old man.”

“Ahh, I see your problem, kid. Did your daddy not love you enough, huh? Did your girl dump your sorry ass or what?”

Right again.

His mouth fixed itself into a scummy smile, revealing a gold incisor tooth.

“Screw you, old man, you’re just mad cause you have, like, two days left to live. You’re mad 'cause you can’t get it up and satisfy your bag of bones wife.”

He stood up. He was a lot taller than even his long, denim-wrapped legs led on. The man seemed to be in decent physical condition.

The cowboy took off his suit jacket, placed it neatly on the chair behind him, and walked over to me, casting the table aside with his shins as he walked through it. I stood up on instinct. Looking up at him, I caught a whiff of his nicotine-stained breath and saw unadulterated rage in his previously empty eyes.

“Do somethin’, kid,” He said, looking down on me.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. I like a scuffle every now and then, but mixing it up with a man of his age isn’t right.

“You know, I’ve been whooping on pretty little punks like you my whole life,” he said, his hand clenched into an iron fist, shaking at his side.

“Now, take a swing or sit down, shut your mouth, and don’t ever look in my direction again, got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can’t hit some half-decomposed, bag of flesh like you, anyway, it wouldn’t be fair,” I said, beginning to reclaim my seat.

Then, bam. He nailed me square in the nose.

***

A group of old ladies came rushing in. I was frozen.

“What’s going on?!” they yelled.

They turned to the ground where the old man lay.

“What happened?!”

They turned back to me.

“What’d you do?!”

I stood there, paralyzed. My head was throbbing; my body ached all over. My right eye had swollen up, and my ears were ringing.

The world spiraled into chaos around me. A group of employees surrounded the man, tending to him. A small crowd gathered around. My senses began to evaporate, slowly transporting me to a pitch-black room with no beginning or end. Right before consciousness left me completely, among the chatter, I heard, “This old man’s always looking for trouble. He can’t help it.”