I approached the homeless man cautiously, unsure of his motives. Some people will knife their own mother for a quarter when they’re hopped up, so I assumed the worst and assured him I came in peace.
“Hey there, buddy,” I said as his back was facing me. “Something I can help you with?”
He turned quickly, forcing a gust of stale air in my direction. The summer heat was definitely making him ripe for the picking and I had to cover my face briefly to help my nose adjust to what it had been forced to inhale. It took a moment for me to realize it, but the man that was now trying to invade my house was the same cigarette-smoking man I had seen the previous night. His clothes were ragged and soiled. He wore a sneaker on his right foot and a leather loafer on his left, but the mismatched shoes were not the most identifiable characteristic the man had going for him. He had a red face as bright as Rose’s house and his eyes were cracking with veins, more bloodshot than any peepers I had ever seen. He was thin and frail, a walking corpse in the process of human decay.
“I was just looking around,” he wheezed.
“Well, this is my house and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take the tour without me.”
“You live here?” the homeless man said in a surprising tone.
“I sure do.”
“This place looks like something you’d see in a Tarzan movie.”
“Hey, now that’s not nice. I don’t come to where you live and poke fun of it.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Just seems weird that someone would live here is all.”
“I get that a lot.”
My new visitor seemed relatively harmless and because he had not yet tried to shiv me in the chest, I figured I’d show him a little hospitality.
“Can I get you a beer or something?” I asked.
“Sure!” he said excitedly.
My home was now becoming Grand Central Station for every bum, hooker, con man and assorted dreg that the neighborhood had to offer. The strange thing was that I found them far more interesting that most of the people in my life. My new friends, no matter how stinky they were, spoke candidly and expressed their true feelings without second guessing themselves, although I must admit that there were some things I could have gone without hearing. But for the most part I enjoyed their company and the flourishing circus atmosphere around my home.
I headed inside and grabbed a couple of cans from my private stock of chilled brews, which sat innocently inside my humming refrigerator, waiting patiently to be digested into the bloodstream. I returned and handed a can to my new homeless friend and he popped the top and chugged it down in a flash.
“You must need a machete to find the morning paper,” he said with a burp.
I knew my place wasn’t a picturesque dream home from of a Norman Rockwell painting, but being chided by a wino on the condition of my lawn was almost too much to handle.
“I don’t read the newspaper,” I chirped back, popping the top on my own beer and taking a swig.
“I used to know people that were in the paper,” he said. “People that ran the world.”
“Like what? Politicians?”
“No. They were contractors. The kind of guys that did all of the contracting. They contracted everything.”
“You talking buildings?”
“I don’t know the exact details. I just know they contracted stuff.”
He finished the remaining liquid clinging to the inside of the can and shook it in my direction. “You don’t got any more of these, do you?”
I headed back inside at the request of my uninvited guest and searched long and hard for a bottle of Dom Perigon that Rooster had given me that Christmas. I hadn’t opened it and had no plans to in the near future, so I figured I’d put it to good use and pour it down the hatch of a man that could appreciate a good glass of alcohol. I found the bottle of Dom sitting in a box I had yet to unpack and noticed a number of monogrammed dress shirts sitting nearby. I had planned to get rid of them anyway because of the pretentiousness that they alluded to, so I grabbed one in my hand. Knowing that the shirt would not particularly match his hobo chic pants, I dug out a pair of yellow slacks embroidered with green alligators all over the legs. Rooster had given me the eyesore lower-halves in hopes of converting me to the land of Prepville but I had promised myself on the day of their arrival that I wouldn’t wear them for anything but a Halloween costume. I brought everything that I had collected outside to my new friend. If he was going to drink my fancy ripple, he might as well be wearing the appropriate clothes at the time. Besides, he looked like he could use them more than me.
I handed him the shirt and pants and he wasted no time removing the outfit he was already wearing, making room for the new one on his body, which turned out to be a near-perfect fit. Crumpling his old clothes up into a ball, he made his way towards the street and discarded the lump of soiled cloth into the sewer, which while I don’t condone littering, was where it belonged. There was no doubt that a microbiology class could have had a field day with those rags, but it didn’t matter anymore because he was looking quite suave in a light pink Armani shirt with my initials monogrammed into the fabric and his fine, preppy yellow pants.
“Is this a girl’s shirt?” he asked me as he looked at himself in the reflection of one of my windows.
“No. What makes you think that?”
“Cause it’s pink and pink is a chick’s color.”
“I’ll have you know that pink is a power color in business and I bet your contractor friends used to wear shirts just like this.”
“I don’t know about that,” he mumbled under his breath. “And what are these things all over my pants?” he asked as he squinted down at his legs.
“I think they are alligators, but I’m not sure the difference between those and crocodiles. Either way, they’re not real, so you have nothing to worry about.”
I popped the cork on the Dom and handed him the bottle. He took a few long swigs as the bubbly spilled out all over his face and onto the ground below. Rooster would be cringing had he known a vagabond was drinking his prized liquid straight out of the bottle, and I couldn’t help but laugh picturing the expression on his face had he been standing next to me.
“This stuff takes like alligator piss,” he complained, wiping the fizz off of his mouth.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said.
“Says you! I’ve been a beggar a long time, but that don’t mean I’ve lost my taste for the finer things in life and this, this tastes like the piss from an alligator’s bladder.”
“Touché.”
“You got anything to eat?” he asked me.
I told the homeless man to go inside and to help himself to whatever he could find in the kitchen. I wasn’t worried about him stealing any valuables because there were none and I hadn’t gone shopping since the first day I moved in, so if he ate anything at all he would actually be doing me a favor because I wouldn’t have to throw it away later down the road.
I sat on my porch and thought about my recent encounter with Jennifer, all while a stranger cooked himself a mystery meal inside my house. I leaned back against the wobbly railing and let my face soak up the sun, filling me with ultraviolet rays so sweet I could almost taste them. I can’t be sure, but I think I dozed off for a few minutes, though I may have just been in a sort of catatonic puppylove state due to my new crush a few houses down.
Having not heard from the homeless man for almost twenty minutes, I went inside to make sure Charlie hadn’t mistaken him for a big cockroach. Luckily he was not inside the belly of the python, but instead, sitting at my makeshift coffee table eating a steak that he must have found buried in my refrigerator. He was on his last bite when I walked in on him.
“That’s the tastiest steak I’ve ever had,” he proclaimed, licking the juices from the plate.
I couldn’t believe it. The steak he had just devoured was an E. coli case waiting to happen. It had been sitting in the unplugged refrigerator when I moved into the house and I had just never gotten around to throwing it away. It was as inedible as any piece of beef could possibly be and I had sprinkled baking soda over the top of the package on a daily basis just to keep the smell from attacking me when I opened the door to get a beer. Scared that he would drop dead on my floor, I immediately told him that I had to be somewhere so he would put a safe distance between his death and my house. I did not need to go to jail for some hungry homeless man that couldn’t tell the difference between broiled and spoiled.
I followed him out onto the porch. “Thanks for stopping by. Watch out for those contractors. They’ll steal your front lawn. You know, if you had one.”
He chuckled and walked off, rubbing his stomach as if he had just eaten a Thanksgiving feast. I watched him make his way down the street until I couldn’t see him anymore. The good news was that it seemed like I was at least going to get away without being pegged as the meat’s accomplice.
My cell phone rang and I coaxed it out of my pocket. The display screen informed me that it was Mikey on the other end, so I answered immediately in hopes that he had already acquired the information I called him about earlier.
“Who’s the man?” I asked him.
“It’s Mikey for sure,” he responded. “I’ve been telling you that every day since I met you.”
“What did you come up with?”
“There’s a street thug named Jamal that runs with a bunch of taggers that can do the job for you. My cousin and he go way back so you got nothing to worry about.”
“Taggers?” I asked.
“That’s what they call guys who work in spray paint.”
“So where do I find this Jamal?”
“He’s pretty much a permanent fixture down at the corner of Victory and Grant.”
“Wait. You mean Jamal the drug dealer?”
“Yeah. I told you he was a street thug, didn’t I? These guys can do the job and nobody is going to get in their way. If you want to get involved in this kind of shit, you have to be able to get your hands dirty.”
I paused for a moment as bugs scurried across my floor. I watched them like traffic from a hot air balloon high above the city.
“Are you sure about this guy?” I asked.
“Sure I’m sure. If you need the job done, he’s your man. My cousin already spoke to him so he’s expecting you.”
I glanced down at my watch and saw that I still had plenty of time before Martha was due to arrive, so I hung up with Mikey and made my way down to the corner where Jamal operated his business. I approached Jamal as he leaned against a telephone pole covered in flyers for weight loss scams and lost dogs. He was an intimidating black man in his mid-twenties with broad shoulders and a dangerous quality to his persona, and the four men that surrounded him on all sides looked like members of the urban Secret Service, complete with their own brand of firearms visibly positioned in the waistbands of their saggy pants. Jamal was obviously the alpha male of the group and they hung on every word that came out of his mouth. He wore a Boston Celtics cap positioned slightly to the side and an oversized tank top, which displayed his ripped arms and the tattoos that covered them. He fixed his gaze on me as I walked towards him, and a gold tooth from his scowling mouth glistened.
“I’m Drago,” I said.
“Murder comes with a hefty price tag,” he told me.
“What?” I asked, genuinely surprised by his response.
“I heard you needed a job done,” he said, making a gun with his fingers and pointing it into my face.
“No. Not that kind of job. I need a couple of billboards vandalized and taken out of action. I’ve got the locations and just need the manpower to pull it off. Basically I need someone to climb up a couple of poles and play Picasso.”
“Picaswho?” Jamal asked, looking at me as if I were crazy.
“Never mind about Picasso. It’s not important. Do you think you could handle the job?”
“How many billboards we talking?”
“There are a total of twenty-five spread out around the city. I know the guy who owns the billboards and he fucked me over, so naturally I want to return the favor. I was told you have some taggers in your group and I’m offering fifty bucks for each billboard you take out of commission.”
Jamal looked back at his crew and then pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting it and taking a long drag. He exhaled the smoke in my face, purposely filling my space with secondhand carbon monoxide.
“My niggas ain’t gymnasts and they don’t jump through hoops for white guys offering fifty presidents a piece,” he told me. “Especially white guys I ain’t ever met before.”
“Fair enough,” I responded. “I’ll make it seventy-five.”
“And is your ass gonna pay their medical bills when they fall and splat on the concrete below?”
“Make it a hundred bucks a billboard, an extra hundred for expenses, and if you get all twenty-five, another two hundred. How’s that sound?”
Jamal took another drag on his cigarette and exhaled it once again in my face. His tough guy act wasn’t that convincing, and I couldn’t help but think that he was trying too hard.
“I want half the money up front and the rest tomorrow when we finish the job.”
I pulled a wad of cash out of my pocket and watched as each of the men eyed me while I counted off half of the money owed to Jamal.
“Sounds like we’ve got a deal then,” I said. “Come by my place tomorrow at around two and I’ll square up on what’s owed. And again, you nail all twenty-five, and I’ll throw in the bonus.”
“Don’t worry about that, homey—we’ll deliver. I’m a man of my word.”
“Good. Me too.”
I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it to Jamal along with the cash.
“Here’s a list of the billboards and their locations,” I said. “And I’m sure I don’t have to ask that this not come back to me, right?”
“As far as I’m concerned you’re Casper the Ghost.”
“Good. Then it’s time that I disappear.”
I turned to walk away when Jamal stopped me.
“Where’s your house, homey?”
“Oak Street,” I said, without turning to face him. “Just look for the house that should have been condemned ten years ago. That one is mine.”