Sixty Cents Short

         Thomas Randall—yes, I know the name.  A name so commonplace, so generic as to stir no recognition at first mention.  Maybe even belonging to a different man than the one I presently recall; after all, the last name rings no bell, nor could I expect it to, for if I ever knew his, it is long forgotten.  But all the same.  I knew Thomas.
         I see the name on the paper in front of me, and musty memories commence swirling like a madeleine in a teacup—idle so long that the mind’s activity hits me hard as tequila.  Don’t ask me what for, no, not just yet: much like a hand that recoils from an unexpected touch of water moments before knowing whether it was hot or cold, I still am reeling from this sudden recollection, entirely unsure of what emotion is responsible.  Give it some time to sort out.  I sip my coffee.  It will come.
         No matter: the details, now clearer, seeping through the nooks of my brain are enough to pass the time meanwhile.  My memory, old soldier, still serves me well enough to order the fragments into a semblance of cohesion.  Something like a story unfolds, something I can almost follow as though reading it from a magazine, as though someone else is telling it.  I enjoy it.  I might have even written something of the sort, once.
         Never mind that, though.  This is how it was.

In my early days at the university—abundant, carefree, bygone—I would go on walks about the area surrounding campus into the wee hours, ignoring the purported nocturnal dangers of the neighborhood.  Call it naïveté, call it bravado, call it what you will.  Headphones on, mind elsewhere, I paid the environs no heed.  I preferred going it alone, letting the cool night air and the music of the moment foster the growth of my thoughts; grand, base, and perverse alike.  The night Tim and I walked together, though, stands out presently among my recollections.
Tim was a year older than I.  Still is, I suppose.  Funny guy—a short, quiet kid with a buzz cut, a shameless chain-smoking habit, and a stubbornness that saw him wearing shorts year-round, even in the unforgiving Midwestern winter.  But Tim is not the concern of the moment, and thus the description of this friend of mine ends here.
Tim and I were walking to Seven-Eleven, or maybe Walgreen’s, on an anomalous, tame November night—our errand escapes me, though I doubt it was relevant.  The walk was uneventful, I recall, until we came to the corner of Rogers and 49th.
         At that point, a short, stout black man, weary and disheveled, approached us, evidently preparing to stop us and ask for change.  I habitually kept my pace in an effort to pass him by, until I saw Tim slacken his gait and nod at the man, as though at a close friend, it seemed to me.
         “Hey big guy,” the man affectionately greeted Tim, who nodded appreciatively in response.
         They began talking.  After exchanging pleasantries that told of a long-standing familiarity, entailing Tim relating the generals of his education to the stranger, who decried the hardships of homelessness and unemployment, the man glanced down at the sidewalk and put his right hand above his mouth, as if to slow his words as they tumbled out.  He asked nervously, in a slurred voice, “Now I’m tryin to get to the bus shelter down over on 35th and I just need two bucks, can you help a brother out?”
         “Yeah man, I got you,” Tim answered cheerfully, pulling two ones from his wallet.
As the homeless man received them graciously, looking at Tim as though they were the last two men on Earth, he stammered, “Now I know—you—I’m sorry, I forgot your name again—”
Tim supplied it helpfully—no offense taken.
“Right Tim, I know you been so helpful to me these days… and I thank you for that, man, you know I do.”
         Dismissively, “No, you’re welcome, anytime.”
         “And hey,” the man ventured cautiously, “you got another cigarette?”
         “Sure.”  Tim handed him one.
         The man thanked him—then he turned toward me, though without looking up to meet my eyes.  As I saw him preparing to speak, though I knew not why, a surge of guilt sped into my chest.  He then looked up to meet my eyes, but only briefly, as if that flicker of contact were all the intimacy he could bear for the moment.  Finally, after a thoroughly uncomfortable pause, which I spent vainly trying to recreate the man’s experiences leading up to that moment, he said to me, “And hey, you, I know you, I seen you walkin round lots.  I holler at you, but you always got them headphones on, can’t hear nobody.”
         I told him, sheepishly, that I apologized, sir, and never meant it personal.
         “Aight well, my name’s Thomas,” with a bitter expression bearing the worn vestige of a smile—absent for ages, perhaps never to return.
         “I’m Marcus.”  Another pause here, as I decided what sort of tone to take with him.  “It’s good to meet you.”  At which Thomas feebly shook my awkwardly extended hand and scratched the back of his head for lack of anything to say.
         “Well I gotta… best be on my way,” he managed.  “Thanks again.  I’ll see you, Tim.”  And Thomas began to leave.
         “But hey,” I started firmly—I cannot say how, nor whence my resolve came—as he walked away, feeling a need to compensate for my apparent past condescensions toward the poor man, “I’ll see you around, definitely.”
         “Aight,” Thomas responded, with astonishing, sudden familiarity toward me, “I know you will.  Stop to talk if you got the time.”
         Whence his response came, I know not.


         Regret.  The culprit.  A deadly sin, perhaps the deadliest, if I may venture to say so, for the time lost wondering what might have been is spent in idleness—idle hands, devil’s work.
         Most people are dead wrong when they talk about regret.  They tell you it is bred by blunders, folly, or error.  Lies, lies: this is not regret, this is reflection—a very constructive activity, in fact; anything but a sin.  Regret, in its most harmful guise, is tied more to things one has not done than to things one has; it comes from so many missed opportunities, indecisions, and aversions of risks.  I know no greater danger than speculating about what might have been, would have been, isn’t; for the impossibility of performing the task properly dooms any such efforts to wasted energy and, damningly, to the multiplication of extant regret.  A vicious spiral, one that numbs the helpless sinner more and more as he travels downward.
         And this is the very reason that, until now, the story of Thomas had been banished to the furthest reaches, the badlands of my memory.


It was not to be long before I saw Thomas again.  Perhaps a week at most—easily long enough, at that season, for the weather to take a significant turn for the worse, but short enough a span to ensure that far worse conditions were yet on the horizon.
On another such night walk—unaccompanied this time, and at a later hour still than previously—I was walking up 49th when, of a sudden, I saw a silhouette coming down a perpendicular avenue, preparing to turn my way.  For lack of my recently misplaced glasses, perhaps then lying in some forgotten corner of my dorm, I could not identify the figure until even after he had already stopped directly in front of me.  I kept walking, feeling no desire to converse with a stranger at this hour.  When I felt him rap me on the shoulder with his first two fingers, I reluctantly turned around to find Thomas staring me in the face.
“Again with them goddamned headphones,” he observed casually, just as I was removing them.
I frankly couldn’t bring myself to feel too apologetic, but didn’t wish to appear condescending.  “Apologies, sir.”
“It’s alright,” Thomas groaned.  He quickly lightened up, as those who have long led a life of continual changes in circumstances, of unpredictable tomorrows, are wont to do, saying, “Hey big guy, you remember me, man, right?”
“Yes sir.  Thomas?”
“Yeah, you got it.”  An uncomfortable silence followed, which I fully expected to be broken by a request for money.  I was mistaken: “So, you goin to the university here?” was Thomas’ remark.
         I told him I was.
         The standard barrage of introductory questions proceeded: “I been seein you round here a while.  How long you gone here for?  And, hey, what you studyin?”
         This was my second year; I was studying English and comparative literature.
Although the answer I gave sounded as mundane as could be to my ears, my companion appeared to feel otherwise.  A touch of sincerity, reaching beyond the ordinary salesmanship instincts of your typically desperate man, was evident in Thomas’s voice as he said, “Wow, man.  So, you write much at all?”
         Call it a lucky guess.  “I’m hoping to make a career of it, matter of fact.”
         Thomas nodded slowly and gave pause, as though overcome by a notion.  Then bursted out: “Hey, man—Matt, right?”
         “Marcus,” I corrected him.  Not an uncommon mistake by any means.
         “Sorry man, Marcus, I got something to ask you.  I—” here he stops again, and when he continues, slows down to infuse as much thought and gravity as he can into each word—“I was wonderin… if you could help me… uh write… something.”
         I nodded my head, signaling that he proceed.
         “Nah, I got… got this idea for a story I been wantin to write.  From all the shit I seen go down.  But see, I ain’t… I don’t know how to write, not much.  I was wonderin… maybe we could sit down a few times, and I could maybe tell you it, and you could write it for me?”
         And it hit me clear as sky; as if I’d heard a knock on my dorm’s front door—unmistakably the sound of Opportunity begging entry.  “Yeah, you know I might be up for that.”  I barely paused before putting forth hastily, in a rush of mental activity and curiosity, “What’s it about?” only aware after the fact of how useless this question was, for he had surely meant to expound on the subject regardless.
         “Drugs and cities.”  Perhaps aware of the vagueness of this initial remark, he clarified: “How drugs done take over cities.  I seen it before.”
         It could be perfect, was my first thought: the experiences of this downtrodden man, told through my storyteller’s lens.  A story commenced writing itself in my mind.  “Sounds great,” I said.
         “Alright well, I’ll be seein you around so, just could you let me know when it’s a good time?  Maybe we can sit down at, at a Subway or somethin.  Anytime you can.”
I assented.  Thomas waited a moment, perhaps hoping to give my supply of goodwill a little time to replenish, then ventured, his words quickening into a blur as he went, “And hey man, you got any change on you? I’m tryin to, could you help your man out, I’m tryin to get somethin to eat.”
         Never one to give out pocket change like so much free candy, I told him, “I’m sorry sir.  I don’t carry cash on me.”  His nod of reply looked unsteady; I nervously bumbled, hoping to placate him with flimsy logic, “Dangerous neighborhood, you know.”  His countenance remained unchanged.  I offered him a weak smile by way of consolation.  And so we parted.


         I spent many an hour, in the weeks that followed, in awe of the masterpiece I could pen, someday soon, from the raw material supplied to me by Thomas.  Its potential scope had me most excited: the experiences of a downtrodden man, the narrative flourish of an up-and-coming writer—too good to believe, it seemed.  I told several close friends about the idea; each one was as eager as the last to read the piece upon completion.  “Great idea; sounds very literary,” one said.  “Shit, I wish I’d gotten to Thomas first,” said an envious other.  Tim’s advice was noteworthy: “Thomas is a good guy,” he told me, “just make sure you buy him some lunch or something.  It’s the least you can do if he’s giving you a story, after all.”  Duly noted.
I had run into Thomas several times more before I went home for the winter holidays; these individual meetings in and of themselves have by now blurred together in my memory, as they were largely similar in nature.  The constants on each occasion were: Thomas would make some small talk about college, life, and then his struggles; I would laud him for his perseverance and good spirit; he would ask me when we could arrange a meeting to discuss his story; I would tell him I’d love to in the future, but I’m very busy with final exams, essays, and extracurriculars now; he would say it was okay, and ask But do you have any change on you?; I would say Sorry sir, I don’t carry cash on me; he would say Right, dangerous neighborhood, ain’t it.  This last statement of his was accompanied by a bitter, almost sorrowful look on his face that made me so uncomfortable every time that I could do naught but end our conversation then and there.  Well I’d best be on my way, sir.

         
         Aside from some abortive attempts at writing short fiction, my month spent back home passed without event, and I was back on campus before I knew it.  Classes resumed, friends reunited, I picked up my habit of night walking again.  And I figured it wouldn’t be long until I met with Thomas; next time, I swore, would be the time I invited him to sit down with me, and let the writing commence.
         But I was to be disappointed in my hopes of seeing him soon.  An entire month passed, and it was early February by the time I saw him once again.  This time, though, was a break in the monotony that marked the previous occasions.
         It happened on an already eventful Friday night, on the eve of a moderate snowstorm, as I was returning from a party.  I was not alone: I was walking with a girl I’d met there, a first-year named Addie.  Addie was a force entirely to herself—charming, smart, distinctively good-looking, and yet later to become the bane of my third year of college—and many a story could be told of her; but this is my recollection of Thomas, so that will suffice.
         As I was taking Addie home, my arm firmly cradling her toward me to warm us against the freeze of the night, we took a wrong turn in our drunken stupor.  We had somehow ended up well east of campus, over on Rogers.  I had hardly noticed this mistake for an instant when that familiar figure appeared around the bend and walked toward us.  I couldn’t clearly make out his face for the distance and blur of thickly falling snow between us, but I somehow sensed—whether from the location, his gait, or some vague intuition, I know not—that Thomas was approaching.
         Indeed it was he.  His appearance was unusually miserable tonight: while Addie and I sported winter coats and knit wool caps in the dreadful weather, Thomas was roughing it in a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of ratty jeans.  He looked much the worse for wear.  His arms were bound tightly around his chest; his visage was frozen into resemble a tragic mask: his eyes squinted so tightly as to be nearly shut; his nose running all down his upper lip; his eyebrows strewn with frost; his blue lips curved sharply downward at the ends, like a blubbering baby’s mouth, in the shape of a handlebar mustache.  The man almost certainly had been out in this weather for hours.  As Addie, having seen by the barely visible street marker that we had erred, abruptly halted, and I paused in assessment of the man’s condition, Thomas sprung on his chance to interrogate us.
         Not a word about his story, my college life, or his general hardships was to be spoken.  All that came out at first, in a terrible cry, was “Man, you got any money?”
         Before I could reply to the man, Addie intervened, addressing me: “We’re too far east.  We need to turn back.”
         Then Thomas practically shouted, ignoring this non sequitor, “I gotta get to the bus shelter, I need sixty cent, I’m sixty cent short, can you help a man out!”
         “Sorry sir,” I said, automatically, “I don’t carry cash on me.”
         Thomas went on indignantly, desperation tingeing his voice: “You know what the city does here?  They turn off the vents outside them buildings off at night, yes they do, so people like me can’t sleep on em!  I need someplace warm, someplace safe to sleep, right, you hear me?!?  Any change, any change you can spare?” he pleaded.  After a momentary pause, he stared me directly in the eyes, and added piercingly, “It’s a dangerous neighborhood.”
         His words were sharper than icicles.  I hesitated; in my idleness, Addie rubbed my back significantly, and nudged my shin with her boot—as though her point hadn’t yet been driven home.  “I’m sorry sir,” came out of my mouth, in a tone as empty as the air; “have a good night.”
         As I turned away quickly, a jingle came from my pocket.  I stopped and looked down, then at Thomas, who hadn’t moved from his spot—he was staring at the spot whence the noise came.  Addie grabbed my hand and kept walking, beginning to pull me away; before I finally acquiesced and turned around to walk with her, the last thing I saw was Thomas mouthing, perhaps muttering, “Sixty cent short.”
         
The next morning, after having woken up at the sensation of drunkenly falling from Addie’s bed onto her floor, I tried to piece together the events of the previous night.  Once I had gotten them in order, tried in vain to wake Addie up (evidently still out cold), congratulated myself on the obvious success of the night, and headed for the dining hall alone, I immediately assured myself that, for certain, the very next time I saw Thomas would be the time our appointment was set up, so my writing could begin.
But it was not to be.
         Yes, I recall it perfectly now—strange rumors circled about campus and the vicinity that day, none of them confirmed until an official notification, a campus security warning, was sent to all students the following morning.  But as soon as I heard the rumblings, that something terrible had happened last night, a dreadful crime, I knew, in the most reluctant reaches of my mind, what must have happened…
         Thomas was killed that night.  A group of undergrads headed to their apartment happened upon the bullet-pierced body, left to bleed, freeze, and finally die who knows how long after Addie and I left him.  And his story, of drugs, the inner city, crime, and who knows what else, died with him.
         Dangerous parts, these.

         I never had realized, until now, how well I really remembered it all.  But it’s all still there; it all happened.  And so I glance back at the document in front of me, and reread from the bottom: “Further questions can be sent to the office of Thomas Randall.”  Thomas Randall.  Thomas.  I knew a Thomas once; doubtless a very different one, but nonetheless.  That was all it took to jog my memory: that familiar first name, a pensive mood, and a slow day at work.
         Yes, I did want to be a writer once.  I was plagued by doubt of the odds that I could ever have made a living from it, and eventually began to look elsewhere for gainful employment.  Shortly after the incident with Thomas, if I recall rightly.  Then, I was offered an internship at a legal firm that summer, went to law school two years later, found a lucrative niche in the realm of tax law, and never looked back.  Though perhaps I ought to have, I now reflect.  I gulp down the rest of my coffee, long since gone cold, then pack up my things and head home.  Call it a day.
         I tell my wife about my recollection of Thomas that night, after the kids have gone to sleep.  Once I finish, she asks, “Really?  You wanted to be a writer?”
         Yes.  But that was so long ago.