Charles didn’t realize how hungry he was until he watched Officer Portly take a bite of his donut. The fried, doughy treat was covered in pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles and Officer Portly ate it with a leisurely smugness, and by doing so, asserted his power in a way that was far more effective than flashing any of his badges.

“Alright,” Officer Portly said, brushing donut crumbs off of his chin in a let’s-getdown-to-business manner. “Let’s get down to business,” he said. “Tell me in your own words what happened today.”

What other words could he possibly tell it in Charles thought to himself, his contempt for law enforcement rising to a previously unsurpassed level. He had only dealt with the pigs one other time in his life, that being back in junior high school, when his group of friends got caught tagging outside the gymnasium.

Twenty-five years had passed, however, since that mischievous day in the fall of his twelfth year, and that timid boy had turned into someone else, someone that Charles was not entirely sure he recognized.

“Go on,” Officer Portly urged. “Take it from the top.”

Top? Charles thought. What top? Though of course he knew that by the top the Officer meant today, when Charles got onto the subway, before the whole incident even got started.

But for a moment, one of Charles’ more abstract, meditative moments, he wondered if by “from the top” Portly meant from the beginning, thirty seven years ago, when Charles was brought, kicking and screaming, into the world. He wondered if Officer Portly wanted to hear the whole sorry story, about how he grew up poor in the Bronx with a depressed alcoholic mother and an absent locksmith father who managed to enter everybody else’s house but his own. If he wanted to hear about Charles’ brother Sammy, who was born four years after Charles and had always been the “good one,” the one who was better at sports, and at school, and who joined the army at eighteen just so he could get the hell out of their house.