The Spaniard

There was a Spaniard on Bart this morning who was drunk and belligerent and terribly tired, seated near the center door of the front car. The man surely had red hair once upon a time, but now it was faded into a rusty gray, like a threadbare sweater. His skin was freckled, his shoulders slumped, his face pitched between the two of them in a brooding sort of way. There were two Asian tourists seated in the chair facing the man, and he was talking to them in an angry, sneering Latin tongue, counting on his fingers, raising his voice, dropping it into a menacing whisper. The tourists looked thoroughly frightened. Then, just as suddenly as their fear had surfaced, so it was given reason to re-submerge. The Spaniard was asleep, snoring peacefully with his eyes fastened shut, the bridge of his nose parallel to the ground.