WARNING: Before you start this post, I warn you it is long and self-indulgent and sentimental. Now that I have finished it, it's almost like O'Henry. So you are cautioned. Just skip over it to the next post if you think it might cause your diabetes to flare up.
You guys really know some awful people. For myself, if I give money to someone, I never expect to see it back. Small nicks aren't going to hurt anything but my feelings.
But I feel as if this long exchange about dishonesty needs an exorcism. So here it is.
For something like twenty years I had a friend from the poolroom whom I will assign the name "Bill." Bill was a seriously, seriously depressed person. Hiding in life far away from a very successful father. Every now and then Bill would ask if he could borrow forty or fifty dollars. I gave him the money every time. It might take a month or two, but I always got the money back. This went on for at least two decades.
Three anecdotes:
1. This was all before there were homeless people everywhere. You would never have taken Bill for homeless, but I think he was "no permanent address" or "if living in car, give license plate number" for many intervals in those years. One heard stories, some of which were delightful revelations of how Bill dealt with his lot. Finally a regular in the poolroom, in my presence, said to Bill, "For God's sake, tell us how you do it. It would make a great book, an instruction manual. We could call it 'How to Live off the Grid Right in front of Everyone.'" Bill declined.
2. One day my phone rang. It was a gentleman asking for Bill. (When Bill really needed a phone number to give out, say applying for jobs, he would give my home number and I would pass a message to him.) I asked the gentleman why he was calling. He said he was Bill's brother. I was stunned. I explained that on rare occasions Bill gave out my phone number and I passed messages on to him. The voice on the phone eventually asked me who I was. I told him, and then he asked, "May I ask what you do?" I told him my profession. He said, "Does my brother know people like you?" I assured him that Bill knew not only me but people of all sorts, and that Bill was rather well liked. Then I said, "Tell me, I understand Bill is very estranged from his father. Is that true?" Bill's brother answered, "I'm Bill's younger brother. I remember the fights. When I have nightmares, they are always about Bill and my father fighting."
3. On another occasion my phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Bill. He said that I probably knew that he had mental problems. I replied that I did. He said he was having a bad moment and wanted me to drive him to the emergency room because he felt he might kill himself. I asked him where he was and drove to a gas station to get him. Bill says to me he wants to smoke a cigarette before we go to the hospital. So we sit on a wall and each smoke a cigarette. Up pulls a familiar car. It belongs to a non-pool room friend of mine named Chris, whose sister lives in the apartment next to the wall Bill and I are sitting on. Chris does not like what he sees. It's three o'clock in the morning. I am sitting on a wall behind a gas station with a person he doesn't know. I am smoking, which he knows I do only very rarely. Chris is suspicious and starting to border on protective. It took a lot of persuasion to have Chris let me drive off with Bill in my car.
After many years Bill ran me down at my customary breakfast spot. He declared that he owed me forty dollars. I asked him if he was sure, because I didn't remember it. He said, absolutely and paid me the forty. We looked at the newspaper together and talked. Three weeks later Bill killed himself.
People in the poolroom all asked me how much Bill owed me when he died. I could truthfully tell them that Bill had always eventually paid me back.
I can't imagine how dull life would have been without the old pool room types. Bring back the pre-narcotics demi-monde!
