Blunt (concrete pencil is away)

He was unshaven, but not distressingly so, and maybe he’d just flown in and was mishandling the jetlag.

Either way, that’s what he said and the steel core of menace in his eyes suggested he wasn’t taking “dunno� for an answer. He wanted definitives. That’s who he was.

“Yes.�

It wasn’t true – but he looked like the kind of man who was set up for rejection. He looked the kind of man who had a stack of evidence to counter my dismissal of the portly action star. Life had been hard and cruel and the man’s struggle found traction on people who simply did not get Under Siege thru Under Siege 2.

He brushed his jowls, flattening the patina of stubble and reconsidering his options.

“Huh,� he said, momentarily foxed.

He took a mouthful of his drink, let out a small sigh and went quiet – the kind of quiet that’s packed with noise, none of it yet formulated. Rather than the kind of silence which suggested we were done. The good kind.

“That the case?� he said.

“That’s the case.�

He sprang upon me, enlivened by the imagination of a slight.“No,� he countered. “But I really like Steven Seagal.�

And in that moment I wondered how long it took before you had the measure of a person.

I had sketched his character in his opening salvo – uncomfortable and ill-defined in his own company, somewhat at sea when not dealing in blacks and whites.

But the “no� sealed the deal. This was a man who liked confrontation, he liked the skirmish of battle. He would turn agreement into discord wherever he might find it.

He could not conceive, let alone appreciate, the possibility that somewhere on this over-populated planet that a creature existed which could challenge his supremacy in the Steven Seagal arena.

(As a side thought – is this a lesson he had acquired from the great man himself or was it a pre-existing condition which found a champion through his straight-to-video actioners?)

He had spoken 16 words, yet I had him figured. He was humourless, baffled, lacking self-awareness, and determined to end his confusion by setting the agenda.

If this was a job interview, I’d be winding down the clock. If this was a prison cell, I’d be clawing at the Polyfilla. If this was a Greyhound bus trip across America, I’d be gorging on out-of-date egg sarnies.

Out of nowhere, I felt sorry for the guy. He wasn’t a sympathetic man – which induced sympathy.

“Actually,� I said, “I prefer Van Damme.�

His eyes lit up. He ran a tongue across his cracked lips and began, with relish and vigour, the prosecution of his case.