I tap my pack of smokes and point outside. The wife smiles, and I stand, cigarette in hand. I spread my fingers. Five minutes, I say. More smiles. Outside, the sun’s reflection dances across the back windows of parked cars, and I squint, cupping a lit match in my hand.
Hey, brother, you got another one of those?
I turn and face a homeless guy I recognize right off. Little Stevie Krantz, a thin, patchy half-ass beard blotting his face like mold. Crack dealer back in the day. Walked around in a body-length mink coat no matter the weather. Hotter’n hell and there’d be Stevie in his coat, all five-foot, four-inches of him sweating rivers. Mister Big Man with a roll of bills in each pocket held tight with rubber bands.
Booze did him in. Just started sipping and nipping. More and more, morning, noon, and night. Next thing you know, Stevie’s on Sixth Street messing himself, walking barefoot, hollering at the moon. Mink coat funky as roadkill. Booze, man, can you believe it? A fifth of this, a fifth of that. Amazing when I think about it. All that crack he dealt, and it was booze that rocked his world. Still, he was able to knock up Vernetta. Back in the day, she was as fine as she wanted to be. But in the end what she got was rank Little Stevie.
What’s up, Stevie?
Tom? Hey man! I didn’t know it was you!
He hugs me, raw Thunderbird breath melting my face.
Get off me!
He backs away and I give him a smoke.
Where’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in like years, man. You’re not at Fresh Start no more, Tom?
No, I say. It hasn’t been that long. I left about a year ago, not quite.
Hear about your boy Michael?
I shake my head. Michael was my office manager at Fresh Start. I hired him from our shelter like most everyone else. When you’re required to hire the homeless, you rely on the few Michaels of the world who don’t drink, talk to themselves, or pick fights. I considered him one of the few normal people I hired. I haven’t seen him for months.
He was diddling me and Vernetta’s kid, man. Police called him on it.
Your kid? I can feel the love, Stevie.
Fuck that, man. Michael’s running. But he can’t run far. Far enough from me, anyway. Sick motherfucker diddling a three-year-old kid. I’ll kill him.
I give Stevie a look like, C’mon, but he’s pissed off enough to glare right back at me, his eyes shot through with the red lines like you see on road maps.
I don’t know anything about that, I say.
I’m just saying so you do know. He’s your boy.
I hired him. That doesn’t make him my boy.
He’s your boy, man.
Stevie, you’ve been such a stand-up father, I’m impressed you care.
He lurches at me and swings, his left fist just missing my face. I’m surprised at his speed, a little of the old crack-dealing Stevie not so pickled after all.
Take it easy, I say, stepping back.
I’ll kill him! Stevie shouts, shadowboxing a tree thinner than him.
Where’d you hear this about Michael? I ask, feeling an old here-we-go-again weariness coming on me whenever someone tells me about one of my staff fucking up.
Streets.
Sidewalks got lips? Tell me, who told you?
I saw John. They’d started a business together.
What kind of business?
Mail.
Mail?
You on the streets, you could use their room for an address. You know how it is. Shelter’s always put a time limit on how long you can have your mail sent to them. So for twenty-five bucks a month, you use Mike and John’s address.
Not bad. I must have had more than a hundred guys using Fresh Start for a mailing address before I cut that shit off. Too much paper and with a staff that could not alphabetize and clients accusing us of stealing checks we couldn’t find, it became my definition of hell.
John was always thinking, always laying plans for some get-rich-quick scheme. Get enough guys receiving disability or Social Security, that twenty-five bucks a month could add up. John and Michael could keep their jobs at Fresh Start, do the mail thing on the side until it took off, yeah, it could add up real good for them. Not likely, but it could if you convinced people who liked to drink and shoot up their money to part with the twenty-five-dollar fee. Good luck with that.
I resigned from Fresh Start about six months ago. I don’t know, I was tired. Same people, like Little Stevie, day in and day out, no change. Breaking up fights, being called all kinds of motherfucker by the same drunk who five minutes later hits you up for a dollar and who can’t understand why you just eighty-sixed his ass. Staff as loopy as the clients.
Fresh Start was about the only place that would hire them, the homeless and formerly homeless. Some of them were flat-out crazy, and they knew it. I, however, had options they didn’t. I could leave. I had that much going for me. When I began at Fresh Start, I wanted to save the world, but I soon learned I couldn’t, and eventually I walked, quit, gave notice, whatever it’s called that’s what I did. It just got to be too much. Nothing ever ended. We got people into detox and then into alcohol- and drug-treatment programs, and they’d graduate and start drinking again. We placed people in housing and they would lose it. It was as if getting off the street was the equivalent of being dropped into a foreign country, much like my Iraqi family. But unlike them my clients didn’t adapt––not all, but most of them didn’t. I think the street changes people. Trying to get them to be who they were before they were homeless doesn’t take for a lot of people, too many for me. Maybe recognizing all the pain in their lives, coming to grips with what put them out there in the first place, is just too much. I don’t know, but I couldn’t watch people die a slow suicide anymore. I’d had enough. Maybe I’m weak. Maybe I gave all that I could. I don’t know. Maybe I should have stuck with delivering pizzas.
I’m a case manager now with International Assistance Inc., an agency that helps refugees. Mostly Iraqis, because of the war. Most, like me, have an education and job skills. They are grateful to be here. They are polite. If they drink or use, they don’t do it in front of me, and they don’t come to my office fucked-up. Once they get settled, they find work, and I don’t see them again. Ever. They’re on their way. That’s the way I like it. They don’t come back every day like Little Stevie to show me how they are slowly killing themselves with booze or some shit.
John was my outreach worker, and if anybody was diddling anybody, I’d’ve thought it was him. He always brought in young women he found on the street. Hookers, runaways, slumming college graduates. He turned them over to the benefits advocate who helped them find a place to stay. Nothing wrong with it, but I wondered. Surely there were homeless men who crossed his path and needed help too. But he always found women. Young women. I told him he better not be taking them home with him. He looked shocked at the idea and denied anything. He stayed in touch with them after they found shelter or were placed in a rehab program. Follow-up, he explained. To show positive outcomes on his stats. That’s legit. I was required by the state to document everything. Maybe it was a head trip, an ego thing for John, a daddy-figure thing. Still, I wondered about him. But then I wondered about all my staff. None of those gals ever complained about John, however. Never. You can’t fire somebody for something you think they might be doing.
Where’s John at, Stevie?
