Breakfast at Sally's

by Richard LeMieux

  I must have looked a little worried, because C laughed and said, “I’m being facetious.” He paused, then interjected, “Would you pass me the egg rolls?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Everything is so delicious. Thank you.”

  But C wasn’t finished with his Jesus fantasy yet. “You know, it’s my guess that he hasn’t changed much in two thousand years and would do pretty much the same thing he did last time: minister to the poor, heal the sick, and console the brokenhearted. He would go to the streets to feed the hungry and to clothe the cold.

  “He would ask why there are so many with so little, and so few with so much, and why, in such a land of plenty, people are begging in the streets and children are shivering in the cold.

  “He would be homeless.

  “With no money and with no army to protect him, the same thing that happened two thousand years ago would happen again. Those who wanted control over the people would see him as a threat. They would conspire against him. He would be charged with some crime and put in jail.”

  C stopped talking. Sandi looked our way to see if C was okay. He was getting tired.

  “You know,” C said, finally, “there hasn’t been a great writer since Steinbeck or Thomas Mann. Steinbeck thought that the writer must set down his time ‘as he can understand it’ and that he should ‘serve as the watchdog of society... to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults.’ If you wrote a book, could you do that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I responded. “I don’t think so.”

  “Today’s writers are not even writers!” C was raising his voice again. “They are manipulators! It’s been ingrained in them, taught in journalism school: Write what you know they want to read, what they agree with; run it through Microsoft Word; don’t preach to them; try to touch their emotions. Hell! I say witness! Write what you see! Witness! And it will be read.”

  Sandi brought a moment of cheer to our table with her smile and the warmth of two more flaming drinks. She also deposited a handful of fortune cookies. “Drinks and good fortune,” she said, as she quickly moved on to help other guests.

  C stood up. “Hey, let’s take these with us,” he said, picking up his drink.

  “Wait,” he said, setting his glass down. “I forgot this.” He picked up the dinner tab, pulled it close to his face. and squinted. He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a roll of bills, peeled off a few, and put them on the table. “While I’m at it, here’s a little for running me around today.” He handed me two ten-dollar bills.

  “Thanks,” I said, shocked. “Normally I would not take it, or let you pay for dinner either. But I am so broke. I—well, I’ll pay you back—someday,” I stammered.

  “Just buy someone else dinner some time when they really need it,” he said, nonchalantly picking up his glass again and heading for the door.

  I wondered where C got his wad of bills. But it was not my business, and I sure needed that twenty.

  It seemed bizarre walking out of a bar with drinks in hand, but C was an unusual person, and Sandi didn’t seem to care.

  “Pingan,” she said, and bowed as C headed for the door.

  “Pingan,” C responded, and bowed to her.

  “What does that mean?” I asked C as we climbed into the van.

  “Pingan?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “It means ‘peaceful, safe,’” C said, stoking his marijuana pipe. Then he flicked his lighter on and took a hit. “Would you kindly take me home, sir? I’m getting sleepy.”

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “I live in my RV, which I call the Armadillo, just two blocks south of the hospital. Do you know where the hospital is?”

  “I do,” I said.

  It was then that I realized that I, who had not had so much as a parking ticket in some three years, was driving around with two formerly flaming drinks in the cup holders, while C was smoking pot and Willow was still high. I had no insurance, no license for Willow, and I was not wearing my seat belt. If we were stopped by the police, I could go to jail for the rest of my life.

  Fortunately, we made it safely to C’s RV, and he stumbled out the van door, grabbing his duffel bag of books. “Pick me up at seven thirty if you want,” he said, leaning back into the van.

  “Okay.”

  “Peace. Be safe.” C held up two fingers, and then swung the van door shut.

  Chapter 3

  THE LADY IN RED

  I had noticed a parking lot at the Episcopal church about three blocks away, so I headed back up the hill to look for a place to crash there for the night. The reality of my current existence hit me once C’s largerthan-life presence exited the van.

  There were a couple dozen cars in the lot when I arrived. Apparently I wasn’t the first person to find this sanctuary. There was one spot left. I pulled in between an old Chevy station wagon and a Pinto and turned off the engine.

  It was a cold, clear night, and frost was already forming on the hoods of the cars. A hand wiped away the moisture that had formed inside the windows of the station wagon, and the face of a man appeared to check me out. He must have approved of my presence, or was at least relieved that I wasn’t the police, because he seemed to lie back down in the front seat.

  I opened the van door and began the process of preparing our bed. It was a routine that had a sense of ritual to it—it had been going on for five months now and would continue for another year. Willow would wait patiently while I shifted the clothes and the few cherished items I still possessed from the back of the van into the front seat. Then I would roll out a sleeping bag and cover the bag with a blanket. Willow and I had downsized from a 5,600-square-foot waterfront house to a 6-by-16-foot-long home on wheels. Every inch counted, and at times the placement of things became critical. Willow had to have her cup of water ready in the cup holder. She had to have a bowl of food on the front seat. The keys had to be placed where they would not get lost in the night; I had lost them once under a pile of clothes and didn’t want to go through that again.

  There was a slight variation to our ritual this particular night in that we were not alone. As I moved our meager belongings around, I saw a small hand in the back of the station wagon making a circle on the moist window to fashion a peephole. Little eyes peered out.

  “Go back to sleep, girls,” I heard a muffled voice say from inside the wagon.

  Willow, startled by the noise, sprang to the window and barked twice. “Shuuush, Willow!” I whispered urgently. “You’ll wake everyone up!”

  The little hands made bigger circles on the glass to form a porthole, and the faces of two children pressed forward. “I told you girls to go to sleep!” the voice said, more sternly this time. One little face disappeared. The other girl raised her hand and waved ever so gently. She looked at Willow and smiled. I waved back, and then her face too disappeared as she lay down.

  We continued with our ritual. When everything was in place, I would always take Willow for a quick walk before we settled in for the night. “Come on, girl. Let’s find some bushes,” I said, and I headed toward a grassy bank beside the church. Willow followed along and then headed for a light on the side of the building, so I followed her. The light shone down on what appeared to be a pile of blankets and clothes piled up under the eaves. Willow headed right for it. Then I saw her. A head of flowing blond hair was sticking out from under the blankets. The woman appeared to be sound asleep as Willow sniffed around her. “Willow. Come here,” I said, as quietly as possible. She either didn’t hear me or ignored my command, so involved in her sniffing that she didn’t care. “Willow, come. Come now,” I called out a little louder. She took one last sniff and trotted back to me.

  We went around the side of the church and found some bushes, which sufficed for our purposes, and then quickly scurried back up the bank to the van and climbed in the sleeping bag for warmth. It was going to be a cold night, but Willow never let me freeze. Once in the bag,
she crawled toward my feet, turned around and came back to put her head on my shoulder. When we were finally settled in, she exhaled a huge sigh from her little ten-pound body and cuddled close to keep us warm. I placed my hand on her side, where I could feel her little heart beating.

  Willow was truly a special creature. She never gave up on me—not once. She could be a clown, cheering me up when she knew I was down. She would hunch down on her front legs and bark at me, turning her head from side to side, and then jump up on her back legs as if to say, “Let’s play!” Then she would run in some wild, joy-filled fashion, which always made me laugh. I often wished I could inhabit her world.

  Tonight, the flaming drinks had left me a little giddy. I had to chuckle as I remembered Willow eating C’s marijuana bud and C ducking down in the front seat, out of the cops’ sight. I marveled at his ability to quote Steinbeck and Dr. King from memory. I could not even remember the salute to the flag or the Lord’s Prayer at the moment. In a little over twenty-four hours, I had gone from nearly ending my life by jumping off a bridge to buying drugs, going to the library, and drinking flaming Mai Tais with a very mysterious person. It felt good to laugh. From my prone position, I could see the cross high atop the steeple of the church.

  A hacking cough broke the silence. It was a big cough from a small child, one of the girls next door in the station wagon. On the day after Christmas, in a land so full and rich, why did a family with two small children have to sleep in a car?

  I put my arm around Willow and closed my eyes.

  It was at night when broken memories came to visit. The daytime hours were too full with trying to survive, and I had learned to slam the door when the past came calling. But tonight C’s spirited dinner discourse, or maybe the three flaming drinks, had my mind spinning. “Oh, what the hell,” I said to myself, and the door began to open.

  I remembered our trip to Italy and France for my fiftieth birthday. Sandra and I had never been to Europe; it was going to be a dream come true for both of us. I called her my wife, even though we weren’t married. It just came so naturally to do so. We had been together for seven years when we made the trip. The plan was to land in Rome and work our way to Paris so I could have my picture taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower on my birthday.

  We were not used to elegance—at least not the elegance Europe had to offer. Sure, we had stayed at the Westin and the Hyatt, but when we were escorted to our suite on the fourth floor of the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, we were overwhelmed. There were eighteen-foot-high ceilings with floorto-ceiling curtains and walls filled with tapestries. We ordered a bottle of champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, drew a bubble bath in the marble tub with gold-plated faucets, and climbed in together.

  The next morning we toured the great city. It was Good Friday, and Rome was abuzz. We saw the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, and all the wonderful places we could cram into one glorious day. Then it was off to Florence on a train for Easter, then to Tivoli and Venice, then to Monte Carlo and on to France. We walked through the great fields of flowers in Provence and toured the magnificent castles and gardens of the Dordogne region.

  It was all topped off with four days in Paris, meandering through the Louvre in an awestruck stupor, walking along the Seine to Nôtre Dame, people-watching from tables at the outdoor cafés, and sampling the cuisine and nightlife at the Folies Bergère and all that the “City of Lights” had to offer. Leaning against the rail at the top of the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the city as Sandra positioned herself to take a picture, I felt like a prince. “It’s his birthday!” Sandra announced to the other tourists. Many smiled and clapped their hands as several burst into song: “Happy birthday to you...”

  That was nearly ten years ago. Now I was a pauper.

  But I had opened the door to my memories, and it would not close easily. My mind was off its leash, and it insisted on wandering awhile.

  It went back to last Thanksgiving Day, 2002. That was the day I learned to beg.

  I was up in Poulsbo. I had used the last of my change to buy Willow a hamburger at the McDonald’s drive-thru. My gas tank was almost empty, and my stomach was growling. Desperate for money just to keep moving and get something to eat, I began to consider the only option I seemed to have left: begging.

  My whole life I had been a people person. As a sportswriter for the Springfield Sun, I had seen Woody Hayes motivate players at Ohio State and Sparky Anderson put the spark into Pete Rose. As a sales rep, I had sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising, convincing people they needed to invest in the product I was publishing. I wore the right suits and ties and kept my cordovans shined and did the corporate dance for twenty years. But this, this begging, was far more difficult.

  I had given to others on the street. They had all types of stories: “I need to buy a bus ticket to Spokane so I can go visit my dying mother.” “I lost my wallet this morning, and I need five dollars for gas.” I had always given, knowing all along that their tales were suspect. So I decided to just straight-up ask for money. No made-up stories. No sick grandmas waiting for my arrival. No lost wallets.

  I started at the store I had shopped at for many years—Central Market. It was a glitzy, upscale place with its own Starbucks, $120 bottles of wine, fresh crab, line-caught salmon, and oysters Rockefeller to go. It was a little bit of Palm Springs dropped into Poulsbo. The parking lot was full of high-priced cars: two Cadillac Escalades, three Lincoln Navigators, and a bright yellow Hummer. I had spent at least $200 a week there ($800 a month, $9,600 a year, $192,000 in twenty years), so I rationalized that I could beg there for one day—Thanksgiving Day at that.

  I was wrong.

  After watching forty people walk by, I finally asked a lady for help. “Ma’am, I’m down on my luck. Could you help me with a couple of dollars?” I blurted out.

  “Sorry,” she said. “All I have is a credit card,” and she moved on.

  A man in a red Porsche pulled in. I watched him get out of his car, lock the doors from his key-chain remote, and head for the store. “Sir, I hate to bother you. This is the first time I have ever done this, and I’m not very good at it. But I am down on my luck and need help. Could you—”

  “Get a Goddamned job, you bum!” he interrupted and kept walking.

  Stung, I wanted to run to the van and leave, but I knew I couldn’t go far; I barely had enough gas to leave the parking lot.

  I spent the next twenty minutes trying to recover from the verbal blast I had received and could not approach anyone else. But the exclamation point had not yet been slapped in place on my failure at begging. The young manager of the store, maybe twenty-five years old, came out to do the honors. “Sir, sir,” he called out to me as he approached. “We have a...” He halted mid-sentence. “Don’t I know you?” he asked instead.

  “Probably,” I replied. “I’ve been shopping here for twenty years.”

  “I thought I’d seen you in the store,” he said. “Well,” he sighed heavily, “a man complained about you begging in front of the store. You’re going to have to move on.”

  I could tell he didn’t want to hear about the $192,000 I had spent in his store. He just wanted to hear what I was going to spend today. So I said, “Okay.” He didn’t offer me a sandwich, a loaf of bread, a soy latte, or even a plain old cup of coffee.

  I had no choice. I had to keep trying. I decided to go across the street to Albertsons. As I walked back to the van, tears filled my eyes. I remembered Thanksgivings of the past. By now, I would be pouring wine for our family and friends, rushing to the door to welcome guests, and taking their coats to be hung in the hall closet. My home would be filled with the smells of turkey and sage dressing. At least twenty people would be there. Children would be jumping on the sofa and racing up and down the hallways and stairs. The football game between the Cowboys and the Packers would be blaring in the background. There would be a buzz. A younger, friskier Willow would stay close to the kitchen, hoping for the
first bites of the bird from the oven.

  But that was yesterday. Today, I drove across the highway to the “down-market” store, nestled in the strip mall between the drugstore and the card shop. I stepped out of the van to try my luck again. It was getting late, and the shoppers were rushing to get home to their festivities. I had little time to succeed.

  I saw an old friend of mine pull into the parking lot and get out of her car. She headed for the grocery store. I turned my back to her and hid behind a pillar. I waited for her to enter the store, and then I approached a man as he walked toward the entrance. “Sir, I’m down on my luck. Could you help me with a little money for food?” I asked.

  He walked away muttering, “Jesus Christ, now we’ve got worthless beggars on the streets of Poulsbo.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment against the failure and fatigue, and then I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Sir,” a lady was saying. As I opened my eyes and turned around, a lady in a red hat and an old red coat with a big brooch of an angel pinned to her lapel was standing there. She was digging through her purse as she talked.

  “I overheard your conversation with that man. I hope you don’t mind. I—well, I can help you a little bit,” she said, holding out some rolled-up bills. Her presence and the offered gift surprised me. I stood there a moment, looking into her eyes. “Here,” she said, reaching her hand out again. “Take it.”

  I reached out my hand and took the money from her. “Thank you so much,” I said softly. “This is very kind of you.”

  “Thank you. I know what...” she began, and then her sentence was interrupted by a cough. She clutched her purse to her chest with one hand and did her best to cover her mouth with the other. She stiffened and then bent her head toward the pavement as the cough from deep in her chest consumed her. She moved her hand from her mouth to her bosom and just held it there. When the cough subsided, she took a deep breath. She looked up at me with watery eyes. “I’ve had this darned hacking cough for a month or more now,” she said after she recovered. “I can’t seem to shake this cold. It’s going to be the death of me,” she added with a smile. “I’m going back to the doctor after the holiday.”