I come home on a Sunday night, a Monday afternoon, Tuesday evening to find that the Sunday paper still sits on my doorstep. This building is divided into 16 apartments. After living here for nearly two years, I know the names of 5 tenants. For those of you scoring at home, that’s a conversion percentage just over 30. Sad, either the state of my being or the state of this world.
I share stairs with an older gentleman. These stairs divide our two apartments…A and B. Estimation leads me to believe he tips the scale at 80 and 60. Years and pounds, respectively. Let’s call him…Felix. Felix has somehow convinced the L.A. Times route runners to hit our shared Holloway nook once a week. Sunday. I fail to see how this could be profitable on any level for the Times. Maybe for Felix, in his piteous state, this is a courtesy they happily extend.
Doubt it? Yeah, you and me both. Roll with it.
Sometimes, he’ll go out of town (slip into a pre-determined, self-medicated coma) and kindly slide a note under my door. “Out of town. Paper is yours if you want it. Enjoy.” It’s a nice gesture, one that involuntarily tucks itself into the back of my mind.
It’s the foolish things I never forget.
Other days, he’ll knock. This is rare. I always know it’s him from the distinctive lack of trauma he exerts upon my wooden door. The last instance, he shamefully asked if I would do him the great favor of getting his mail. When I opened the box, it was stuffed so tight a crowbar was nearly appropriate. He hadn’t walked the fifteen steps of our courtyard for weeks. I came to his door with my arms full and he spilled it. He hadn’t had the strength or faith to make it without collapsing…
I told him I’m always right next door…that I’m always a knock away if he needed anything. Anything. And…I think I was even sincere.
The next week, I found him sitting on the ground, halfway between his door and mailbox. He was spent. In a mess of sucking air and spitting words, he managed to share the uplifting news that he had fired his doctor and was feeling much better. Of course, any up-lift I had experienced instantly deflated when the visuals came rushing in. Looking down on him in that moment, I realized this was a man I could literally lift above my head and snap in two. It’s not possible for me to imagine a walking man in worse shape than this one.
Felix has been ill. Quite. When I first moved in, he carted an oxygen tank everywhere he went. Its old wheels would scream pitches to rupture eardrums as they hit revolution danger zones. I’m sure it bothered some of the tenants. Not this one. It afforded me prep time, albeit brief, for our impending conversations.
When you speak to a man that can barley take in enough sustainable oxygen to survive, KNOW immediately that you are destined to Shepard that and every conversation the two of you will ever have. I’m good with words, but speak to a dying man greater than 50 years your elder and also KNOW, take every drop of help you can get.
…
It’s Monday, eight minutes before midnight and that paper is still sitting outside his door. This tune is hardly fresh. Actually, it plays quite often around these parts. I sit here in my darkened apartment and let the melody fill my mind.
I think about the frailty of his life, the invincibility of mine and determine that reality falls somewhere between.
I look at the white wall separating my world from his and I wonder. What will the song sound like when I remember, long after Felix is gone, that his Sunday paper is actually being read on a Sunday?
I bet I’ll laugh. No, I’m sure of it.
