One Last Favor
"Stop right there and give me your wallet!"
I turned toward the man yelling at me. I didn't see his face because all I saw was the gun pointed at my chest. I was unarmed, of course, and I couldn't run due to my injury. He probably picked me out because he saw my labored gait and figured I was an easy mark. Cornered, with no options, I smiled weakly and replayed the events that got me here.
Not so long ago, things seemed so … normal. I had my job at the publishing firm. I was married to an artist, and we were happy together, or so I thought. We lived in a house we owned with a mortgage we could afford, and life was on cruise control. Not in a race car or a luxury car, just a comfortable sedan traveling safely within the speed limit.
Then the downturn in the economy, which hit publishing particularly hard, and I lost my job. Let go with two weeks' notice and no severance because I had only been at my current firm for about nine months. After a series of networking lunches and informational interviews over coffee, I became discouraged about my prospects. My career in this city and others had always been in publishing, and the industry was dying. I thought that because I was a well-spoken, well-read, hard-working generalist, I would glide into my next job at a firm where people appreciated such things. After a few weeks, I was disabused of that naïve fantasy.
My wife, who had been perfectly self-sufficient before we were married, turned out to be worse than useless. She hadn't had a job since we moved here. She had been painting and, with my full-throated cheering from the sidelines, created a considerable body of new work. It was exciting, sure, but that was a lifetime ago. When I lost my job, she spent a lot of money framing her paintings in preparation for selling them, then spent more money to design and print promotional materials, then didn't sell a single painting. She decided she would look for a graphic design job – that's how she'd always made a living – and spent money we didn't have on creating a design portfolio and buying new clothes for the interviews that never materialized. It turns out you're not that marketable if you're a fifty-something with a two-year gap in your resume in a field that values youth and whatever the tastemakers declare to be the next fresh thing. Result: no income, large outflow. Result number two: staggering credit card debt.
She then had an affair with a gallery owner who seduced her with promises that he would show her work – he never did – and one day, the two of them jetted off to his other gallery in San Francisco, and I never saw her again. There was a "Dear John" postcard on the kitchen table and, a few months later, divorce papers in the mailbox. Since then, just like Murray and his sister in the movie A Thousand Clowns, we've communicated primarily through rumor.
I called in several favors and was able to get some money from friends to pay the mortgage, but that lasted only a few months, and then after a few more, the bank took the house. I had stopped reading my mail because all the collection notices were too depressing, and I was depressed enough, and even though I saw it coming, I didn't see it coming. I came home one day to a foreclosure notice on the door, changed locks, and my stuff on the sidewalk. The neighbors and passersby must have picked through the heap and helped themselves because my laptop and leather easy chair were gone. Probably other stuff too. I held an impromptu yard sale, made a few bucks, stuffed a gym bag with some clothes and books, and walked away.
I imposed on the same friends who lent me money, this time to sleep on their couches. But soon enough, those favors dried up too, so I swallowed what was left of my pride and moved into a shelter. One afternoon I decided to walk around the neighborhood and was badly beaten up by a group of teenagers; when they asked me for money, I laughed because I didn't have any. I think they were just prowling the streets looking for someone to beat up for the fun of it. And a homeless down-and-outer like me? Even better. One of them smashed a two-by-four across my leg and broke it. My leg, not the two-by-four. I dragged myself to the nearby hospital emergency room. After an excruciating three-hour wait, a young resident who looked over-tired and might have been drunk set the leg badly and left me with a pronounced limp that makes me appear diminished and vulnerable when I go out, which invites predators like the one pointing his gun at me right now.
"Stop right there and give me your wallet!"
Cornered, out of options, I said, "Go ahead, asshole, shoot me if you want. You'd be doing me a favor. Thing is, I don't think you have the balls." I stepped forward so that the gun was an inch or two away. I looked directly into his face. It was a dead-eyed mask of sadness and rage.
"What did you say?"
"I said, I don't think you have the…"
An ear-shattering blast. A burning sensation and a burning smell. I fell to the ground in slow motion. I felt almost no pain, even as the sticky wet blood ran along the sidewalk and into my hair. I lifted my head to look up and saw the gunman's blank expression. Just another day at the office for another lost soul. In the moment before I surrendered to the dark void, I thought, At last, all my troubles are over.