by Susan Wilson
Before I fell asleep, I licked my paws and thought, This is extraordinary. Not twelve hours ago, I was cage-bound, my life as circumspect in its routine as a monk’s. My battle of the week accomplished, kibble in my dish. My whole life contained in that cellar. Now here I am, making my own plans, eating like a king, thinking already about mating.
The only problem with this living in paradise was that my wound, the jagged rip my late opponent had sliced into me, had begun to hurt.
Chapter Ten
The Fort Street Center is in the worst part of town and serves homeless men, providing a hot meal, a gathering place, and, for twenty of them, a place to sleep out of the elements. Adam knows about the center only because it’s one of the hundreds of charities that solicit him every year. He’s maybe thrown a few bucks its way, without really thinking about the mission or the nature of the cause.
Homelessness is not a word that Adam thinks about with any degree of interest. To him, a “homeless man” is a bum, a street person, a schizophrenic off his meds. A panhandler. An annoyance. Someone to dodge as he goes down the street, much like a stray dog. Might be diseased or drunk. Shaking empty paper cups, begging for coffee money. Giuliani got rid of the squeegee men in New York, so why couldn’t this city find a way to get the street people off the street? That’s what Adam thinks whenever some indigent crosses his path on the sidewalk.
If Adam has given any thought to the why of homelessness, it is to believe that as he is a self-made man, these must be self-undone men. Victims of bad habits and bad decisions. Everyone knew of the guy who chose to live on the street rather than in his home, where his abandoned wife or caring children couldn’t keep him. Common knowledge. Or the guy who just fucked his life up so badly, no one wanted to be near him, his own violence and temper putting him on the street. The guy who won’t even try to hold on to his family.
Adam has spurned his lawyer’s offer to go with him. He will report to the Fort Street Center by himself, a man with free will. No hand-holding, no audience. No billable hour. Not sure what to expect, Adam dresses in his usual business attire. Most likely this Bob Carmondy fellow will be overjoyed to have a man familiar with business at his disposal. Maybe the worst that will happen is that he’ll hand Adam the books. These nonprofits are so often run on shoestrings, or, worse, like lemonade stands. Adam looks at his freshly shaven face in the mirror as he knots his Harvard tie. He tries not to see the dark circles of restless nights beneath his eyes or the faint yellow color tinging the whites, like pale echoes of the brown of his irises. Or the hollowness of his cheeks. The new gray in his hair. He’s even looking forward to putting in some volunteer time. That’ll look just fine, with tweaking, on his curriculum vitae. It is no longer enough to have enjoyed the career path he has been on: promotions and bonuses labeling him a man of substance. The ignominious departure from Dynamic has made him less than attractive; in this day and age, corporations are reluctant to hire people fired for such a violation as his. Only embezzlement would have been a harder crime to overcome. Time will help, counsels his lawyer. Get past the headlines, the blogs, the pillory of public discussion. Sit tight. It’ll blow over. In the meantime, his bank account, the only one Sterling didn’t get, is dribbling away and he is powerless to stop the constant leak. Sterling resolutely refuses to give up any of the houses, the masseuse, the flower arranger. These aren’t luxuries, but necessities; she mustn’t give up her standard of living, not for her sake, but for their daughter’s. Ariel deserves the best-possible everything. She makes it sound like if she doesn’t have access to their time-share jet, it will be Ariel who will suffer the humiliation of commercial air travel. Her young life will be ruined.
Lying awake in the middle of the night, Adam realizes that Sterling has never wanted for anything. Not once in her gilded existence has any desire been left wanting. Ever. The basic needs so well met that luxury itself became a basic need.
He has known the want of basic human desires: the pangs of hunger, of real hunger, when his foster mother served only what she thought a growing boy should eat and locked up the rest, the desire for affection; the basic human need to be touched gently.
When his thoughts begin to drift in that direction, Adam finds oblivion in cheap blended scotch.
This will help. In a year or two, working with the homeless will look like philanthropy. A break from high-stakes corporate life; not quite the Peace Corps, but, with the right tweaking, enough to gloss over the empty place on his CV.
Oh yes, it certainly will. Cheered, Adam dusts an invisible speck of lint from the lapel of his charcoal-gray Hugo Boss suit. Just where is that solitary businessman now?
Although Adam lives only six blocks away from the center, he drives his Lexus to Fort Street. It’s a world away from his current neighborhood, but Adam is hard-pressed to distinguish much of a difference between his street and Fort Street. A similar group of mom-and-pop businesses line the side of the street opposite the faded brownstones that are home to a host of other nonprofits serving mankind. Maybe the difference is in the check-cashing service rather than a paper store, and the pawnshop with a litter of chintzy lamps and questionable statuary in the window instead of jolly fish cavorting across a rainbow of letters.
Remarkably, Adam finds a parking place right across the street from where he thinks the center is located. There is no sign identifying the center, just an American flag with the ubiquitous MIA/POW flag suspended beneath it, both flags barely moving in the midmorning breeze. Before parking, he wonders briefly if he should find a garage instead. The men gathered on the stoops of the brownstones eye him as he idles, but he shrugs off the worry. It’s broad daylight. Getting out of his car, he drops a couple of quarters in the meter, locks his car with an over-the-shoulder flourish, and crosses the street with a “Don’t fuck with me” stride.
The Fort Street Center is in a building much prettier than his own, a nineteenth-century town house built in a time when this part of the city was the good part. The bow windows and brownstone stoop are black with grime, but the ornate trim and sturdiness of the building is still evident. Adam checks the address written on the index card handed to him by the judge’s law clerk against the black-and-gold number in the transom above the big black door. Number 27. This is it. As Adam puts his foot on the first step, a man swings the door open and stumbles out. He’s wearing, despite the warm fall day, a greenish snorkel jacket with bulging pockets, its orange lining exposed by tears under the arm. Even from this distance, Adam can smell the odor of him, the punky, slightly uriney smell of old clothes and unwashed body. The man goes down the three wide steps, pausing for a moment to take Adam in, then meanders down the street, kicking aside an empty plastic bag, muttering in an angry grumble punctuated with a single comprehensible word. Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Adam slides a moist hand down his tie, shrugs his perfectly tailored jacket into place, and jogs up the steps.
If he expects to be greeted as a visiting dignitary, Adam is mistaken. It takes a few minutes to find the man in charge and he is forced to speak to the indigents hanging around the narrow hallway, who point him to the director’s office.
Adam knocks at the open door to a room that might once have been a large room but is now split into two smaller ones. A man Adam presumes to be the director is sitting at a desk, facing the open door. His feet, in the largest shoes Adam thinks he has ever seen, are on the desk, which is piled with manila folders. He’s on the phone, the curling cord twisted into a contortion of wire. Seeing Adam there, he waves him in with a wide gesture, mouthing “big donor” and pointing to the phone.
Adam is impatient, not appreciating having to wait to introduce himself and get this over with. The director smiles over the mouthpiece, a helpless “What can you do?” smile.
Rocking slightly on his heels, his hands jammed into trouser pockets, Adam examines the various newspaper-reprint photographs on the wall. Each one pictures the director shaking hands with a familiar politician: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, M
ayor Menino, Bill Weld. Deval Patrick. Each one is a study in two smiling faces, below which, hands are locked in a stagy clasp across bodies.
At last, the director drops the phone into the cradle, further tangling its overstretched cord. “Sorry about that. Potential donor. Gotta listen to their ideas.”
“Adam March. I’m here to, uh, volunteer.” The word volunteer sticks a little in his throat, as if he isn’t able to recall the proper verb; he’s been thinking of this as a sentence.
“Robert Carmondy.” Carmondy is a big man. He knows this and puts it to good use. “They call me ‘Big Bob.’” He reaches over the breadth of the desk and cheerfully squeezes the life out of Adam’s hand. Whack. A manly Big Bob shoulder slap nearly takes Adam off his feet. “Glad to have you here. Siddown.”
Big Bob’s office is a tiny space filled mostly with a desk, a file cabinet too full to close the drawers all the way, and Big Bob. Adam turns to the only other chair in the room, the seat of which is filled with even more unfiled folders. Bob makes no move to accommodate his well-dressed visitor, so Adam lifts an armload of folders and sits down; finding no surface available to place the folders, he ends up holding them in his lap. Bob looks at him with a slight smile, and Adam wonders if he’s going to be asked to start filing.
“Let me tell you about this place.” With that, Big Bob is off on his well-rehearsed narrative on the genesis of the Fort Street Center: the evolution from a crack house to a safe house; his own brush with homelessness, getting off the drugs himself; and the constant need for money.
Adam smiles. This is where he can be of service. “I have some ideas.”
Bob cuts him off with a teacher’s gesture. “We follow a strict protocol of confidentiality. We don’t know what happened to these guys; we don’t rehab, counsel, or criticize. We just feed ’em; wash ’em, if they’ll have it; bunk ’em, if they want; and street ’em. They don’t live here. They can come and stay, but this is a way station. Capice?”
“I do.”
“Okay, then.” Big Bob rocks back against his chair, which protests like a wounded animal.
“What do you need to know about me?”
“Nothing. You’re here and you’ll do what I need you to do.”
“I have some ideas.” Maybe Big Bob hasn’t heard him the first time. “I’ve been looking into some grants—”
Big Bob snaps forward, the back of his chair crying out in relief from the released pressure.
“No ideas necessary. You need to suit up and report to Rafe in the kitchen.”
Adam straightens himself on the edge of the chair, realigns the slipping folders on his lap. He clears his throat, finding his executive voice. “I can be of much more use looking into finances, grants.”
Big Bob stands up, shoving his desk chair back against the wall. “Let me walk you down.”
“Mr. Carmondy, I’ve got an M.B.A. Surely you can use some help.”
Big Bob sets one meaty hand on Adam’s shoulder, gives him a friendly squeeze that hurts like a Vulcan pinch. “I’m sure we do.” Bob lowers his mouth to Adam’s ear. “Judge Johnson is pretty clear about assignments. You will do what we need you to do. And what we need is kitchen help. Ideas are fine; actions are better. And, Adam, it’s Big Bob.”
Adam March stands in his Hugo Boss trousers, his brand-new Calvin Klein T-shirt, purchased out of a sense that it was easier to buy new underwear than to go to the Laundromat once a week, and a white uniform jacket with a faint gravy stain emblazoning the left side. A paper hat completes his ensemble.
He is humiliated. This is his community service, doling out hot lunch to indigents. Doing whatever the “boss” wants. The boss being Rafe, a wiry black man with a shiny shaven head, hands the size of palm fronds, and a drill sergeant’s refinement. Rafe points him to the rack of waiter wear and tells him not to wear good pants again. “Jeans’ll do, long as they’re clean and not ripped.”
Ripped jeans. Just who does this guy think he’s speaking to?
“We serve hot lunch from eleven to two. Give ’em as much as they want, but don’t get fooled by the greedy ones. Everbody gets enough, but not more than enough. We feed about thirty-five men here a day, sometimes more in winter, less in summer. It ain’t cordon bleu, but it ain’t junk food, neither.” Rafe says cordon bleu with a perfect French enunciation. Adam is still hung up on the perfectly pronounced cordon bleu linked to the grammatically suspect surrounding of the sentence. Rafe might talk street, but Adam suspects another influence.
“An another thing.” Rafe places one of his alien hands on Adam’s shoulder. “You treat these men wi’ respect. You ain’t here ’cause you love ’em. You here ’cause you fucked up. So did they, so that’s something you all have in common. Got it?”
Adam straightens his shoulder under Rafe’s hand and lifts his chin. He is eye-to-eye with his new boss, his brown eye holding the deeper brown eye of the man, taking the measure of an opponent. Rafe narrows his eyes, sure in his authority. Adam has seen eyes like that before in the boardrooms and back halls of business. Kings of their domains. Men certain of their power and their place in the world.
Adam nods, a curt acquiescence.
“Now I need you to go into the back room and bring out a case of niblets.”
And thus Adam March begins his penance.
Adam is put to work as runner, carrying steam trays filled with food from the kitchen into the dining room, then taking the empty bins back to wash them in the industrial sink. The old brownstone has suffered from its change in purpose from elegant home to abandoned crack house to its new life as a shelter. The interior walls have been cut away to open half of the first floor into a large room, filled now with long cafeteria tables no doubt donated from some refurbished high school, the benches fixed to them so that the men have to sling a leg over to get seated. The floor-to-ceiling windows are shrouded even on this warm fall day with industrial-strength curtains, pulled closed so that the men served are protected. No one can stand and stare at them, recognize an old friend or neighbor in straitened circumstances. No one can look out.
Adam hasn’t bench-pressed this much since high school. The aluminum trays are filled with slices of meat floating in a thick brown gravy with what appear to be shitake mushrooms folded in. The whipped potatoes are stiff and creamy, real potatoes, really whipped. But they weigh a ton, and Adam fears that his back will go out, and then where will he be? What if he gets hurt on this community-service job? What happens then? Can he sue someone? After fetching the canned corn from the massive stockroom, Adam is put to opening the number-ten cans one after another. What is served to the men is mixed with half as many lima beans and sautéed into a mixture that he might have seen on his plate at any benefit dinner Sterling dragged him to. The lovely odor of cooking food is obscured by the rank scent of the men who line up in front of the steam tables. Even though he isn’t—yet—assigned to serving, their smell fills the high-ceilinged room like a miasma, and he gets a whiff every time he comes up behind the man who is ladling out portions onto divided plates. With each customer he greets by name, the server, another middle-aged black man, asks the same question: “One piece or two? You wanna a roll wi’ that?”
Adam is reminded of high school, St. Joseph’s, where the last two sets of foster parents coincidentally sent him. The ancient cafeteria with its warped floorboards was also the gymnasium. The students passed through an alley, where the food was kept behind glass, pointing to their choices—mac and cheese or hot dog, ziti or a thin slice of overcooked ham steak with a floppy ring of pineapple. Because the cafeteria was also the gym, the odor of unwashed bodies pervaded the air, and the food never tasted good. Most of it was tossed in the massive gray barrels on wheels next to the exits as the kids rushed to get outside to sneak cigarettes or make out in the corners.
When he wheels the big blue plastic barrels to the back dock from the dining room after the meal is over, Adam can’t help but notice that there is almost no food in them.
Adam can’t make himself touch the plate until he washes. He feels extraordinarily filthy, as if he’s been handling garbage, as if he hasn’t been wearing plastic gloves. “Where do I wash?”
Rafe pulls one ear bud out of his ear. “Men’s room out to your left.”
Adam sees himself in the speckled mirror over the sink, the ridiculous paper hat tipped over his forehead. He looks like he works at McDonald’s. He grabs it off and tosses it in the bin. Gall quickly dissipates into despair.
He has no intention of eating here.
The four plates are now on a freshly wiped table. Someone has folded up the other tables up and rolled them all to one side of the room. The floor, no doubt to protect the original hardwood, is covered by a cheap linoleum with a fake wood pattern, and it is filthy with dirt and sand, along with dropped paper napkins and food. It is the single most disgusting place Adam has ever been expected to eat. He is about to say that he’s out of there, when Rafe, standing up, waves him over not like a gracious host, but like a commander. You will sit and eat. This is part of your penance. “Sit down, man, ’fore this stuff gets colder.” The man who has been standing for the last few hours serving up food to the continual flow of men pats the space next to him. Another flashback to high school, the flush of pleasure at being included in a group. But this is no group in which Adam would ever want to be included. “We never got properly introduced. You can call me Ishmael.” The black man grins at his well-rehearsed line and sticks out a hand for shaking. He’s pulled off his toque, revealing a head full of dread-lock coils. Like Medusa’s snakes, the coils bounce around, threatening Adam.