to make sure they aren’t misrepresenting themselves.”
“Louise,” he said.
“You don’t check out,” I said. “Your name’s so common it makes you hard to investigate, but what does come up has some pieces missing. I think I know what’s going on here.”
“This is making me very uncomfortable.”
“You’re free to leave. I can’t hold you here. But why don’t you listen to what I have to say, and then you can tell me if I’m right or wrong. Or just tell me to go to hell, whatever you want.”
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“He had a rough time,” I said. “He had a job and a girlfriend, and he lost them both at about the same time, and he took it hard. Slept fifteen or more hours a day, watched television the rest of the time. De-pression’s a self- limiting state, and sooner or later you generally find your way out of it, unless you go and kill yourself first. He managed to avoid doing that, but by the time he surfaced he was broke and three months behind on the rent, and he knew it was only a question of time before they locked him out of his apartment. He took his laptop and some of his clothes and put them in his car, and he was just in time, because two days later he went back and saw everything he owned out at the curb. He just turned around and walked away.” I could have told her this over the phone, I suppose, but it seemed to me she deserved more than that. So I’d called her at work and met her at five- thirty, in a coffee shop around the corner from her office.
“He wasn’t destitute,” I said, “but his credit cards were maxed out and he was very low on cash. He called all his contacts in the business, looking for freelance work, and a couple of people gave him some work. But that meant waiting to get paid, sometimes for months.
That’s evidently the nature of the business.”
“It’s the nature of every business,” she said.
“He looked for a place to live,” I said, “and he couldn’t find anything he’d want to live in for less than two thousand dollars a month. Even 228
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way out in Brooklyn or Queens everything he looked at was well over a thousand, and that meant coming up with a month’s rent and one or two months’ security deposit just to get in the door.”
“And he’d need furniture on top of that.”
“The rent alone was the killer. Even if he found a way to swing it, the monthly nut was going to be tough, because his prospects weren’t that great and he didn’t have a cash cushion to get him through the slow stretches. So he decided to hell with paying rent. He’s been living in his car.”
“You’re kidding. I didn’t even know he had a car.”
“It’s so old and beat up he can park it on the street, which is a good thing because he can’t afford to garage it. And it’s a Chevy Caprice, a big old four-door sedan with a roomy back seat.”
“And that’s where he sleeps?”
“He says it’s not that uncomfortable. He slept in it while he looked for an apartment, and he had grown used to it by the time he realized he wasn’t going to be able to find anything he could afford. So he went on living in it, and the only problem is making sure he’s always got a legal parking place. If he ever gets towed, he’ll have to come up with a few hundred dollars to get his car back from the pound, and he can’t afford to let that happen.”
“But he doesn’t look like somebody who’s living in his car. He shaves, he combs his hair, he wears clean clothes, he smells nice . . .”
“He belongs to a gym. It’s a good one, the membership costs him over a hundred dollars a month, but that’s a lot less than an apartment.
He shows up every morning, pumps some iron or puts in his time on the treadmill, then showers and shaves and puts on the change of clothes he’s brought with him. He keeps all his clothes in the trunk of his car and goes to a coin laundry when he has to.”
“And what about work? Is he really writing advertising copy?”
“Just like he said. He’s got his laptop, which he hides under the front seat of the car in case somebody breaks in. When he wants to go online he goes to a cafe with wireless access. I’m not too clear on what that is.”
“I know how it works. I’ve got a card for it in my laptop but I’ve never All the Flowers Are Dying
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used it. My God, do I know how to pick ’em or what? I find the man of my dreams and he’s living in the back of his car.”
“He’s not married,” I said, “and he’s not leading a double life.”
“How could he? It sounds as though he’s barely leading a single life.”
“He’s making ends meet. It’s hard for him to get ahead of the game, but he’s staying even, and that’s no mean trick in this economy. He’s a plucky guy. I have to say I liked him.”
“I liked him myself. Or at least I liked the person he was pretending to be.”
“The pretense bothered him,” I told her. “Our conversation was an uncomfortable one—”
“I can imagine.”
“—but he seemed relieved to have it all out in the open. He wanted to tell you but he didn’t know how.”
“ ‘Honey, it so happens I’m a bum.’ ”
“Well, he doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life living in his car.
He’s hoping to find full-time work, or build his freelance business into something that’ll put him back on his feet again. Anyway, he wasn’t sure how much you liked him, or whether the two of you had something that might last. If
