Lost December (20 page)

I walked up the boulevard. Pawnshops are ubiquitous in Vegas—they follow gambling like seagulls follow shrimp boats. I had never been inside a pawnshop before. It looked like an indoor flea market without the energy. The place was dirty and dank, with surveillance cameras in the corner of the room. At the back of the shop was a wooden counter and behind it were rows of guns locked up in a case. A large man wearing a Stan Ridgway T-shirt, bald with a goatee, sat behind the counter looking at me with a grim expression. “What can I do you for?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

“I’ve got to sell some things,” I said.

“Whatcha got?”

“I’ve got an iPad and an iPod,” I said.

“Anything else?”

“Some clothes.”

“Don’t do clothes.”

“They’re expensive clothes,” I said.

“Don’t do clothes,” he repeated. “Let me see the electronics.”

I took them out of my suitcase and set them on the counter.

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars for the iPad and seventy-five for the iPod.”

“How about my suitcase?”

He looked at it. “Fair condition. I’ll give you forty-five dollars for it.”

“Forty-five dollars? It’s a Louis Vuitton. It was over three hundred dollars new.”

“It’s not new anymore.”

“How about two hundred dollars?”

“I’ll give you fifty-five. Final offer.”

I looked at the bag. I wasn’t about to carry it around with me. “Do you have any backpacks?”

He pointed to the wall. “Over on that shelf.”

“How much are they?”

“Depends on the pack.”

I walked over and selected one that was big enough to fit my clothing, but not so big to look like I was camping. I checked the price tag: $27. I looked back at him. “How about I trade you the suitcase for this pack and fifty dollars.”

“What’s the price on it.”

“Twenty-seven dollars.”

“Then I’ll give you the pack and twenty-eight dollars.”

The guy wasn’t budging. I relented, bringing the pack up to the front. I filled it up with my clothes, then lifted my suitcase up to the counter.

“Don’t put it up here,” he said. “Just leave it on the floor.”

“Sorry,” I said, setting it back down.

He took out a calculator and a pad of paper and pen. “We got an iPad for two hundred, an iPod classic for fifty-five.”

“Seventy-five,” I corrected.

He looked at me. “Seventy-five. Then fifty-five for the suitcase minus twenty-seven for the pack, the total is three hundred and three.” He opened his register and took out some bills. “Here’s your money.”

I put the money in my front pocket, then turned and walked out. I sat down on the sidewalk near the side of the building to think. I knew I wasn’t thinking right. I was depressed, angry, desperate and scared. I had $303 to my name. I needed to conserve every dime until I could create some kind of situation for myself. I had to come up with a plan before what little money I had left was gone—before my clothes were dirty and I stank too much for anyone to hire me.

Hire me? How would I get a job? I had skills and schooling, but I had no I.D., no address, no résumé and no phone. I had hired dozens of people for Crisp’s and I had never hired anyone on the spot. It was always a phone call the next few days or weeks. Where would they call? And even if someone did hire me immediately, it would be weeks before I received my first paycheck. How would I cash it without I.D.? I began to understand the downward spiral of homelessness.

There had to be somewhere else I could go for help, if I could just think of it. As I thought of the people I knew, the reality of my life hit me like a truncheon. I had no friends—no one I kept in regular touch with. I suppose that was part
of the initial allure of the Wharton clan—it was the first group outside of a work environment that I had belonged to. I had no church. No social club. No fraternity. In college I went from class to work and then home. The only friends I had, if you can call them friends, were my associates from the copy centers, and, because I was their manager, none of those were close. At the time I blamed it on the stigma of officers fraternizing with the troops, but the truth was, I just didn’t have time for anyone.

Sadly enough, the Wharton group was it. Sean and Marshall were users and Candace had left me. Suzie was who knows where. Lucy would help, if she could, but she didn’t have any money and I didn’t even know where she was. The only one I knew I could turn to in a crunch was James. And he was gone.

As far as family went, I was in equally bad shape. My grandparents on both sides had passed away years earlier. The only relatives I had from my mother’s side lived back East, and the last time I’d seen any of them was at my mother’s funeral when I was seven. The closest thing I had to a family was the group my father had created: Henry, who had thrown me to the curb, Mary, who was an appendage to my father and would do nothing without his consent, and my Aunt Barbara and Uncle Paul. I knew Barbara and Paul well enough to know that they would side with my father.

As awful as it sounded, spending the night at the homeless shelter seemed to be my best option until I got things figured out.

I spent the afternoon making my way to the rescue mission. It was easy to find. There was a massive gathering of humanity in front of the building. I felt uneasy as I approached the crowd. Some of those around me were obviously mentally ill, talking to themselves; some were shaking, addicts of one substance or another; then others were just people like me, down on their luck. People like me? I doubted there were many displaced millionaires in the crowd.

I pushed my way to the front, looking around for someone to explain how things worked when a woman shouted at me, “Get back in line!” She pointed at me and almost everyone around me turned to look at me. Drawing attention to myself was the last thing I wanted.

A large man covered in tattoos shoved me. “Get in line.”

“I’m trying to find the line,” I said.

A moment later a man near the shelter’s door raised his hands and shouted, “That’s it, that’s it.”

I turned to the man behind me. He wore army fatigues and his gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “What’s he talking about?”

“They’re out of room,” he said.

“So what do we do?”

He looked at me with an amused expression. “Find a nice dumpster, somewhere that don’t smell too much, and make sure it ain’t on trash day. I lost a buddy that way.”

“I’m not sleeping in a dumpster,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “There’s always the tunnels.”

“What are the tunnels?”

“Flood tunnels under the city. There’s a whole world underground.”

“Where do you find them?”

He grinned. “They’re everywhere, pal. There’s one underneath you right now. But you’ll need a flashlight. And a knife.”

“Why a knife?”

“You never know who’s down there.”

My world had transformed from dream to nightmare.
I wasn’t like these people
, I told myself,
these “homeless.” I had run a multimillion-dollar business. I had an M.B.A. from Wharton. I’d stayed in Napoleon’s house
.

These thoughts brought me no comfort. No, I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t as smart. If they had that kind of money, they would cling to it like a life raft. They wouldn’t have given a dime to Sean.

I walked around the area until two in the morning—until I couldn’t walk anymore. I was tempted to use the money I had in my pocket for a cheap hotel room, but that would be shortsighted. What would I eat with? I found a place to sleep behind a pyracantha bush in a park. Sleep isn’t the best description of what I did. I think I woke at every sound. Being homeless is a frightening thing.

Years earlier, in my college sociology class, the professor asked us to contemplate what it would be like to be dropped
into a foreign country without shelter, friends or currency. I never imagined that I’d have the opportunity to find out firsthand what that would be like. Over the next few days I learned about this culture I was now a part of. I was amazed at how uncomfortable “normal” people were around me and became aware of their subtle, furtive glances of pity or disdain.

I learned that there were more than 14,000 homeless in the city and just a small number of beds available for them. Even then, many of the homeless stayed away from the shelters after being beaten up, having their things stolen or both.

The streets weren’t any safer of course. The homeless fall victim to other homeless, drug addicts, gangs and sometimes even the police. In civilized society there are rules, courtesies and pretenses, but they don’t apply to those on the street. The concrete outdoors is as mean a world as nature itself—a violent world, where the strong prey on the weak.

If you couldn’t get out of the quicksand
when you were strong,
how are you going to get out
after you’ve lost all your strength?

Luke Crisp’s Diary

For the next few days my space behind the bush at the park was my home base. I found some cardboard, which I laid flat over the bush’s fallen needles. I bought a loaf of bread and a
box of crackers, a package of toilet paper and a plastic bottle of water, which I purchased more for the receptacle than the liquid.

I bought a newspaper and started looking through the help wanted ads. I found a few openings for managerial positions and I called from a pay phone at a 7-Eleven to schedule interviews. My first interview was two days later with an office supply company. The day of the interview I shaved and washed myself with paper towels from the sink at a nearby gas station, then put on my cleanest clothes. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I wished that I hadn’t let my hair grow so long in Europe. I did my best to make it look good, then walked four and a half miles to the interview.

I arrived at the interview sweat-stained from my walk, sunburned from exposure and puffy-eyed from lack of sleep. I had, out of necessity, brought my backpack, which looked out of place in the corporate environment.

The receptionist was indifferent toward me and I waited in the lobby for nearly an hour, which, frankly, I didn’t mind, as it was air-conditioned and furnished with soft, vinyl couches.

When the HR director finally walked out into the lobby to get me, I could see from her eyes that I had already failed the interview.

The first thing the woman asked was to see my résumé, which I didn’t have, though I offered her a verbal one. She listened to me for a moment, but I could tell it was only out of courtesy. She asked just a few more surface questions (the obligatory kind, not the ones you ask when you’re serious about hiring), then said they’d give me a call if they decided
to hire me—ignoring the fact that she’d never asked for my phone number.

Over the next week I went to three more interviews, all with similar results. Actually, worse results, probably due to my increasing desperation. My father used to say, “The world only offers you what you don’t need.” He may have been right. You can’t get a bank loan until you can prove you don’t need it, and it’s tough to get a job if you don’t already have one.

In spite of my thrift and near starvation, I was quickly running low on money, so after just one week of rejection I decided to lower my sights and applied for four custodial positions. If I couldn’t work in an office I could, in the meantime, clean one. I was astonished to find out how competitive it was to get a job cleaning a building—even a warehouse.