Jesse Lives Pg.2

establishment or the other “No meat on the floor!”
 
These folks served as ice-breakers for the rest of us. We stared at them out of the corners of our eyes, then made eye contact with a nearby fellow “sane” person and, perhaps, began a conversation. “Doesn’t she live in the building on 83rd with the art deco entrance? The one with the doorman who’s always hosing down the sidewalk?”
 
“I think so. That doorman’s as crazy as she is. You know that scrawny eucalypsus tree out in front of the building? I saw him attack a Chinese delivery boy who dared to lock his bicycle to it. Hosed him down like he does the sidewalk, and this was last November. The poor kid was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and didn’t speak a word of English.”
 
“He may have recognized the kid as one of those who leaves the leaflets all around. I live in 342 just down the street, and we end up with all the leaflets from his building clogging up the gutters in front of our building because he washes then down in our direction.”
 
“Oh. Is that a good building, 342?....”

And so it went. A new acquaintance made, perhaps someone to run in the park with or share a cab with if need be, someone to suggest a repairman or a mover or a dry cleaner. The quality of life in New York City is dependent on such exchanges of information, and as stimulators of such exchanges, people like the turning lady, the restaurant inspector, and the tree-obsessed doorman could be credited with contributing to that quality of life.
 
Jesse, as I discovered in time, did not really belong in the same category as these. He belonged (and belongs) in a category of his very own, Jesse did (does), but I’m getting ahead of myself, and there are things, gentle reader, that I must keep to myself, for now, as I promised Jesse I would.
 
In any case, as I have said, in my ignorant arrogance, I placed Jesse in the category of the “mildly insane”, and was thus rather wary when he first began to address me as an individual, apparently bestowing upon