Wayne must have repeated that to me five times throughout the course of our stooping it.
Wayne is a mid-sixties, haggard-toothed drink server at the Hilton in the Inner Harbor. But he lives two stoops down. Shelley and I have always seen him stumbling down the street after too many at the bar (and he always said hello) but today was the first time he and I chilled out. You see I always spend part of my evening on the stoop, having a beer and watching the passersby. Wayne saw me and, while holding a beer out to me (he had a six-pack), asked me if he could sit with me and share some stories. I told him to park it and get to the good ones. And did he. Being in the Army, working as a scaffolding erector, never being married but always owning a dog, he bared it all over the course of 45 minutes. We compared work-torn hands, and laughed about how it makes us feel tough. He told some AMAZING jokes (which I will only be able to share once I get back home and am in the company of men only). He gave me some advice, too, and f*** it if it didn't make a lot of sense. We did a lot of talking in the span of a couple beers and cigarettes.
I told him I'd be out on the stoop every evening it's dry (cause I am) and that he is always welcome to join me. And I told him I owed him a beer, since he insisted that I depart with one of his. He said he was glad to meet me, and that it was good to talk to someone who reminded him of home (he's from South Carolina, and has spent a couple lifetimes in Texas, too).
Wayne is a good dude. Kind and light-hearted. But most of all, he is lonely. As he walked away from our doorstep tonight, after yelling bye, he said, "I could sure use a friend". But he didn't say it so much as whisper it.
