Still Life with Tornado(28)

Eventually, we cross the bridge and I see he’s going to the train station. I can’t imagine what business he has there, but I follow Alleged Earl to the train station.

Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station has Corinthian columns. It has a portico. Architecture like this doesn’t seem to belong here in the middle of the ugly tracks and graffiti on the concrete barriers between the tracks and the world. Homeless people don’t belong here, either, so 30th Street Station is off-limits to Alleged Earl unless he has a ticket and he doesn’t appear to have a ticket. He just looks inside and looks up and then smells the air as if there’s something different in it here, over the bridge from Center City.

University City is not our turf. He is a homeless artist man. I am a high school near-dropout. He shuffles south to Chestnut Street and I walk at the same rhythm about twenty feet behind him. I wonder if he thinks I’m some crazy girl who has no purpose in life. I wonder if he’s right. He stops on the corner of 32nd and Chestnut and pulls a piece of sidewalk chalk out of his coat pocket. He sits down on the sidewalk—right in the middle, blocking people’s way to work or way to class—and he draws a chicken in one line without looking at the concrete canvas. It’s like a blind chicken drawing except that there is no real chicken. He’s drawing the chicken from memory in bright blue chalk. It’s abstract, but I can tell it’s a chicken so it’s not abstract. He finishes with a rooster’s comb on top. He makes it look like a headdress—as if the chicken’s head is pouring out of itself. He takes a piece of cloth—an old T-shirt or a towel or something—out of another pocket and he spits at the chicken drawing and rubs his spit into the headdress and the feet, which look gnarly and rigid. He spits until his spit runs out and then he gets up and dances on the chicken. Moves his feet back and forth like the jitterbug. Waltzes around the chicken. He says, “Not today!” and continues up Chestnut. I stop and take a picture of the chicken drawing with my phone. I see brown-red in spots—the spots where he spat. I wonder if Alleged Earl is spitting blood. I wonder when he last saw a dentist or a doctor.

We get to 37th Street. He walks into a building marked INTERNATIONAL HOUSE. I stay outside because I don’t know what International House is and don’t want to be kicked out of a place I don’t know about.

I go to the Wawa across the street and buy a bottle of water. I can’t imagine how hot I’d be if I was covered in a bunch of blankets and coats. I buy a second bottle of water for Alleged Earl because maybe he’ll need it. I sit in the shade under the awning of the Wawa and drink my water. Five minutes later, the manager comes out and says, “Move your business elsewhere.”

Who talks like that? Move your business elsewhere.

Then I see Alleged Earl and a young man come out of International House together. The young man looks sharp. That’s something Mom would say. Sharp. He’s dressed just right in preppy University City student clothes. His hair is light brown and he’s shaved and he’s got the right haircut. He’s smiling and Alleged Earl is talking to him and only now do I realize that Alleged Earl can laugh or even be nice. He’s never said a word to people who give him money. Not a thank you or a much obliged. He throws imaginary fruit and spits. But here he is, smiling. Throwing his head back in laughter. He puts his blanket-wrapped arm around the young man and they walk back toward Center City. I didn’t know anyone could be close to Earl—or that he’d ever let anyone in. Now that I see him walking and laughing and being close with this preppy guy, we have even less in common than we did a minute ago. Or, I’m more of a fraud than I thought I was. Or something.

They walk into a small café and I follow them. I buy a blueberry muffin and sit down at a table on the opposite side of the café. The muffin is dry so I open the bottle of water I bought for Alleged Earl.

I’m halfway into my muffin when I see the young man approaching. I expect to feel some sort of emotion—fear, excitement, anything—but I don’t feel anything because I decide he must be walking toward someone else until he says, “Can I sit down?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“My dad says you’ve been following him around.”

“He’s your dad?” I ask.

He nods.

Here is the son of an original idea. I have no idea what to say to him.

“He doesn’t want my help, if that’s what you’re about to say.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“He wants you to stop following him.”

“He’s an original idea,” I say. “I really admire him.”

He doesn’t smile. “Stop following him.”

“I don’t know,” I say, which makes him pause. It makes me pause, too, because I want to talk to Alleged Earl. It’s all I’ve wanted to do for days but I never do it and he’s sitting in a café with me and his son is talking to me and he can answer so many of my questions right here and right now and—

I get up and leave the café. Maybe that’s the most original thing I can do. Girl finally gets a chance to meet her idol but just gets up and walks away. Seems original enough. I try to think, as I walk back over the bridge to Center City, what next original thing I’m going to do.

I wish I could levitate.

I wish I could be Spain or Macedonia.