Chapter 25

25

Around 6:30 in the evening I ask to use the store's courtesy phone.

"I'm sorry, sir, but our phones are for business use only."

I explain my situation to the young clerk, a speckled, spectacled man in his early twenties. He nods in mock understanding, dismissing my plight while desperatley looking for someone with more authority than he.

"I'm really sorry, sir."

I, usually a soft-spoken, passive individual, find myself frantically raising my voice as I repeat my previous explanation. Exhaustion and circumstance clouds my calm. Why can't I just use the phone, for five minutes, so I can arrange a place to sleep tonight? Five minutes and then I'm gone, out of his hair for good. Five minutes and I won't freeze to death tonight as the steady rain chills to snow.

Then, for emphasis but without properly thinking out the consequences, I grab his arm.

The redhead with the bad complexion starts yelling like someone is beating him with a baseball bat. This makes me wish that I were.

Customers all over the store begin staring and a few point their fingers accusingly at me. I quickly notice that the banshee's nametag promotes the boy's name as "Customer Service Representative Steve".

"Look, Steve, I don't want any trouble, I just really need to use the phone. Please stop yelling for Christ's sake."

But its too late. Two men, neither much bigger than me but have power in numbers, now have me by the arms and are pulling me away from Steve. Like a bad scene in a Western I am the washed up outlaw tossed from the local saloon into the dusty road and warned never to return again.

In my scene however, the road is firmly made of concrete and I have yet to begin drinking.

Desperation makes anyone a little crazy and I don't blame myself for my actions. Steve must just be a high-strung individual. How was I to know? I look around the parking lot as the sun begins to sneak away. Walking towards me is a woman on her phone.

Should I even bother?

Yes, but she doesn't even acknowledge me sitting on the pavement, doesn't make eye contact, doesn't stop talking. Fight the urge to reach out to her Richard, that would inevitably be a disaster. Just remain sitting here, waiting for some simple miracle to happen. That's what you've been reduced to here in this aged world, a beggar holding on to a quick change in fortune, a simple, random act of kindness.

Suddenly, fortune shines through the impending downpour. A quarter has found its way out of someone's pocket and lies discarded at the foot of the nearest trashcan. I hurry myself to my feet and pick it up. The trashcan smells of fried chicken.

Pulling John's card out of my pocket I head over to the solitary payphone. I slide the quarter into the slot, but before I can push all the digits a cold, distant, metallic voice explains that an additional twenty-five cents is needed to place the call.

I'm a very long way from fifty cents.

Holding the receiver in my right hand I am defeated. Apparently I shouldn't have had that second cup of coffee with Jamie.

"Well," I say out loud, my voice sounding just as hollow and metallic as the operator's. "I guess there's always tomorrow."