Time Well Spent

There has to be a metaphor here. I will admit that I have found myself in some rather unpleasant homes before – I have slept on couches of drug addicts and accompanied the abused on the run from their abuser – but this has got to be the most unpleasant. I can feel the street sludge from last week’s winter snowfall soaking into my backside as I lay crumpled on the cement. I have found that as soon as you make your home where the sidewalk meets the storefront, you become cellophane to the strangers who pass you. Not having a permanent residence has never bothered me much, I have never stayed in one place for very long. It is the invisibility that haunts me. I have value, you know. No one likes to be ignored. When I was young, I bounced from home to home. I was never any trouble, and most held onto me for as long as they could, but my home will always be ever changing. I am old and worn now, and still I drift through society. I have been called many names, but I prefer George. It fits the image of the man people see me as. A woman on her cellphone passes me without a second glance.

The longest place that I have ever stayed was Chicago. I got a job at a bank that I loved. It was an easy job for me – just manning the till. I liked it because nothing ever happened. Some people want their lives to be filled to the brim with excitement and change, but not me. Slow and steady means sturdy, and I like to stay grounded to where I am. What some call stagnant, I call comfortable. Plus, I was surrounded by others who were like me, which is a situation that I rarely find myself in. I truly felt like I had purpose there, unlike where I am now. A black car moving way too fast sprays more slush over me. I don’t mind, as I am already soaked through and through.

Technically, these are still the streets of Chicago, but I have not been back to that bank or seen the friends that I made there. I wonder if they are all alright after the incident. You see, my leaving was by no account my own decision nor was it a usual event. The amount of chaos that erupted that day was the most adventure I had ever seen, and I have not experienced more since. It started just like any other day, the doors of the bank were opened and the same steady stream of people rippled through the doors. It wasn’t until nearly closing that anything even remotely strange occurred. A man I had never seen before approached the till. He was tall and slender, and he walked with a confidence that was striking. He was wrapped in a three-piece suit that fit him perfectly, and sported a cigar-stained mustache that he somehow wore with style. What was strange about him – other than his ability to steal the gaze of everyone without speaking a word – was that he circled the room multiple times before approaching the till. The slow walk of this man reminded me of a leopard on the hunt. He was scribbling in the small black book that previously resided in his inside breast pocket. He only spoke one line before leaving, and did not even make a transaction. Proudly he stated, “you will pay my debt for me” before striding through the doors he had entered. If the man strolling past me now were slightly taller, I would have sworn that it was him.

Shortly after the mysterious man left, four men dripping in stereotype entered with large guns, which they promptly fired at the ceiling as if they didn’t already have people screaming and cowering. They made no effort to conceal their identities, although I wish they had. None of these men were as well kept as the first mystery man, and their faces seemed to have more damage and grease than a high-speed auto collision. There was a lot of screaming and the whole confusing ordeal took way longer than necessary to complete. Only one person got shot trying to overpower a gunman. Whether it was heroic efforts or idiotic desperation is for you to decide. Myself, along with many of the others friends I had made, were rounded up and taken hostage by these men. As many as could fit were shoved into a van and hauled away. I have never been claustrophobic, but after these events, I am happy to be in wide open space by myself. Three little girls just ran past playing tag and the spittle from their laughs shower over me, but I still consider myself alone.

We were pressed against each other in that dark filthy space for what seemed like an eternity before the van finally arrived at an abandoned factory building. From the looks of the graffiti-plastered walls and rotting boards on the windows, the factory hadn’t been used for its original purpose for years. We were taken inside by the men and were sat in an empty room. We sat there for some time listening to the muffled conversation of our captors and their boss. Strangely enough, the next people we saw were a team of generic criminal fellows whose main job was to clean us up and organize us to be presented to the boss. No one resisted – not after watching the shooting at the bank. Once we were to their liking, the team left and none other than the mystery man with the book entered. He seemed extremely out of place in this dirty factory, but moved as if he owned it. Slowly and methodically, he examined each of us and counted us in his small book. As I waited for my turn, I examined it. The pages were thin and worn, yet the black leather looked polished and new. Gold letters in the lower corner spelled the initials “C.J.”. A similar black book splashes to the ground near me and fear devours me. There are no gold letters. An elderly man swears as he gathers the book and adjusts his glasses, then continues on his way down the road.

When the mystery man had finished counting us all, he grinned and hurried out of the room. I strained to hear his phone conversation. “I finally have twenty thousand,” he hissed through his teeth. “Pick up is at midnight.” He mumbled some inaudible orders to the goons who took us before leaving the building entirely. The five men rounded us back up and crammed us all in the van again. We were taken downtown to a shady back alley and given to three men in all black. These men then hauled us straight through town. I remember thinking that it was very brave of these men to take hostages straight through the city, and I was right. We were confronted by a cop and the men made a break for it. I was able to slip free from their grasps in the confusion. I haven’t been the same since then. That’s how I found myself living on the streets, the same streets these cruel men attempted to trade me on. I did hear that the men who took us were never found and the case was closed. A young boy runs by with his friends. He skids to a halt and looks at me. With a look of pure joy, he yells to his friends, “hey guys! Looks! I found a dollar! I was so craving a candy bar too!” As he snatches me up to take me to my next home, I hear the reporter in the store window speaking. “Breaking: Man finds twenty thousand one-dollar bills near a dumpster behind his shop. No links to any criminal behavior have been found, and he will be the new owner of the money.”