Damaged Hearts. Jan St. Marcus

as the homeless kid and the image he’s actually seeing of himself in decent clothes. He turns to me and his expression changes. He seems self-conscious. Is he embarrassed? That expression doesn’t last long. It was just a flash. I smile at him and nod.

      He’s smiling like a kid at Christmas. “I can’t believe how nice I look.” He turns and checks himself out in the mirror again. I smile and drift over to the sweatshirts. We spend another thirty minutes or so adding items to his new wardrobe, and when we’re done, I ask Mindy if she’d be kind enough to cut off the tags. He insists on wearing the dark-blue jeans and light-blue shirt out. He’s also fallen in love with the shoes we bought, so his Chucks go into the bag with his old clothes as Mindy rings everything up and hands us our bags. I slip her a twenty-dollar bill and thank her for her help. I open the trunk of the car (which is in the front) and he puts the bags inside. He looks at me like he doesn’t want to go home. I don’t blame him. I pop my head back in the store and make sure that it’s okay with Mindy that I leave the car in her parking lot for a little while. And while Bran doesn’t know how much I spent, I figure that for five hundred bucks, I should be able to leave my car there for a couple of beers. I am right.

      We walk a couple of doors north to a nice little restaurant/bar and I catch Bran checking himself out in the windows of the shops we pass. I like smiling, and watching Bran enjoying his new appearance, I am smiling again. As we sit on a couple of barstools, it strikes me how easy it is to change someone’s life for the better. Bran, who showed up in my life looking like what he was—a homeless guy starving and looking for some food scraps—now looks like he could be a college student hanging out after classes at UCLA. And his whole demeanor has changed, too. He’s still shy, but his eyes are bright. His head is slowly but surely spending more time up and less time looking at the ground. And he’s got a great smile.

      Our stay at the bar is cut short by a bartender who insists on seeing Bran’s ID, which he doesn’t have. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know how old he is. I am thinking about asking him when I see how disappointed he is. I guess I’m disappointed too. I really like the food at this place. I was looking forward to a good dinner. Oh well. I kind of learned to deal with disappointment at a young age. I lead him out and once outside, I look up and down the street, trying to remember another place where the food is good. I’m not too thrilled to leave my car parked in front of the GAP. I’m sure that a car like mine would up the status of the store if people saw it parked there, but then again, if someone I knew saw it parked there, what would they think of me? I’m joking. I honestly couldn’t care less what anybody like that thinks of me. But I’ve got beer at home, and I’m now kind of hoping that Bran sticks around for long enough that we’ll have more chances to hang out in the future. “I’ve got beer at home,” I say as I head back towards the car.

      “Yeah. Okay.”

      “You’re disappointed, huh?”

      “Kind of. Like I said earlier, I don’t think I’ve ever looked this nice before …” His words trail off, and I let the silence settle on us like a slow-moving fog. He’ll get over it.

      “Well, why don’t we stop at Chipotle and take it home, drink some beers and eat?”

      He perks up at this. “I can live with that.”

      As we near the parking lot, I realize that I’m actually disappointed a little bit, too. Not disappointed enough to go driving around looking for a place to eat out, but disappointed nonetheless. As soon as the engine roars to life, I begin to smile again. Damn, I love my car!

      5. Brandon

      I. Am. Fucking. Ecstatic! One of the kids in one of my numerous foster homes was this wanna-be surfer dude named Tyler. He was always telling people “Don’t harsh my chill, dude.” It sounded so douchey that I never paid much attention. I mean it was about the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard eight thousand million times. But as I stand in front of my bed with all my new clothes neatly arranged on the puffy white, satiny comforter, I’m just hoping that Michelangelo doesn’t come in and “harsh my chill” by reminding me that the food is getting cold. I just want to stand here and stare. And then I want to try on everything and look at myself in the mirror in every outfit and every variation. Truth be told, I wanna do it twice. Okay, spoiler alert: I’m going to remind you that I’ve been practically homeless my whole life and things that you take for granted are things that I wouldn’t even dare to dream about. Like having a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of brand-new clothes laid out on a comfy bed in a comfy house with a gorgeous, model dude who seems to genuinely like me and care about me. Um, yeah, except . . . I’m not really sure how much he spent on the clothes because he wouldn’t let me see the amount when we checked out, and when we were shopping, I was so excited looking at myself in the mirror that I never thought to look at the tags, and then he had that Mindy girl cut off all the tags, and I think he just told her to throw them away when we left. But it had to be a couple of hundred dollars, right?

      And, of course, now I have dilemma number three for the day: Do I stay locked up in my bedroom trying on all my cool new clothes or do I go eat a really nice meal from Chipotle and drink some beers with my new best friend? Yeah, on second thought, it’s not that big of a dilemma. If you’ve ever been hungry, you’ll understand how I looked back over my shoulder at the clothes for as long as I could as I hurried out to the kitchen to eat. You’ll have to tell me if it’s weird that Michelangelo has placed all the food onto his really nice plates and bowls and set out pretty cool place settings with cloth napkins and stuff? Is that weird, or is that what most people do? I mean, he’s even cut little wedges of fresh lime and placed them into the tops of the Corona bottles. Earlier in the evening, when that asshole bartender carded me and refused to serve me a beer, I was kind of disappointed that we couldn’t stay, but now I am realizing that I actually prefer this.

      “I thought I was going to lose you there, kiddo.”

      “You almost did. I mean, those clothes are so cool. I know I’ve already said this but thank you so much. I literally have never been shopping for new clothes before in my whole fucking life. You don’t even know.”

      Michelangelo smiles and gestures for me to sit. He doesn’t have to ask me twice. He lifts his beer and reaches over to toast. So I pick up my bottle and tap his before shoving the lime wedge in and taking a swig. I think the combination of the ice-cold beer and the sourness of the lime combine to do something weird to my throat. It’s a pretty cool sensation. I’m not really a big drinker, but when I can, I enjoy a nice cold beer. Wait. That’s a lie. I would like to enjoy a nice cold beer, but being homeless, you know, it’s not really a thing for me. A couple of swigs of lukewarm beer, watered down by the backwash of whoever was drinking it before doesn’t really qualify. Then again, if it’s an option, this ice-cold Corona with a lime is something I could get used to.

      “Ahhhh,” I say with a satisfied sigh. “That’s the best beer I’ve ever had.”

      Michelangelo smiles and nods. “I like it just above freezing. If it’s not cold, it’s not beer, is it?”

      “No arguments here.”

      “Let’s dig in. I’m starving.” Michelangelo looks up at me nervously. “No offense. Sorry.”

      “What the hell are you talking about?” I wonder out loud.

      “I don’t know, it just sounded kind of . . . awkward? Insensitive? Just weird talking about starving to a guy who was homeless two days ago.”

      I nod. “No offense taken, dude. Nothing to worry about.” He smiles again and my eyes start to dance over the food.

      “Help yourself,” he says, handing me a spoon. I take the spoon and shovel some of the burrito bowl onto my plate and then pile some chips and guacamole on the side and hand him back the spoon. “Don’t wait for me. Dig in,” he says as he serves himself some of the food.

      I take my first bite and it’s so good I can’t stand it. I hear myself making little sounds as I eat and it’s kind of embarrassing, but I really don’t care. I can’t help it. I look up and Michelangelo