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I unlocked my door and stepped into my all too humble abode. Let’s pause for station identification, alright? Sometimes I can be a mite unfair and I’ve just been running on with no due diligence in explanations. It’s the way of life, one thing after the next and the next and the next never really ending long enough to catch up. So, fuck the rules for a second. How does a grown man live in Manhattan in a building with a doorman and have a problem finding a lousy 60 dollars to pay for a bloodied shirt?

I have no job, let’s get that out of the way. I, Thomas Klien, am unemployed which is why I describe myself as a professional native. Do not assume that I’m some sort of slacking independently wealthy playboy just fucking around with my life. Untrue, I am not independently wealthy nor a playboy. Not really at any rate. Just the benefactor of some nice luck.

When I was a wee tot my grandmother decided I was some kind of perfect creature, the way many relatives decide such things of children they don’t have to live with for long periods of time. I was, to be blunt, a suck up. I mean, she was ok, a nice lady really, but no where near as great as I made her out to be whenever I saw her. When she wasn’t there I was your standard terror of a child, Calvin without his mood stabilizers. Oh but when she would show up for a visit, or my parents would drag me out to see her, I was a damned angel for her. My parents saw through it but what could they do except keep saying “He isn’t like this really…” which would get them evil glares from Granny who would not abide cross thoughts about her little darling. Well that kept up for years and years.

She lived on the edge of the East Village and would let me crash on her floor and call my parents from there so I could hang out downtown and be myself, exploring and learning who and what I was and wanted to be, as late as I needed to be out having fun and self-discovering epics. I would go and wake her up, and she never seemed to mind too much so long as I wasn’t drunk. My parents had to stop complaining that I wasn’t home, up in the wonderful homes of Yonkers (Which was and is a different country than the rest of NY. Border guards ask for a passport to get in or out.) so long as they knew I was with Granny. Good old Granny.

I remember I was about 18 and walking around for a while and spotted this guy with a slack face that looked like it wanted to melt right off his face and a t-shirt that read “Your village called. They miss their idiot.” and just started laughing. Not with the shirt, of course, but at him. Sadly he wasn’t a small man and he disagreed with my appreciation of his looks and attire. Words were exchanged, accompanied by my feet slowly back peddling trying to keep out of his reach in case he decided to rip off my face and use it as his own half melted one. Maybe that was why his face looked like that, the last victims face was just a bad fit. I really had no desire to stick around and find out.

Back and back my feet went, while this brute told me in slow and simple detail exactly how he was going to rearrange my face. He kept using those words and it was freaking me out, all things considered. Then I heard someone, my grandmother, call my name. I said “Hi” without looking away from the man monster in front of me and kept easing backwards. She eventually stepped in front of me and faced this man-thing down herself. She tsk’d at him and shook her head and asked him if he knew where she could find a cop in case she needed to have him arrested for starting a fight in the middle of the street. He gave me the finger and plodded off into the day ahead of him to be swallowed by the City forever.

She had saved me, that was so cool. Then she turned to me, slapped me upside the head and said “This is how you compose yourself?” and walked away.

When she died, a few years later, a few months after my 24th birthday, I was crushed. I couldn’t stand it, didn’t want to believe it at all. When they read her will and it was discovered she had left me her rent controlled apartment and a tidy sum of money I took it, but guiltily at first. I am in no way rich, but I live decently off a monthly stipend from that lump. Between that monthly lump and my insanely low rent I get by. None of which helped me now as I was strapped for cash until the next check came in a few days.

I shook myself out of reverie and reached for the phone. I started to dial a number from memory and waited while the ringing commenced.

“Golden Palace.” Shit that was the number for the chinese place down the block. I knew the number was familiar. I briefly considered some dumplings while I made more calls until I remembered that I was making the calls because I had no cash. I apologized for dialing the wrong number and hung up.

I started to look for my address book on the end table that also served as my phone stand. It had to be in one of the drawers, where else could it be? I found all sorts of things: paperclips, receipts, menus, $3.47 in loose change, a dead fly, some hair that was very not mine, one red sock also not mine, and four books of matches. I needed to clean out those drawers more often. I did not, however, spot an address book anywhere. I lifted the couch’s cushions and checked under the recliner and behind the TV. Eventually my brain clicked over and said two words to me, “Banana Guacamole”. Of course, how could I have missed that? I sighed and wandered over to the freezer and there it was, sandwiched between some fish sticks and frozen burritos. It must’ve ended up in there last week when I was looking for a number to call a friend and was unpacking food at the same time. Carlin was right all along. Who knew?

I flipped through the chilly and slightly damp book and grabbed the phone again, dialing. It rang four times and just as the answering machine clicked on it clicked right off and a voice answered the phone with a sleepy, “Wha?”

“Carlos, it’s Tom. I need sixty bucks semi-instantly, man. Can you hook me up, I’ll toss it back to you in a week or so, no shit.” It took a few seconds for that to percolate into Carlos’ obviously half-asleep brain.

“Uhhh …. yeah, ok. Come get it though.” Shit, I had no choice so I agreed and said I’d be there soonest. Carlos, as luck would have it, lived in the Bronx all the way at the ass end of the D line. It was a bit after 5 now and the trip would cost me about an hour each way. Doable certainly, so long as I moved now. I was really starting to resent that silk shirt.

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Never Bite the Homeless is copyright Adam P. Knave.