A Hell of a Thing.

"Guys?"

A Rochester Blue and White is parked in the avenue entrance at the closed and darkened Gulf across from Wilmer Street. The Gulf has only a dim blue-white glow within it and the block next door is dark in the way that brick building are at such five in the morning times.

"It's a helluvah thing to ask you, fellas, but..."

And one really does hate to disturb you...

An even dimmer crimson glow is there low within the cruiser's front seat and the officer passenger is shuffling paper work about in the seat between himself and the driver - printed forms, Incident Reports, Tour logs and such one imagines them to be.

"...I just came down from my room and...there is this homeless guy in the lobby, the atrium of the building."

One really does hate to ask it, to have you disturb him but...

A bundle was seen through the window in the locked and heavy stairway door coming down, a bundle of some sort in the lobby, the atrium down below beyond the door. In a hesitant instant it was recognizable as a person's shoulders and back in baggy brown jacket. Some one sitting or crouching was there across from the residents' post boxes in the four or five foot square tiled space between the stair door and the outer street door of the building.

"It really is a hell of a thing to ask..."

To do.

In a further hesitant instant, the bundle of clothing acquired a leathery-brown face beneath an o.d. wool cap, a suddenly aware face that looked in and up the stairs. And, then, there was no going back, no further second thought of going out the building's back door, instead, into the dark and possibly dangerous parking lot. There had been that incident; someone had been robbed back there a month or so back, the building super had said, had warned.

"...an' I hate like hell to ask it..."

It is such a thing to cross the street and not just look the other way, keep about one's one business, live and let live...

"But I know the Super, Gene, would roust the guy if he were awake, up..."

His back was in the corner where the plate glass and lockless street door hinges while his heavy shoes were wedged where the stair door hinges open. His knees up, he was trying to fashion another cigarette from too much stringy tobacco piled on a rolling paper and making a mess of it. Strands were falling off and about him to the tile floor. There was an odor, too, much of it tobacco that had already emanated in to the bottom of the stair well.

"He says he's just waiting for a bus in an hour...."

Finishing the roll and repositioning his thick soled shoes so that the stair door could swing out enough to emit a person were undertaken all together along with explanations of his presence.

He says, too, he's from around the neighborhood. That he is known and all right.

"But I know Gene...well, I know he'd want the guy rousted. It's just...."

Wouldn't have a quiet word to the wise have been better? Is it better to involve them?

"Which is your building, sir?" is all that the officer driver wants to know.

On the angle across the avenue the only light remaining on at this end of the block is there behind the narrow foot deep door stoop surrounded by its rectangle of rough gray stone. There isn't much that can be seen of the postal lobby through the plate glass of the street door. The man within has positioned himself so there is nothing much of him to be seen at any angle from the street.

"640, the doorway next to Oxford's."

The avenue is so dark and silent and dead at this hour. The officer driver only looks over the street in the right direction and doesn't move to get out or to put the car into gear. The officer rider only continues to shuffle paper.

How is it that this happens now? Will this, after all, happen?

"It's such a hell of a thing...!"

An awkward and awful thing...

"And I really do hate asking it."

Perhaps it is necessary to back away, to leave them to do what they need to do without further involvement, without eyes on them doing it.

The Blue and White sits motionless just behind the sidewalk on the pavement of the station lot the time it takes to walk down almost to the corner and it only moves to pull out into the avenue when the street is almost crossed to the newspaper box waiting beside Gitsis' diner door.

How do such things happen?

The cruiser half fades into the shadows of the block, of 642 and 646. It goes up even beyond the alley way to the parking lot behind the block, before turning and, then, disappearing altogether into a space among the parked cars well above 640.

The wide windowed and brightly lit Gitsis', at this hour of a Thursday morning, pictures a quiet and family friendly diner with greenery potted along the inside of the glass and hanging, too, in decorative pots along the aisles. There are gleaming electric light fixtures that reflect in paneled mirrors on load-bearing square columns and on the walls of the dining room. Of the few customer inside, an old man in beige slacks and a sports shirt, wearing a white canvas hat crumpled on his head is standing paying his check at the register up front.

How does such a thing happen?

One officer and, then, the other are out on the street. They move slowly down toward the unseen door.

Lethargically move...unwillingly...laggardly about an unsavory business? Or just routinely about a job?

The paper from the box has a headline, something about CITY CRIME FIGURES...and the old man's face emerging from the diner door looks surprised anyone might be on the street at this hour of the morning, maybe, even a little concerned. His car is in the side lot and he hurries to it.

The two officers are at the doorway and stopping, not walking on beyond it as seemed at first possible. The driver with the light colored hair, the heavy set unresponsive looking face is first and doesn't seem to look within the lobby, doesn't seem to have seen anything of interest. He stands straight ahead, instead, and looks out across the street, hands on his belt.

Gone? Did he go? Did he take the word to the wise unspoken and leave after being seen, noticed?

And, then, it does happen the way it does happen and the officer driver turns and pulls at the door stepping inside while his younger partner following turns, too, in toward the doorway and holds the door open out on the street with a stiff arm.

Mark's Hots, where the breakfasts are cheaper than at Gitsis', is a long block and a half down Monroe and on the other side of the street. It is a small square yellow sign hanging out over the sidewalk. It is an awful, awkward thing to have to do, to have done. The night is still black all the way down the avenue. There is light only in the Bruegger's Bagel Bakery with the baker inside in his baker's service cap behind the counter in a half lit and empty shop. All the stores and businesses and bars and eateries are darkened windows with some neon left on in them in places down to Mark's. It is a calm night and fair for early April. If it were February and crazy cold outside, or, March with a lake effect storm whipping down the street off Ontario, it would be different. The traffic is all still single cars and vans and not even traffic yet. There might be but isn't a truck or two but there are no buses in an hour. In less than a hour there will be buses but there are no buses yet. The night is that dark that, when the light does comes, the sky won't soften to rose or gold far down the side streets to the east or be that dark blue above the block north and west of the intersection of Meigs and Monroe. It will be only a dull and ordinary Rochester lead.

In Mark's the slinky waitress with the tall face and the blonde and boyish cut hair, the one with rings pierced in her lower lip serves breakfast and the customers are all the usual customers of five-thirty in the morning. At six the sky isn't yet as light as it will be and the African lady is opening the little no name convenience along side Averill for business. Back across from Mark's, Nick's Super Store in the east block is open and lit up and single customers are in and out while, on the corner of Meigs, fares are waiting for a bus downtown.

And a Blue and White is backed into the lot along side the Avenue Pub, hidden from south bound traffic by the brick corner of the building.

If it had been February, March or raining it would have been different.

The guys are overseeing the street in this block, now, though it is hard to tell they are looking at anything at all.

The stair door lurched shut and locked - but the next person out might not have been careful to watch for it, to be sure it did....The lady on three who comes down to wait for the early bus mornings might not have wanted to go out through the lobby; might not have dared go out through the rear door....There were spent paper matches and tobacco shreds and ash on the tiles and, too often, in the morning, there are puddles of urine to be stepped over or around and for Gene to have to clean up.

And, still, it's an awful thing.

At Wilmer it is full day light with the cut off corner of the Cornell building that looks somehow gothic at night stands in front of the dull dawn's early light. The room on the second floor at 640, left without a light on, will be half shadowy while its windows overlooking the inner building court yard with the Cornell next door will be bright with day. The room will have that stillness of a room half dark at dawn in a still sleeping building.

The remembered mess is on the floor of the lobby with out any urine and the remembered tobacco and slightly sour scent is lingering there still and at the foot of the stair well, too.

Still, it is a helluvah thing!



April 29, 2009.