“The city is beautiful in the fall,” he said, taking off his red jacket. The accent in his voice betrayed his past in New York City. “I enjoyed walking through Central Park and looking at all the colors in the trees.”

He pulled the chair away from the table, placed his left hand onto the back, and leaned into it. The skin of his hands was dry. Dirt had collected within these crevices and underneath his fingernails. My eyes traced these dark tributaries over the hills of his knuckles and through the valleys of his palms.

“There were a lot of concerts in the park. I’m not sure if they still happen, but there was a time when you could see a lot of performers for free. The city did nice things like that,” he continued. He ran his free hand across the surface of his greying hair before scratching his chin. I noticed that his sideburns were uneven, both in length and in thickness.

“Would you like to sit down?” I asked. He had sat down the last time we spoke. What was stopping him from doing so today?

“Oh, sure,” he said, pulling the seat out completely. He sat on the edge of the chair, reclined back, and slowly stretched his legs out. I could almost hear his joints creak. He unbuttoned his blue jacket, revealing a plaid green shirt with buttons underneath.

“Do you miss the city?” I asked. He did not know that the city he had left long ago is my pending destination.

“No—absolutely not,” he resolutely said. “People are too busy in New York. People don’t look at each other. They just push past you and keep going. If you went to New York, you would find that people are always in a rush. They don’t ever take their time.”

He unwrapped the brown scarf around his neck and tied it securely around the arm of his red jacket. He pulled up the faded black sock that had sagged down past his left ankle, thus obscuring the thin white one underneath from view.

“Sometimes they’re not very nice, either. They’re just so busy—they’ll push past you in the subway. And they don’t talk to you. When I was in New York, the clerk behind the counter wouldn’t ever say hello to me. I’d ask him how he was doing, maybe he’d grunt something. Most of the time, he just ignored me. Here in Seattle, they’re more likely to talk to you. I say hello, they say hello, they make conversation with me. I like that.”

He pulled a dead leaf from his pocket. Surveying it with his eyes, he turned it over and rubbed his fingers against the papery surface. He then dropped the leaf into the trashcan.

“That’s also where they put me on haloperidol,” he said. He smiled at me, revealing a space where a molar should have been. “That stuff is bad, bad, bad. I know why they put me on that stuff—I used to be worried about the KGB following me. That’s not a concern for me anymore; it’s been many years—but that haloperidol was terrible! My muscles got stiff and I felt like I couldn’t sit still. Haloperidol—no good, no good.”

I nodded. I could only imagine how this man appeared while he was in New York City. If I was speaking with him on the phone, I would not have had any suspicions that he at one time was psychotic. Obviously always intelligent, he was now clearly logical and interpersonally skilled. Eccentric, perhaps, but that was undoubtedly part of his charm. But his untamed, grey hair, the multiple layers of clothing, the numerous, empty plastic grocery bags that were stuffed into his pockets, his consistently unwashed skin—

“—and there wasn’t any place outside for me to sleep,” he said. “At least I can find an undisturbed bridge to sleep under in Seattle. I can’t stand those shelters; too many people. It’s too crowded there. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the social services—New York and Seattle try to protect the homeless, try to make sure that they aren’t beat up and attacked—but I just don’t like the shelters. The bridges are safer.”

—what else was going on…?

“I would never go back to New York City now,” he concluded. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to go there.”

A small, shy smile crossed my face.