Brooke wasn’t showing up at The Clover until after eight these days. None of her real estate clients wanted to see homes until at least ten, and the owners needed time to get ready. So if she got to the office around nine, she was still the first one in.
Blair had suggested how eight would be better anyway. “Now you’ll be able to go for your run, take a shower, fix your oatmeal upstairs, all before you walk in the door. You’ll look like you’ve come from one meeting and on your way to another. Bankers like that.” Blair said.
Maybe Blair was right. At that hour, The Clover was full of bankers and developers, so perhaps she’d meet one of them and not be driving well-heeled young women around town looking for some precious dollhouse all day.
Banker types were well-dressed, kept their hair trimmed, and, “Walked with a purpose.” They were like cadets at The Citadel she’d known when Bobby, her oldest brother, was there. She’d have liked to have dated one of the boys in Bobby’s company, “M” she thought it was, but she was only starting high school back then.
Brooke wondered where all the young men from Mike Company (yes, that was the right name) where now? Where did they live? After all, Bobby was now a lawyer in Seattle and Ben was in Bozeman with his outdoorsy girlfriend.
As Brooke watched The Clover fill up with young people each morning, she worried about Charlotte’s own young people, all moving so far away.
Brooke tried to mix with the banker and developer types, but she could never get comfortable. At least not in the look Marion favored for her. Marion wanted Brooke to dress like the picture in the company brochure, everything perfect: hair, makeup, smile, all just right in a world too often valuing the appearance over the real. Some agents had even gone beyond soft music in the background with an open book resting in a chair, to now having fresh baked cookies on the kitchen counter, as if they were expecting the kids home from school at any moment.
Brooke tried to play her part, she bought a few tight-fitting pantsuits with matching pointy pumps from the high-end Dallas store at the end of the mall. Marion said Texans knew how to do things “big,” so that was a start.
Still, Brooke’s go-to for dress up was her navy-blue suit from Belk’s with its skirt just at her knees, and a pair of sensible two-inch heels. Try as she might, she just wasn’t a Texas Girl.
Brooke stood in line to order, scanning the room for a place to sit. She didn’t want Blair delivering her coffee to the table, and she certainly wasn’t going to go behind the counter to fix her own.
Asking strangers to join in their group was hard, especially for this Xennial still in therapy for her condition. The messy guy, whose name she didn’t know, was there, maybe she’d sit with him.
“Hey, do ya mind?” Brooke asked as she motioned to the empty seat next to the young man.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up, just used his foot to push out the chair.
“Thanks. I’m Brooke.” She said, settling into the chair. Brooke stuck out her hand, he mumbled something, then went back into his computer screen. Brooke lowered the untouched offer to her lap.
For all his disheveled appearance, along with today’s particularly ugly Aloha shirt, the messy guy sure wanted things on the table to be tidy. He would arrange and rearrange everything: coffee, pencil, and notepad. Even his computer had to be positioned just so. Oh well, Brooke thought, “We’re all different.”
On it went for the next few weeks, more and more customers at The Clover and Brooke ending up with Mr. Messy. Until the day she decided, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Brooke pushed on the bright shiny Apple, closing his screen. That got his attention.
“What’s your name?” Brooke asked, with an unusual demanding tone, as she hoped he remembered hers.
“I’m Peter, Junior, but just call me Peter. I design websites for a living, but business has been slow since things fell off. What customers I still have don’t pay on time and I was padlocked out of my apartment months ago.”
So now, Mr. Messy was Mr. Chatter Box, giving Brooke his life’s story.
He continued, “I’ve been sleeping in my Honda but need to move when the parking lady comes by. After I find a new spot, I come to The Clover and ask Blair if there’s any suspended coffee.”
Whoa, thought Brooke, sleeping in his car – no wonder he’s messy.
“Gosh, I’m sorry about being locked out of your place and all, but what’s “suspended” coffee?”
“You know, it’s coffee like yours, ’cept it’s free. Blair usually has some, cause people like the idea of paying-it-forward with a simple cup of joe. Folks like you pay for their own plus one extra, and everyone is happy that way. Blair puts little tally marks on one of the bags he keeps beside the register, you know, the ones for the carryout beer.”
Brooke felt her eyes get wider, maybe her head spun a little, as she thought about how she was becoming involved with a guy who was homeless, needed to visit a barber, and drank suspended coffee.
From then on they visited more. Peter would be waiting for Blair to open, and Brooke would come in later to join them. When Blair needed to tend to something she might ask Peter to move with her over by the window. She watched the people, and he stared at his screen.
Brooke found herself thinking more about Peter these days. The only homeless people she’d met were at the shelter. It was the one closer to town where she served lunch before she got the job with Marion.
Brooke knew how helping the needy was the right thing to do, the Bible said so.
It was a place where both men and women, even children, could get lunch, do their laundry, and see a counselor (usually to ask for a bus pass). Best of all, Brooke thought, the center gave them an address, a place to get their mail. “Everyone needs an address if they want to belong,” was Brooke’s belief.
It had started as a “soup kitchen,” run by a church, but as Charlotte grew so did the problem of homelessness and poverty. The director at the center had referred to it as a ministry of “presence,” and recently had begun finding permanent housing for “the neighbors,” as he called them.
One program Brooke liked included running with the neighbors. It was started by an older girl from Brooke’s high school. The theory was running builds confidence. So the idea was for homeless men and woman (even one young family with a small girl and boy) to use running at lunchtime to give themselves the self-confidence needed when they went on a job interview, or even to exchange a “hello” on the street. Some of the neighbors were now running long races, marathons even.
Brooke enjoyed running with Mere Bear’s group (a nickname the leader picked up from her dad when she was little), not for the free t-shirt, but for the chance to talk with the neighbors. She would stay at the back, offering encouragement.
Encouragement mattered to Brooke, her right brain needed the praise she had found.
“Let’s see if we can keep running until we get to the stop sign!” she might say as they ran along the street just before South College, where they would turn left.
Once they had rounded the corner, “I’ll race you to that pole!”
Next, it might be the fire hydrant. On it went, all baby steps of encouragement with each stride breaking the months of inactivity from sitting on a park bench and sleeping under a railroad viaduct.
So Brooke did know a few homeless people. Was it at the center she had seen Peter? She wasn’t sure. He wasn’t a runner, but maybe he was one of the neighbors who sat by themselves in the courtyard after lunch. Could any of them be website designers, computer programmers, bankers even, just down on their luck?
Yes, the more she studied Peter, the surer she became. She’d ask someday, maybe. And she’d also ask why he kept arranging and rearranging everything on the table; even why he wore such funny shirts.
The vibration of Brooke’s phone interrupted her conversation with Peter. Even if she didn’t love her job, it was the time-honored role of a salesman to answer the call, to get things done. Like the bumper sticker, she saw on her way to college told her, “If a truck brought it, a salesman sold it.”
She would love her work someday. She just needed to keep at it. Persevere. Stay the course. Go the distance. Hang in there. Yep, that’s the spirit!
Everything would be fine. Just fine.
Hopefully.