When I leave in the morning to go to work, Peter sits on his doorstep. He sits Indian style, and a pile of checks flop over his legs like a paper skirt. They are all made out to CASH. He's arranging them in a fluorescent pink shoebox. I have the sneaking suspicion he is writing those checks to himself. His toast-brown dog is tied to a copper statue of a pilgrim.
I try to walk by fast enough that he won't see me. I am approaching the speed of light. Perhaps I will appear as a flash.
He lifts his head up. I can smell whisky and bourbon and tequila and Doritos on his breath. He is into his own version of the breakfast of champions it seems.
He says, "Where you going?"
"To work."
"Another hard day? I know all about that," he says in all seriousness.
Hard liquor, sure, I'll bet he's an authority on the stuff. But what the hell does he know about hard days at work? If he owned a tie, I would be flabbergasted. Going to a job like mine where numbers are crunched until eyes and fingers are numb and disembodied, this is not on his agenda. Overtime and afternoon meetings, not his style.
His style is waking up with no memory of yesterday. A few nights ago, he blacked out and fell down the stairs. He was passed out there in front of the leasing office until someone dragged him up to his door and left him there. He woke up shaped like the General Mills logo with vomit dried all around his face.
"That girl living with you?" he prods.
"No."
"Let me tell you something, never trust a woman. Never let one get that close. She will cut your fucking throat and leave you to the vultures. I had a woman once and she stayed with me. I come home and she had broken into the safe. Bitch took everything. She left the gas on in the oven too, so if I got home and lit a cigarette...boom! I got lucky. Watch your step, buddy," he whispers the last bit.
Peter scares the hell out of me. When he talks like that at the peak of his bitterness there is something grave in his voice. His eyes seem to turn black and I can almost hear that horror movie music in the background.
I scuttle away. I wonder what Peter could have possibly had locked in a safe. Or perhaps by safe he meant liquor cabinet.
When I met Peter, I was dragging my mattress along the sidewalk when he popped his head out. His face was worn, a snake's smile on his mouth.
"Moving into 301?" he said, perched in his doorway.
"Yeah, I am."
"Good, good, good. When I heard someone was taking that place, I prayed it wasn't a black."
I stopped. If my mattress had brakes, they would have screeched. I might have sprained a muscle in my neck doing a double take. I stared at his very dark face, nappy hair, and I wondered, is this man delusional enough to believe that he's not black? Maybe he’s completely deluded and believes himself to be Captain Ahab or something. Or is he so full of self-hate that it spills over to all black people?
"What did you say?"
My other theory was that I just misheard him.
"I said, I'm glad you're not a black. This neighborhood is full of them and they hate my guts. I used to park my car in front of the building but they kept taking my hubcaps. Then they started threatening to burn my house down. They wait in the shadows to try and stab me. They hate me. Fuck 'em."
I quickly lugged my mattress inside my new apartment. When I fastened the chain on my door, I wished that the flimsy, fake-gold one I had could be replaced with one you might drag an anchor with.
