I can see the guy with the questions has noticed this all by himself, since he keeps glancin’ back and forth between the two of us as he jots down my responses.
“Next of kin?”
“I guess that would be Nunzio, here,” I sez, jerkin’ a thumb at my colleague.
“You two are related?”
“He’s my cousin.”
“Oh.”
For a second I think he’s about to say somethin’ more, but then he just shrugs and scribbles a little more on his pad.
“Do you have a criminal record?”
“Beg pardon?”
“A criminal record. Have you ever been arrested?”
“No convictions.”
That earns me another hard look.
“I didn’t ask about convictions. I asked if you’ve ever been arrested.”
“Well . . . yeah. Hasn’t everybody?”
“What for?”
“Which time?”
“How many times have you been arrested?”
“Oh, three . . . maybe four dozen times . . . but no convictions.”
The joker has his eyebrows up now.
“You’ve been arrested nearly fifty times with no convictions?”
“No witnesses,” I say, showin’ him my teeth.
“I see,” the guy sez, lookin’ a little nervous, which is one of the customary side effects of my smiles. “Well . . . lets try it this way … are you currently wanted by the authorities?”
“No.”
“Good . . . good,” he nods, fillin’ in that blank on the form in front of him.
“Okay . . . one final question. Do you know of any reason why you should not be allowed to enlist in the army of Possiltum?”
In the actualities of the situational, I knew of several reasons not to enlist . . . startin’ with the fact that I didn’t want to and endin’ with the godawful wardrobe that I would be forced to wear as a soldier-type.
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