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ChapterSeven
After securing a hotel for the week, I put everything in the storage room at the gym except a handful of things to get me through the next few days.
The hotel I chose is just off the highway. It is not the worst place I’ve stayed in, even if it is one of those budget motels. Everything is cheap and cheerful in a false kind of way, with its too bright yellow walls and faded flower decals. But it’s clean and tidy and suits my needs for now.
I hang a few things in the small closet and place my toiletries in the bathroom before heading out to grab some food. There have been a lot of changes since I left. Although I come to the gym occasionally—usually at night when I know it’s deserted—I haven’t had much opportunity to check out downtown or the revitalization project they’ve been doing for the last few years.
It’s odd looking around at the place that was once my “home,” and yet my memories happened in a place that doesn’t exist anymore. This makes me feel sadder than I thought it would.
The run-down streets have had a facelift. Restaurants and bars line the busy roads, and little bistros with patio seating have people talking animatedly in the warm sun as others wander in and out of antique shops and little boutiques that make the place feel more upmarket than it is.
If you look hard enough, you’ll see that nothing is really fixed. They just put a nice shiny coat of paint on it. The alleyway between a juice bar and the bank is proof of that. I look into the shadows and see a man huddled inside a sleeping bag with his dog asleep beside him. Out of sight and out of mind, but not if you know where to look.
I head inside the noodle bar on the corner, happy to see it’s quiet, and order two portions of vegetable lo mein and steamed rice. I grab a couple of bottles of water, two sets of free chopsticks from the counter, and a couple of packets of those little wet wipes they provide.
I take in the abstract watercolor artwork on the wall until my order is ready and bagged.
Heading back out, I make my way toward the alleyway and look for the man, who is still sitting where I last saw him, his dirty hand stroking absently over his dog’s head.
I walk toward him, making him jolt, but I don’t talk. I sit on the flattened cardboard box beside him and pull out a box of noodles and a set of chopsticks before offering them to him.
He stares at them as if he expects them to explode.
The ripe smell emanating from him is enough to make my eyes water. It’s a smell I’m intimately familiar with, so I ignore it, breathing through my mouth as he hesitantly reaches for the food.
He takes it from me gently before ripping the lid open and shoveling handfuls into his mouth.
“Slowly. Don’t want to make yourself sick,” I tell him softly. I know that fear he’s feeling right now. Like he’s waiting for me to snatch it away from him and laugh in his face. Or worse, turn nasty and make him beg for it, or perform some demeaning task, one he would do readily just to stop the pain of his stomach eating itself from the inside out.
I pull out a bottle of water and crack the lid, pouring it into the empty bowl near the dog before offering the man the other one. He takes it and gulps it down before remembering what I said and slows down.
I take out one of the boxes of rice and another bottle of water and place them beside him with the chopsticks on top.
“For later. Is there anything else you need?” I could go into the sporting goods store across the street and buy him a new sleeping bag. But that would make him a target, and by tomorrow he’d be back to square one, or worse because then he wouldn’t have a sleeping bag at all.
He shakes his head and swallows before speaking, his voice scratchy and rough like he doesn’t get to use it much. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. This your usual spot?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to answer, but after a few minutes, he nods. “Here and down near the bridge.”
“You notice anything odd? Any familiar faces just up and disappear on you?”
He looks at me sharply. “You a cop?”
I snort. “Fuck no. I grew up on these same streets, so I get you. It’s why I’m not gonna blow smoke up your ass. I’m gonna level with you. People are poofing out of existence like they were never here to begin with.”
He shrugs. “People move on.”
“Not this many.”
“What does it matter? Nobody would miss us anyway.”
“It matters to me.”
He looks away for a minute before turning back to me, his brown eyes reminding me of icy root beer on a hot summer’s day.
“There used to be more of us at the bridge. But lately, the number is smaller.”
