Beans for
Breakfast

He's wall-eyed, has a weathered face, stocking cap, & a thin goatee. He came up to me one day and asked if I had any baseball cards that I could give him. I don't know where that came from, maybe he saw me reading a comic and assumed I was a collector.

So over the last couple of years he's been coming up to me and asking if I have any cards, pictures, slides, or anything for him. I always tell him no and then we'll walk a little and he'll tell me a convoluted story about finding a box of slides in a dumpster or about someone giving him their expired passport.

His stories are kind of difficult to explain, because they kind of have there own logic and he sometimes leaves out key parts of the story.

One time I was having lunch with a friend at Noodle Studio, he walked by and waved. A couple of weeks later he said, "Last time you were with your wife."

He's starting to grow on me. He's some kind of anthropologist/artist. That's what I've decided.

I gave that guy a few odd postcards today.

I think that the wall-eyed kooky guy I met awhile back might be homeless now. He's been hanging out in the park near my building for the last few weeks. He sits on a little duffell bag, among the homeless kids and dogs laying in the grass, staring into space as if he's waiting for something. Another thing, his conversation is a bit less disorienting than it used to be. I remember that he used to ramble on with confusing monologues that had only their own internal logic. These days, his conversation wanders a bit but there's usually a hint of clarity in what he says.

Yesterday I had to catch a bus back from the U District after seeing a movie. Bus fare is now $1.25, but I just had a one and a ten dollar bill. I was thinking of going into a store and asking them to break my ten, but everyone's always so mean about that, plus it was 6:00 and stores were already closing. I paced over to Zanadu Comics and peaked inside as they turned the closed sign around. When I turned around to walk back to the bus stop, I ran into a friend of a friend browsing the dollar book rack outside Twice Sold Tales. We said hello and I continued on my way. After a couple of steps I spun around and asked, "Hey Wayne, you wouldn't happen to have a quarter would you?" As I was saying it I realized that it sounded like I was spare-changing. He stiffened defensively, started to turn away and ask "What?" Embarrassed, I explained that I just didn't have the right change for the bus. He was relieved and sympathetic, and fished around in his backpack for some change.

This morning I walked over to Kinkos to send a fax. While waiting for the light to change at Broadway I saw my friend, the card collector, approaching from about a block away. We waved, and he broke into a run to meet me.

He made it across the crosswalk while the light turned yellow.

"How are you doing?" I asked him.

"Oh, I'm getting along okay."

Since I bought him a cup of coffee awhile back, we've developed the routine that whenever I see him I'll buy him something to eat at Jack in the Box. We stood together on the corner for a moment longer.

I bought lunch for the card collector at Kentucky Fried Chicken again the other day. At one point he told me that he was dyslexic and couldn't read because his father had taken him out of school early on. This revelation clarified a couple of things. His dyslexia kind of explains his confusing word choices (like when he called the Salvation Army bell-ringer a "door opener"). And regarding his obsessed with photographs, cards, and slides: I think he likes pictures because the world of the written word is so confusing to him.

I bought lunch for The Card Collector at Kentucky Fried Chicken again the other day.

He told me about the $25 a night hotel he'd stayed in the night before. "It was nice because I could get under the covers and press the buttons on the TV." He showed me the key that they'd let him keep for the day under the assumption that he'd be able to get together $25 for that night. I took this as a hint and gave him enough money for the night.

He asked me to keep him company for a few minutes, so I sat and stared out the window. He talked about how things had been going, about sleeping outside, how thankful he was for what the lord above had given him, and about the job and apartment a church had promised him weeks ago.

I was feeling a little tired and stiff. When the conversation lulled, I explained that I was a little worn out and that that was why I wasn't very talkative. As I said that, I realized how stupid it was for me to be talking about my minor discomfort to him - using the same language that he might use when describing the effects of sleeping in a doorway.

Then he told me, "I wish there was something I could say to heal your pain."

Today the card collector stopped by my apartment, repeating the words over the intercom that he'd used the last time he came by, "Jeff? This is Robert. I need your help."

He produced a letter from his Salvation Army case worker. It was brief, addressed to "To whom it may concern". It just said that Robert is homeless and is trying to find a place to stay. There are a few prospects, but they won't be available immediately. "He would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give him." I was a little confused about what it was for. Was this documentation that he's homeless? But he seemed to think that it would explain something about his visit.

It's cold and rainy out and I can't exactly send Robert out - he has a cold. But I do, I send him away with a few dollars during the afternoon hours that I'm out. He's going to the Hurricane Cafe, he tells me.

The flat grey sky and steady drizzle give no respite to my gloomy mood and sleep-deprived brain.

I have some breakfast at the increasingly cave-like Bleu Bistro. As soon as I sit down someone puts on the soundtrack to Rushmore. I blankly watch everything that's happening outside. The chai that I drink doesn't cut the edge off my mood either.

I run into Robert twice while I'm out and we just trade nods.

I finish reading my book at Bauhaus and head back home. I go on a cleaning binge - clear all the papers and books from the coffee table, wash dishes, and clean the bathroom.

Robert is back around five and we listen to a little NPR while I surf the net. He just sits and when the silence becomes unbearable, I suggest he see what's on TV.

He turns on one of those Sunday evening low-budget action shows. I figure there'll be a meeting of the minds when Enterprise comes on, but he asks, "Do you think this looks exciting?" I say it looks good and he humors me, I think.

Quarters are close. Neither of us can sneeze without the other knowing about it. I'm pretty much framing his whole day for him - when he eats, sleeps, and watches TV. He goes along with it - maybe because he has no preference, maybe because he's trying not to step on any toes. I'd be more comfortable, I think, if it seemed like he had a plan.

It turns out that Robert did have a plan, confused though it was. This morning he suddenly explained that he was eligible for a substantial discount at his hotel, if he were to take them a letter from his case worker explaining his situation.

"You mean a letter like this one?" I grabbed the confusing letter he gave me the other day. (Robert is illiterate.)

"That letter is for you. I can go to my case worker and get a letter for the hotel today."

"I'm pretty sure that this letter was meant for the hotel."

So he's gone for awhile with money for a discounted room; and I have some more elbow room. There are some more stories to tell - anecdotes he told me about his background. I'd rather go along to other things (nothing specific I'm afraid), so they will have to wait for another time.

The phone woke me up at six in the morning. I ignored it, letting my voice mail answer. It rang again shortly after and I got up to turn off the ringer. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and looked at my caller ID. The calls had come from my building's intercom system. I figured it was Robert. A few days before, he'd called several times in a row from the building intercom and later from the Salvation Army. There had also been a string of messages from him while I was out the night before.

There were several messages on my voicemail, all from the last fifteen minutes. Robert was standing outside my building, effectively leaning on the doorbell. The first message was basically, "Jeff, are you there?" Followed by a couple where I could just here him moving around. He'd spent the night at a mission and everyone had been put out in the street at 4:00. It was raining. He got increasingly agitated over the next couple of messages. "I've been trying to contact you all week. I know you're there." "It's raining and cold and I'm going to get the flu." "I have a funny feeling that you're mad about the hundred bucks you loaned me. Well, I'm going to leave now and I won't bother you again until I can pay you back." There were a few more messages, where he waited for me to pick up the phone until the intercom hung up on him.

I answered the phone on the next call and told him that I couldn't help him today.

"I'm not here for money," he told me, "I just need a place to rest."

I told him that I wasn't talking about money either and repeated that what I'd given him before wasn't a loan.

He started to talk again, but the intercom cut him off. He probably thought that I'd hung up on him. He didn't call back.

I guess I've drawn a line between my hospitality and my need for a life. Unfortunately, due to my mode of delivery, his image of me has probably (rightfully) skewed from guardian angel to selfish and careless devil. I've never seen him betray an ounce of bitterness or pessimism before this incident. And now, he's probably feeling worse than ever and I turned my back on him. I hope that, the next time I run into him, he's doing better. And I hope that he's not too mad to even talk to me.

On Friday I went out late to rent a movie. I walked into Broadway Market and saw Robert passed out on a bench over his belongings. He looked horrible, weary, and worn out. Worse than I've ever seen him. I was really scared. I sat down next to him and shook him awake.

His voice was low and rough. He mentioned the security guard who'd decided to let him be and we touched briefly on the morning wake-up call he given me a couple of days before. It was cold outside and if he needed a roof over his head on one day, this was it. So I roused him and we walked over to the cash machine for hotel rent. We walked up to Dick's for a couple of burgers and I left him there half-awake, with a burger and some cash tucked away into the plastic garbage bag that he was carrying his blanket in. He was talking to a homeless youth acquaintance of his. I wasn't sure how he was planning to get to the hotel in Belltown.

Yesterday he appeared beside me at Vivace, looking as fresh as ever. I bought him some cofee and we sat down. He rambled on for a long time. He vaguely remembered seeing me the other day, but wasn't sure if it had really happened.

Anyway, things are okay. We're on good terms. Also, if I understand correctly, in recognition for his efforts to get the new mission started up, one of the missions has reserved a bit of floor space for him to sleep on whenever he needs it.

Robert tracked me down at Vivace. He basically confirmed his continuing purgatory. The end is nearer than the beginning; he's supposed to have his subsidized apartment on the first and he says that his church may start paying him for his work setting up the mission and some janitorial work.

He seems a little hurt since I've been less able to help him with the rent just as he's needed the most attention and my supply of optimistic moral support has dried up. When I gave him a few dollars for coffee he said, "I'm going to find a smaller cafe. Everyone seems to be in their own little world here."

I looked around and agreed, "Yeah, I guess so."

After he left, I looked again and thought, "There's nothing wrong with that!"

Maybe extroverts feel excluded in a room full of close conversations and lone people hovered over books and papers. Or maybe he was onto something, that hard to pinpoint shelled-in attitude that people sometimes associate with Seattlites.

My acceptance of Robert's optimism is just naive wishful thinking. For the last week or so, he's been saying that he was supposed to get a subsidized apartment on February 1. But I ran into him yesterday (he's turning up most days now) and he immediately handed me his case worker's card and a post-it note that had the name of the facility and "wait list 10 months to a year" written on it in pencil. He said that his caseworker had told him to give it to me.

Robert has talked occasionally about a photographer he used to work with who he calls Doc Holliday. A lot of their work involved photographing military personnel. Through these military contacts they accumulated a book filled with sensitive information and photographs. Doc Holliday held onto this book when he moved to Burbank, California. The book gives him the power to call in any number of favors from people who wouldn't want its secrets to get out. So far, it seems, no one has had to use this power.

My heart sank the first time he told me this. I'd never known Robert to carry his ramblings off into any paranoid fantasies.

Doc Holliday isn't getting any younger - "He's in the 70's," as Robert says. So he's asked Robert to take responsibility for it. Robert wants nothing to do with it. The book scares him. Once your fingerprints are on the book, they will know who you are. You see there's this computer -

When he started talking about the computer, I interrupted him. "Robert . . ."

He looked at me shaking my head. "I know this sounds hard to believe . . ."

"This isn't real. It's a story that you made up or that someone else told you."

"No. It's real," he said. He dropped the subject.

He stopped by another time and started talking about his hopes for the future. Once he gets back onto his feet, he wants to save up enough money to buy a building that he'll open up to the homeless. From the building he'll provide services to help the unemployed find work. When drug addicts and drunks stop in, he'll somehow get them to quit. Everyone will be happy, especially Robert, he really likes helping people. Some Italians have offered to come up from Burbank to help anytime he needs it. You see, he finally caved in and accepted the book from Doc Holliday.

My face fell in disappointment and he noticed.

"I know you think it's just a story. But this is serious business."

He's too trusting and good-natured. I assume a senile friend told him some version of this story and he embellished it further with his own misunderstandings. Written words confuse him, so it makes sense that he would believe that a book could hold so much power.

The city I live in is one where hobos and loners are thoroughly representative of the place, where superstition thrives, and where people often have to live by reading the signs and surfaces of their environment and interpreting them in terms of private, near-magical codes. Moreover, these people seem to me to be not sports or freaks, but to have responded with instinctive accuracy to the conditions of the city.

-Jonathan Raban, Soft City

Robert stopped me on Broadway and started digging around in the Nordstrom bag he's been carrying his things in. "I finally got my camera out of storage and bought a roll of film. But I ruined the film when I tried to load it."

He found the camera and handed it to me. I looked it over. It had a zoom lens ("It brings the picture to you," as Robert put it) and everything seemed to work, though there was a small piece missing at the top of the casing.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Could you loan me some money to get another roll of film? I'd really like to take some pictures."

I told him that I didn't have any small bills on me, but agreed to buy him lunch. He gobbled his pizza in record time. He talked about his camera while I finished.

"Don't you think it would be more important to feed yourself right now then it would be to take pictures?"

Eventually he became resigned to the fact that he wouldn't have the chance to take any pictures. And I suggested he sell the camera.

"Would you be willing to give me ten bucks for it?"

"No. I don't really need it. But I'll bet you'd get more than that for it at a pawnshop."

I finished my lunch and we walked over to the pawnshop. The man at the counter took one glance at the camera and turned it down.

"Sorry, Nobody's buying the cameras that I have now. I definitely won't be able to get rid of something broken like that."

Robert put the camera back in it's pouch and we went outside.

"Well, that's too bad."

We walked a block and before we split I gave him a ten-dollar bill.

He started crying and asked for a hug.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm just so happy. Now I can get some more film. I'll have Zed help me load it so that I don't break it this time. I'll be able to take some pictures now."

"You really didn't want to sell that camera."

"No, I didn't."

Robert tracks me down at a cafe. "Doc Holliday sent me some more artwork. And I wanted you to see it."

I get him a cup of coffee and bring it over to the table. He pulls a big manila envelope out of his bag and hands it to me. I empty its content out in front of me. A couple of dozen slides fall out.

I hold one up. The words "Greece" and "Hellas" (in Cyrillic letters) are stamped into the little white frame. It looks like it came from an educational filmstrip or some other commercially available slide show. I hold it up to a light so that I can make out the picture. It's an image of a Greek ruin.

We go through the little pile one slide at a time. I look at the slide and describe it to him, then pass it along to Robert.

"Oh, that's Greece? Interesting!" He squints carefully through the little window, letting it soak in. I'm not sure how much of the picture he can make out. (The word "Greece" will enter his vocabulary for a few days. "I was talking to this Greek guy . . .")

There are a few more slides from the Greece series and there's a batch of photos from Mt. Vesuvius, the captions printed on the frames are in Italian.

I come across the first personal slide in the collection and hold it up to the light, "This is a man. Who is this?"

"I don't know."

I look again and try to guess when the picture was taken based on the man's clothes. Then I notice the fish. One would think that I'd notice the two foot long fish that he was holding out beside him in the classic, I caught this fish pose.

There were a few more images of the fisherman and his family and a batch of tourist photos - from Copenhagen according to the handwritten caption on the frames.

Robert will produce another pile of slides every day until his supply is exhausted. Though the subjects of the slides are limited to the Greece, Mt. Vesuvius, fisherman, and Copenhagen sets, each day's show will be different.

The meals I give Robert are barely helping him sustain himself. I buy him lunch and give him a five or a ten dollar bill for "coffee money" every day. I can spare it. But he comes back every day, lost and hungry. And I see no end to this. It has really been weighting me down.

For a couple of weeks Robert was showing up constantly - tracking me down at coffeeshops, finding me on the street. He was dialing my apartment from the building intercom several times a day. He only knows the numbers to press to reach my phone, he doesn't know the code to hang up and can't read it off the instructions. So he'd stay on the line through my voicemail message, past the beep, waiting silently. When the intercom system hung up automatically after a minute, he'd redial immediately.

Robert came by earlier than usual, in tears. He sat for awhile, recovering somewhat over a pot of tea and a bowl of corn flakes. I eventually shooed him out, and we walked down Broadway a bit, untalkative. I could see that he was barely holding himself together, weighted down by his bag, a pained expression, his occasional comments barely lucid. I imagined that once we'd parted, he'd be alone like this, lost on Broadway, crying again, with eight dollars to get him through the day. "What are you doing next?" I asked him. "I'm going anywhere that has coffee," he laughed bitterly, "But I'm so confused right now - I don't know where to go." I rearranged the vague plans in my head and took him down to Bauhaus. He selected the donut with the most colorful sprinkles and then chose the most out-of-the-way table to sit at upstairs. He slowly perked up as he worked his way through two cups of coffee and as he let the words tumble from his mouth. Soon after he'd reached the point where I could picture him making it through the day without crumbling, I got ready leave. "Take care of yourself Robert," a hand on his shoulder. It was the wrong thing to say, he looked hurt. I tried again, "It sounds like you have a couple of things in the pot brewing?" He answered briefly and we parted ways.

A woman is wailing in Spanish at one of the reserved busker stations in Pike Place Market. She expertly works the strings of a tiny guitar with her bare fingers. I'm surprised that her fingers aren't bleeding - I'm surprised that the guitar isn't bleeding. Her voice is loud and confident, amplified by the acoustics of the cement walls around her. If these walls don't crumble in the wake of a sustained note, then they'll withstand an earthquake with no problem. I think I recognize her voice, she's the woman with the unlikely last name, a city or a country. (Yves Las Vegas.) She was in a short-lived band with Krist Novaselic. Her hair is cut close to the scalp and she's wearing a heavy jacket, she could almost pass for a boy. Her guitar case, open in front of her for donations, is guarded by a trio of naked Barbie dolls. She has a pile of homemade CDs and a little sign that says "Breast-Reduction Surgery Fund - Really". I listen from upstairs for awhile. Everyone who walks by is compelled to stop and listen for awhile. Eventually after she's finished a song, I go downstairs. She's already ringing out the next song. I hold up a twenty-dollar bill before dropping it in the guitar case, to show that I'm paying for the CD that I'm taking. She doesn't see me, her eyes are squeezed shut. I doubt she'd see me even if she were playing with her eyes open. She's somewhere else entirely.

"I was trying to get to sleep, up front in the driver's seat, but there was this really hyper guy moving around in the back of the van, keeping everyone awake. A. said that some ice water would calm him down, so he told me to go out and get some. It was about twelve o'clock and I didn't want to go out there, I wanted to get some sleep. It's A.'s van though - he's the boss - so I walked around until I found a place to get water. I got back to the van and the water really calmed him down, he went right to sleep as soon as I got back. I don't know why."

"Uh, Robert . . ."

"Yes?"

I try to figure out what to say, "Oh, never mind."

Robert had been saying that he wanted me to help him write a letter to his mother. I'd been putting him off, "We'll talk about it later." I had visions of long paragraphs spiraling into nowhere and I didn't have the patience to make sense of it. One of his pastors turned him down too. Robert said that the pastor had confessed that he couldn't read or write either. I assume that Robert was filling some gaps in the story or that the pastor has a cruel sense of humor. Finally, yesterday, I said, "Okay. Let's get this letter written." And this is what Robert dictated to me:

Sorry I can't make it down for your birthday. I'll try to figure out a gift to send you for Mother's Day. I hope you're feeling well.

From your son,
Robert

I tried to draw him out, "Is there anything else you want to say?" "No, that was it." We went out and got a card, he chose a postcard with Mount Rainier on it. I asked him for his mother's address. He thought for a second, before admitting that he no longer had it.

Dale is in his 60s, a retiree. He hangs out in coffee shops and plays chess. Sometimes when he doesn't have an opponent, he talks to me. He's always fishing for some piece of information, but his questions are too vague for me to figure out what his angle is.

Dale asks me what I think about the stock market. "Are we bound for a recovery?"

"I don't really know. I don't follow it, I don't understand it as well as I should. My brain doesn't think that way."

He prods a little more, his face never revealing what he thinks of my answers. "What do you think of the economy in general? Are people you know finding jobs?"

Robert called earlier, frustrated about his slow progress at reading lessons, hungry and broke, and feeling lonesome. I told him I could meet him in the park and give him some money for a burger, but that I couldn't visit with him.

Robert was standing at the corner watching my door when I went out a little later. I walked over with a ten-dollar bill in my pocket and talked to him for a minute. I gave him the ten-dollar bill, aware that to outside appearances this looked like a drug deal, and returned his hug.

Now I'm sitting here feeling a little lonely myself, waiting for Ingrid's phone call, and trying to write about Robert. But I'm not getting anything down, not even a basic description of our conversation over coffee this morning. And I'm realizing that I felt lonelier talking to Robert than I did as soon as we parted.

Maybe part of that is sympathy for Robert - he has pretty much nothing and nobody. But more than feeling sympathy, I think I just feel empty when I see him. I see that the gap between what he can provide for himself and what he needs will always be wider than what anyone will be able to give him. No matter how his situation improves, he will always need exactly as much emotional support from me as he needs now.

I feel emptier each time I see him now. I try to separate Robert from the rest of my life, but sometimes it seeps in. And now I feel like I need to push him farther into the background of my life and move on.

Robert is walking on the other side of the street, peering at me through his good eye. (Through his good eye, rather than with his good eye, because when he looks at me from that far away I get the sense of being looked at from behind a telescope. It's as if he felt that if he were to blink or lose focus, he might not be able to find me again.) I wave to acknowledge that I see him and he slows down, then stops.

He turns his head, keeping me in sight, as I cross the street. When I reach him, I ask, "How are you."

He says the usual, "I'm hanging in there."

"Do you have a place to stay these days?"

"No. I was staying at Angela's, Linda's sister. But she's out of town for a late Christmas thing. She's taking care of her mom who has diabetes - just like my mom."

"That's too bad."

"I guess I should watch out. It's supposed to run in the family."

"Uh huh."

"Say, I wonder if you could loan me five dollars. I'd like to go over to the coffee shop for a cup of coffee and some donuts. That's what I want. I'd really like some donuts."

"You know, you should eat better. You should get some soup or something like that." I stop to think of something that he'd be more likely to eat, "Or if not soup, I don't know . . . hamburgers. You'll be less likely to get diabetes if you eat better." I half made that up. I don't really know what I'm talking about.

"I didn't realize that. I'll have to think about that. Ok. Soup and hamburgers."

He's trying to repeat my words so that I'll understand that he'll consider my advice. But he's not really worried about his health or about piecing together money for a week's rent at the dumpy hotel. He's busy thinking about filling his stomach and passing a couple of hours' time. How could there be a this week or a this year when it's always this afternoon.

I'm pedaling slowly up the hill in low gear. I spy my homeless friend, Robert, on the other side of the street up ahead of me. He's pacing around outside his church. He moves toward the entrance and peeks through a window, then steps closer to the big doors. He grabs the handle of one door and gives it a tug. It doesn't budge. He takes hold of the other door's handle, pulls, and it remains closed. He reacts by not reacting - both doors are locked, as he knew they would be.. His movements show an absence of disappointment, of frustration, and of concern. The only emotional condition that shines through is tiredness. Other feelings are warehoused somewhere beneath his skin. Robert lowers his arms to his sides and turns mechanically, toward the street. Now he sees me. He stops and stands there in the alcove. I free a hand from my handlebars and give him something like an encouraging wave. He doesn't wave back. He just watches, his gaze shows the same detached and unmoved reaction.

Now I'm under the microscope. My movements are amplified 10x. Until I'm safely out of Robert's view, my forward movement feels slowed, and my pedaling seems disconnected from my progress.

One afternoon, about a year and a half ago, I was buying lunch for Robert. He was depressed, and I wasn't feeling up to attempting to steer him toward a more upbeat mood. We were standing in line to order. The song that was playing on the cafe's speakers ended, and Ring of Fire came on. Just to break the silence, I said, "Is this Johnny Cash?" Robert rose straight out of his slump and his face brightened with recognition, "Yes, it is. I love Johnny Cash." We sat down to eat and Robert went on for a good twenty minutes on Johnny Cash. When I left him at the end of the meal, he was in a cheery mood.

There goes Robert, bundled up against the weather, walking through the parking lot across the street. I'm at Bauhaus, reading a book and drinking cocoa. I only see Robert from behind, but his left glasses lens is visible from this angle. His face is lopsided or his glasses are askew or his head is turned slightly this way, and there's that big lens. It feels like he's staring back at me through it.

I went to see Master and Commander last night. The fire alarm went off in the theater and the audience was herded outside. They fed us free passes and sent us away. But before that happened, there was a scene in the movie where the ship was preparing for battle. Aubrey lifted a spyglass up to his eye to study the enemy ship. He flinched. What he saw in the scope was the French captain standing out on deck, peering back at Aubrey through his own spyglass. That's what seeing the lens staring at me from the other side of Robert's head feels like. Robert sometimes stops by my usual haunts to see if I'm around to buy him coffee. And I assume that he was just in here, and that he either didn't spot me, or he decided that he'd be bothering me if he did come over to talk. (Chances are, I would have been bothered.)

Now he's passed out of sight behind a building. There are no sidewalks on that side of the street. I guess he might be camped out under the overpass.