After All(47)

"Nah man, I need a quarter," he says and when he sees I'm not budging, he takes the bar. I watch him, curious, and see him shuffle down the street before trying to sell it to another junkie for a dollar.

I'm not surprised. I never give them money because they only want it for one thing and as often as I do bring food from the set, occasionally buying someone in need a burger from McDonalds down the road, it can be hard to find people who are seriously hungry. Usually their only hunger is for drugs.

But there's always Jimmy. Jimmy's been part of my life for as long as I can remember and by some kind of luck, he's never been addicted to the hard stuff. That's not to say he's perfect. He's a drunk, through and through. But he's a good man and even as he's pushing into his seventies, he's still living in the same apartment in my old building, with a job working at the homeless shelter and soup kitchen.

I tuck down the brim of my baseball cap by habit, even though no one would ever recognize me here, and then head into the apartment. I step over a man passed out on the stairs, cover my mouth with my sleeve to block out the smells of urine, vomit and shit, and head up to Jimmy's apartment.

I knock on his door, even though it's partially open, and wait a long minute before I step inside.

This is the moment I fear. The idea that I might step in here and find him dead. It only gets worse as time goes on, that I'll have to deal with the same situation I found my mother in.

But this time, Jimmy is snoring loudly on the sagging couch in the living room. I take the moment to put the plastic bag on the counter and put some of the food away before slipping on a pair of rubber gloves and cleaning his apartment the best I can.

I do this about once every two weeks, more if I can get away from work. I know it sounds strange but there are times when I look up to Jimmy as if he's my father. My actual father left when I was two years old, which then turned my mom onto drugs, but growing up Jimmy was really the only face that was always around. Sometimes it feels like he's my only real friend. That's not to say Will isn't. But even though Will knows bits and pieces of my childhood, he doesn't really understand. How could he? How could anyone know what it's like to grow up in a true house of horrors, surrounded by the stench of death and depravity at every turn.


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But Jimmy knows. He understands. And he doesn't judge. With him, I can just be me. I can let it all out, all the hurt and the fear and the anger that still lingers in me. The kind of stuff that even my therapist couldn't coax out.

"Hey, Tetty," Jimmy says, stirring from the couch. "What time is it, Tetty?"

Tetty has always been my nickname. He wouldn't call me Em because he says it sounded too much like my mother's name (Emily), so Tetty it was.

"It's late," I tell him. "You can go back to sleep, I'm almost done."

"You love me and leave me, don't you boy?" he says and after a feeble attempt to get off the couch, he lies back down again. "You didn't happen to bring me anything to drink, did ya?"

From the way he's slurring his words, I can tell he's been on another bender. He normally isn't so bold as to ask me, either. I'm not an enabler.

"Just fruit juice," I tell him. "And food. Please tell me that you're still keeping your job." I know he doesn't actually need the job to survive. The government only gives him a couple of hundred a month for welfare but I've secretly been paying his rent here for the last fifteen years. If it weren't for me, he would have been homeless a long time ago.

And yet, that's the extent of what I can do for him. I can bring him food, give him shelter, but I can't get him to stop drinking. I can't make him go to work. I can't make sure he's brushing his teeth and eating right and taking care of himself. Which makes me both direly needed and absolutely useless.

"Fruit juice?" he says, grumbling. "Ah hell, I guess it will mix well."

I close my eyes and lean against the counter, taking in a deep breath that smells mercifully like the bleach I just used to clean his place. "Jimmy, promise me that you're going to pick yourself back up tomorrow and go to work. They need you there."

"Bah," he says, turning over on the couch so his face is in the cushions. "No one needs me and I don't need them. I don't need you either, Tetty, so get your fancy suit out of here and leave."

I glance down at my dirty jeans and t-shirt and Timberland boots and nod. When he gets abrasive like this, there's no reasoning with him. "I'll come back soon," I tell him. "Might even pop in at your work and see you there."