Sweat

“You’re welcome,” Jake replied, patting the boy on the head.

Traffic snarled at the intersection of Constitution and Twenty-Second, and it wasn’t the result of driver error. The Department of Transportation had cleverly designed the intersection in such a fashion that Route 66, a major highway, dumped directly onto an already congested twenty-five mph street. For added confusion, and to test driver reaction time, a stoplight rested at the foot of a very short off-ramp.

Well here I am, Jake thought, checking his watch.

He sat down on a dark green park bench with its wrought iron legs and stretched one arm along the back as if making a move on an imaginary date. He checked his watch again. He was right on time. Here I am. Where are you?

The light turned red and Jake’s attention turned toward the homeless man in the median who went to work on the cars stopped in traffic. He approached the window of every vehicle, holding a sign that simply, and quite needlessly, read “Homeless.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Jake whispered to himself.

Jake let the morning sun wash down on his face as he watched the cycles of the cars stopping and the homeless man making his silent pitch. It was an amazing study in sociology. People in suits, in air-conditioned cars, with the windows up, and the radio on. People with breakfast in their stomachs and a three dollar drive-thru super soy latte resting in the cup holder. The privileged going face-to-face with the unfortunate.

The homeless man seemed oblivious to his own plight. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were old, but neither of which were dirty, torn, or tattered. He held his head high and looked the drivers in the eyes. In ten minutes he successfully panhandled his way, through pity or determination, to two dollars and twenty-three cents.

Jake was ready to give up. He looked over his shoulder at the wide stretch of grass and a group of people his own age playing Frisbee football. It was a beautiful morning, even if he was being stood up on his blind date. It had only taken a few weeks of work to realize that sitting on a park bench was better than being in the office. Jake turned back to the homeless man just in time to catch his sociology lab rat heading right for him.

“Follow me, Jake,” was all he said as he passed in front of the bench, the stench of eau de homeless trailing behind him.

Jake sprang to his feet, mouth gaping, and fell into position two paces back. The unshaven man in jeans, t- shirt, and worn sneakers walked fast, back straight as a board, a posture rarely seen in the slouching Generation X and seemingly spineless Generation Y. He walked with an unmistakable purpose, and given the direction they were heading, Jake surmised the only possible destination was the Potomac River.

Jake followed his leader into the shadows near the riverbank, the concrete arch of the bottom of the Roosevelt Bridge forming the homeless man’s roof. He shared the barren ground and man-made retaining wall of the river with two other address-lacking tenants. Boxes, plastic, garbage bags, and winter clothes were stacked neatly in piles, wrapped with bungee cords of various colors and lengths.

“Please have a seat, Jake,” the homeless man said, gesturing to an old chair with a torn wicker seat and cut-off legs. Jake took the offer and sat down, his knees nearly straight, his feet out in front of him. It felt like a beach lounge chair, without the sand, and it was surprisingly comfortable. The view wasn’t bad either. Kennedy Center to the right, the Tidal Basin in the distance to the left.

Al Korgaokar, homeless person extraordinaire, emptied his morning’s change into a small hip-hugger bag and zipped it shut. One of the straps on the bag was torn, repaired with a mix of string and rubber bands. Al pulled a red milk crate from his shelf, a crawl space in the upper reaches of the “apartment” where the ground met the bridge structure above. He flipped the crate upside down and sat down next to Jake.

“My name is Al Korgaokar,” he said, enunciating every syllable carefully. The measured, almost insultingly slow pronunciation was the product of forty-eight years of people butchering his name.

“You can call me Al,” he said trailing off into the first verse of the Paul Simon song. Jake’s first thought was that Al could have been an extra in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His second thought was if Al was a singer by trade, he needed no further explanation for his homelessness.

Al Korgaokar didn’t act homeless, even among the packrat existence of his living room. Deep blue eyes flashed both a warmth and brilliance, mixed with a certain inexplicable flightiness. His reddish-brown hair reached just below his earlobes and ran around his neck in a perfect line—a cut given by a local homeless man who specialized in hairstyles for his peers. “The Hairman,” as the homeless barber was known, charged fifty cents or a cup of decent booze, per cut. The man with the scissors and toothless grin never went back to the shelter broke or sober.

“Or you can call me ‘K,’” Al continued. “A lot of my friends here on the street like that one.”

“I’ll go with Al. I’m Jake Patrick, but I guess you already know that.”

“Yeah. Knew the name was Jake. Jake the Snake—an average quarterback with a great name.” Al dug through his belongings for something he didn’t find and looked up. “So, Jake, what can I do for you? What’s your problem?”

“Actually, I don’t have a problem.”

“Sure you do. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Well, it is not really my problem,” Jake said.

“Even if it wasn’t your problem before, it is now. You just learned the first rule of politics. Don’t care. If you don’t care, it won’t be your problem.”

Jake shrugged his shoulders and nodded simultaneously in a sign of complete confusion. “I’m here because Marilyn said you might be able to help.”

“Jake, Jake, Jake. Keep up. I’m not a psychic and you’re not famous, at least not yet. I already know why you are here. You gotta stay one step ahead—that is the first rule of survival.”

“I was answering your question.”

“Some questions are rhetorical. And your answer wasn’t an answer to the question I asked.”

Jake wanted to leave, but knew he would regret it. “So you know Marilyn?” he asked dubiously.

“I know what you’re thinking. How in God’s name does Marilyn know a homeless guy?”

“Well, yeah, I guess that is as good a place to start as any.”

“How about a more tactical question? Something like…how in the world did she contact me?”

Jake didn’t have the energy to keep up. “Okay. I’ll bite. How did she contact you?”

“Like the rest of the world.”

“Which is…?”

“She called.”

“She called?”

“Jake the snake, for heaven’s sake,” Al responded, laughing at his own rhyme before turning to the right and digging through a box of what any normal homeowner would call crap. He pulled out an article from the New York Times.

The below-the-fold headline read: Thirty Percent of Tokyo Homeless are Homeowners. Al handed the article to Jake. Jake glanced at the headline and put the paper in his lap.

“What’s wrong? Don’t believe everything you read?” Al asked.

“No.”

“Maybe you’re smarter than you look after all.”

“So you’re a homeowner?”

“Yes. I’m a homeowner. Don’t I look like one? Own a car, too. Homelessness is nothing more than a state of mind.”

“Never looked at it that way.”

“Most people wouldn’t.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Shoot. I’ve got nothing pressing,” Al said, inhaling deeply as he stretched his arms out to embrace his environment.

“If you’re a homeowner and you are choosing to be homeless, why don’t you just lend your house to someone who doesn’t want to live on the street? Let someone live there who needs it?”

“I do, Jake. My brother lives there. He is more needy than anyone I’ve ever met.”