drew up beside them.
The thing was, never having actually come across a dwarf in real life before, and only having seen Time Bandits a long time ago, Joe had never realized just how short a dwarf’s legs can be. The shuttle bus had a fairly low step, but it was way too high for that dwarf. Well, obviously the guy had had to deal with this type of situation before, he just took hold of the pole in the middle of the door and swung himself right on up, no problem. He had to hand the driver money to put in the fare dispenser, which was also way too high, and then he went back into the bus and he had to swing himself up again just to get onto one of the seats—what kind of a way is that to go through life?
Joe paid his fare and then he went back into the bus and sat down, a long way from the dwarf. One of the first lessons you learn in life is to avoid men of below-average height. There’s something about being short that makes a man feel he has something to prove, say he stopped growing at 5'6", a couple of extra inches would have made all the difference, instead of going with the flow he tends to be aggressive if not downright mean. Take away another couple of inches, and you’re into mean son of a bitch territory. Take it right on down to 3'11" and God only knows what you’re up against. Best to keep a safe distance.
Anyway, the bus pulled out, and Joe’s mind reverted to its bête noir: the disabled toilet. And the thing he suddenly realized was that the disabled toilet would be way too high for someone like this dwarf. No better than any of the other toilets, in fact, except that it had a rail he could use to climb up onto the seat. And if you stop and think about it for a minute, when was the last time you saw a toilet with a dwarf icon on the door? Well, what kind of world do we live in when we give people no option but to climb up onto the seat whenever they need to answer the call of nature?
Joe was still thinking this indignantly when one of the other passengers, a big fat guy with a paunch, decided to pick on the dwarf. The fat guy had also had to sit at the front of the bus, on one of the long seats that back onto the side rather than facing the front, because it was the only seating that would accommodate him comfortably. Not that the guy was so big he couldn’t take the width of the other seats. He was big, but he wasn’t that big. No, the problem was the distance between the seats was such that a guy with that size of paunch wouldn’t have been able to squeeze it in between the seat he was sitting in and the back of the seat in front. So the guy was sitting up front, where he had a whole aisle to let the paunch breathe freely, and he was sitting facing the dwarf, who was reading a book.
Fat Guy: “Watcha reading, big guy?”
Joe was thinking I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. Big guy? What kind of insensitive pig comes right out and says something like that to someone you know has got to be sensitive about his height? It wasn’t even that the guy was out to torment, looking at him you could tell he thought he was just being friendly. Jesus.
Joe waited for the dwarf to pull a switchblade and sling it straight into the unsuspecting paunch. Or stamp his heels to reveal a line of razor blades in the soles of his shoes. Wanna try a little kick boxing, big guy? the dwarf would say, and before the guy knew what hit him the dwarf would be in the air, slashing out—
“The John Foster Dulles Book of Humor,” said the dwarf.
“Huh,” said the guy. “Any good?”
“I’m only up to page two.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, John Foster Dulles is not someone I would have tended to associate with humor. Or anything else, come to think of it.”
“That’s a mistake a lot of people make. There’s a lot more to JFD than meets the eye.”
JFD? thought Joe. JFD?
“Is that a fact. The name’s Paul, by the way.”
“Ian.”
“Pleased to meet you,