Another deep breath.

Exhale.

Again.

Listen.

Nothing.

No noise.

I take a final breath and notice one of my homeless volunteers, the Iraq War vet Jay Spencer, standing at the top of the stairs by a desk I gave him, his station to answer the phone. He has a wide face, stocky build. His short red hair points up from his scalp with the precision of shorn grass.

Morning, Tom, Jay shouts.

Hey, Jay, I say.

Jay has post-traumatic stress disorder. He used to come in every morning, sit in the reception area, and refuse to speak. How do you get someone to talk? I asked myself. I had never taken a counseling course. I decided I just had to force him. So I made him our volunteer receptionist.

For two days, the phone rang and rang while Jay sat beside it as if he didn’t hear it.

Jay! I yelled. Answer the phone!

He looked at me. He turned toward the phone as if he had just noticed it. He reached for the receiver. In a barely audible voice thick as syrup he said, Fresh Start. May I help you? He listened for a moment and then told me the caller was from Goodwill. They were asking for me. They had some clothes they could give us. I thanked Jay and took the call. In a world of reduced expectations, Jay meets my definition of success.

Mr. McGraw’s in your office.

I go up the stairs and stop at Jay’s desk.

I see that, thanks. He let you in?

Yes, sir, Jay says.

I look through the window of my office door and watch McGraw fussing with papers on my desk. It looks like he’s organized them into piles beside a stack of crisp manila folders. That’s what he does with his desk when he’s nervous. Organizes papers. Tidies up. Every year, when the city threatens to reduce our funding or when he’s behind on grant applications or when he has appointments with potential donors, McGraw reorganizes his files like it’s priority number one.

I set my coffee down and stand outside my office. McGraw looks up.

Hey, Tom, he says. He gets from behind my desk and opens the door a little too fast so that he stumbles when he steps back.

You don’t have to knock. Your office.

He laughs a little too loud. I drag my fingertips over the pile of files.

I can actually see my desk.

You can arrange it any way you like, he said, but I find putting folders with budget stuff and other financial things in one of the top drawers of your cabinet and files with program information below them works best for me.

Thanks.

Staff folders go behind the files with the flow charts and our five-year plan.

Got it.

You really should be better organized. There’re grants coming up that we need to apply for soon.

Get me the application and I’ll fill it out, whatever you need.

You don’t run an independent ship. Fresh Start is part of New Horizons.

Never said it wasn’t.

You’re accountable. You need to be a team player.

I am.

Here’s an opportunity to show me.

He gives another forced laugh, picks at his left thumbnail, and rubs his nose. I’m about to offer him a Kleenex when he pulls a file and hands it to me: Okri, Bobby. Bobby is one of my four floor supervisors.

We have to change the status of this guy, Okri.

Why? I ask.

He takes Bobby’s folder, opens it, and removes the two pages inside and tears them in half and then tears them again.

Make a new file for Okri. List him as a homeless volunteer.

He’s staff.

He’s dead, Tom.

McGraw drops the sheets in the trash. One flutters to the side and I pick it up. I look at it and then let it fall from my hand into the trash.

Dead?

Dead.

What happened?

McGraw rubs his face and sighs.

OD’d. Someone found him in his room after the fire alarm went off. Apparently when he passed out he had a cigarette going and it lit up the curtains in his room. Not bad, but the fire department was called and evacuated the building. TV showed up. He had his staff badge in his wallet. Police called me.

I don’t know what to say. I’d known Bobby since I started working for McGraw. He was a big old dude in a cowboy hat, jeans, and a T-shirt—the top of which was covered by a thick gray beard. He came in every morning for coffee and called me Kid. Hey, Kid, you’re taking this job too serious. Smile! And I would. He had been a Navy cook and volunteered in the kitchen. He made good casseroles out of government-issue cheese, canned pork, and rice. Heavy but edible. Maybe not so much pepper next time, he’d say. A little more cream of mushroom soup. Like he was Julia Child. A personable guy, Bobby. Always used our bathrooms to clean himself with a washcloth after spending a night in Golden Gate Park. He would stink of sweat and campfires but never of booze. When he came out of the bathroom, he rolled his sleeves down. He’d shot heroin and speed when he was younger, and his track marks embarrassed him.

He listened well. Whenever we had somebody who had burned all their bridges with alcohol programs, who had been eighty-sixed from all the shelters and just wanted to start a bar fight in the middle of the drop-in, I’d send for Bobby. He’d chill the guy right out until they had it together enough to leave the building without busting any heads.

My contract requires me to hire the homeless, the idea being that people with problems can help other people with problems. I select my staff from the few among them who get clean, or short of that, ones like Bobby, who keep it together despite their vices. If nothing else, they know their world. One time on my way to a meeting, I saw a shelter client holding a knife to a volunteer’s throat. Bobby was standing beside the guy calm as calm can be. I paused, considered the knife. Serrated edge. Maybe a Gerber, I didn’t know. The volunteer’s eyes were so wide I half expected to see planets orbiting around them. He had his hands raised above his head and sweat was waxing his face to a shine. He could not have sat more still if he’d tried.