Overheard Starbuck

"I had dinner with him once. He didn't like me. In those days what people thought of me wasn't so important. I remember him talking about guard dogs, german shepherds and rothweillers and thinking about it later having the feeling he was talking about me. As if he was familiar with the future, or as if he and his friends could turn people into whatever they needed and admired. ... About three months after that I saw him and a young boy playing hopscotch or something in the yard of one of the buildings he owned. I walked a lot in alleys back then. He wasn't happy to see me. He had nothing to say and all but ran to his car and drove away as his friend ran up the backstairs without saying a word. I never talked to him again."
---"Had you been barking?"
"Funny. --No it took me years to realize what he might've been up to."
---(laughs) "'Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus'."
"Recently I saw him on a local Sunday morning tv program. Being interviewed about some 'affordable' North Side condo or housing complex he and his corporation were developing with assistance from the city."
---"Hey you knew him when. --He's gotta be a millionaire now.--You can ask him for a job."
"I don't think I became the guard dog he predicted."
---"You got the face for it."
"I became a camel instead and walked away from him and his kind."
---"How's the desert been treating you then?"