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And then it was just what I did.
Every weekday for two years, I bought two coffees at the kiosk beside the station. Mine with cream. His black. I’d hand him his cup and we’d talk for five minutes, and then I’d rush off to my office and my spreadsheets and my life.
Larry never begged me for anything. That’s the thing people don’t believe when I tell them. In two years, he never once asked me for money. He never asked me for anything at all. If I brought him something, he took it and thanked me. If I didn’t, he never mentioned it.
But he talked.
God, could that man talk.
Some mornings we discussed the weather like two farmers. Other mornings he complained about the pigeons, which he claimed had a personal grudge against him.
“That gray one,” he said once, pointing. “That one’s been casing me for a week. He’s planning something.”
“He’s a pigeon, Larry.”
“That’s what he wants you to think.”
One morning he looked down at my shoes and shook his head slowly, like a doctor delivering bad news.
“Who designed those?”
“They’re work shoes.”
“They were designed by somebody who hated feet, Sarah. Somebody who woke up one morning full of hate, looked down at his own feet, and thought, I’ll make everyone suffer like I suffer.”
I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my coffee. A man in a suit stared at me like I was crazy, a woman in heels laughing with a homeless man outside the F train.
That was Larry. I never knew his last name for the longest time. I never asked where he’d come from or how he’d ended up on that patch of concrete. It seemed rude, somehow, and he never offered. We just had our five minutes. Mine with cream. His black.
I want to be honest about something. I thought I was a good person for those five minutes.