Shit I never got to at the time: The Player

(This piece is from September but I never got around to putting it together until much later)

I saw Marlo Stanfield on the bus today. If you are have absorbed the cult favorite television series The Wire you know what and whom I am talking about.
I believe he got on the bus in Columbus Ohio. Late twenties, quiet, self possessed, dark skinned black man, short hair, sideburns, slender, apparently made of a very high grade of corfam stainless titanium wire. I'm saying no fat and no beef just whipcord. Extremely masculine.. Sat a few rows ahead of me on the other side of the aisle. What made me really notice him was the 4g wifi stick on the laptop he was operating in his seat as we rolled through the last of the summer’s greenery in lush eastern Ohio. For some reason, maybe I caught a glimpse, I have the impression he was doing his facebook thing, chuckling to himself, or maybe his email. I dunno.

Then I noticed the sneakers, new, nice, Nike. And the black Adidas tracksuit. I noticed that because I have black plush Adidass, and they weren’t any cheaper than Juicy Couture which aren’t cheap at all. I remember thinking they might not be Adidas but they were the good, and the Nikes might not be Air Jordans but they were the good, and I noticed he wasn’t young, even though he hadn’t hit thirty, no way, but he was alert, and serious, and he wasn’t worried about anything at all. That fact really caught my full attention. There's one thing that can yield such confidence. Street money.

Then later on we were on one of those stops that aren’t listed on the schedule, where the driver goes in to check for priority freight or passengers on or off and that’s it, back on the road. But the drivers that smoke cigarettes somehow hit these stops six or seven minutes early, and leave on time, and the smokers get off too and everybody burns one on the down-low. It’s a nice thing to do. One of these times I noticed the guy, the serious twenty-something black man with the quiet confidence standing there casually chewing the fat with our driver while they and the other handful of smokers had their smokes. He thanked the driver and made a gesture which I recognized with a start that he was passing a folded greenback like you do with a maitre' d that you wish to seriously and respectfully cultivate with gesture of gratitude, saying thanks man I appreciate the break, but the driver wouldn’t take it, which didn’t offend this fellow, he respected that, but the thing I noticed that it wasn’t a small bill either, and I been around enough street money and the guys that have it and I saw the play. What we had was a no-shit but surprisingly rare cash-carrying dope dealer, and not any of your sideways pistol, rap-slangin’ homeboy “playa” but the real thing. And that was why he wasn’t worried about anything at all, he had it covered, on the down-low but well sure of his world, and he knew I was watching, too, had me spotted as he come down the aisle in Columbus and so he knew I knew but that was ok, he even knew that, too.

There’s guys like that, complete situational awareness, and an ethereal sort of command presence.

I think he got off the bus in Philly.