He has the face of an angel and the soul of a satyr. With his tousled hair and faded beard he looks to be everybody’s favorite uncle. Only the gods know the difference.
“Just money for work, ma’am,” he sings into the air as the quarters clink down in his silver cup. “Gulf War vet. Will work for food,” reads the sign beside him as his whiskey lays hidden inside his fur coat. “Thanks kindly, Sir,” he says to another. “God bless you please, gentlemen.”
As the money piles up in front of him and the real needy beggars gaze at him with jealousy and no little amount of ill will, he checks his watch, gold plated and all. Time to check the closing stocks. He takes one final draw from the Old Forrester and stands slowly, stretching his limbs. And then it seizes him.
It begins as one long spasm through heart and brain alike and then spreads to the rest of his body quickly like wildfire. A wicked scar ticks its way around his face to his gibbering lips and his arms and legs shake all over as electricity runs through them. Soon the stroke is complete and he is left with a cruel, revealing expression on his face. The whiskey bottle smashes to the sidewalk and he collapses amid the great, teeming mass of uncaring humanity.
Flash forward to a year later. He has been in and out of many rehab centers attempting to heal Zeus’s mighty thunderbolt but to no avail. All his stocks were lost in the Great Bubble Burst of ’01 and now he knows the pain of the truly lost. His luxury high rise gone the way of so many mislaid plans, his rich cohorts abandoning him like hot goods found in front of the police station, he sits again on the sidewalk, his bent paper cup before him.
“Crippled Man In Need” reads the sign and he grins a crooked thought at all the passersby, hoping to garner some measure of sympathy. His hopes are many though the day is young. Crowds pass by him like some familiar herd lost to the onetime straggler and the man stares forth into thin air with dreams slowly dimmed to the reality of time.
By nightfall, not a single dime dwells in his cup and he sits there still. Waiting. Always waiting.
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