There is an alcove in the west face of the building near where I catch my last bus to work every morning.  It’s on Highland Avenue just off Hollywood, and, like the building itself, it’s grimy and dark and has gone unused for some time.  A pudgy white man with a wild afro of brown curls had set up camp there, just him and two trash bags filled with things he’d found worth keeping, brown slouching blobs resting at his feet on the stained concrete.

He was missing most of his teeth but had managed to hold on to the lower canines, and with his pudgy face and round, bulging eyes, it gave him the appearance of an amiable bulldog fallen on hard times.  He had a gently spacey quality, and he sat cross-legged on the sidewalk like a grimy Buddha in old jeans and a sweatjacket he wore zipped to the neck, high as it would go.  It was sky blue, but dirty.

“Can you spare any change?  For a cup of coffee?”  He asked me.

“No.  Sorry, man.”  Payday was coming, but it wasn’t for a few days and I was skint, with maybe ten dollars in my pocket to see me through to the end of the week.  I passed him by to find a spot near the curb, one with a clear view down the block to watch for my bus.

“’Scuse me, sir,” he called out.  “Do you know this man?”

I turned to see who he meant.  He was holding a piece of newspaper he’d folded on all sides to display a picture accompanying an article on preparations for the upcoming Academy Awards.  One of the figures in the photograph was unmistakable.

“That’s you!”  I said.

“Yes it is,” he confirmed, pleased I’d recognized him so easily. “I was in the paper.”

Deciding that was somehow worth a dollar, I gave him one.  He was grateful.

“Here,” he said, holding the paper out to me.  “Read what it says.”

I took it from him.  The picture had been snapped from over the shoulder of an older man in glasses wearing a dark polyester blazer.  The jacket identified him as part of the security firm hired to oversee operations, but he was not an especially imposing figure, and he looked more like a disgruntled sportscaster.  He frowned at the curly headed interloper (identified in the caption as “Theron Tyler, a homeless man”) standing knock-kneed on the heavy red carpet unfurled on the sidewalk.  Trash bags slung over one shoulder, arm outstretched and face turned to the sky in a dopey grin, he looked every bit the happy hobo.  Though the paper couldn’t have been more than a few days old, already it was scuffed, as if it had been dropped to the concrete and scraped.

“They took that picture of me right on Hollywood Boulevard,” he told me proudly.  “People saw me all over the world!”

“Theron Tyler?”  I asked, reading it ‘Thee-ron.’  “That’s you?”

“Theron,” he corrected me, pronouncing it like ‘heron.’  “That’s me alright.”

“Theron,” I repeated, handing him back the clipping.  “I can hear you’ve got an accent.  Are you from the South?”

“Yes I am,” he said, grinning a big, empty gums grin.  “Arkansas.”

“Arkansas!  What brought you here from Arkansas?”

“Oh, I came out for the weather,” he said. I guessed most people did.

I had a strange feeling of someone pulling up close beside me, and a thin man in a baggy leather bomber jacket and bandana suddenly eased into position in front of me.  Projecting a cool, disarming confidence, he greeted me as though we were old friends.  He was tall and lanky, and his light brown face was calm and open, despite a slight daze in his eyes.

“Hey man!  It’s good to see you, my brother!”  He enthused.  I didn’t know him, but he clasped my hand in a warm soul shake and pulled me closer in a partial embrace.  It was eight in the morning and there was booze on his breath you could smell when he talked, but none of that was cause to refuse a little brotherhood. He was clean and carried himself well enough to maybe pass for someone who didn’t live on the street.  We broke the hug and he stood at an odd angle, bowed back but solid, just a dandelion in the breeze.

Theron started to say something in an effort to reclaim the hijacked conversation, but the other man cut him off.

“Man, you ain’t got no teeth and I can’t understand a word you’re saying.  You probably already drunk.”  They knew each other, and his attitude wasn’t so much hostile as hierarchal; Theron was simply beneath his notice.

“Hang on now,” I interjected.  “You gotta give it to him.  He did make the paper.”

“Yeah!”  Theron said.  “Look!”  He held out the clipping proudly.  The other man took it and looked it over. 

“People saw me all over the world,” Theron insisted.

The other man sniffed, unimpressed.  “And you carrying around the same dirty garbage bags, ain’t you?  Damn!”

“At least I’m in the newspaper,” he boasted.

“Man, I like to stay out of the paper,” he said, not missing a beat as he handed the clipping back with disdain. He returned his attention to me. “Hey, let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“You got anything you can give me to help a brother out?” 

He may as well have been someone at the office asking if I could spot him a buck for the soda machine. A consummate pro, he operated on the presumption we both simply knew I was going to give him the money; it was like he wasn’t even asking.

His game was smooth, and as I dug for a dollar in appreciation, I noticed something I hadn’t before: he wasn’t traveling alone.  The man he was with stood off to the side, keeping close to the street.  He was a frightened looking brother, smaller, darker and dirtier than his friend.  His clothes were ratty, and he had wild eyes, bumpy skin and a chronic case of the shakes.  He was worse off than even sloppy, toothless Theron, since his spooky look left him in a position where the things that made him most in need of a little charity were intimidating enough to prevent anyone from offering.  It was his friend’s talent for show business that kept them both afloat, and he knew it well enough to maintain a safe distance while his partner worked, so as not to queer the deal. I watched him flinch as the 156 to North Hollywood heaved to a stop alongside the curb behind him.

“Listen,” I said, nodding to the bus, “that’s my ride.  I’ll have to catch you later. You guys take care of yourselves.”

“Alright alright.  Thank you, my brother,” the tall man said, walking backwards down the block as his nervous friend scuttled after him.  “I got a dollar!”  He shouted as a final jab at Theron.

“Bye!”  Theron said to me, refusing to acknowledge the other man’s taunts. 

I moved to board with the rest of the riders. Behind me, Theron tried to get the attention of a woman in business attire as she hurried past the alcove.

“’Scuse me, lady,” he called to her. “Do you know this man?”

copyright,  © 2007 Wyatt Doyle