The drizzle is gentle like two chickadees bathing in a clogged gutter. My feet lead me past the down and out crowd in the bus shelter along 6th. Natural Ice canned in a toy car red-black-blue-white is tucked beneath the curved bench hidden from police cruisers that idle on the corner. The glass backstop is a window into an ankle-height street bar. Everything is a miniature game of cops and robbers. Outside the Nike store is a man in grey sweats. His left pant leg is rolled up to the knee. A blank monitor wraps around no-show socks. In Major’s Carry Out an elderly woman leans on the counter facing the street. She carries a cane but doesn’t use it. Nor does she sit in the high metal backless stools that invite patrons to take their meals elsewhere. I walk back home. Randy calls. Fred and them are drinking, “bullshitting,” and he needs a hand with paperwork. It’s about his disability payments from the Social Security Administration. The Admin wants an admission with a doctor’s notarization, not fit for work. It wants a list of major calamities. It wants a signature and a stamp. Randy is calmer than usual. Looking through his surgery records I see Dr. Jian has noted “patient is anxious.” We track back through the thicket of his once declining health. We’re sitting at the great wooden table in the dining room. I don’t have a #2 pencil so I scrounge for a pen in the office upstairs. We place X’s in the right boxes upon my return. Randy’s heart is growing stronger, “that’s cuz I don’t listen to all them bullshitting, I put my faith in the doctors and the lord.” Samarth comes home shirtless and wet, small blue jogging shorts on. William, back from Albania, and Emma soon follow. Long drawn chins sleek and cool as Siamese cats. We’re wrapping up now and Randy asks if I need anything for the Baja. It got towed the other day. “I tried knocking and ringing the doorbell. I even asked the foreman if he could hold up as your my neighbor and he said, ‘you better go get him,’ I wondered if you had a bitch down there or something. Were you drinking or something?" I plead stupidity and decline the intimated cash. He apologizes for the slur and then signs in an elegant cursive, “Mr. Randy,” that I envy, what with my chicken scratch. “Can I show you something?” He rises from the table and instructs me to wait. He pops next door and returns with an envelope full of 20s. He starts counting. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, he pauses and refolds the bills. He wasn’t but halfway through. “Be careful down by the ATM, they’re acting crazy down there.” I tell him to be careful with all that cash too. “Oh I got a hiding space in the house that nobody knows. If anybody’ll find it, it’s the rats!” And with that he stands, takes his unstamped envelope, and makes for the door. “You’re right on time, Alex.” Fred’s next door listening to Drake on his hand radio. Nice cool breeze, uh-huh.
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