Sidewalk St. Louis
Originally published in Intrinsick, 2021
The coffee shop closes at 9pm. It’s 8:50 and the customers have left. Louis waits outside until it’s near closing time, but not too close to lights out. He’s smoothed down his pants, plucked up his collar. He’s wiped his teeth with his finger and run a hand through his hair. He puts on a little smile, because a full smile would seem aggressive and would reveal all the crevices of blackness and missingness there.
The girl, it’s always some girl, gets ready to throw away the bakeries behind glass and the milk that’s stood all day on the coffee accessories bar. Just before she closes, regardless of the girl, he goes in and says, nicely, “If you’re going to throw those away, I’d sure appreciate them.”
He stands far away. Doesn’t get chummy. He’s washed his hands in the washroom of Penn Station. He looks as presentable as he can. (Sometimes he washes his underwear and the armpits of his shirt there too, drying them as best he can under the hand blower. This is done early in the morning; “in the wee hours”, the Irish call it. But Louis is Russian, his real name was Lyudovic – but no one likes Russians right now, so it’s better to be Louis.)
He can speak some Spanish, Russian of course, and English. How many Americans can do that? 20%, wail Louis will tell you, if he’s in his cups. He can’t afford to go too deep in his cups because he’ll end up like Mr. Steves, who sleeps on the grate on a piece of cardboard, and is often mistaken for dead by some old woman walking out of CVS who finds and holds on to a cop walking the beat, holds on to the cop’s arm, trying to evoke a smidge of worry. He’s not going to end up like Mr. Steves, eaten up by the city, melting into the sidewalk that serves as temporary bed; that serves as temporary gurney; that becomes a temporary deathbed.
He stands at a distance from the girl. Doesn’t ogle or make any move that would frighten her. He simply waits as she’s giving him the bag.
“You keepin’ that milk there?” he asks, knowing she isn’t. Knowing it’s The Law that makes her throw it away. Knowing that she wants to go home in a second, and that no one’s there to defend her, she’s alone, and she wants him to go. This will be her last week, he thinks, perhaps her last day. Then another girl will be here, next time, which is good.
“Just give me a cup,” he suggests to her, giving her the answer to her dilemma, her feeling of danger. She will quit this job soon, because of Louis, because of all the Louises, and a new girl will be here soon, and he will say the same to her, and so on. “I’ll empty out the milk in it and go.” He gives her that small smile, a grin with a raised right eyebrow, and finger combs his hair carefully to the side. This used to get the women excited when he was young, but he ain’t so young anymore, is Louis.
She hands him the cup, and the old muffins and croissants that fail Madison Avenue standards plop plop into a paper bag. He nods his thanks, not touching her hand as he takes the bag, he can see, he knows. He’ll go catch the 4,5 to Wall Street and tuck in. He needs to get to the turnstile while it’s busy enough so he can jump the stile and won’t get yelled at. A few dirty looks maybe, but he puts on his slightly crazy act, sort of shambly, and eyes slide past him.
One of the cops that works the Wall Street subway told his buddies that Louis, they know Louis down there; that Louis’s dad died on 9/11. We don’t know if that’s true or not. This keeps Louis safe from harassment on his bed of wooden seats as the train wails by, wail by, wail, wail, then gone, and Louis slumbers there, his knees bent over the wooden arm, his neck twisted back, jaw open.
The morning, well the morning will be a ride up to Times Square, shaking the now empty milk cup through the cars, then if the weather’s good, a little panhandle spot. He’s able to scrabble up a marker and a clean piece of cardboard, to write “Today is my birthday” or “I need $37.50 for a bus ride home” or “I am a veteran!”. The exclamation point wobbles a little and is larger and more stabbed into the cardboard than the rest of the words. He keeps his head low, his shaking cup arm up. People give more money if they don’t have to make eye contact with you.
Who puts a dollar in his cup, on the corner where there’s a Starbucks? Not the rich folks walking by to work, busy, busy, smirking at his sign. Maybe a tourist, more often someone like a working guy. Maybe someone who’s had Hard Times, or knows Hard Times, or who had a father, and maybe this is how this guys’ father turned out. The Times Square cops don’t have that September 11th rumor (it could be true), so they are less tolerant of his vagrancy. He has to move along, move along, get going.
In the late afternoon, he heads a few blocks down to Penn Station to freshen up and go see Squido. Squido, and no one knows his real name, Squido, a large bellied, cigar left side of a woman-lipped mouth, furious eyebrows, arms like a hog leg. Squido gives him a book of fake Madison Square tickets to sell and a sports Jersey (New York Rangers or New York Knicks) to slip over his head – “don’t get a stain on it or I’m docking your pay,” Squido chews out of his lady lips. Louis goes to his spot near the Garden, “tickets, tickets,” he calls, loud enough, not too loud because there are cops all over. He collects the money for the tickets and then peels out of the shirt and shuffle runs away, because the tickets are fake – no good. This little heist requires speed. The angry buyer, once they’re denied entry into the Garden, runs back outside to look for some dude (“cock sucker son of a bitch”) in a sports jersey – which they can no longer see out front of the Garden with the shrugging cop pretending to scan the crowd. So the money’s gone, as is Louis. Squido does well when the New York teams are hot.
Louis likes weekends and summers. Winters and rain are the worst. Someday the cops that tell the story of Louis and September 11th will retire, and then where will Louis be?
His one friend is Mr. Steves, and when it’s cold out, well, he just may have to go there with him and share that grate.
On one cooler night, not especially bitter cold, but the kind of cold that makes Louis realize he may not get out of the current rut he’s in, the rut that’s been going on for a few years, admittedly a decade or more. It’s a bitter taste in his mouth and he needs something to wash that away, so on his way uptown to maybe visit Mr. Steves, he thinks about a nice drink. He’s got some coin, he’s followed a few families with young children who never finish their meals and throw them in the trash so he can pluck it out as quick as if it was new. So he’s got this coin, this coin chattering in his pocket, and he plays with it as he ponders what, what, what to drink, but he already knows. This is a game he plays with himself, and he gets his liquor and he starts walking up to visit with Mr. Steves who might be lying out there on the grate near Mt. Sinai’s, out on 10th Avenue, far enough away from the hospital not to get booted, close enough in case, well in case.
He’s going to change it all around tomorrow, he’s saying to himself. “I’m going to change it all around tomorrow,” he’s talking out loud now, steps slightly less confident now, a little bit of a shuffle to keep it all steady. He knows if he doesn’t eat again for a good long while that buzz will carry him through deep into the night.
He almost falls over Mr. Steves, who is lying on his back, his belly exposed, and it looks like he’s holding his crotch under his pants, Louis grins wide and laughs a bit. Gives Louis a gentle nudge kick, but Mr. Steves doesn’t respond.
Mr. Steves goes straight for the killer sport, heroin. Do not pass go, man. Louis looks down at him, still grinning, kicks him again, a bit harder, but gets no response. Looking around first, Louis reaches into Mr. Steves’ right pocket. Empty. Left pocket. Empty. Back pocket. An old tissue, and a broken toy car. He kicks Mr. Steves extra hard, but then collapses next to him, his bottle now almost drop empty. Almost drop empty. He leans against Mr. Steves, using him as a chaise lounge in a way. Sticks his finger under Mr. Steves’ nose to see if there’s any warmth there, if he’s bitten the dust.
He is not going to end up like Mr. Steves here, he thinks. “I am not going to end up like you, Mr. Steves. You have gone too far. Too far,” he says out loud. Then he slides down and spoons him and falls asleep.