Before Shelley hired John to walk his dog, he employed Casey, and she also dwelled at the Parker Spruce. In her dresser were bread, peanut butter, jam and pop tarts, and in winter, cans of Bud Ice could be kept cool in a plastic bag hanging out her window.
"So you trust John, huh?" I asked Shelley. "He doesn't steal like Casey?"
"You know about that too!" Shelley smiled. "Casey only stole small things from me. I went to her place once and saw all these little things that looked very familiar, like salt and pepper shakers that I used to own. Everywhere I looked, there were little things that I used to own."
"Yeah, it was Casey."
Soon enough, everything that isn't nailed down will walk. It's telling that many of our homeless still leave relative valuables such as a newish jacket, belt or pair of shoes unattended as they sleep. This means we're not quite Third World, hurrah!, for if we were, even a pair of unwatched prescription glasses would take wing within seconds. Of course, stuff here already disappear often enough. In Berkeley, I met a white haired man who had been robbed by another homeless man four times. His coat and shoes he managed to recover in nearby trash cans, "but the photos of my wife and children are gone." As we talked, a young woman gave him some leftover from a restaurant meal. "But I can't eat it," he lamented, "I don't have any teeth."
"You can eat it," she smiled. "It's only rice."
Without fork or spoon, he then scooped the brown rice with the carry out container's plastic top.
The big guys will steal big, including your youth, mature years and old age, your entire lives, in short, sometimes even your sanity or parts of body, while small time crooks will try to relieve you of everything else, including your salt and pepper shakers. The biggest guys will steal the earth from right under you.
I never hinted to Casey that I knew she had stolen from me, but after that incidence, I kept my distance. I have known her for a long time. Adopted, Casey has never been able to find her Puerto Rican birth mother. On each of her sneaker is scrawled "ESPERANZA" ["HOPE"]. Casey has worked as a cook and as a waitress, including here at McGlinchey's. The last time I saw her, she said she was getting married, so I waved at her bride, a laughing woman standing across Broad Street. They had found an apartment in Point Breeze. Idyllic sounding, it's a neighborhood best known for flying bullets.
Once, a balding, middle-aged dude saw me talking to Casey, and so advised, "You know, you shouldn't talk to her. She's ugly. You make yourself look bad by talking to such an ugly woman." This guy looked like crap himself, I must add, and so do I, even on my best days. Ugly and uglier, we will slog forward, for sure. The current waitress at McGlinchey's is only 23, however, and so not ugly. She's pretty, in fact. Let's meet her.
"I never went to college, because I don't like school, and I also can't afford it."
"But you said you're into languages?"
"Yeah, I studied French for five years, and the other day, when I met some French students, I could speak to them, maybe because I was drunk," she grinned, "and I can pronounce Russian words. I read Camus' The Stranger five times in English, but when I finally read it in French, it was so much better."
"You read it in French from beginning to end?"
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