The Shirt
The early-mid-aughts are over twenty years ago now. I got sober (again) in 2001, and my friend Charlie P. set me up for a service position. I took an AA meeting into a medical detox in midtown Manhattan near Carnegie Hall on Tuesday nights.
Back then, I was still sort of a big shot working on Wall Street. I still wore the uniform: a grey wool suit, a white button-down Brooks Brothers cotton shirt, and black Church's tassel loafers, a Hermès tie. I had a great collection of Hermès ties. I lived in a tiny apartment on York Ave in the 80s, but my wife and daughter lived full-time up at the farm in East Durham. I'd take the train up on Friday evening and back on Monday morning.
I carried personal cards with my name, cell phone, and personal email to give to people I met at AA meetings so they could contact me if they needed to. I also handed them out at the detox meeting.
One afternoon, I got a call from one of the guys I'd met at the detox. I'd remembered him as a well-spoken, handsome young black man, said he lived in Harlem. He said he had been living in a halfway house in downtown Manhattan since he got out of detox. He told me that his grandma had died. He said he had no dress clothes, and wondered if I could help him get a shirt so he could go to his grandmother's funeral. I asked him what his shirt size was and told him I'd get him a shirt and meet him at the halfway house the next day.
The next day, at lunch, I visited a local men's shop downtown, bought a shirt, and then met him at the halfway house. He was effusively grateful when I showed up. I handed him a bag with the shirt, and he thanked me again.
Then he explained that he needed forty bucks in cash so he could take a taxi to the funeral.
I took a subway token out of my pocket and told him to lose my number.
The Ring
At the north end of East Nashville (locals call the neighborhood Ingelwood) is a series of highway interchanges, Galatin Pike (31E) to Briley Parkway (155), Briley Parkway (155) to Ellington Parkway (31E), Interstate 65, and Interstate 24 mix and match in an engineering nightmare. Hundred-acre interchange after hundred-acre interchange of high-speed, modern automobile traffic leaves a driver lost without bearings. Google Maps is horrible in these interchanges.
One afternoon, I'm on my way to an appointment, not late, plenty of time to make it. However, I need to traverse the above-mentioned interchanges. As I circle down a loopy ramp, I notice a man waving. He's wearing dress slacks and shoes, a collared shirt in a snappy color (mango, saffron, tumeric?), and a full head of black hair, barbered, combed, and clean-shaven, standing near a dark-colored crossover SUV of the current type.
I hit the brakes, checking my rearview mirror is empty, and pull over a few feet in front of him. I have no concern for my own safety, don't really imagine what I can do to help, but perhaps I can. I don't carry cash - I should. I haven't had use for it since COVID. There's a BP station, a 10-minute round trip back on Gallatin, but I don't have a can. My niece wandered off with my jump pack a couple of weeks ago. Help change a flat? I roll down my window.
As he approaches, he places his right hand over his heart and says something like "salam alaikum". I'd heard that before on old Law & Order reruns or some Iraq War era movie. The 13th Warrior? It bothers me.
I say, "What's up?"
He starts into a story about his family and the car. I cut him off.
I ask, "How can I help?"
He takes a very large chunk of a gold ring from the pinky on his left hand and shows it to me. "Collateral", I think. Now I am offended. I've watched Better Call Saul too many times. I get images of Slipin' Jimmy.
I say, "Sorry, I can't help." I close the window and drive off.
Diabetus
Summer. In the afternoon, I went to the CVS in Madison to pick up my prescription. I'd been there before, pre-COVID, I'd used their drop-in clinic. I'd remembered it as clean, well-stocked, professionally staffed, and busy.
It was no longer clean; the shelves were shopworn, the staff at the checkout were missing, and an old woman in apparent cognitive decline was bumping into aisle end caps with her wheelchair.
I stepped out into the August afternoon heat and headed to my car across the parking lot, blinking from the sun high on my right. I saw a large black man, about my age and weight, walking toward me up from Gallatin Avenue. He nodded at me. He was wearing dark blue nylon shorts, slides with socks, and a sweated-out Yankees t-shirt, no hat. I nodded back.
As I approached my car, he called to me, "Hey, guy?" I turned around and saw him standing in the shade by the CVS building.
He said, "Can I ask you something?"
I said, "I don't carry money, other than that?"
He said he needed to get his diabetes medication filled. He showed me the lesions he had on his ankles (under his socks).
Those are tracks from injecting heroin, I think to myself. I try to keep an open mind. The guy showed me a prescription and said he needed $14.75 to refill it.
"Let's go in and see," I say to him.
We go in, the old lady in the wheelchair is still circling, and we move to the Pharmacy in the back. The pharmacists are busy, so we line up.
I ask him, "Is this going to get me in trouble with the Pharmacist?"
"Probably," He says.
I tell him I'll be back and go to the front of the store looking for an ATM. I haven't used an ATM since before COVID. At the Kroger, you could always get $20 with no service fee when you paid for your groceries, but they stopped that a while ago. It took me a while to get the $20 with a $3.50 service fee from the ATM.
As I turn around, the guy is on his way out. "The Pharmacist says I have to go to the community health center in Donelson to get this filled."
Donelson is going to be an hour, at least, each way by bus. Not something I'd look forward to in this heat.
I hand him the $20 and say, "Take care of yourself." I don't feel good about it.
