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by Scene: Lakeshore Plaza, a small shopping village near the San Francisco Zoo in the 90’s.
The mall is essentially a one block parking lot, surrounded on all four sides by flat-roofed, grey adobe buildings in a neighborhood of single family homes. On the west side of the mall the buildings have a second story with professional offices—dentists, doctors, etc. Among the eastern buildings is a supermarket and inside the supermarket is a coffee shop. At the entrance to the coffee shop is a ragged homeless man with an empty cup in his hand. He is drunk, his hand is shaking, he holds out a cup to people entering and leaving.
Two men in their late seventies are entering. They are both wearing baseball caps and freshly-ironed work clothes. The homeless man holds out his cup to the first and gets in return, “You’re a drunken lazy bum, sober up and get yourself a job.”
The second man stops, pulls out his wallet, takes out a twenty dollar bill and puts it into the cup. The homeless guy looks down at the twenty, looks up at the man, and there is gratitude in his red-rimmed eyes.
“Thanks friend,” he says.
Inside the two men get their coffee and sit down at a small table. The first man looks up from is coffee, says, “A drunk, doesn’t deserve any help. He’s going to spend it on booze any which way.”
The second man responds, “Tony, remember the depression, when we came out here riding the rails looking for any kind of job and sleeping in alleys?”
Tony looks at him. “Yah so?”
“Do you think he is homeless because he is drunk or, drunk because he is homeless?”
Tony doesn’t answer. He stares at the steam rising from his cup.
copyright 2009 Irving Rothstein
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