79. AIDS

While I was drawing this, a short bald man holding a large white envelope came running toward me.
‘OH MY GOD,’ shouted the man as he reached me, ‘YOU’VE GOT GREAT ENERGY!’
‘Really?,’ I said, taking off my headphones and standing up, ‘do I?’
‘YES,’ shouted the man again, raising his arms as if I had just performed a hold-up on him, ‘you sure DO!’
Then, suddenly, he put his right hand on my left shoulder, inhaled, held his breath for a moment or two, tilted his head forward, exhaled and quietly said – ‘I have AIDS.”
Then he pursed his lips and nodded his head up and down.
‘Shit,’ I said, frowning, ‘That’s very, very bad luck,’
Then the man opened his eyes.
‘Yes, yes it is,’ he said, looking into my eyes, ‘But don’t worry, you can’t catch it like this,’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t think I could,’
Then the man, who was wearing a pink polo shirt, blue slacks, and was missing the front teeth on both his upper and lower jaw, pulled up the sleeve of his polo shirt.
I look up to see a bony shoulder on which grey hair was growing in tufts, like seaside grasses.
‘I need some medication,’ the man said, waving the white envelope in front of my face, ‘I need 36 dollars,’
‘Um,’ I said, ‘okay.’
Then, like a magician performing a cup and balls trick, the man waved his hand and the envelope disappeared.
‘You see?’ he said, pointing to his abdomen, ‘I need suppositories.”
‘Oh,’ I said, bending forward slightly to look at his distended abdomen.
‘You see?’ the man said again.
Then the man closed his eyes and went quiet.
I stared at his face, at his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping on a river bank.
And then there was a long quiet between us until I broke the silence by saying ‘I’m afraid I only have 5 dollars’,
The man opened his eyes and poked his head forward like an emu.
‘Is that all?’ he cried as I held a 5-dollar note toward him.
‘Yes,’ I told the man who was now tsking me and fanning his face with the white envelope, ‘I’m afraid that really is all I have.’