For a Few Cookies More

He handed me a book. “Here, can you find me?” “Huh?”
 It was a elementary school year book from 2005. I browse the pages looking for him, whom I didn’t know very well.
 “I doubt you’ll be able to find me, I look quite different now,” he added.
 I browse through the pages once. Then a second time. I notice a few people whom I had seen around my high school, way back in the day.
 “Hey, did you know her?” I say, pointing to girl. She looks like someone who was in my grade but… did she skip a grade? “Oh yeah, her. She’s a bitch,” was all he said. I give a polite nod and continue looking through the book.
 It dawns on me that this guy must be 20 or 21 years old, so I double back to the first few grades of elementary school years. Mackenzie, O’Brien, Polard, Rolland, Rupp, Smith…
 “Wait, is this you? Rupp?” I say, pointing to the young, blond boy with spikey hair.
 “You got me,” he says with a grin. And there’s a quote underneath: ‘I am going to protect metal.’
 “You liked metal music back then?”
 “I still do.”
 “I see.”
 I take one last look at the book before handing it back to him. “I noticed your school had a lot of Super Nintendos, what’s up with that?”
 “Oh, my mom worked for some kinda game company, or so I’ve been told, and they had a bunch of leftover machines that they donated to the school.”
 “Wouldn’t the teachers find that distracting?”
 “They did but we only had lame educational games to play with.”
 I hand the book back to him and decide to return to my duty. He takes my silence as an indication he should do the same.
 “Did I ever tell you about the time a friend and I stole $10’000?”
 “What!?”
 “Yeah, we stole it from one of those armoured trucks, the dumb guards had just left it open so we grabbed a handful of cash from a sack and ran off. We weren’t strong enough to carry the bag, and lemme tell ya, those things are heavier than they look.”
 I ponder if I should interrupt him or let him continue. How the hell did the agency hire a felon?
 “Well, when we got back to my friend’s house he said he was gonna deposit the money and then he would transfer the money to me via our cellphones. Only problem was that I had an Android and he had some other phone, don’t remember which one but it must not have been too popular.”
 I decide against asking why-or even how-transferring money from an early 2000s cellphone was supposed to work and why they couldn’t have just split the money before his friend deposited the cash into his account.
 “Anyway, he said he couldn’t transfer the money to me so I give up and stop being friend with me. About 15 years later I forgave him, though. Do you think that was the right thing to do?”
 “Man… I don’t know.” I rub my temples. “Yeah, I suppose it was mature of you forgive him.”
 “Thanks, I needed someone on my side about this. Feel like I can move on now.”
 After a moment we get call from on of the line officers that another inmate has broken into one of the subway trains. Third one this week. Everything comes in threes, they say.
 By the time we get down to the main foyer of the station, two line officers have apprehended the criminal. They hand him over, we sign some paperwork and receive a few cookies as a reward.
 On the way back, we stop by a street buffet to grab some food, but it looks like it’s fishmonger day. My colleague has started to wolf down whatever he could get his hands on. I grab something with cream cheese. We stand next to the parapet by the station and eat our meal, in what I can only hope will be silence. At least the city looks nice this time of year.