“I’m not a warring man.” Rick sat down his shot glass and looked up from the table.
    “Everyone’s a warring man one time or other in her life.” Wolkig was leafing through the newspaper; stories about the mysterious death seemed to be everywhere, others accompanied. “This is yours.”
    He continued, setting the paper down. “You think you’re not. You say you’re not, you say you’re a peaceful man, content with himself. Then your environment gets disturbed. You keep with the peace and go down with the others, like ants stepped on with a shoe. The ones that survive- they catch on, run away, plan their revenge. And war turns itself over and over. You can’t stop it- once the engine starts, the only way to end it is to let it run out on itself.”
    “I can’t fight. I have no experience with weaponry, with commands, with-“
    “Then you die.” Wolkig’s face was as cold and pale as the woman shot last night at the bar. “That girl at the bar last night, where you were when the shot occurred? She wanted peace. She wanted to party with her friends and have good time. Then one shot changes that. That’s all that peace can do. It gives you innocence, and then you drop.”
    “There has to be a way we can negotiate.”
    Wolkig looked at him, then down at the paper. An awkward silence emerged from their conversation, the room listless and bare. As Rick sat there he noticed a sight he never would have foreshadowed. A tear, clear and wet, dropped down from Wolkig’s eye, falling with an audible pop on the newspaper. No others followed and neither said anything.
    A lone bird cried out from outside the window.

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