State Street

I step out of the Indian restaurant onto State Street, and am blinded by a flash of sunlight. As my pupils adjust, a homeless man doing abstract pantomime comes into focus. He’s climbing an invisible ladder, trapped inside a box, walking a tightrope. All of these are done without much skill, or regard to detail. He rushes through each routine like a toy whose spring has been wound too tight. He glances at his wrist to a watch that isn’t there, pulls a banana out of his coat pocket, peels it, then sits on an overturned bucket and begins talking into the banana like a phone. His show is over, and Nick and I were his only audience. I toss whatever change I have into his cup, and he pauses, asks the person on the other end of the banana to hold a moment, looks at us, then whispers “thank you.”