My friend Adam

My friend Adam is amazing. He’s really an inspiration in these parlous times; he’s had to do so much, for so long, with so little, it’s like he can do everything with nothing at all. The story of our meeting will come another time; right now, I just want to describe him and his life a bit.

Adam’s not a big guy; his hair is usually a bit unkempt, his clothes are clean but frayed. He doesn’t spend much on clothes, seeing how his wardrobe is mostly jeans and t-shirts, hoodies and the like. His hands are small, but strong, with clever dexterous fingers. There’s an air of calm confidence about him, a man at peace with himself, comfortable wherever he goes. That’s a good quality for him to have, looking at the way he earns his keep. Adam doesn’t have a full-time job, but makes his money in a variety of parttime ways. At last count, I think he had five part-time jobs: minding a parking lot downtown some nights, mucking out a mechanic’s garage on Sunday mornings, working the counter at a consignment store a couple afternoons a week. He cleans the offices at the suicide hotline every other week, and he gives the overnight staff the night off every last Saturday of the month down at the juvenile center.

Through these pursuits he makes enough to manage his modest lifestyle. He lives in an apartment over a storefront that’s been used as a warehouse for a heating and cooling installer for decades. The company owns the building and doesn’t charge Adam much rent; he says they like someone being around to discourage vandalism. The neighborhood is pretty run-down. Once it was the retail district of a small town that eventually got swallowed up in the urban sprawl; now most of the buildings house small industry, or warehouse space, or are vacant and crumbling. It’s an old brick building, two stories tall, two storefronts side by side, each with an apartment above. Both storefronts are full of ducting and hvac components, blowers and motors and coils of wire; the other apartment is full of boxes of company records and heaps of odds and ends.

That's enough for right now; I'll have to come back to this topic later.