WHEN WE REACH THE OTHER SIDE OF MADISON Avenue, Max stops dead.
There’s a guy sitting cross-legged on a blanket spread out on the corner, his back against the granite of a building. Long hair in dreadlocks, multiple layers of dirty clothes, torn work boots. An empty coffee can sits in front of him, along with a sign that says: HUNGRY HOMELESS VET. GOD BLESS.
“It’s happening!” yells the guy. “You don’t know! Because you don’t ask! That’s what they’re counting on! But I can tell you, it’s happening and it’s going to change things for all of us!”
An older woman pauses in front of the blanket, fishes a dollar bill out of her purse, drops it in the coffee can.
“I’ll give you all the information you’re going to need,” the homeless guy tells the woman with a mix of gratitude and excitement.
The woman holds up her hand and shakes it in a No, thanks gesture. She smiles politely at him, then speeds up her pace.
Max frowns as he watches the woman hurry away. I see the wheels turning in his head and although I don’t know what they’re churning up, I say, “You know he’s not really a vet, right? Or religious. I think these guys do market research on what signs get them the most money.”
“Yeah, I know all that,” he says.
“Also I read an article about some dude who does this and earns thousands of dollars a month.”
“I saw that article, too.”
“And remember, we have that no-money rule. . . .”
“Yes!” he practically hisses at me.
“So what are we doing here?”
“Not sure,” says Max, who hasn’t taken his eyes off the guy. “I just thought . . . what if we listen to what he’s saying? Nobody else is.”
“Because what he’s saying is crazy?”
Max gives me a sideways, twinkle-eyed glance. “Are you sure?”
We both stare at the “homeless vet,” who in turn is staring at the ground as people walk by. He seems to be very interested in everyone’s feet. I guess that’s a tricky thing for him, deciding where to look. It’s not like he can fiddle with his phone or read a magazine.
Finally, Max steps forward and sinks into a squat next to the guy.
“Hi,” says Max. “I’m Max.”
The guy looks at him. Offers a hand wearing two gloves, one on top of the other. They’re both see-through thin. “Josh,” says the guy. “What up?”
Huh. I would not have pegged him for a Josh. A Ronald, maybe, or Horatio, something like that. I’m already thinking about how to sketch him.
“What is it that’s happening?” asks Max. “What don’t they want us to ask about?”
The guy pauses, regards Max cautiously, and frankly I can’t blame him. “The cameras,” he says. I guess I should call him Josh.
“What cameras?” I ask, stepping closer to them.
“The tiny ones on every single building,” Josh says, pointing up and around us. “On every car. Every street sign. Fire hydrants. Mailboxes. Trees. Traffic lights. Any place you can think of, they’re there.”
We’re all quiet for a moment. I’m trying to think of what to say to that.
“Who put them there?” asks Max.
“Private corporations. You’d think the government, right? But the corporations . . . they’re the ones who have the most to gain from spying on everything we do. They want to know what we’re wearing, eating, watching.”
“I have to say,” says Max, “if that’s true, I don’t really have a problem with it. I have nothing to hide. How is that different from the tons of consumer research that’s being done on us all the time?”
“That’s a good point,” I add. “And sometimes security footage helps catch criminals.”
“But it violates our rights,” says Josh, looking at me, and his eyes are very clear. “Listen, I know about this stuff. I used to be in a long-range surveillance unit.”
“So you are a vet,” says Max.
“Nineteen months in Iraq.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“At a shelter.”
“Doesn’t the VA help you?” Max presses.
Josh pauses. “It’s a long story.”
“What do you do with the money you take in during the day?” I ask. Max glares at me, but Josh breaks into a grin.
“I spend most of it on photocopies,” he replies, and reaches into a duffel bag, taking out a homemade flyer, aka a letter-size sheet of yellow paper folded in half. He gives it to me, then pulls out another for Max.
Every inch of the front page is filled with handwritten poems.
I fumble to open the flyer with my gloves. Inside, more poems, some scrawled in print, some in cursive, all different sizes. It’s hard to tell where one poem ends and another begins, but maybe that’s the point. My eyes settle on one that’s written larger than the others, the letters slanting sideways.
We fly into the night
Not knowing where we’ll land
In the middle of a fight
Or in pieces on the sand
I glance over at Max, who’s also reading. “Good stuff, man,” he says to Josh.
A police officer breaks through the crowd.
“Every day you have to do this?” asks the officer.
Josh just shrugs, completely unfazed. “It’s a great spot.”
“It’s an illegal spot.”
Josh sighs, gets up, and starts collecting his things.
“Do you need us to call the shelter for you?” says the officer. The set of his jaw has softened and behind his face-swallowing wraparound sunglasses, I can tell there’s some sympathy.
“No, no, sir,” says Josh. “I have somewhere to be.”
Josh steps off the blanket and picks up his sign, coffee can, and duffel bag. Max bends down to grab the blanket, folding it in half, then in quarters. He offers it to Josh and doesn’t even seem to care that the thing looks saturated with filth. I’ll offer him some hand sanitizer once we’re on the next block.
“Thanks, kid,” says Josh to Max, taking the blanket.
“No problem.”
“I mean, thanks for stopping.” His voice dips lower.
Max smiles. “You’re welcome.”
They both look at me. “Good luck,” I say, and then wish I’d come up with something less stupid.
Josh moves toward the corner and disappears into a knot of people. When the knot untangles, he’s gone. Max looks at me and I wish I knew him better so I knew what this look means.
“Do you think he’s mad that we didn’t give him any money?” I ask.
“Did he seem mad?”
“No.”
“He seemed happy that we stopped, right? That we bothered to actually talk to him.”
Happy is a strong word to use here, but maybe un-sad. Then I catch Max’s drift.
“You’re asking if this counts.”
“I think it should totally count,” says Max.
“How was that a random act of kindness?”
Max makes an exasperated sound. “How is it not?”
“I don’t feel like we helped him. All we did was listen to him talk.”
“Exactly!”
There’s so much energy in Max’s smile, it’s hard not to take whatever it’s offering.
I’ve walked by hundreds of these people. Not just in New York but at home, too. There’s a guy who basically lives on Main Street with his shopping cart and a pit bull named Lulu. Then, in Europe. So many that I really perfected the “looking away without feeling guilty” routine. I don’t know what I feel when I think of all of them as a whole. But now I do know this one guy’s name, and that he has ideas and writes poetry that’s not terrible.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “It counts.”
“Two down,” says Max.
“Two down,” I echo. “But we didn’t get a picture to prove this one.”
“Erica will have to take our word for it, I guess. We do have his flyer.”
I stop in my tracks. “Or I can record it another way. Hang on.”
I step toward the wall of a building, take out my pen and notebook and prop it up against the cold stone. Then I slip off a glove so I can scribble Josh’s name and where we met him, what we did. When I’m finished, I tuck everything back into my bag and tug the glove back on. It feels like I just wrote one page in a story.
We start walking toward Fifth again. My phone dings and I glance down, my heart jumping because maybe it’s a message from Jamie. But it’s from Emerson.
I think I may have sent you a text meant for someone else.
I stop for just a second, keeping Max’s tall head in the corner of my eye.
You did, I reply.
There’s a pause. Then:
Shit fuck dammit dammit dammit. Call me.
OK but later, I type back. In the middle of something.
Um, yeah, that’s putting it mildly.