Picky Walker

            As I stepped up the walk to Picky’s, a guy sitting on the steps of the building across the street returned my stare from behind a black hoody.  I knew I should have brought my wife’s oldToyotainstead of my BWM.  Ten feet from Picky’s, I heard his television.  I rapped on the aluminum frame of the screen door with my knuckle.  Through the mesh, I saw Picky rise from a couch and head my way. 

            “Hey, man, it’s Alan.  How you doing?” I called.

            Picky pushed on the door to let me enter.

            I offered my hand for him to shake.  “Good to see you, my man,” I said.

            I looked down at least a foot to the top of his head.  He shook my hand, loose, moist, and quick, and spun off toward his seat.  I passed a small kitchen, clean white appliances and bare counters.  I sat on the couch, next to Picky.  On the TV screen, Tom Selleck in a dark blue, red, and fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, climbed into a red Ferrari.  I smelled cigarette smoke, imagining that it came from the apartment next door.  There was no way Picky would be smoking with part of his throat, palate and tongue gone to cancer.  On an end table, next to a bulbous lime-green ceramic lamp, sat an ashtray, brimming with a smoldering pile of butts.  What the hell.  Was he suicidal?  I should have stood, said, “Sorry, I got to go,” and walked out.  The sooner, the better, for everyone.  No more worrying about my car out front or what to say to this wreck of a human being.  But I sat and stared at the television show.  I thought about my sister.  Picky didn’t need me to judge him.  I could offer the slightest bit of company and consolation.

            “So, how you been feeling?” I said, turning my head toward Picky and raising my voice over the volume of a commercial for a technical college.

            He reached around the arm of the couch and pulled up his white board and marker.  I watched him scribble sick.

             “Treatment?”

            He nodded his head.

            “Radiation?” I asked, looking at his thin, leathery lips as if that’s where the answer would come.

            He mouthed “and chemo.”  The breathy, blunted voice that came out sounded as if he were a deaf speaker.

            “Brutal,” I replied.

            He laid his board on his lap and went back to the television.  I joined, wondering if I could sneak a look at my watch.  If I lifted my arm, Picky would know what I was up to.  I glanced for a clock, around the living room and small empty dinette, opposite the kitchen.  The couch, two tables, lamp and TV were the only furnishings in the house.  The off-white walls lay bare.

            I didn’t see any point in asking Picky any more questions.  When the show ended, I would excuse myself and leave.  I sat on a cheap cloth sofa, in one of the worst parts ofPortland, next to a small, odd man about whom I knew nothing.  A stranded dying stranger.  My presence seemed to be enough.  We were one, he and I, in space and time.  A moment of real truth.  

            As the end credits for Magnum rolled on the screen, I slid forward on the couch.  It seemed too soon to go.  Another episode of the same program came on.  I could watch it, put in the time, and exit.  I rested my back against the cushion.  I thought the actors’ antics were funny, but neither Picky nor I laughed aloud.  We sat three feet apart without talking.  It seemed to suit him, but I felt that if I didn’t say something, I wasn’t doing my job.