Snowing. Covered his hair, shoulders, shoes, bench. Snow’s on the ground. Dog tracks. Someone not long ago slipped a few feet or intentionally slid: Yippee, look at me. Several lampposts away a figure’s cutting across the grass on skis. “By God it’s snowing,” I say, feeling my hair and accumulated crunch.
“I know and I believe I froze,” still with his head leaning over his knees and staring at his feet.
“Seriously?” His eyes close. I look around. Nobody’s around. Snow’s become sleet and light rain. I open the umbrella, touch his hand. “Still warm, almost hot,” holding the umbrella over us. “Maybe that’s a sign of frostbite — the first, only and last. But what do I know about frostbite? That if the affected skin stays hot but you can’t feel it — can you or my touch?” Eyes stay shut. “Then probably is or close and you should get to a hospital for it. Get into some cover at least. Don’t just keep your eyes dry. And gloves. You have to see to yourself. You could also lose your nose.”
He puts his hands into his jacket pockets and says “Excuse me but is there any way possible—”
“Stop repeating yourself.” Rain’s become sleet and then sticking snow and I close the umbrella. “Not that I don’t appreciate that you at least saw to your hands, and your polite tone. No, that sounds flossy and patronizing. But craziness — this is what I’m driving at — isn’t going to get or keep you well. You’ll catch cold. Pneumonia. Don’t let me be your mother. Here.” I take some change out. “All my change, token’s in there too.” I hold it out. It’s already wet from the rain. I open the umbrella and hold it over us. “Take it, I have to go.”
I try to take one of his hands out but it won’t move. Around the wrist I touch is one of those hospital identification bands with a clamped clasp. I drop the coins into that pocket. Snowing. “Thank you,” he says, body same way.
“Yes, I’m a terrific son of a bitch, aren’t I?”
“I own thoughts, sir.”
“Then get cover. Listen, for all the money I shelled out I’ve the right to bark orders. So arf. Arghh arf arf. That means shelter, health, gloves.” Doesn’t look up. “All right, just remember the change is in there and a token, and take it easy.”
I turn around, lit storm clouds eclipsing the top of Empire State, start out the park way I came in. What’s this? Feel sick, stomach cramp and cold head sweat and chills, rest against a lamppost, try to close the umbrella, can’t, try, too weak to and it drops out of my hand, I didn’t let it go, wind drifts it a few feet off the ground a few feet, lets it go, rolls on its rib tips along the path several cycles, off it to I-can’t-see-where when I hear its handle hit up against a tree trunk — if that’s it. My nose itches and I close my eyes, open my mouth, suck in air, can’t sneeze. Cramps, chills, sweat and weakness are gone. Feet freezing, shoes and probably socks steeped through, turned-up cuffs caught some snow. I empty them. Strange night. Helene, my divisiveness, this weather, my seventeen-second flu. Jogger. Sloshing past in tank top, cap and shorts adding his or her part to it. Wouldn’t be surprised to look up and see the sky full of stars and unfettered moon. Un what? Where these words come from sometimes? I suppose I meant of clouds and unfetid might be better. Must have picked it up from one of the hundred or so Hasenai love poems I went over the last two days. Unchalked, unmoved, unrefined, storm cloud. Those last two lines weren’t it and I’ll change “storm” to “rain” and would now or maybe to “snow” if my notebook wouldn’t run, but close enough to be the source. And my divisiveness tonight? Some other time.
I look up, grateful to be well again. Snow that stops right before my eyes, a last flake, which I blow at to keep aloft. Then rain. I go after the umbrella. For the use it’ll give me after the time I find it, weighed against how much wetter I’ll get during the search, it’ll be worth it. But must have been blown farther in or annexed in neutral territory, since it’s not where I thought I heard it land. “Anyone around here—” No, nobody would say for a variety of reasons. It was a cheap umbrella, bought in front of a subway kiosk during a torrential downpour, May waiting inside for me to rescue her and bring her home partly dry, better or different days. Oh dear, so many women, so many girls, such a long life with them and most times just servicing for us while being one of their boys. I don’t know, but got about a dollar thirty-five a year use out of it and May’s great smile and approbation for being a sport. But get home and to bed or at least to a—
“Pardon,” gray beard, man says, hand out, no hat, also soaked and unseasonably clothed and by the sound his feet make against the water running off the path, though I don’t want to look, barefoot.
“Sorry but I already have with my last change to that guy on the bench there and I’m feeling a bit sick besides.”
“A dollar would help.” Oh would it my answer looks. “Thought it being around Thanksgiving time—” Sympathy my head shakes. “What’s a buck these days anyway and I’m awfully hard up.” A buck’s something to me my finger points. “No problem,” and as if it isn’t raining and hasn’t been and sleeted and snowed, walks into the park, is barefoot but on the other just a sock, stops at a trashcan, picks around, I don’t want to watch anymore but my mind walking away with me sees him digging deeper till out leaps a rat with cocked teeth.
Pay phone at the corner. Now I can say with some authority as they say why most of the street booths have been removed and can assume that all will be replaced with these reasonably soon. Only enough cover under this one for one’s head and hands and I run to it, thinking I have to have a dime or its nickel equivalent somewhere, but don’t. Do a dollar as a woman passes, plus the napkin with pâté. “Excuse me,” wrapping the napkin tighter and putting it in my side coat pocket, “but can you change a dollar bill for me?”
“No,” keeps going.
“It’s very important. My child in the hospital. I have to see about him. We’re split, my wife and I, and my kid who lives with her got hit—”
Has slowed down, stops, pauses, turns around, starts back.
“By a bicycle.”
“I’m sorry. A bike might sound like a comical thing to get hit with but I know it can be bad. I bet it was going the wrong way.”
“No, my son was, but the bike was going very fast and never stopped.”
“Hit and run? That could also be a joke if nobody had been hurt.” She’s dressed right for the rain, sleet and snow though all have stopped. Feels inside the quilted coat pockets while I look around for a trashcan nearby for the pâté, unsnaps a pocket off the coat and shakes it out into her palm. Keys, coins, candy or antacid mint and three tissue-wads roll out. “Didn’t think I did and I seem to have lost my little koala bear keyring. Here’s a dime.” Throws the mints into the street and turns the pocket inside out and back again. “Darn. In fact take both dimes in case the phone company bungles your first call or you need to talk more.”
“Take the dollar.”
“No thanks.” She resnaps the pocket to the coat with the keys and wads back inside. “My good deed and all that and maybe it’ll get back my bear.”
“Then what’s your name and address so I can repay you, in just stamps.”
Smiles. “Think I’m crazy?” Crosses the street, seeming from behind in her raised attached hood to ankle-length hem like a jaywalking sleeping bag or sleeping jaybag or some converse figure of speechlessness, though neither of those. I dial Information, give Helene’s borough and name and last four letters in it and get her number, think I shouldn’t, won’t, but can’t help myself tonight which true is a flimsy and untruthful excuse, but go on, what’s the harm? might even help in several unexplainable ways I haven’t time or mind to try to explain right now why I think they’re unexplainable or even why I haven’t time or mind right now, dial Information and give the same information and say “By the way, that’s Stuyvesant Place she lives on, right?” and he says “I’ve only one Helene Winiker and it’s on West a Hundred-tenth, still want it?” and I say “That’s right, she moved,” get the number, repeat it once to him and several times to myself, dial and a woman answers with the last four digits I dialed but combines them into two numbers, something I should have done to simplify memorizing the whole number.