On a hot Summer day, I came into work on my day off to do something, I can’t remember what-- but I can confirm I was trying to get in and get out as fast as possible. It was a beach day, the bar was dead, no one needed me there. I was running an errand and getting out, fast. That’s what I thought anyway, until I saw Kip (not his real name) sitting in seat 111, with his protruding belly resting on the bar.
Backlit by the sun, he was silhouetted like he was posing for a cruise ship ad. Relaxed and unbothered, he looked up, watching the tv above the bar. Blinking to confirm what was happening before me, I registered Kip’s button-down shirt unbuttoned, gently flapping from the breeze of the oscillating fan, revealing his bare torso. His chest hair, exposed and swaying, like a field of wheat. If wheat were dark brown and curly.
You never know what you’re walking into when you work in a restaurant.
I mouthed what the fuck?! to the bartender on duty. She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. With three beers in her hands, she walked by me to deliver them.
“Hey Kate, it’s a scorcher, isn’t it?” Kip said as I approached the bar. Fanning himself with his straw hat, he smiled at me with closed lips, he looked like a boy despite pushing 70. There’s a perpetual, mysterious glimmer in his eyes at all times. His smiling face was an attempt to quell the visible horror growing on mine. It didn’t work.
The closer I got, the more Kip glistened, like a sweaty fairy. Even when his doctors told him not to, he rode his bike to the bar. Every few weeks he’d come in with a new brace. Back, wrist, sling, boots and neck braces, just to name a few.
“Hey! Button up your shit, Kip! You’re not at the beach, man.”
Irritated at having seen his nipples against my will, I didn’t bother to be polite. He kept smiling and did what he was told, fiddling with each button. The job was time-consuming because one hand was in a brace, and only some of his fingers could bend.
Despite his quirks, I like Kip.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about him. He told me he was an athlete once, before seemingly every bone and joint in his body was broken, torn or crushed. He rowed crew, played hockey and lacrosse. He may or may not have run the Boston Marathon once, I don’t know if I believe that story. Money was of no object to Kip. Fortunes were won and lost on the lottery. Slow servers cost him thousands, he said. He’d talk about it for months, blaming you if you were too slow in getting his bets in, I can attest to that. He fished as often as he could before his canoe was stolen. Every night, before he was evicted, he left a little food outside his door for the neighborhood coyotes.
Six months ago, Kip got evicted. Probably for good reasons. Feeding the coyotes was discouraged by management. And Kip loved to prank. I came close to banning him for life for nearly making a woman faint by dropping a fake spider at her feet. I can’t imagine what his neighbors had to endure. There were the rubber rats he placed on the bar behind my fruit tray that he jostled with fishing line. Feathers, a small turtle shell and a few bones were pulled out of his pocket one afternoon, next to a couple deciding what to have for lunch.
Even after all this, I couldn’t kick him out. Looking back, I probably should have. But I worried about him. I wondered where he went home to. And he was kind, and appreciated kindness in return.
One day, in the Fall, he told us he was looking for a new place to live. Then we stopped seeing him around the bar. We didn’t see him riding his bike while wearing a neck brace on Route 28, either.
Then he was gone.
They say, “You have to know someone.” And It’s true. That’s how I found a place to rent.
Options for a new place to live are sparce for a working-class, or low-income, single person. Especially with bad referrals. Apartments don’t stay vacant long. A newly constructed apartment building in Falmouth with 40 units received over 900 applications. The 860 who didn’t get the apartments are now on the waiting list. And where can they go while they wait? Kip doesn’t strike me as a guy who has many friends to call.
The nearest homeless shelter is in Hyannis, 20 miles away.
“You look at cold nights differently, I’ll tell you that much,”
I called someone who knows more than me and asked her what happens to people on housing waitlists. There are different lists for each group offering housing, she said. The state, town housing authority, etc. Then, she said, those lists turn into more lists, for the elderly, for families, for low-income, on and on and on.
“And none of them talk to each other. People sit on multiple lists for years.” She used the word convoluted twice in the span of a moment when describing the process to me.
“So, what do they do?” I asked. “Where do they go while they’re waiting?”
“They couch surf or stay with relatives. Some people live in their cars for a while” She paused and said, “A lot move over the bridge.”
The woman on the phone sighed and said “Yeah, I’ll never sleep the same through storm.”
It’s not fair of me to assume the worst for Kip. He could be living in a better apartment in a different town and maybe he got a job. Maybe he’s with his family or on a tropical island scaring another bartender with fake rats and spiders. Maybe he hit the lottery and bought robotic limbs so he can ride his bike with no pain. Wherever Kip ended up, I hope he knows we all worried about him when we didn’t see him anymore. We cared.