“Yeah, we’ll see.” There was some fuss about condiments, and I watched his taco steaming in the frigid air, feeling anxious about it getting cold. He finally took a bite.
His eyes lit up. “YO! It is VERY GOOD!”
I laughed. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
While chewing, he told me that he grew up in Yonkers, but his mother moved to L.A., so he’s back and forth. It’s hard to find work in L.A. “I see mad heads out there from here, from Philly, from Ohio. Bright lights and big dreams get deflated over there. Mad homeless heads that couldn’t make it in Hollywood. But I go back and forth, because of my moms. And I have a court date out there.” He threw the last thing in casually.
He has a job here as a courier. “I’ma quit that tomorrow, though. I gotta get me a good job. I have my resume done and everything. I might sell newspapers in the morning. You know, how they give out those papers by the train for free? You do that and it’s like 300 a week. You work what, 6-9? 5-9? And I might hand out flyers. You get like 50 a day for that, under the table. No taxes. That’s another 350. I’ma start looking hardcore tomorrow.”
He took another bite of his taco.
“You up in this spot every day? What time you come here?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “About this time, I guess. Not every day, but often.” I thought for a second about giving him my phone number—I mean, he’s trying to ask me when we’ll run into each other again. I didn’t. As delightfully non-New York this moment was, there are some things you just don’t do, I thought.
He went back up to the taco truck, and I got another lesson in incompatible Spanish. He was asking the cook to give him the bill the next time I came for something to eat.
He turned back to me. “Hey, what’s your name?” I told him. We slapped hands, hugged. “You going this way?” he pointed. I said no, I was going home. “Aight. I’ma check you later.” He took another bite of his taco. “This is very good!”
I walked home with a sense of the bittersweet, that I could have had this exchange with a complete stranger, that I would have to walk away from it after it was over. I love people so much. People can be so beautiful.
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