The Marigold Eater

Sunset on the boulevard of dreams is hardly a way to describe the squalor that is this stretch of my walk to work from my neighborhood home to the glass and steel monument to many successful acquisions. Partially emptied paint cans tipped on their sides drip their contents into what was once a small stream that has long dried up. An assortment of detritus built up over years of neglect. I recognize the tattered remnants of fast food containers that were once styrofome clamshells; ancient debris.

I duck past the the sprawling palo verde trees that have overgrown the twisting chain link fences that separate man and beast. Their flowers, having fallen, litter the ground in growing drifts thanks to the listless wind. I am always wary as I pass. The tree’s gangly branches obscure my view, and I’m no fool; I won’t be taken by surprise. But I am anyway, surprised that is. I wasn’t expecting the cat. I see the wanton curl in his tail, so I lean down to pet him, if only because I don’t want his sullied white and gray tabby hair and dust clinging to my carefully pressed, seersucker slacks. What kind of impression would that give the clients? I shoo him away after a moment. Standing again I notice her.

Every day I pass this woman by on my way to the office. She has the gaunt and leathery complexion of a life-long smoker, her skin the color of lacquered redwood. I don’t know her name or care too. But she’s always there among the palo verdes and the saguaros. She watches me pass twice daily and I her, though I am careful to avoid her gaze. She watches me pass faithfully, though I only see her in the periphery. You should never look the homeless in the eyes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not afraid of her, or any of them really. She’s harmless enough. I avoid this momentary intimacy precisely because it gives them a chance to capitalize on your weakness, to siphon a few dollars from you. It’s a well-established fact, I hear, that this only encourages them to remain indolent. I would only be contributing to the problem of homelessness, and that just wouldn’t do. I am lost in this stream of thoughts when I catch the tip of my long-toed Meccarielos on a newly buckled and heaved section of sidewalk and tumble down in front of her amid the wrappers and baggies and, “ew!” whatever that is.

While she regards me bemusedly, albeit silently, I stand and brush myself off, spinning around, too, making sure I didn’t get anything wet or sticky that might stain my suit. Embarrassed and irritated with myself for being so careless, I flick microplastic filaments and clinging fuzz from my jacket. Taking no apparent interest in my fall, she says simply, “you’re in my light.”

“Pardon me?” Of all the things she might say to me, she chose this sentence as her first?

“You’re in my light,” she cocks her head to one side, a little like my own dog—a rescue—when she’s unsure about what I want her to do, and with equal earnestness. I look around to see where the sunlight is shining, only to find that my shadow is behind me. I take an awkward step backwards and to the side hoping she’ll find that more to her liking, but she says nothing to indicate whether I’ve succeeded in doing so. She only pops a golden red orb into her mouth and chews it thoughtfully. “Want one?” she lifts an outstretched hand with a marigold bloom in her palm. I take the flower’s decapitated head from her not knowing what she intended me to do with it.

“You may eat it now,” she chirps.

“Uhh. No thank you,” I grimace, my left lip and nostril offer a visceral rebuke. Instead I slip it in my pocket. “Why are you eating flowers? I can give you money for food if that’s what you need.” See, this is why I don’t look them in the eye. I don’t have the resolve not to pay to assuage my conscience. She only shrugs playfully, tossing the next bloom in the air and letting it fall into her open mouth.

She motions across the boulevard with her chin to the Hindu temple. “I can always get more if you change your mind.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Are you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you be?”

Irked, I gesture at my fine suit, “I’m great, look at me. I’m a successful businessman.”

“Yes, I see. Your clothes are indeed very fine. But it’s not what I asked you.”

“This is getting tiresome,” I respond curtly. “Who are you to judge me? Look at the squalor around you. You’re reduced to eating flowers cast aside by celebrants.”

“Is that how you see me?” she asks with childlike curiosity bereft of any hint of irony.

Oh, I realized, she’s a few bricks short of a wall. I nod knowingly and say wisely, “Yes, and if you applied yourself, like me, maybe you’d be going somewhere.”

“Ahhh,” she drawled, “and where is this somewhere you’re going?” She asked.

“To work, of course. That’s how you get ahead in life,” I barked.

She tutted and shook her head for a moment before offering me another flower—which I declined—then clarified, “I asked where you are going, not where you are walking”?

“I, uh.” I stammered, “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”

She looked at me, seeming to regard what I said with great seriousness, then smiled. The look in her eyes was, in a word, unexpected. “I can see that,” she said with…pity. How strange of her to pity me. I stood there another moment before she said without irritation, but with a mouthful of marigolds, “you’re still standing in my light.” It’s as if she stopped seeing me right then and there. So, I looked at my watch, pantomiming my need to get going to an audience of one who does not see me, nor care to. Then I turn and walk the rest of the way to work. What a fool.

When I arrive at my office twenty minutes later, I pull my wallet and phone from my pants and into my desk drawer. As I do, the marigold bloom pops free of my pocket. I look at it for a moment. I can’t bring myself to taste it, but I am left wondering what I’m missing. But only for a moment before I flick it into the trash.