Page 21

“And that,” Mustafo Bob said with a flourish to his audience — now consisting of only a couple of hipsters and a passing cyclist who’d stopped to drink some water — “is how I came to live in this illustrious location.”

Immediately before this proclamation, a pair of parents had hurried over to Bob’s “residence” — the underpass beneath the Interstate — and urgently pulled a few children (probably their own) away from his impromptu story time.

Bob had been sharing his autobiography — verbally, of course, for he fancied himself quite the storyteller — which included his time as a circus clown, a shoe shiner, and a personal attendant to the President’s second assistant under–press secretary.

The children, of course, were no strangers to Bob’s tales. They were often found at his underpass “home,” listening to his outlandish stories of daring exploits and unlikely heroism — such as the time when he, Mustafo Bob, personally rescued a Danish princess from a planned loveless marriage of convenience to a duke from, as he called it, “Whereisitsstan.”

True or not — and Bob knew how to spin a tale — the kids loved it.