He wore his suit like it didn't belong to him, or if it did he very seldom had one on. I looked closely at him, sitting near me on the park bench half turned toward where I was slouched, trying to imagine what type of clothes would be natural to him; all I could conjure up was a white frock and rubber gloves and a white face mask.
He had asked me, "Are you employed?", and I had swallowed an impulse to snap at him long enough to size him up.
So now I had sized him up. I didn't like anything about him. But a civil answer to his question might lead to the price of a badly needed meal. I forced a polite grin.
"Not at the moment," I said.
"I surmised as much," he said quickly, smirking. His voice had the quality of a high school chemistry teacher talking to an audience of sulphuric acid carboys.
I turned away, looking out across the expanse of lawn and trees and flower beds of the park to where the double decker busses bobbed along like water bugs above the carpet of cars flowing along the inner drive. The impatient honking of tired motorists on their way home after their day's work mingled with the contented quacking of ducks on the pond at my back.
"Would you like to earn some money?"
"Huh?" I said, jerking my attention back to him.
His smile was the kind a professor would give to a pupil who had just awakened from a sound sleep.
"I said, would you like to earn some money?"