Improvise

I like to sit in 5 Walnut’s back room—a little art gallery—and drink a beer as I read a book or jot notes down on my pad. Usually it’s just me back here. I open the door to let breeze in, play jazz quietly on my phone. Today B. joins me; he plops down in a nearby chair and lets me buy him a beer. He’s talkative, eager to connect. “I was a crack baby,” he says, out of the blue. “That’s why I walk like this.” He points down to his legs. “I tell ya, growing up the way I did in Chicago, it teaches you things.” “Like what?” I ask. I’m not sure B. will talk to me in this manner again. He thinks on it a while, sipping down his beer. “That you need to always work hard. And when there’s no work, you improvise.” I nod my agreement. “That’s the word,” he says. “Improvise.” A man walks past, across the street, stumbling and lurching, shouting out to no one. “It’s too early,” B. comments. “For that boy to be cracked out.” I assume the man is drunk, but looking closer, he seems haunted by ghosts. “I’m not going out there and play Superman,” he says. “That don’t get you anything but trouble.” Later, as I get ready to head out, B. tells me, now that we’ve talked: “We have a thing, you know. We can sit down now and talk to one another.” He takes off his bright yellow cap and rubs his cross-cropped head. “Like adults.”