CLAUDIO

Cedar Wood

No experience could faithfully portray Claudio’s approach to life better than when I first met the man. Staying in his ‘embarrassingly modest’ two-story penthouse, my group had asked him for a meal after our round-the-town excursion. Instead, he ordered a basket of tangerines. Most of us had one, maybe two, but Claudio picked through fast, peeling the skin off with his long, nimble fingers and tossing them behind him over the balcony’s edge. Sat across from him, I watched as the little orange petals floated down to the street below, with pedestrians occasionally straining their eyes to the sky, trying to find the source of the tangerine peels littering the streets. A small toddler began crying when one landed on his face.
       I remember telling him, ‘Claudio, I think your peels are hitting people’, to politely convey, ‘Hey, maybe put them somewhere else? Maybe in the basket, or, how about, up your arse?’
       You know what he did? Gave a little Hmph before craning his neck over the balcony from his seat, taking aim, and firing his peel directly at a passerby. He then promptly returned to his conversation, complaining how the world is too cruel to the rich nowadays.