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Sixth and Forty-third is a shitty place to work engineering. I speak from experience in that regard, though I probably shouldn’t be proud of that little tidbit of extraneous life. There I was, Thomas Klien, Native, having a fine and lush breakfast off a street vendor during the morning rush hour. As a professional Native of Manhattan I had much of no where more important to be right then, and what better way to start your day than with a steaming knish and a coke while watching people in bad suits scurry like ants.

I leaned against the side of a building and smiled to myself, even as a few badly dressed woman (Who were, I am sure, convinced they were the epitome of high fashion in their knock-off DKNY dresses with their street vendor fake silk scarves pinned delicately with fake Gucci lapel pins that all clashed with each other.) eyed me with an air of distain. Who was I, they asked themselves, to have the time to lounge while they had important places to be. I never considered a delay on the 1/9 to be important but to each their own. The knish was too hot to eat, so I merrily chewed away scalding the holy fuck out of my tongue and the roof of my mouth in between sips of Coke. That’s when I saw the guy coming down the street.

He was one of a million, with a beat down hand truck lugging a milk crate full of copies of that days Post. He was waving a paper in vain to passersby shouting “POST! TWENTY-FIVE CENTS!” over and over, as if someone would hear this and rush over to him full of angelic thanks for delivering the gift of shitty news. Every few feet the guy would stop rolling his hand truck and reach up to pat his well crushed and dismayed hat, making sure it didn’t fall off his dainty little head. He slowly, glacially in fact, made it up to where I was still leaning. I made a slight effort to lean in the manner of someone who wasn’t the type of person to want to lean and read and sought to avoid direct eye contact with him. Eye contact would lead to a sale for him and we both knew it. If I had been mobile I might have avoided it, but suddenly going mobile would ruin my quiet morning reverie.

Eventually he made it up to me and screamed his battle cry right in my face. I kept trying to look disinterested, adding an air of possible deafness. In retrospect I really should’ve known better. The performing arts attempt not only did me no good, but worked against me as he simply repeated himself louder while vaguely leaning in my direction. I found myself suddenly enraptured in the goings-on of a gaggle of pigeons (I’m not sure if that’s the proper term for a lot of pigeons but they sure looked gagglish to me.) and finished my knish, balling up the napkin and foil I had been holding it in. Taking my eyes off the friendly neighborhood mobile newsstand was also a mistake as it turns out. He took the second to shuffle everything sideways so that when he screamed again I certainly knew it. I also knew what he had devoured for breakfast himself that day (Scotch, cheap. Eggs, cheaper.) and the mix startled me enough that I cursed violently (At myself mostly, for managing to completely ignore this guy enough to let him get that close. I blame the caffeine for not taking effect fast enough.) and dropped the wad of foil and paper to the ground.

I gave him my best “what the fuck is your basic genetic defect” glare and waited for him to move on, now sure I had won this round. He smiled at me and said softly “Hey buddy, wanna Post? It’s today’s.” Damn it, damn it, fine! I forked over a quarter and sighed, tucked the paper under an arm and starting to turn away even as he started to resume his forward movement away from me. He shuffled forward and yanked the cart behind him and suddenly let out a yell even as I turned to see the cart fold in on itself, a lone wheel spinning away into the street. I was torn between an urge to look like a good citizen and help him right his crap and just walking away to find somewhere else to ponder the meaning of life. I had just decided to do the smart thing and leave him when he lifted the cart a bit to try and get it semi-stable and saw the wad of foil and paper.

“You dropped this! That’s why my truck broke! You owe me a new truck, fucker!” He bellowed at me in rage. I think I goggled at him disbelievingly but it may have been a simpler look of astonishment, the court is still out on that.

“Yeah I dropped it, but if a small wad of fucking tin foil could take the wheel off your cart it would have to have the relative fucking density of titanium!” I delivered with all the proper aplomb required. He was, of course, having none of it and kept screaming. I decided that perhaps helping him right his cart would be the proper response to settle the matter and shut him the hell up as we were now drawing a crowd. Alright two skater punks, a fat guy in a dirty t-shirt and one ancient lady that could have passed for Yoda’s grandmother might not really count as a crowd I admit, but they were watching.

I bent to help him, and he pointed into the street at wheel were it lay forlornly in the gutter. Sighing I trudged over and grabbed it with as few fingers as possible, carrying it back to him. Glaring, he took it from me with an swipe of hand and proceeded to try to reattach it to it’s axle. I sighed deep in my chest and stood waiting. Protocol at this point required me to stand there and look like I really wanted to help him, and we both knew it. By now, sensing there would be no fight everyone had wandered back to their lives except Yoda’s grandmother. Eventually my favorite news merchant looked up at me again and grunted while gesturing, a clear and true sign he wanted help with this engineering problem.

Fine. Fine! Fine. I squatted down to take a shot at the small problem in front of me. The axle was bent and smushed so that the wheel wouldn’t stay even if it could somehow be forced over the bent section. I looked at him and shrugged. He looked at me and grunted. We started miming back and forth about the problem inherent in tool-less metal working. We were both getting madder as time went on, and slowly the charades got fast and more abrupt as the grunts got even more sinister.

So there we were, both starting to shout. My day was shot, his hand truck was shot. I threw my hands up in the air and stood up. He joined me back in the realm of the recently vertical and started waving his arms as incoherent sounds came out of his mouth. This was getting worse and worse so I hung my head and asked him how many papers he had on him. He stumbled over his most recent incoherent indignity and looked down at the box of papers. I saw his lips move as he tried to count.

Finally he looked back at me and gave me the grand total of fifty. I dug into my pocket and started counting off the $12.50 needed to just buy the papers off him en masse. Whatever it took to shut this guy up and be able to get on with my life was going to be attempted by then. He smiled at me and took the money, bent over and dumped the papers out of the crate which he picked up. He shambled off into the mists carrying the crate and pulling a broken cart wobbling dangerously even as it was scraping the broken axle along the sidewalk. I looked down at my recent investment and kicked the pile where it lay. That would teach it.

It felt good, kicking that damnable pile of papers, so I did it again. Then again. Then I started to scream and kick at the pile faster. That’s when the cops came and tried to get me to go to a shelter. Sighing I walked off towards Lincoln Center in search of something to do that would make up for the morning so far. I spared a backwards glance towards my oddly-gotten gains, now ripped and mulched slightly and blowing in a light breeze. Yoda’s grandmother was bending ponderously down to retrieve what was, for her, a free paper. Let her have it. Someone would have a decent morning’s entertainment out of all this at least. Me? I needed a second knish and coke, and maybe a brain hemorrhage on the side. Christ, I love this town.

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Never Bite the Homeless is copyright Adam P. Knave.