At Least They're Committed

He shifts his weight from his left to his right. “There are three,” he says to the Other. “Two just hang there, waiting, drooling: stray canines pining for a piece of flesh.”

The Other looks out the window at the blowing snow; chunks of untouched white stuff breaking free and sliding with silent blasts down the tin roofs and onto the brick patios of the second floor apartments across the way.

“So you think that’s wrong?” says the Other.

“You tell me,” he snarls. The Other turns his head back to him.

“It’s not wrong,” the Other says, bored.

“It’s painful,” he spits between gritted teeth. “I see the pain, I feel it.”

The Other nods his head, looking back out the window, he blinks; a whole sheath of snow slides from the glass awning over the bar beneath the apartments, enveloping a clinging couple trudging through the slush. They shudder and scream, wet, smacking at themselves and each other, trying unsuccessfully to be loosed of the icy chill. A sly smile crawls across the Other’s face.

“It’s the third that concerns you . . . ” the Other says. “But it’s going as it should. The Necessary Evil suffers a necessary evil.”

“You have a wicked sense of humor,” he says.

The Other simply smiles and nods. “Yes.”