Eddie
Alan Rice
I’ve never liked panhandlers. I mean, nobody really likes panhandlers, but I try especially hard to avoid them. I really hate those that you can’t avoid, like the ones that stand at the corner when you’re stopped for the light. They lay a guilt trip on you with their pathetic cardboard signs clumsily lettered in black paint: “Homeless. Hungry. Please help. God bless.” Tugging at the heartstrings of the Pharisees. I admit I sometimes fish a dollar out of my wallet (no easy task when you’ve got your foot on the brake), but I read somewhere that you shouldn’t do that because they’ll take your money instead of going to a real shelter where they could get not only food and shelter for free, but counseling services. I know damned well they’re going to spend my dollar on cheap booze.
So when I saw this one on the sidewalk just ahead of me I froze, inwardly. I couldn’t get around him. There he was, looking hopefully at the passers-by, all of whom tried to avoid making eye contact. It was July and hot, and I was on foot during my lunch break. I still had my suit jacket on, but I’d loosened my tie. I was pretending to myself that I was going on an errand, though the truth was that I just wanted to get out of the office. A bad decision.
Traffic jerked down the street; cars braked suddenly, and then lurching forward with a squeal. The panhandler was right there, near the curb, close by some construction workers who were doing something with the drains. They wore yellow hard hats; he wore an ancient, grubby Metallica tee-shirt and filthy khakis, and a sky-blue windbreaker. He hadn’t shaved in a while, or washed his hair, or cut his fingernails.
“Hey mister, sir, can you spare a dollar? I haven’t had anything to eat, I’m hungry. . .”
The workers were also taking a break, it seemed. Whatever they were doing, they weren’t in any hurry, and one munched a sandwich. They were eying the panhandler with amusement, as if they’d been watching this show for a while.
“You’re hungry?” I demanded, trying to sound skeptical and unsympathetic.
He apparently was unused to being answered.
“Yeah, man, I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Can you spare a dollar, so I can get something? I’m so hungry.”
I had an evil inspiration.
“Okay, if you’re hungry, I’ll buy you some lunch.”
“Huh?”
That clearly wasn’t what he’d expected. He obviously wanted the money.
“Come on,” I said to him. There was a drug store across the street that had a little lunch counter inside. I’d buy the sonofabitch a hot dog, damn it, and that would teach him.
“Huh? What?” He started towards me, but he was clearly rattled.
“Come on,” I ordered him. “Across the street. I’ll buy you some lunch.” I moved toward the corner and punched the crosswalk button a couple of times.
“Hey, is this guy crazy?” He sounded a little panicky.
“He ain’t crazy,” answered one, laughing. “He just ain’t gonna give you no dollar for your booze. You want lunch, you gotta go with him.”
The light changed and I stepped into the street. Immediately a car screeched to a halt and there was the angry blare of a horn. “Come on,” I snapped at him, and he moved to the curb. I almost grabbed him by the arm, but fortunately he followed me, and we crossed the street to the drug store. I pulled open the door for him, and followed him in.
There were about a dozen stools, red vinyl atop chrome pillars, in front of the Formica counter. There were the usual set-ups of sugar dispensers and salt and pepper and holders for those ridiculously tiny napkins that shredded when you tried to pull one out. The window behind the counter displayed a side-street, and you could see the tops of SUVs and the heads and shoulders of passers-by. A squat young woman, her white uniform spanning across her middle stood with her order pad in her pocket, and her pencil in her ear. She didn’t greet us, but looked dubiously at this odd couple coming into her space.
“Sit down,” I said rudely to the panhandler. “What do you want to eat?” I think the waitress’ mouth dropped open.
The panhandler seemed subdued. He studied the menu on the wall above the window, then looked over at me.
“I dunno,” he mumbled, “Anything, I guess. A hot dog?”
“Fine,” I said. The foot-longs were cheap. “Two foot-longs for my buddy here,” I told the waitress. “And fries. And a Coke. Wanna Coke?” The man nodded. “Okay, that’s it. And I’m paying.” The waitress continued to stare at me, but she took down the order without saying a word. No Can-I-help-you or Thank-you. Just wrote it down, stuffed the pad in the pocket of her dirty uniform and slouched off. I stood next to my guest. We were silent for a while. I was going to wait until he was served, then pay the girl myself. There was only the buzz of other customers, the street noise—horns and shouts and construction sounds—as he looked at me, his fear (if that’s what it was) seemingly gone.
“Mister. That was real nice of you. I don’t remember last time when anyone was that nice to me.”
Well, I didn’t feel nice. I suppose that I was doing him a real favor. If I was right, if I’d given him cash he’d have only spent it on liquor and contributed further to his cirrhosis of the liver or whatever other alcohol-induced sickness he was courting. And I was actually feeding him, putting real food into him instead of booze, and I perhaps I would have been justified in feeling all virtuous, but all I really felt was resentful. And somewhat disgusted by this pathetic. . .
“You gonna get something?” He looked at me expectantly.
Okay, here was a problem. I really ought to have gone back to the office, but if I wanted to play hooky for the afternoon, I knew I could, and my secretary would cover for me. “He’s with a client,” she’d say if anyone asked. So the problem was that I didn’t really want to, but I actually was hungry and damn it the guy wanted company. It wouldn’t seem right if I bought him his goddam hotdog and then left him there on that cheesy stool. An annoying voice inside my head said “Don’t be such a shit, sit down and be nice.”
“I guess so,” I said, and sat down. I pulled out my phone and texted Simone, the office manager, that I’d be late coming back. The waitress returned with the hot dogs and the Coke, and I gave her an apologetic look. “Could you do another one of those?” I asked humbly. “I decided to stay.” She heaved a sigh of exasperation, but only hesitated a moment before she swayed off toward the hot dogs.
Christian charity suddenly took hold of me. “Where are you staying?” I asked him. After all, if I was buying him lunch, he could at least tell me a little about himself.
“I got a place over by Cedar Street,” he said between mouthfuls. I knew the place he meant; it was a kind of tent city for the homeless. “I got what I need, mostly,” he went on. “It’s not too bad.”
“You live in a tent?” I’d seen them. From a distance.
He nodded. “There’s a gas station there, and they let us use the john if we keep it clean. The owner, he’s Indian, I think, or one of those—what are they?—who wear those black turbans. He’s nice.”
“The police don’t hassle you?”
“Sometimes. Not much. There’s some that are mean, but mostly. . . A couple are really nice.”
“Why don’t you go to a shelter? You wouldn’t have to panhandle.”
He’d begun to feel more comfortable, I thought, but with the mention of the shelter he put down his hot dog and stared at his plate. “I can’t go there,” he said.
Just then the waitress brought my lunch. I felt bad about being so mean, and so when she asked, “Will there be anything else?” as if expecting me to make her life harder, I smiled at her.
“You got any pie?”
“Apple, I think there’s some left. And peach.”
“Tell you what, bring us a couple of slices of peach pie, and two coffees. I think that’ll do it.”
“You want ’em now?”
“Can we have them for dessert?”
She thought a moment. “I’ll get you the pie now. So no one gets the last piece. And I’ll bring you your coffee when you’re done, so it’ll be hot. I’m just making a new pot, anyhow.”
Maybe she was not as awful as I had assumed. Not yet ready for the Oak Room, but maybe she just needed a chance.
I turned back to the homeless guy. “How come you can’t go to the shelter? You’d get fed, a warm bed, maybe someone to help out.”
He looked positively scared. “It’s not that. I like it there. They’re real nice. And I never made trouble. I’m sober, you know. I been sober three months. I go to meetings regular. But I just can’t go there.”
“How come?” I was really interested. This was bizarre.
“Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“There’s this guy. He’s been following me. I don’t know who he is. But he knows me. He knows my name. And he turned up there, at the shelter. So I can’t go there.”
“What do you mean, this guy just follows you around? Has he done anything? Like, has he threatened you?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just. . .” The guy swiveled around on his stool. “I’m not crazy. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I swear to God. And he doesn’t look—I don’t know—violent, just evil. Really evil. And I try to find out who he is, and he just, like, disappears. And I saw him down at the shelter, and he was just looking at me, smiling. He waved. He was a ways away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could see that he was calling my name.”
“Did anyone else see him? I mean, did he, like, interact with anyone?”
He shook his head. “He never seems to say anything to anyone, only me.”
“What does he say to you?”
The waitress brought us our pie, and homeless guy pushed his plate towards her. I shook my head at her, and she retreated with my guest’s plate.
“First time, this was a couple of years ago. I was just walking home, you know, from my stop, and it’s pretty crowded on the street. And suddenly I hear this voice, like right in my ear. ‘Hi Eddie.’ And he’s right at my side, Sort of smiling, like he was expecting me or something. And I’m like, ‘Do I know you?’ because I’ve never seen him before, and he just laughs, like it’s a stupid question. And he says, ‘You been good?’ Or, ‘How’s your day going?’ And sometimes weeks’ll go by, I don’t see him. Then suddenly he's there, while I’m waiting to cross the street, or at the stores.”
“What did he look like?” I asked. I was thinking at first that the alcohol had just frazzled his brain, but that wasn’t right. His story was definitely weird, but he wasn’t crazy. Whatever he was talking about, it was real. To him at least. “Can you describe him?”
He looked miserably at me. “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve tried. But every time I try to say what he looks like, it sort of—changes. The picture I mean. The only thing,” he swallowed hard, “the only thing is his smile. It’s so—evil. And his eyes. The eyes and his smile. And I can’t even tell you what color his eyes are. Or if he wears glasses, nothing. I just know that . . .”
“Know what? Have you, I don’t know, have you talked to the police? One of the nice ones?”
“Oh, mister, I started to. There’s one lady cop, she’s really great, I tried to tell her. But then it was like, I just couldn’t find any words. How can you describe something like that? When you’ve seen someone like a hundred times, and you can’t even say what they look like?”
“A hundred times?”
He nodded. “He just appears. Like, anywhere. Never inside, though. He never came indoors.”
“What do you mean, inside? Inside your tent? I thought you were living there on Cedar Street.”
He shook his head. “I used to have an apartment. And a regular job. I was a machinist. I wasn’t married, no, but I wasn’t no drunk in the gutter panhandling for change. And then . . .”
“What, this guy started hassling you?”
“No, he never hassled me! He was just—there! Grinning, like he knew something! ‘Hey, Eddie? How you doing? You been good? I been watching you!’ But it’s like he times it so that he shows up when you expect him least, when you’ve just about forgotten about him. And suddenly he’s there. It got so that I couldn’t do nothing. Like, I started skipping work. They called meetings and stuff. They had the union in and everything. ‘If you miss any more work, we’re going to have to let you go.’ They called in Employee Assistance. But shit—pardon me, I’m sorry, I never used to swear—I couldn’t remember.”
“Couldn’t remember what? The guy?”
“No! I couldn’t even remember being out! They asked if I’d been sick, but I hadn’t been sick, and the company doctor, he asked about drinking, but I wasn’t even drinking then, not much at least, he was asking me about blackouts, but that’s not the same. I know that much. Blackouts like when you do stuff you don’t remember, but I wasn’t doing stuff and I couldn’t remember not doing it! Like paying bills. Or buying food. And then, well, then it all happened.”
“What all happened?”
“I got evicted. And I had money, I think, but I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know how to get it. I just . . . I just . . . lived . . . You know. On the street.”
The guy’s story didn’t make sense. What did it have to do with this imaginary guy who was stalking him? But in a way I couldn’t not believe him. He was starting to cry, for Christ’s sake. I had to get back, I didn’t want to waste my afternoon with this guy.
“Here,” I said. “Eat your pie.” I signaled to the waitress, who suddenly appeared with our coffee. “Thanks,” I told her. “That was a really good hot dog. Was it some special brand?”
She actually smiled. “They’re from a butcher in town. They’re really good. I’m glad you noticed, most people here don’t even know what they’re eating.”
The guy had been sampling his pie, though he seemed to be having trouble eating it, like the crust was stuck in his throat.
“So anyway. Eddie. That’s your name? Eddie? What happened?”
“That was it, really,” Eddie said. “I mean, I started really drinking then. It was awful. Then I got into AA. I don’t remember how. And I stopped drinking. That was three months ago.
“Is it any better? Do you still see—that guy?”
He shook his head. “Not in a long time. But that’s the thing, you never know. Sometimes he’s just there, like he comes out of nowhere. With that evil, that evil smile. Those eyes.”
“Hey, Eddie, look. Maybe things are getting better.”
“You mean because I haven’t seen him?”
“Well, yeah, that, but you know that’s about the time you stopped drinking, too. You think maybe the two are connected?”
Eddie stopped to consider this. Of course, there was a flaw in my reasoning. He’d started seeing this nemesis long before he’d started on the booze, before he’d lost his apartment and everything. I had absolutely no idea what was going on inside the poor slob’s mind, but maybe I could make him feel a little better. And I really had to go. Eddie took a bite of his pie, and took a swallow of coffee. “Do you think so?”
“Well, think about it. I mean, I’m no doctor, no specialist, but maybe it’s connected somehow. And you haven’t been eating very well, right?” He shook his head. “So put it together. Anxiety. Alcohol. Lousy diet. No wonder.” I didn’t want to say, No wonder you’re seeing things; after all the things—or thing—he was seeing was real to him. But to just leave him sitting there would be cruel. I don’t like panhandlers, it’s true, I admit that. But maybe buying Eddie his lousy hotdog had helped to reduce the panhandler overpopulation. I didn’t want to mess that up. “Come on, you finish up. I’ve got to get back to my office, but you can start working on some of that stuff yourself. Will you do that, Eddie? Just start working on it. Hey, you never know what might happen.”
It would be pretentious to say his eyes filled with tears of gratitude, but it’s true that his eyes were wet, and he looked up at me like I was his best friend ever.
“Thank you, mister. You know, you helped me a lot. A lot more than you know, I mean a lot more than just lunch. And it was good, the lunch I mean, and I never thanked you for it. It was really, really kind. I don’t deserve it.”
“Of course you do, Eddie. You do deserve it. You’re a good person, just down on your luck a bit. You just tell yourself, ‘I can do this, I can pull myself up’ and it’ll happen.” Sometimes you just have to say stuff, even if you don’t believe it.
“Yeah, mister, maybe you’re right.” He was all gratitude.
“It’s Carl,” I told him. “That’s my name.”
“Carl. Thanks.”
“Well, now you know my name. And you know what to call me if you see me again.” I was a Good Samaritan, or something, but mostly I just felt annoyed. I’d wasted a perfectly good lunch hour, thrown away good money on a pathetic drunk, who’d likely go right back to his spot panhandling, except now he’d have a full stomach. I couldn’t believe I’d swallowed that story about the Mysterious Stranger.
“Okay. Carl. I’ll remember that. If I ever see you again.”
I picked up the check that the waitress had left on the table, and left enough to give her a nice tip. We got up and headed for the door. I remembered as soon as I opened it how insufferably hot it was outside, and wished momentarily for the air conditioning of the drug store. We stepped up to the crosswalk and I punched the button, wondering if it would work.
Eddie stepped out into the street directly into the path of a truck. His body was thrown up into the air like a stuffed doll and landed flat on the sidewalk just a few yards from me. There were a couple of screams, the screaming and swearing of the driver and I didn’t have to go up close and look to know that Eddie was dead.
The driver got out of the truck, utterly dismayed. He wasn’t at fault, at least not technically. Eddie hadn’t waited for the light to change, though it may not have made any difference. The driver had been going too fast, and Eddie was a pedestrian. I was a witness, of course, so I couldn’t leave. I saw people on their phones, presumably calling 911, which I guess ought to have been my job, but it was only a few moments before we heard the wail of the police siren.
An officer got out of a cruiser and was headed towards the circle of bystanders around Eddie’s body. He knelt down, and I waited for him to rise so that I could give my statement.
“Well, shit happens,” said a voice behind me. I turned around, startled. A man about my own age and height was standing there, with the most sickening expression on his face I have ever seen. He was wearing some kind of a grin, as if he were actually glad about something. There were crinkles around his eyes, and he let out a suppressed chuckle. I was about to say something, something really cutting about his dirty smirk and his supercilious tone, when he said “Hey, Carl. I’m just telling it like it is. Who knows? You could be next.”
Alan Rice
I’ve never liked panhandlers. I mean, nobody really likes panhandlers, but I try especially hard to avoid them. I really hate those that you can’t avoid, like the ones that stand at the corner when you’re stopped for the light. They lay a guilt trip on you with their pathetic cardboard signs clumsily lettered in black paint: “Homeless. Hungry. Please help. God bless.” Tugging at the heartstrings of the Pharisees. I admit I sometimes fish a dollar out of my wallet (no easy task when you’ve got your foot on the brake), but I read somewhere that you shouldn’t do that because they’ll take your money instead of going to a real shelter where they could get not only food and shelter for free, but counseling services. I know damned well they’re going to spend my dollar on cheap booze.
So when I saw this one on the sidewalk just ahead of me I froze, inwardly. I couldn’t get around him. There he was, looking hopefully at the passers-by, all of whom tried to avoid making eye contact. It was July and hot, and I was on foot during my lunch break. I still had my suit jacket on, but I’d loosened my tie. I was pretending to myself that I was going on an errand, though the truth was that I just wanted to get out of the office. A bad decision.
Traffic jerked down the street; cars braked suddenly, and then lurching forward with a squeal. The panhandler was right there, near the curb, close by some construction workers who were doing something with the drains. They wore yellow hard hats; he wore an ancient, grubby Metallica tee-shirt and filthy khakis, and a sky-blue windbreaker. He hadn’t shaved in a while, or washed his hair, or cut his fingernails.
“Hey mister, sir, can you spare a dollar? I haven’t had anything to eat, I’m hungry. . .”
The workers were also taking a break, it seemed. Whatever they were doing, they weren’t in any hurry, and one munched a sandwich. They were eying the panhandler with amusement, as if they’d been watching this show for a while.
“You’re hungry?” I demanded, trying to sound skeptical and unsympathetic.
He apparently was unused to being answered.
“Yeah, man, I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Can you spare a dollar, so I can get something? I’m so hungry.”
I had an evil inspiration.
“Okay, if you’re hungry, I’ll buy you some lunch.”
“Huh?”
That clearly wasn’t what he’d expected. He obviously wanted the money.
“Come on,” I said to him. There was a drug store across the street that had a little lunch counter inside. I’d buy the sonofabitch a hot dog, damn it, and that would teach him.
“Huh? What?” He started towards me, but he was clearly rattled.
“Come on,” I ordered him. “Across the street. I’ll buy you some lunch.” I moved toward the corner and punched the crosswalk button a couple of times.
“Hey, is this guy crazy?” He sounded a little panicky.
“He ain’t crazy,” answered one, laughing. “He just ain’t gonna give you no dollar for your booze. You want lunch, you gotta go with him.”
The light changed and I stepped into the street. Immediately a car screeched to a halt and there was the angry blare of a horn. “Come on,” I snapped at him, and he moved to the curb. I almost grabbed him by the arm, but fortunately he followed me, and we crossed the street to the drug store. I pulled open the door for him, and followed him in.
There were about a dozen stools, red vinyl atop chrome pillars, in front of the Formica counter. There were the usual set-ups of sugar dispensers and salt and pepper and holders for those ridiculously tiny napkins that shredded when you tried to pull one out. The window behind the counter displayed a side-street, and you could see the tops of SUVs and the heads and shoulders of passers-by. A squat young woman, her white uniform spanning across her middle stood with her order pad in her pocket, and her pencil in her ear. She didn’t greet us, but looked dubiously at this odd couple coming into her space.
“Sit down,” I said rudely to the panhandler. “What do you want to eat?” I think the waitress’ mouth dropped open.
The panhandler seemed subdued. He studied the menu on the wall above the window, then looked over at me.
“I dunno,” he mumbled, “Anything, I guess. A hot dog?”
“Fine,” I said. The foot-longs were cheap. “Two foot-longs for my buddy here,” I told the waitress. “And fries. And a Coke. Wanna Coke?” The man nodded. “Okay, that’s it. And I’m paying.” The waitress continued to stare at me, but she took down the order without saying a word. No Can-I-help-you or Thank-you. Just wrote it down, stuffed the pad in the pocket of her dirty uniform and slouched off. I stood next to my guest. We were silent for a while. I was going to wait until he was served, then pay the girl myself. There was only the buzz of other customers, the street noise—horns and shouts and construction sounds—as he looked at me, his fear (if that’s what it was) seemingly gone.
“Mister. That was real nice of you. I don’t remember last time when anyone was that nice to me.”
Well, I didn’t feel nice. I suppose that I was doing him a real favor. If I was right, if I’d given him cash he’d have only spent it on liquor and contributed further to his cirrhosis of the liver or whatever other alcohol-induced sickness he was courting. And I was actually feeding him, putting real food into him instead of booze, and I perhaps I would have been justified in feeling all virtuous, but all I really felt was resentful. And somewhat disgusted by this pathetic. . .
“You gonna get something?” He looked at me expectantly.
Okay, here was a problem. I really ought to have gone back to the office, but if I wanted to play hooky for the afternoon, I knew I could, and my secretary would cover for me. “He’s with a client,” she’d say if anyone asked. So the problem was that I didn’t really want to, but I actually was hungry and damn it the guy wanted company. It wouldn’t seem right if I bought him his goddam hotdog and then left him there on that cheesy stool. An annoying voice inside my head said “Don’t be such a shit, sit down and be nice.”
“I guess so,” I said, and sat down. I pulled out my phone and texted Simone, the office manager, that I’d be late coming back. The waitress returned with the hot dogs and the Coke, and I gave her an apologetic look. “Could you do another one of those?” I asked humbly. “I decided to stay.” She heaved a sigh of exasperation, but only hesitated a moment before she swayed off toward the hot dogs.
Christian charity suddenly took hold of me. “Where are you staying?” I asked him. After all, if I was buying him lunch, he could at least tell me a little about himself.
“I got a place over by Cedar Street,” he said between mouthfuls. I knew the place he meant; it was a kind of tent city for the homeless. “I got what I need, mostly,” he went on. “It’s not too bad.”
“You live in a tent?” I’d seen them. From a distance.
He nodded. “There’s a gas station there, and they let us use the john if we keep it clean. The owner, he’s Indian, I think, or one of those—what are they?—who wear those black turbans. He’s nice.”
“The police don’t hassle you?”
“Sometimes. Not much. There’s some that are mean, but mostly. . . A couple are really nice.”
“Why don’t you go to a shelter? You wouldn’t have to panhandle.”
He’d begun to feel more comfortable, I thought, but with the mention of the shelter he put down his hot dog and stared at his plate. “I can’t go there,” he said.
Just then the waitress brought my lunch. I felt bad about being so mean, and so when she asked, “Will there be anything else?” as if expecting me to make her life harder, I smiled at her.
“You got any pie?”
“Apple, I think there’s some left. And peach.”
“Tell you what, bring us a couple of slices of peach pie, and two coffees. I think that’ll do it.”
“You want ’em now?”
“Can we have them for dessert?”
She thought a moment. “I’ll get you the pie now. So no one gets the last piece. And I’ll bring you your coffee when you’re done, so it’ll be hot. I’m just making a new pot, anyhow.”
Maybe she was not as awful as I had assumed. Not yet ready for the Oak Room, but maybe she just needed a chance.
I turned back to the homeless guy. “How come you can’t go to the shelter? You’d get fed, a warm bed, maybe someone to help out.”
He looked positively scared. “It’s not that. I like it there. They’re real nice. And I never made trouble. I’m sober, you know. I been sober three months. I go to meetings regular. But I just can’t go there.”
“How come?” I was really interested. This was bizarre.
“Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“There’s this guy. He’s been following me. I don’t know who he is. But he knows me. He knows my name. And he turned up there, at the shelter. So I can’t go there.”
“What do you mean, this guy just follows you around? Has he done anything? Like, has he threatened you?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just. . .” The guy swiveled around on his stool. “I’m not crazy. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I swear to God. And he doesn’t look—I don’t know—violent, just evil. Really evil. And I try to find out who he is, and he just, like, disappears. And I saw him down at the shelter, and he was just looking at me, smiling. He waved. He was a ways away so I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could see that he was calling my name.”
“Did anyone else see him? I mean, did he, like, interact with anyone?”
He shook his head. “He never seems to say anything to anyone, only me.”
“What does he say to you?”
The waitress brought us our pie, and homeless guy pushed his plate towards her. I shook my head at her, and she retreated with my guest’s plate.
“First time, this was a couple of years ago. I was just walking home, you know, from my stop, and it’s pretty crowded on the street. And suddenly I hear this voice, like right in my ear. ‘Hi Eddie.’ And he’s right at my side, Sort of smiling, like he was expecting me or something. And I’m like, ‘Do I know you?’ because I’ve never seen him before, and he just laughs, like it’s a stupid question. And he says, ‘You been good?’ Or, ‘How’s your day going?’ And sometimes weeks’ll go by, I don’t see him. Then suddenly he's there, while I’m waiting to cross the street, or at the stores.”
“What did he look like?” I asked. I was thinking at first that the alcohol had just frazzled his brain, but that wasn’t right. His story was definitely weird, but he wasn’t crazy. Whatever he was talking about, it was real. To him at least. “Can you describe him?”
He looked miserably at me. “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve tried. But every time I try to say what he looks like, it sort of—changes. The picture I mean. The only thing,” he swallowed hard, “the only thing is his smile. It’s so—evil. And his eyes. The eyes and his smile. And I can’t even tell you what color his eyes are. Or if he wears glasses, nothing. I just know that . . .”
“Know what? Have you, I don’t know, have you talked to the police? One of the nice ones?”
“Oh, mister, I started to. There’s one lady cop, she’s really great, I tried to tell her. But then it was like, I just couldn’t find any words. How can you describe something like that? When you’ve seen someone like a hundred times, and you can’t even say what they look like?”
“A hundred times?”
He nodded. “He just appears. Like, anywhere. Never inside, though. He never came indoors.”
“What do you mean, inside? Inside your tent? I thought you were living there on Cedar Street.”
He shook his head. “I used to have an apartment. And a regular job. I was a machinist. I wasn’t married, no, but I wasn’t no drunk in the gutter panhandling for change. And then . . .”
“What, this guy started hassling you?”
“No, he never hassled me! He was just—there! Grinning, like he knew something! ‘Hey, Eddie? How you doing? You been good? I been watching you!’ But it’s like he times it so that he shows up when you expect him least, when you’ve just about forgotten about him. And suddenly he’s there. It got so that I couldn’t do nothing. Like, I started skipping work. They called meetings and stuff. They had the union in and everything. ‘If you miss any more work, we’re going to have to let you go.’ They called in Employee Assistance. But shit—pardon me, I’m sorry, I never used to swear—I couldn’t remember.”
“Couldn’t remember what? The guy?”
“No! I couldn’t even remember being out! They asked if I’d been sick, but I hadn’t been sick, and the company doctor, he asked about drinking, but I wasn’t even drinking then, not much at least, he was asking me about blackouts, but that’s not the same. I know that much. Blackouts like when you do stuff you don’t remember, but I wasn’t doing stuff and I couldn’t remember not doing it! Like paying bills. Or buying food. And then, well, then it all happened.”
“What all happened?”
“I got evicted. And I had money, I think, but I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know how to get it. I just . . . I just . . . lived . . . You know. On the street.”
The guy’s story didn’t make sense. What did it have to do with this imaginary guy who was stalking him? But in a way I couldn’t not believe him. He was starting to cry, for Christ’s sake. I had to get back, I didn’t want to waste my afternoon with this guy.
“Here,” I said. “Eat your pie.” I signaled to the waitress, who suddenly appeared with our coffee. “Thanks,” I told her. “That was a really good hot dog. Was it some special brand?”
She actually smiled. “They’re from a butcher in town. They’re really good. I’m glad you noticed, most people here don’t even know what they’re eating.”
The guy had been sampling his pie, though he seemed to be having trouble eating it, like the crust was stuck in his throat.
“So anyway. Eddie. That’s your name? Eddie? What happened?”
“That was it, really,” Eddie said. “I mean, I started really drinking then. It was awful. Then I got into AA. I don’t remember how. And I stopped drinking. That was three months ago.
“Is it any better? Do you still see—that guy?”
He shook his head. “Not in a long time. But that’s the thing, you never know. Sometimes he’s just there, like he comes out of nowhere. With that evil, that evil smile. Those eyes.”
“Hey, Eddie, look. Maybe things are getting better.”
“You mean because I haven’t seen him?”
“Well, yeah, that, but you know that’s about the time you stopped drinking, too. You think maybe the two are connected?”
Eddie stopped to consider this. Of course, there was a flaw in my reasoning. He’d started seeing this nemesis long before he’d started on the booze, before he’d lost his apartment and everything. I had absolutely no idea what was going on inside the poor slob’s mind, but maybe I could make him feel a little better. And I really had to go. Eddie took a bite of his pie, and took a swallow of coffee. “Do you think so?”
“Well, think about it. I mean, I’m no doctor, no specialist, but maybe it’s connected somehow. And you haven’t been eating very well, right?” He shook his head. “So put it together. Anxiety. Alcohol. Lousy diet. No wonder.” I didn’t want to say, No wonder you’re seeing things; after all the things—or thing—he was seeing was real to him. But to just leave him sitting there would be cruel. I don’t like panhandlers, it’s true, I admit that. But maybe buying Eddie his lousy hotdog had helped to reduce the panhandler overpopulation. I didn’t want to mess that up. “Come on, you finish up. I’ve got to get back to my office, but you can start working on some of that stuff yourself. Will you do that, Eddie? Just start working on it. Hey, you never know what might happen.”
It would be pretentious to say his eyes filled with tears of gratitude, but it’s true that his eyes were wet, and he looked up at me like I was his best friend ever.
“Thank you, mister. You know, you helped me a lot. A lot more than you know, I mean a lot more than just lunch. And it was good, the lunch I mean, and I never thanked you for it. It was really, really kind. I don’t deserve it.”
“Of course you do, Eddie. You do deserve it. You’re a good person, just down on your luck a bit. You just tell yourself, ‘I can do this, I can pull myself up’ and it’ll happen.” Sometimes you just have to say stuff, even if you don’t believe it.
“Yeah, mister, maybe you’re right.” He was all gratitude.
“It’s Carl,” I told him. “That’s my name.”
“Carl. Thanks.”
“Well, now you know my name. And you know what to call me if you see me again.” I was a Good Samaritan, or something, but mostly I just felt annoyed. I’d wasted a perfectly good lunch hour, thrown away good money on a pathetic drunk, who’d likely go right back to his spot panhandling, except now he’d have a full stomach. I couldn’t believe I’d swallowed that story about the Mysterious Stranger.
“Okay. Carl. I’ll remember that. If I ever see you again.”
I picked up the check that the waitress had left on the table, and left enough to give her a nice tip. We got up and headed for the door. I remembered as soon as I opened it how insufferably hot it was outside, and wished momentarily for the air conditioning of the drug store. We stepped up to the crosswalk and I punched the button, wondering if it would work.
Eddie stepped out into the street directly into the path of a truck. His body was thrown up into the air like a stuffed doll and landed flat on the sidewalk just a few yards from me. There were a couple of screams, the screaming and swearing of the driver and I didn’t have to go up close and look to know that Eddie was dead.
The driver got out of the truck, utterly dismayed. He wasn’t at fault, at least not technically. Eddie hadn’t waited for the light to change, though it may not have made any difference. The driver had been going too fast, and Eddie was a pedestrian. I was a witness, of course, so I couldn’t leave. I saw people on their phones, presumably calling 911, which I guess ought to have been my job, but it was only a few moments before we heard the wail of the police siren.
An officer got out of a cruiser and was headed towards the circle of bystanders around Eddie’s body. He knelt down, and I waited for him to rise so that I could give my statement.
“Well, shit happens,” said a voice behind me. I turned around, startled. A man about my own age and height was standing there, with the most sickening expression on his face I have ever seen. He was wearing some kind of a grin, as if he were actually glad about something. There were crinkles around his eyes, and he let out a suppressed chuckle. I was about to say something, something really cutting about his dirty smirk and his supercilious tone, when he said “Hey, Carl. I’m just telling it like it is. Who knows? You could be next.”
