"Tales of the Tel Aviv Ticket Inspector" - short story

"Tickets! Tickets for inspection!"

The grey-haired woman in the third row squirms in herseat, fumbles with her purse, and finally extracts her green Rav Kav bus card. Avshalomsenses she's hiding something. His suspicions are confirmed when he presses hercard to his handheld reader.

"You didn't pay," he tells her.

"What?" she asks in Russian.

"Rav Kav—empty," he replies in accented,imperfect Russian. This surprises her, he can see. She isn't expecting areligious, Sephardic, slightly overweight, somewhat disheveled ticket inspectorto answer her in her native tongue. "Get off bus," he says.

"But I paid!" Her face reddens inembarrassment as she pushes past the commuters standing near the door. "Ipaid!" She steps down to the sidewalk. The door whooshes closed behind herand the bus pulls away from the stop.

Read the rest of the story on DoubleSpeak.

Photo by Bahnfrend and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license