Broadway and Union during the evening rush. A homeless man in tattered denim sauntered next to a young executive in Italian leather and Armani, and neither was aware of the other. It didn’t get more real than that.
Chase Janvier repositioned his tripod for a new vantage point across the intersection in front of the U.S. Courthouse. He opened up the lens of his video camera and zeroed in on a head shot of a tailored woman in stilettos, busily tapping at the tiny keys of a BlackBerry as she walked. She clutched a half ring of bagel in the hand that held the device. The woman didn’t look up to get her bearings as her heels staccatoed the sidewalk. She knew where she was going.
The woman’s pace overtook the tattered man who’d stopped to poke at a candy wrapper on the pavement with his foot. Chase pulled back the zoom as she passed him. Would the man catch a whiff of her perfume and turn his head as she walked by? Or would she would be as invisible to him as he was to her?
Slowly the man in rags swiveled his head in the woman’s direction. Chase leaned forward, itching to capture a remnant of the man’s earlier civility, his ability to appreciate beauty. The man’s eyes locked on the woman’s hands—delicate, pale, and jeweled. He took a step toward her, the candy wrapper forgotten. Chase filled the viewfinder with the man’s face and at once saw what the man was staring at: not the graceful features of gentility but the half ring of bagel. The man pivoted and took another step toward the woman, then quickened his pace to match hers. If Chase didn’t move, he’d lose them in the crowd.
He grabbed his tripod by its legs and dashed across the intersection, the blast of a punched car horn following him. Once across the street he held the camera to his left eye and zeroed in on the retreating figures. The footage would be jerky, wild. He smiled. The erratic images would add a layer of expediency to the recording: life in motion on the streets of San Diego. He liked it.
Chase closed the distance, settling into a stride behind the homeless man, who shuffled several feet behind the woman. At the street corner a waist-high trash receptacle came into view. The woman shifted the BlackBerry in her hand as she worked the bagel free from its place in her palm. The homeless man accelerated his pace.
A gust of wind from a passing Metro Transit bus caught the woman’s honey gold hair and lifted handfuls of it across her face. As she reached with the hand that held the BlackBerry to sweep her hair away from her face, she stretched her other arm forward. She misjudged the distance to the trash can, and the half bagel tumbled to the pavement. The woman clacked away unaware. Chase took a step toward the curb and leaned against a lamppost to stabilize his shooting arm. In the viewfinder he saw the man bend down and close his fingers around the half bagel. He squinted at the bagel as he straightened. Poked out a raisin. Frowned.
He tossed the bagel in the trash can.
The homeless man turned, and his eyes met the lens of the camera. Chase raised his head, ready to bolt if the homeless man confronted him. But the man smiled, revealing shiny pink gums and one front tooth. Chase smiled back and kept the camera rolling.
The homeless man shuffled past him and disappeared into a sea of silk, iPhones, and agendas.
Perfect.
Chase stopped recording and looked at his watch. Nearly six. His parents would be home soon, bringing with them a cousin he barely knew. They’d be ticked if he wasn’t home when they arrived with her.
It surprised him that his parents were letting Tally come just like that. His parents never did anything on the spur of the moment. Especially his dad. And it annoyed him just a little that he was expected to be her tour guide at school. She was a year younger than he was. They wouldn’t even have the same classes.
He’d wanted to know how long she’d be staying. His mother said she didn’t know.
Chase grabbed the tripod with the camera still attached and broke into a jog for C Street and the trolley line. It would take him fifteen minutes to get to Old Town where his car was parked and another thirty to get home. He would barely make it home before his parents, assuming traffic was moving along I-15.
The trolley pulled into the Civic Center Station, and Chase dashed the last few yards to board before it headed north. He slid into a seat and began to detach his camera from the tripod, wondering for the tenth time that day what it was going to be like to have weird Uncle Bart’s daughter living with them. Chase barely remembered Bart; he’d been a little kid the last time he saw him. He remembered a tattoo of a dragon, the aroma of tobacco and limes, a leather jacket that squealed when Uncle Bart hugged him, and the curly twirl of his uncle’s ponytail. He remembered even less of his cousin Tally. She’d hung around with Delcey, though she was closer in age to him. He remembered that Tally smelled faintly of tobacco and limes too, that she ate her Lucky Charms dry, that she’d never heard of the television show Full House, and that she didn’t run to anyone when she fell on their patio and skinned her knee. She just got the garden hose and, with tears in her eyes, rinsed away the blood and gravel.
Chase had overheard snippets of conversations his parents had since that long-ago visit. Uncle Bart was in Manhattan. Uncle Bart was in jail. Uncle Bart was in Switzerland. Uncle Bart was living in his car in San Antonio. And there was the unspoken understanding that wherever Uncle Bart was, Tally was with him, except, of course, when he was in jail.
And this time was apparently an exception too. Tally wasn’t with him this time. Uncle Bart was in Poland and Tally was homeless in Arizona.
Homeless. The image of the toothless man rose up in Chase’s mind as the trolley shuffled through Little Italy.
He doubted Tally and Uncle Bart had been tempted to eat discarded bagels off the streets. Had they? Chase half-consciously moved his fingers across the slim body of his video camera, wondering.
This could be interesting.
This could be very interesting.
Chase shifted the tripod onto the seat next to him and noticed a matchbook peeking out from the seat back. He paused a moment and then reached for it. Duncan’s Sports Bar and Grill. It felt thin in his hands, empty. Chase frowned and opened the matchbook anyway. It wasn’t completely empty.
He stared at the lone match for a moment, then ran his finger up the match’s smooth cardboard body and the cat tongue--textured head. The trolley zipped along the tracks as he folded the cover and stuffed the matchbook in his back pocket.