Daddy's Gone a Hunting

53

Shirley Mercer had escorted Clyde to his room at the city-run Ansler Hotel. With its gilded ceilings and exquisite candelabra, it had once housed one of the great dining rooms in New York City. But that was ninety years ago. In the 1950s, it had fallen out of favor with sophisticated New Yorkers and eventually was closed. Located near Macy’s department store on Thirty-third Street, for many years it had been boarded up, and then several years ago had been reopened as city housing for the homeless.

Shirley had been pleased to see that the room assigned to Clyde was a single with a cot, a small dresser, and a chair. The bathroom was down the hall. In the corridor she could see scraps of takeout food casually dropped on the floor. She knew that the cleaning staff did the best it could but was always dealing with some people who had long ago lost any sense of hygiene. Someone in the adjacent room was playing music so loud that it threatened to shatter her eardrums.

She observed the expression on Clyde’s face as he pulled his cart into the room. It was impassive, noncaring. I won’t be gone fifteen minutes before he’s out the door behind me, she thought.

Clyde began to cough, the deep, rumbling cough she had observed in the hospital. “Clyde, I have a couple of bottles of water here. You must be sure to take your medicine.”

“Yes. Thanks. This is real nice. Homey.”

“I see you have a sense of humor,” Shirley said. “Good luck, Clyde. I’ll look in on you in a day or two.”

“That would be nice.”

What kind of man was he? Shirley wondered, as she walked down the four flights to the lobby. It was either that way out or trust herself to the elevator that broke down frequently. She had been trapped in it for an hour a few months ago.

When she reached the sidewalk, she stood there long enough to fasten the top button of her coat, then tried to decide if she should stop at Macy’s and pick up a present for the baby shower she was going to attend on Saturday. But then the thought of her snug apartment in Brooklyn and the fact that it was her husband’s day off and he had promised to cook dinner for them was too inviting. She went to the corner and down the steps to the subway, grateful to be going home to an atmosphere of warmth and love.

If only I could really help people like Clyde, she thought. But I guess the best I can do is to keep him from dying of pneumonia in an alleyway somewhere.