Elmo looked around his alley domain. Cars beeped and chugged on Main Street beyond the Farraday. Elmo seemed to listen and then touch his face.
“Just need another tomorrow,” he said. “And who’m I trying to impress, I ask you.”
“You’ve got a point,” I said. “But if you put the shave together with a bath, some clean clothes from Hy’s or Chi Chi’s Slightly Worn on Hoover, you might be able to line up a job.”
“Had one once,” Elmo said with a smile. “Makes me itch. Got no patience. Most guys out here …” He looked around, but there weren’t any guys. “Most guys have a story. What they were. What they walked away from. You know?”
“I know,” I said.
Elmo jangled the coins in his pocket.
"I got no story. No ambition. What the hell. You’re born one day. Sixty, seventy years later you’re dead. You know?”
“I know,” I said.
Elmo shook his head.
“So,” he went on, “the way I figure it, why waste the sixty, seventy with work, trying to get something you can’t keep anyway. I’m not starvin’. I’m not cold or wet most days. I get plenty of time to read over at the library or wherever.”
“I get your point, Elmo.”
“You think I could really get a job?” he asked, looking away from me. “I mean if I cleaned up okay?”
“Lot of jobs, Elmo. The gravy’s in the navy.”
