He was thirty-six, but must have lived a hard life. He looked at least a decade older. He was there because he was "cooling off". She had pissed him off again and it was probably over this time. He celebrated with a six pack of Busch pints, the last one still clung to the plastic ring hanging from his pocket. The second to last was slowly being sipped as he told me his story. "They're always older like, in their fifties but they're always pretty hot, usually". He assured me that he wasn't violent but that he understood domestic violence. He spoke with the certainty of someone who had dealt a blow, probably several, most likely hundreds. He rolled a joint and lit it. It turned out to be a cigarette. Hand-rolled cigarettes are cheap and I soon learned that he was out of a job. He had been out of a job for years now and lived off the kindness of others and what God granted him at the food pantry. His family was appalled by his lifstyle but he had recently made his peace with them. They were wealthy and he had chosen the life of a drifter. San Diego, Key West and any other place where you could live in your van year round, he had called home. He left when the work ran out or when his sentence was up and always returned to New York.
My laundry was done so I told him that I'd see him around. I never did catch his name.
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