Walter

The phone rings on Oscar’s desk just as I ask him for a shower. He raises a hand to stop me from speaking and picks up the receiver.

Fresh Start, he says. Social worker’s office. May I help you?

Oscar nods his head to whatever the person on the other end is saying and takes notes. Thank you, he goes and hangs up.

Goddamn it, Walter, he shouts at me. Where’s your mask?

I shrug. He points to a sign hanging off the desk: covid-19 alert. wear a mask.

I was going to ask you for one.

Yeah, right.

I come to Fresh Start about once a day at least for a shower and the food bags that Oscar hands out, mostly canned stuff. I got a P-38 if I need it. If you don’t have one of those old military can openers or some other kind, and a place to cook, then you eat cold food. Tuna fish cold I can do, other things like canned chili, no. I get a cup of noodles and use the hot water attached to coffee machines in convenience stores to heat it.

A woman comes in and stands behind me. Oscar leans so he can see around me and look at her. He’s a fucking dog, man. Oscar turns back to me and points to a jug of hand sanitizer on a stool about a foot from his desk. I spritz it, rub my palms together. The sanitizer turns to goop from my dirty hands. I wipe them on my pants, mixing dead germs with new ones. I show Oscar my smeared palms. He makes a face and extends his right arm, a blue surgical mask dangling off one finger. I put it on.

Thank you, he says.

I need a shower and a food bag, I tell him.

He gives me a plastic sack. I open it. Tuna fish, some crackers, a bottle of water. Good.

Shower?

You want a job, Walter? Oscar asks.

A job?

The person on the phone just now was a guy in North Berkeley. He needs help painting one side of his house.

How big is it?

I don’t know. Twelve dollars an hour. You want it?

How long will this take?

Four hours, he thinks. Maybe longer. Why? You busy today, Walter? You have other plans?

I’m just asking.

Up to you.

I don’t know. It probably won’t take long. Just a room. And it’ll be money in my pocket instead of standing on Seventh and Market with my hand out. I need a new sign. I had one: Homeless, anything will help. Thank you. A girl who said she was a student at the Academy of Art University asked to decorate it and made all sorts of swirls with different colored markers. It was the best-looking sign I ever had, got me some money too, for real. Even had a few people take selfies, but cardboard lasts only so long.

What do I say to the guy?

That we referred you to the job, Oscar says. I’ll call him back and give him your name. You don’t have to say much. This isn’t a date.

I don’t know.

You been drinking today?

No.

What’s that I smell on your breath?

Teeth that need brushing.

He snorts a laugh and tears off a sheet of paper with a name and an address on Eunice Street and tells me to be there by ten. Taking a metal box from a drawer, he gives me a BART pass and ten bucks.

I don’t know if he’s including lunch, Oscar says.

I take the money.

This enough?

Should be for a sandwich. Of course this is San Francisco, but I think so. Don’t drink it up.

I look at him and smile.

I’m serious, Walter.

What about my shower?

You’re just going to get dirty on the job. Wash up afterward.

I need a shower.

I don’t disagree. I’m just saying.

So I’m doing this?

Are you?

I guess.

I think you should.

This guy in AA?

How’d you know?

You’re fooling, right?

He told me he was in recovery and wanted to help a fellow drunk.

A fellow drunk?

My words. Five-minute showers.

I don’t want him lecturing me.

Oscar reaches behind his chair and tosses me a white towel.

You don’t have to say anything but Thank you.

I go to a table where a guy sits in a chair outside a bathroom.

Shower open? I ask him.

Sign in, he tells me, and pushes a clipboard toward me. No one’s ahead of you.

May I have a hygiene kit?

I almost said “Can I,” but “may” is grammatically correct. My sixth-grade teacher, Miss Fowler, drilled grammar into us. She made us write two-hundred-word essays once a week and blue-lined the hell out of them. I like to think that sets me apart a bit from everyone else.

The volunteer reaches for a box at his feet and hands me a baggie with a razor, soap, a deodorant stick, and a finger-size bottle of shampoo. His hands shake. Fresh Start’s twenty-four-hour detox is next door. I don’t recognize this guy but I bet he dried out and is waiting for an inpatient program. I don’t ask. I’ve been there. You get tired of people getting into your business. No good comes of it. Someone will go, Where are you on the waiting list? and then you’re reminded how long you’ll be waiting, and then you think, Screw this, and start drinking.

I walk into the bathroom, pull off my mask, hang my towel on a hook, and take the soap and shampoo out of the baggie. The yellow linoleum floor smells of bleach and shines in the pale light. A bucket of gray dirty water and a mop stand against the shower door. I move them and open the door and turn the knob to hot. I pull my shirt off and drop it on the floor and really catch a dose of my stink. I step out of my pants and the air quality gets even worse. I turn my head so as not to get a dose of my feet when I yank my socks off. Steam rises out of the shower and a shiver goes through me as the water hits the top of my head, and I just stand there, chin against my chest, as the heat waxes over my shoulders. Water bubbles against my arms and I scrub myself three times all over until my skin squeaks beneath my fingers. I rinse myself a final time and shut off the water. Toweling off, I hear the bathroom door crack open.

Time’s almost up, the volunteer says.

OK.

I lean against a wall and put on a pair of jeans I picked up at a Goodwill on my way here with a voucher Oscar gave me last week. Got a blue polo shirt and a pair of socks too. I pull the pants up and roll the cuffs because they’re a little long. I take my belt from my old pants and tug it through the loops, feeling behind me with my fingers so I don’t miss any, and I see myself in a mirror, not fat but sagging around my chest and stomach, every hair gray. A middle-aged man dressing for work, that’s me. I slip on the shirt. It falls like a feather against my shoulders. I put toothpaste on the toothbrush and scrub my tongue. I’ve lost most of my teeth and the few still in my mouth resemble posts from a rotted fence. I rinse my mouth, shave, wipe my face with the towel, and put on my mask. I look at myself again. Not so bad. Can’t see my teeth, anyway.

Combing my hair, I think maybe this time I’ll stop drinking, for real, and there’s this voice in my head that goes, Sure, sure you will, and I hear the sarcasm but it doesn’t stop me from thinking maybe, just maybe. I always get this way after a shower, I guess because I feel better and I don’t look so ragged. I’m tired from the aches and pains of sleeping outside that pile on with the years. Maybe this is the moment. Maybe. If this job works out, if this guy needs me for other work, if he can keep me busy. It’s on him. I’m in his hands. And if he goes all Nazi on me with AA, I’m out of there. I don’t want to disappoint Oscar, but I’ll be gone. I get stressed thinking about it, all these ifs and the things he might say, but I got ten bucks in my pocket to deal with any problems. I don’t want to do Oscar like that, but if I can’t handle this guy then that’s how it’ll be. I won’t have a choice, not if he pushes my buttons. Try not to worry about him, I tell myself. You’re clean. You’re back in the game. He’ll be cool. Don’t trip. I take a deep breath. You can do this. Sure, sure, the voice in my head says.

I pull on the socks. They stick to my feet. I wiggle my toes. The socks cling to the sweaty insides of my sneakers. I take off the shoes, stick the towel in each one, and wipe them out. When I finish I put them on again. That’s a little better. Tucking in my shirt, I imagine knocking on the door of the guy in North Berkeley. I’m here about the paint job, I see myself saying. I guess the guy will ask me in. Maybe not. I don’t know. My heart ticks up a notch just thinking about it.

Time’s up! the volunteer shouts.

I grab my old clothes and hurry out.

Sorry, I say, thanks.

I drop the clothes in a hamper to be washed and recycled for someone else.

I got a job today, I tell the volunteer.

Where at?

North Berkeley.

At least you’ll get out of here for a while.

That’s what I’m thinking. What about you?

Waiting on a program?

I figured. Which one?

Redwood Center.

It’s good.

Been there?

Yeah.

What happened?

What always happens. I started drinking again. Nobody made me. I didn’t have to.

I’m like tenth on the waiting list.

Good luck.

Day at a time, right?

That’s what they say.

I turn to leave. Passing Oscar’s office, I raise my hand goodbye, but he’s talking to that gal who was behind me in line. I go out the front doors to the sidewalk. The sun blazes down and I cover my eyes. Cool in the shade, warm in the sun. I like days like this. I feel almost like a normal person. My hands shake a bit, my body talking. Where’s that wine? it’s asking me. Across the street I see two guys I know, Lonny and Jeffrey. Lonny lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident, or that’s what he says. He doesn’t have it, I know that much. The accident cost him his job at a garage. He got on disability and started drinking. He always drank, he said, but after the accident he got into it full-time. He has a thick brown beard, and when he listens to people speak he frowns and pouts his lower lip and makes me think of a clam all bristly with that beard. I can’t talk to him without laughing. He dried out one time and would have been accepted into a program except for his leg. He had to show he could get out of a room, hop through a hall, and down a flight of stairs in sixty seconds in case of a fire. He hopped like a mofo, but he always fell, even when he used crutches. Nerves, he said. Everybody watching him. The program wouldn’t take him and he started drinking again.

If they’d’ve given me a few seconds more . . . he said. Katie, one of the detox counselors, told him to apply to other programs, but Lonny decided that getting drunk in a doorway was less humiliating.

Lonny raises a hand, and I see he’s got a bottle. I wave back but keep walking. If I go over to him I’ll start drinking. Then the three of us will blow my ten bucks, and then Oscar will tell me how I burned a resource and ruined it for all the other people this North Berkeley guy could have helped. I cut up Sixth Street and turn on Market toward the Embarcadero to catch a BART train. I don’t have to walk, I could catch a bus, but I want to walk. In my clean clothes, strolling to work like everyone else. Nobody knows who I am. They think I’m one of them. I laugh. Shadows retreat, shrink up buildings, slide back on the rooftops. Sweat begins to pool under my arms. I feel a little jittery but good, I’m good. I’ll get past the shakes. Sometimes I stay sober for two or three days. I’ll have this bloated feeling and I can’t drink. Or I just don’t feel well. The few hours of the first day sober are hard, not impossible, but hard. On warm days like this they’re easier. On cloudy days when the air gives me chills, then it’s impossible, and I drink and I won’t care how bad I’ll feel later, or how down I’ll be on myself.

I jog down the steps of the Embarcadero Station, flash my BART pass, and shuffle behind a man pushing through the turnstile to the platform where a train waits, doors open. I have about an hour to spare, more than enough time to get to the job.

I’m going to work, I say to the guy ahead of me.

Another day, another two cents, he says, glancing at me over a shoulder.

The train jerks forward just as I get on and I reach for a pole to keep from falling. An older woman watches me stumble and I smile and then I feel embarrassed for showing her my bad teeth. I lift a hand to hide my mouth, but I feel my mask and realize she can’t see my teeth.

That was close, I say, and she smiles back and we both shake our heads as if to say, Isn’t this something? The train starting before I can sit down. She adjusts her mask, digs into her purse for a pair of glasses, and starts reading a copy of The New Yorker. A subscription card falls out and I pick it up.

Thank you, she says.

I smile again and sit down across from her.

I’m painting a house today, I say. I work at Lowe’s.

Oh, she replies, looking over the top of her glasses. A good day for it. Weather, I mean. I didn’t know Lowe’s sent people out to do house work.

I shrug.

A house in North Berkeley, I say.

Oh, she goes again. That’s where I live. Do you do gutters?

I do, I say. Since I was a kid. Used to clean my mom’s gutters.

Well, mine need to be done, the lady goes. Do you have a card?

I don’t.

She takes out her cell phone.

What’s the Lowe’s number?

I hesitate for a minute and then make up a number. If she calls, she’ll think she misheard me or put it in her phone wrong. At least that’s what I hope. I want her to believe I work.

I can do your gutters, I tell her.

I show her the address in North Berkeley.

I’ll be here if you can’t reach me on the phone.

She peers at the address but doesn’t take it down.

Thank you, she says.

The train stops at MacArthur Station and a barefoot man with a torn T-shirt and ripped sweatpants gets into the car. He wears boots and his toes stick out of the torn leather. He smells like something spoiled, and I push back in my seat so the guy doesn’t come near me, and I feel the cool damp of my own sweat, the odor of deodorant mixed with it.

The dude makes his way down the aisle, placing cards on every passenger’s knee. The woman across from me looks horrified. Everyone else hides behind their cell phones. The cards have illustrations of hands fingerspelling A through Z. The woman across from me swats hers on the floor. I ignore mine. After he hands out the cards, the dude turns around and collects them, pausing with his hand out until he receives change. All I’ve got is the ten bucks, and I’m not giving him that. I look at the floor, as still as a mannequin, hoping like hell I don’t know this guy or if I do he doesn’t recognize me. Hey, Walter! I imagine him shouting and cringe at the thought.

The woman across from me shrinks in her seat as he approaches. She tries not to watch him. She stares over my shoulder out the window. When he reaches her, he pauses and then sees the card on the floor. He picks it up and snaps his fingers in her face and holds out his hand. She shivers.

No, no, I’m not interested, she says. Thank you. Go away now, please.

The dude snaps his fingers again and makes broad, wild gestures pointing to his ears. He waves his card in the lady’s face, striking her nose.

Go away! she cries, and snatches the card from him and throws it on the floor. Now go! she shouts again, squirming into a corner of her seat. She raises her hands as if he might hit her. People watch, their eyes peering above their masks. They look pained but don’t move. I don’t either. I want to help her, I bet everybody does, but we all have our reasons. Mine, I don’t want him to recognize me.

Leave me alone! the woman shouts.

The train jolts and slows to a stop at the North Berkeley station and the dude stumbles to the floor. As he gets up, I step in front of him to get off. He stands and tries to lean around me, but I’m pushed up against him by other people getting off. Everyone hurries out, the woman with the dirty gutters swept up with them. The dude stares after her. Turning to me, he gives a hard look and shoves me. I push him back and he falls. I don’t recognize him. I wipe my shirt where he touched me and get off before the doors close.

I see the woman walking toward a parked car and a man waves from the driver’s side. The train starts again, moving slowly, picking up speed until it rushes from the station, pounding the ground. My body vibrates until it’s far enough gone that the ground beneath my feet settles and I don’t feel anything but my clothes sticking to me. I look at the slip of paper with the address and start walking. Mist blows in my face. The morning fog hasn’t burned off this side of the bay. I wish I had a jacket.

A sharp pull on my right shoulder spins me around, and I lose my balance and fall to my knees and hit my forehead against the pavement. Everything goes dark for a minute. I press a hand against the bump already forming and close my eyes. Someone grabs my hair and jerks my head back and starts hitting my face. I throw up my hands to block the punches and then they let go and start kicking me and I roll up into a ball until they stop. I don’t move. I hear my breath fast and furious. I open my eyes and raise my head and make out the figure of the dude running.

Pushing myself up, I pick the grit off my face. Blood drips from my nose onto my shirt. I feel my face swelling around my nose and under my eyes. My back and ribs ache. A breeze picks up my fallen mask and swirls it away. After a moment, I stand, holding my head. Dizzy, I sit back down. I piss myself. I smell it.

Looking out at the street, I see the lady from the train staring at me, a hand over her mouth. The guy she met watches me too, as he talks into a cell phone. I stand again and wobble forward, arms out for balance.

Everything was fine until it wasn’t. Oscar was right. I shouldn’t have taken a shower. I’d’ve caught an earlier train and this wouldn’t have happened.

Someone yells, Wait! and I see the woman wave at me and I cover my mouth so she doesn’t see my teeth, not that it matters now. The man with her points to a police car and an ambulance racing toward the parking lot. I keep walking. There’s a liquor store I know on University Avenue and Sacramento Street. A long walk but not too long. I stop at a drinking fountain and rinse my face. The cuts sting. I finger my nose, wincing. More blood drips onto my shirt. I tilt my head back to stop the bleeding, stare into a gray sky.

I’ll have to get another change of clothes.

When I see Oscar again.