AN OLDER WOMAN IN A LIGHT PINK RAINCOAT fell backwards out of the bus with her toy poodle clutched against her, coins scattering across the street as she screamed a horrid little yelp; Magnus, ignoring the scene and drawing on a cigarette instead, asked, “where the hell’d you come from, Mr. Fleming?” The dog let out a shrill growl that almost sounded like far-away laughter. You didn’t pity the thing so much as wish it would stop. Magnus offered me a courtesy smoke, but I declined politely, making some offhandedly vague comment about my own private religion. It was supposed to be funny, but became somehow mangled between my brain and my mouth. Magnus retracted the offer and glanced awkwardly away from me. It was 3:54pm.

“So you got what, like, a sixth sense in the matter or what?” Magnus asked, inquiring as to my truth-discerning ability.
I was understandably nervous, but the most surprising thing was probably that I’d agreed to talk to Magnus at all.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said.
“Well do you or don’t you?”
“I don’t want to give you the wrong impression; I don’t want to start off with the idea that it’s an absolute thing, me knowing when people are lying or not.”
“So give me a figure,” Magnus said. “A percentage. Fraction. Something. What, would you say, eight outta ten?”
I gave it some thought.
“With, like, factual statements?”
“Sure.”
“Not, you know, expressions of opinion or feeling or whatever?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I gave it some more thought.

It was surprising, really, how many people the pink-coated old woman managed to take down with her on her way to the ground: three people who’d been waiting to get on the bus (two of whom’d been arguing vehemently about something prior to their being taken down), a courier on bike (who was definitely at the wrong place at a not-very-good time), and the bus driver, who’d inopportunely taken it upon himself to help the old woman down to the sidewalk, obviously not knowing what that would entail. I watched this, distracted, for as long as several minutes, until the point at which Magnus finally said, “look, are you going to buy a paper or what?” and “What can you tell me?”
“Ninety-five out of one-hundred?” I guessed, shrugging unemphatically.
Magnus balked.
“Plus or minus,” I said.