75

It wasn’t the life he dreamed of, but then he didn’t have the time or inclination to dream. Surviving was exhausting enough. He’d mapped out, in his mind, the neighborhoods he frequented. He knew which blocks would see stray bullets and avoided them.

The idea of a job was a joke—who’d hire him?—and public assistance would rob him of the only thing he owned, his dignity. So, he lived on the streets, anxious and amoral. He did what he knew.

Stealing, begging, gambling. He got good at it. Sometimes a robbery went wrong and he got hurt or his target did. This worried him for a few hours and then he’d be on to the next thing. For some time he was angry, but he became tired of being angry and lapsed into just “being.” Stuck in neutral, he simply did what he did.

The New York City turnstiles were easy to jump, but he discovered something better: sucking tokens out of the turnstiles. If one had the capacity to be disgusted, it would be disgusting. He sold the tokens. Better yet, sometimes he would take the wallet of the prospective buyer. He’d usually share the largesse with his family, a sister and step-mother, though they were like strangers. But still family.

He could have kept at it for years, even decades. But the germs on one particular token did him in. He got a fever, weakened, dizzy. He continued to beg, steal and gamble until he dropped. They picked him up. It wouldn’t look good to have a man, even a homeless man, die publicly in the street. They moved him to a shelter, then a clinic.

He died in a hallway, without ever seeing a doctor. They thought he’d last longer and put other patients first. They were wrong. Everything was wrong.

As he awaited death, he had time to think. He didn’t need to steal, beg or gamble any more. He asked himself what he could have done differently. The answer came: nothing. He closed his eyes, finally content, and stopped breathing.